Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
A marketplace for live cohort courses, not a membership platform. No monthly fee; Maven keeps 10% of every sale and Stripe takes its cut on top. Each cohort gets its own channels, DMs, projects and live sessions, then it ends. Students can export as CSV but there's no import, no gamification, no app, and Maven's refund guarantee runs to the end of week two.
Maven is the odd one out on this site. It isn't a place to run a community. It's a marketplace where experts sell live cohort courses, one-day workshops, free "Lightning Lessons," downloadable resources and coaching, and Maven markets the catalogue to what it says is 500,000+ learners, mostly in AI, product, engineering, design and leadership. Every course gets its own small community for the length of the cohort, and then the cohort ends.
It's listed because it's in every "cohort course platform" comparison and because the economics are different from everything else here. You pay nothing to list. Maven takes 10% of what you sell. If that trade appeals, the rest of this listing tells you what you get for it and what you give up.
There is no plan. No monthly fee, no free tier, no trial, because there's nothing to trial. You apply to teach, build a landing page and a syllabus, and open enrollment.
Revenue share: Maven keeps 10%, you keep 90%. The help centre is precise about the order: Stripe takes its processing fee first (typically 2.9% + $0.30 for US cards), then Maven takes 10% of the gross product revenue, and the rest lands in your own Stripe account on whatever payout schedule you set there. So on a $1,000 enrollment you'd see roughly $1,000 minus $29.30 minus $100, about $870.
Maven collects and remits VAT for EU students automatically. For US instructors, Stripe issues the 1099-K. Certain products have minimum prices. Maven's own Teach page quotes "$10,000 average Year 1 earnings," which is a marketing number and should be read as one.
10%, plus Stripe. Rated 10%.
Stripe, connected to your account, with B2B invoicing for companies that want to expense a course. You must connect Stripe before you can open enrollment. No PayPal. Rated "Stripe only."
The refund policy is worth knowing before you price anything. Courses carrying the "Maven Guarantee" badge give students a full refund through the end of week two for courses of four weeks or longer, through the midpoint for shorter ones, any time before the start for workshops, and within 14 days for self-paced courses if under 25% complete. That's a generous window for a student and a real exposure for you.
Each cohort has a Student Home with Channels (announcements, questions, share-your-work, and one channel per project for submissions and feedback), People (a cohort directory with LinkedIn links and DMs), an Inbox for notifications, and the syllabus laid out by week and module. Students keep lifetime access to the lessons in most courses, but the community is scoped to the cohort. There's no cross-cohort or alumni community inside Maven; the help centre's answer to alumni is a broadcast email.
Gamification: none. No points, badges or leaderboards. Course certificates exist. Rated "None." Spaces: channels inside one cohort, nothing above that. Rated "Categories only."
Live sessions run on Zoom with calendar integration, auto-scheduling, reminders, recordings shared back into the course, and Zoom attendance reports. Rated "Yes."
This is the product. Syllabus by week and module, lessons (video, pre-reading, links), projects with submissions and feedback, due dates with automatic reminder emails, certificates, student progress analytics, applications and an admissions dashboard if you want to vet students, multiple cohorts per course, self-paced cohorts, and co-instructors. Rated "Yes."
Does it send members a digest? Not a content digest. Students get notification emails "up to 2x per day" bundling DMs, tags and replies, plus due-date reminders the day before a lesson or project is due. Rated "Basic notifications."
Can you email your members from inside it? Yes, and it's better than you'd expect. Every student status has an automated campaign attached: abandoned payment, incomplete application, application received, accepted, enrolled, joined waitlist, cohort launch. You can edit or pause each one. On top of that, one-time broadcast emails to any student group, including all alumni. Lightning Lessons exist specifically to build a waitlist you can then email. Rated "Sequences and automation," with the caveat that it's a course funnel, not a general newsletter tool.
Can you get your list out? Yes. Students tab → Export → pick the lists (waitlisted, dropped off, enrolled, applied, accepted) → CSV. The help centre adds a warning that you're responsible for using it lawfully, and the webhooks article is blunter: "Do not add students via Webhook or any other method to any external newsletters not intended for course communication without their express permission or opt-in." For live sync there are webhooks for every status change (waitlist joined, payment success, enrolled, removed and so on), wired up through Zapier. Rated "Zapier or API only."
Members in: none. The help centre says it outright: "We don't currently offer the ability to import students." Maven staff can load a waitlist for you if you email them; anyone in an enrolled or accepted status has to be added one at a time with the "+Add user" button. Rated "No."
Members out: student CSV by status. Channel posts and DMs: no export we could find. Rated "Members CSV only."
Courses in: rebuild in the syllabus editor. Rated "Manual rebuild only."
None. Students use the web. Rated "None."
None for referring instructors that we could find. Instructors can create discount codes for their own courses.
No persistent community: each cohort's channels and DMs end with the cohort. 10% of gross on every sale plus Stripe. No student import at all. No mobile app, no gamification. Students can claim a full refund through week two of a course under the Maven Guarantee.
Checked 26 Oct 2026 against Maven's Teach page and these help centre articles: Maven Expert Policy Guidebook; Your Student CRM; Student Home; Student notifications; Webhooks (API Integrations); Maven's Satisfaction Guarantee; Course certificates; Creating additional cohorts.
The course platform with everything in one bill: courses with quizzes, unlimited email and automations, funnels, payments, and a community tab. $179/mo to start, $143 on annual. No free plan, a 2,500-contact cap on Basic, and the community is the weakest part of the package.
The cheapest real course builder with a community attached. $54/mo, or $40 on annual, 30-day trial, 0% fees if you use Thinkific Payments. The community is one feed with 5 Spaces on Basic, the email tool is a few canned sequences, and bringing your own Stripe on Basic costs 5%.
A course and coaching platform, not a community platform. Teachable has paused its Community feature. From $39/mo with a 7.5% fee on Starter, 0% from Builder ($89). Shared student app, broadcast email, native Mailchimp sync.
