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Courses

5 Maven Alternatives for 2024

These alternatives to Maven have something that will work for everyone.

By The Mighty Team

December 27, 2023

5 min read

IN THIS ARTICLE

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    If you’re considering bringing your knowledge and expertise to a live course, you may have come across the course platform, Maven.


    Maven is a solid platform that lets you share your knowledge through a cohort course. It feels a bit like Skillshare to use, with a searchable course library. You basically enroll in a cohort course and show up when the time comes, learning as a group.


    We love cohort courses, and there’s a huge push for them right now. But while Maven has some great features, it’s not open to anyone. You need to get approved first, then you need to do their course accelerator, and then you can potentially teach a course.


    So, if you’re looking for an awesome platform to teach a course that you don’t need to apply to, that lets you get your course up and running faster, let’s look at some Maven alternatives. Each of these alternatives to Maven has something different, and there’s definitely something on this list that will work for you.


    Let’s go!


    If you want more support in building your online course and community, come join OUR Mighty Community for free and meet other new and established community owners! We’d love to meet you. Join for free!




    ((toc))


    1. Mighty Networks


    If you're looking for an awesome place to run courses, Mighty Networks gives you everything Maven does and more.


    Mighty comes built with native live streaming capability, and flexible Spaces to build a cohort course – Spaces can be customized with features like events, member profiles, messaging, chat, discussion forums, and other content options. This gives you a ton of flexibility for customizing your course.


    Mighty Networks - Graphics - Live streaming


    Maven puts a heavy emphasis on community in courses, and so does Mighty! In fact, Mighty is ranked as a top online community management platform by G2. But, unlike Maven, there’s no gatekeeping. You could have your cohort course planned and selling in the next 30 minutes.


    Mighty goes beyond cohort courses too. It also comes with a full, responsive learning management system – an asynchronous course engine – which means that if you choose, you can spin your cohort course into an evergreen course after the fact.


    Mighty Networks - Graphics - MC Courses Paired Dark


    This potentially lets you sell your course twice, or at the very least, give the option for your core course members to revisit the recording.


    When it comes to selling your course, Mighty lets you charge in 135 different currencies or even monetize with token-gating.


    Last but not least, Maven doesn’t have an app yet. With Mighty, your cohort course comes with a fantastic online course app for every device.


    Start Your Free Trial


    2. Mighty Pro


    If you love all the features of Mighty Networks and want to add a totally custom, branded app under your own name in the App Store or Google Play store, we do that too!


    YT pro page - mn experts section - drew binksy


    With Mighty Pro, we work with established businesses and creators to build apps. We’ve built awesome white-label apps for creators like Adriene Mishler – YouTube's top yoga instructor, travel vlogger Drew Binksy, and the TED presenters community.


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    3. Circle


    Circle is another community platform that has the option to create cohort courses. Like Mighty, it has native live streaming and gated spaces. You can choose an event or course space, and could run a cohort course with it. The community functions work well, with good discussion boards and interactive features.


    Circle.so - CIRCLE - Community - new image


    When it comes to selling your course, Circle lets you create paywalls and charge for access. This gives you the functionality to host cohort courses. It also has a beta version of an LMS, meaning that you could potentially also turn your cohort course into a pre-recorded course.


    Circle doesn’t really have an app for every device yet – they just launched an Android app in beta so this may be addressed in the future. Circle also has a lot of limits on things that require spending more, members, admins, mods, spaces, you hit limits on all of these things and get dinged with extra charges – Mighty offers an unlimited number of each of these.


    4. Thinkific


    Thinkific is another online course platform that can be used as an alternative to Maven. Although it's not created intentionally for cohort courses, with no native live streaming feature, it does offer a Zoom integration.


    As far as traditional course platforms go, Thinkific has a good learning management system, options for dripping content, the possibility to build evaluations, and some other good features.


    Thinkific - styles


    Thinkific is also really strong on the course marketing side, much stronger than Maven. With customizable landing pages and integrated email marketing, it's a really good alternative if you don't mind teaching your cohort course over Zoom.


    5. Kajabi


    Kajabi is another well-known traditional course platform. Like Thinkific, it doesn't have live stream capability built in. But like Thinkific, it offers a workaround.


    Kajabi app


    Kajabi suggests creating a live stream on YouTube and embed it into a course module. This gives your audience the experience of live streaming, but you use YouTube as the platform.


    Kajabi’s greatest strengths are its marketing features, offering comprehensive email integration, landing pages, drip campaigns, and special offers. They’ve done a lot of work building the course marketing side of things.


    So, despite live streaming not being built-in, the strength of its traditional course platform, with a similar feature set to Thinkific, makes it a decent alternative to Maven. And unlike Circle, it does have a good app for every device.


    There are two big drawbacks to Kajabi. One is the price. It’s the priciest option on this list starting from $149/mo, so you’re paying for those marketing features. The other weakness is Kajabi’s community offerings are pretty basic.


    Ready to start?





    If you’re ready to start building your cohort course, come give Mighty a try! We’ve got everything you need to live stream an awesome course, from scheduling, RSVPs, selling access, gating content, and building out a great community to go with your course.


    It’s easy to get started. You can try Mighty free for 14 days, no credit card required!

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    Start Your Own Mighty Network Today!No credit card required.

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