A client emailed me last fall asking if I could send a video explaining how I wanted her to use the pre-session reflection form. She was new to coaching, had never worked with anyone like me before, and the written instructions I'd sent were, in her words, "clear but cold." She wanted to hear me walk through it. She wanted the human part before the first session even started.
I recorded a four-minute Loom video that afternoon. Walked through the form question by question, told her what I was actually looking for in her answers, mentioned that the last two questions tend to be the ones that surface the real stuff. She replied within an hour: "Okay, this makes so much more sense now. I actually feel like I know how to start."
That's the version of Loom for coaches that works. Specific, human, replacing a moment where text falls flat. What I want to talk about here is where that usefulness starts and stops, because I've seen coaches try to build entire workflows around Loom, and most of those workflows collapse within a month.
The three places Loom actually earns its keep
After experimenting with Loom off and on for about two years, I've landed on exactly three situations where it's worth opening.
Client onboarding walkthroughs. This is the example I started with, and it's the strongest use case. When a new client signs up, there's a gap between them saying yes and the first session. That gap is full of forms, logistics, and instructions. Written onboarding works fine for most people. But for clients who are already nervous about coaching (which is more of them than you'd think), a short video from you turns the onboarding packet from paperwork into a conversation. I record one generic onboarding walkthrough and then, for clients where it feels right, a two-minute personalized version addressing something specific from their intake responses. The generic one lives in my Notion template. The personalized ones I record fresh.
Proposal walkthroughs for corporate sponsors. When a coaching engagement is being paid for by an employer, there's usually an HR contact or a sponsoring manager who needs to understand what they're paying for. I used to write detailed proposals and hope they'd read them. They didn't, or they skimmed the pricing section and ignored the scope. Now I send the proposal as a PDF and attach a five-minute Loom walking through the key sections. The watch rate is noticeably higher than the read rate ever was. Three of my last four corporate engagements, the sponsor mentioned the video specifically as something that helped them approve the budget.
Quick feedback on client work. Occasionally a client will send me something between sessions: a draft of a difficult email they're about to send, a proposed restructuring plan, or notes from a conversation they want to process. Instead of typing three paragraphs of feedback that might land wrong in text, I'll record a two-minute Loom walking through my reactions. The tone of voice carries things that punctuation can't. I don't do this for every between-session exchange. But for the ones where nuance matters, it's the right tool.
That's it. Three use cases. I know that's not the kind of expansive recommendation you might expect, but after trying Loom in about a dozen other scenarios, those are the three that stuck.
What I tried that didn't work
Let me save you some time.
Session recap videos. I tried recording a brief video summary after each session and sending it to the client as a kind of visual follow-up. The idea sounded great. In practice, it was exhausting. After a full session, the last thing I wanted to do was talk into a camera for another five minutes. I also found that seeing my face on screen right after a session created a weird dynamic, like the session hadn't actually ended. Clients started treating the recap videos as mini-sessions and responding with questions I had to address before the next real session. I went back to written recaps within three weeks.
Marketing content. Some coaches use Loom to create quick thought-leadership videos for LinkedIn or their website. I tried this for about a month. The production quality of a Loom recording is fine for one-to-one communication with someone who already knows you. It's not fine for public-facing content. The screen-share format, the tiny face bubble in the corner, the casual framing: it reads as unpolished when a stranger encounters it. If you're going to do video marketing, invest in something that looks intentional. Loom is not that.
Internal practice documentation. I thought I'd record walkthroughs of my own systems so that if I ever brought on an assistant, they could learn by watching. Turns out text documentation with screenshots is much easier to update, search, and reference than a collection of videos. Every time I changed a workflow, the video was outdated. Margaret can update a text document in seconds. Nobody can edit a video that fast.
Pricing and what you actually need
Loom has a free plan called Starter that gives you 25 videos with a five-minute limit per video. For the three use cases I described, this is enough for most months. Most of my coaching Loom recordings run two to five minutes. If you're consistently hitting the limit, that's probably a sign you're trying to use it for more than it's suited for.
