# Maven > Marketplace for live cohort courses and workshops taught by experts Maven is a marketplace where working experts sell live cohort-based courses, one-day workshops, free Lightning Lessons, resources and coaching. Maven hosts the landing page, checkout, emails, student community and Zoom scheduling, and lists courses on its own discovery site. There is no subscription: Maven keeps 10% of each sale. - **Category:** Courses & Communities - **Made by:** Maven Learning, Inc. - **Website:** https://maven.com - **Runs on:** Web - **Facts last checked:** Oct 17, 2026 ## Pricing Maven is free to use. - **Pricing model:** Free - **Free plan:** No fee to teach. Maven keeps 10% of what each student pays as a platform fee, and Stripe's processing fees come out as well. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Teach on Maven | $0 | No subscription. Maven keeps a 10% platform fee on each sale and pays the rest to your Stripe account; paid offerings start at $200. | Read from https://help.maven.com/en/articles/12240853-maven-expert-policy-guidebook on Oct 17, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Maven before buying. ## Key features - **Cohort courses and workshops:** Sell multi-week live courses, one-day workshops, self-paced cohorts, resources and coaching from one expert profile and landing page builder. - **Free Lightning Lessons:** Short free live sessions that collect sign-ups and feed them into the email list for a paid course or workshop. - **Built-in email campaigns:** Pre-written automated emails go to waitlisted, applying and dropped-off students, and announcements email the whole cohort. - **Cohort community:** Each course comes with channels for announcements, discussion, intros and questions, plus project submissions and course content in one place. - **Zoom and calendar scheduling:** Connect a Zoom account to create meeting links for every session, auto-record them and publish recordings to students. - **Marketplace listing and promotion:** Reviewed courses appear on Maven's discovery site, and the Student Growth Program runs sales, referrals, affiliates and ads for a share of revenue. ## Good for - Working professionals teaching live courses alongside a day job - Experts without a large audience who want marketplace traffic - Courses that companies reimburse, with team and invoice purchases ## Worth knowing - Maven keeps 10% of every sale, and Stripe fees (2.9% + $0.30 for US cards) come out too; refunds return Maven's fee but not Stripe's. - Paid offerings must be priced at $200 or more, and courses are reviewed before they are listed on the marketplace. - Experts are enrolled in the Student Growth Program by default, which can discount a course by up to 30%; opting out is by email. - Maven, not the expert, decides refunds: students get a full refund up to the course's halfway point. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.2 out of 4**, graded Oct 17, 2026. Maven is a marketplace for live cohort courses and workshops: it hosts your landing page, checkout, emails, community and Zoom sessions, and can list you on its discovery site. You pay nothing up front, but it keeps 10% of every sale. Paid courses must cost $200 or more, and Maven, not you, decides refunds. - **Value for money: D.** No subscription, but Maven keeps 10% of each sale, so $2,000 of sales a month costs $200, past where this category's dearest tenth starts ($143). The fee shrinks when sales do, and it pays for a listing on Maven's marketplace and its Student Growth Program. - **Free plan and trial: B.** Nothing to pay to start: no subscription, and you can publish and sell, with free Lightning Lessons to build a list. Selling isn't free, though: the 10% is graded under value, and paid offerings start at $200. - **Features: C.** Cohort courses, workshops, self-paced cohorts, free Lightning Lessons, automated emails, a cohort community and Zoom scheduling with recordings. It does the live-cohort job fully, but that's a narrower job, with prices from $200 and refunds set by Maven. - **Ease of use: C.** No App Store rating on record. Maven handles the page, checkout and emails, but a live cohort takes a lot of running, and courses are reviewed before they're listed. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, with Stripe, Zoom, Zapier, Klarna and webhooks for wiring it to other tools. No phone or desktop apps listed. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Maven's own pages on 17 October 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among course and community platforms - Maven's GPA of 2.2 is higher than 4 of the 18 other course and community platforms we grade, and level with 3. - It stands best on free plan and trial (B, above 17 of 18) and worst on value for money (D, above 0). - Maven has no paid plan. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.3 out of 4, and no tool on the category's chart scores higher without costing more. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/courses-communities ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** Maven is free, so making your own would save you nothing. And it is not the kind of software a weekend replaces. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 11 of the 18 other course and community platforms grade higher. - You could make: Online courses and surveys: an app builder makes these well. - You could not: Newsletters sent to thousands of people that still reach the inbox. - You could not: A members' space with posts, chat and events that people keep coming back to. - You could not: People on the other end: coaches and live sessions. No app builder makes those. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Stripe, Zoom, Zapier, Klarna **Tags:** Online courses, Community, Email campaigns, Surveys ## Alternatives - [Disco](https://toolgpa.com/tools/disco): Branded learning academy for cohort courses, community and AI help. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/disco-vs-maven) - [Teachable](https://toolgpa.com/tools/teachable): Online course, coaching and membership platform with its own checkout. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/maven-vs-teachable) - [Thinkific](https://toolgpa.com/tools/thinkific): Course, community and membership platform for experts and academies. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/maven-vs-thinkific) - [Kajabi](https://toolgpa.com/tools/kajabi): All-in-one platform for selling courses, coaching and communities. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/kajabi-vs-maven) - [Podia](https://toolgpa.com/tools/podia): Website, store, courses, community and email for creators in one place. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/maven-vs-podia) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 17, 2026: - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/12240853-maven-expert-policy-guidebook - https://maven.com - https://maven.com/teach - https://maven.com/about - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/6732396-pricing-your-course-workshop-or-self-paced-offering - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/6813971-6-ways-to-convert-students-with-email-campaigns - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/5597349-end-of-course-survey - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/6289166-community-overview - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/5905981-zoom-integration - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/5597266-webhooks-api-integrations - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/5624937-how-to-offer-a-payment-plan - https://help.maven.com/en/articles/16220073-designing-your-self-paced-cohort Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/maven Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).