The Business plan runs $15 per user per month (billed annually) and removes the video limit, extends recording length, and adds features like custom branding and engagement analytics. I've been on the free plan for the past year and haven't needed to upgrade. The analytics are interesting in theory (you can see exactly when someone stopped watching), but I've never made a practice decision based on that data.
If you're already paying for SavvyCal, Notion, and Claude API credits like I am, adding another $15/month should require justification. For most solo coaches, the free tier does the job.
The comparison coaches actually want
Here's how Loom stacks up against the other ways you might send a video to a client:
| Method | Best for | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Loom (free) | Onboarding walkthroughs, proposal videos, quick feedback | 5-minute cap, 25 videos/month |
| Loom (Business) | High-volume async communication | $15/month for features most solo coaches don't need |
| Screen recording (built-in Mac/Windows) | Quick one-offs you don't need to host | No viewer tracking, file management is on you |
| Vimeo/YouTube unlisted | Longer content that needs to look professional | Overkill for a two-minute walkthrough |
| Voice memo (no video) | When the visual doesn't matter | Sometimes clients need to see what you're pointing at |
The honest answer is that your operating system's built-in screen recorder does 80% of what Loom does. What Loom adds is the shareable link (no file attachments clogging email), the viewer notification (you know when they watched it), and the face-in-corner format that makes it feel personal. Those three things matter for client communication. They matter less for everything else.
How Loom fits next to Margaret
I've had a few coaches ask me whether AI tools are replacing the need for something like Loom. Short answer: they do different things.
Margaret handles my written communication brilliantly. She drafts onboarding emails, processes intake forms, helps me write session recaps that sound like me. If the message is primarily informational, Margaret can handle the first draft and I edit for voice and specifics.
But there are moments where a client needs to see your face and hear your voice. The nervous new client who's never been coached before. The sponsor who's skimming your proposal between meetings. The client who sent you a vulnerable email and needs to know you actually read it carefully. In those moments, text, even well-written text, doesn't carry the same weight.
My workflow for client onboarding now looks like this: Margaret drafts the onboarding email with all the logistical details (scheduling link, form access, what to expect). I review and send it. Then I record a short Loom that adds the human layer: welcome, here's what to expect emotionally, here's how to approach the intake form. The combination covers both the information and the relationship.
It takes maybe ten minutes total. The email alone used to take me twenty because I'd agonize over making it sound warm enough. Now Margaret handles the information, Loom handles the warmth, and I handle the parts that require actual judgment.
When to skip it entirely
If all your clients come through the same channel, already know what coaching is, and don't need hand-holding during onboarding, you probably don't need Loom. Your written communication is enough.
If you coach teams or groups rather than individuals, the one-to-one personal video format doesn't translate well. Group communication needs a different approach.
If you're already behind on admin and looking at Loom as another thing to add to the pile, don't. It's meant to replace specific communication moments, not add new ones. If you're currently sending a written onboarding packet and it's working fine, Loom doesn't make it work better. It makes it work differently, and "differently" only matters if the current version has a problem.
The coaches I'd genuinely recommend Loom to are the ones who keep hearing some version of "I wasn't sure what to expect" from new clients, or who are losing corporate proposals and suspect the decision-maker never actually read the document. For those specific problems, a short video solves something that more words won't.
The thing I keep coming back to
There's a conversation I have with myself about every tool I add to my practice, and it goes something like this: does this help me be more present with clients, or does it give me one more thing to maintain?
Loom, used narrowly, passes that test. The onboarding video means clients arrive at the first session less anxious and more prepared. The proposal walkthrough means I spend less time in follow-up calls explaining scope. The occasional feedback video means I can convey tone when tone matters.
Used broadly, it fails the test. Session recap videos burned me out. Marketing videos looked amateur. Documentation videos went stale immediately.
The pattern I've noticed across every tool review I've written is the same: the tools that survive in a solo practice are the ones you use for one or two things and ignore the rest of the feature set. Loom's marketing wants you to "replace meetings" and "build a video-first culture." Ignore all of that. You're one person with twelve clients who needs to occasionally say something on camera instead of typing it. That's the version of Loom worth keeping around.