Negative mentions of Thinkific

For a paid cohort-based course with live calls + chat, I’d shortlist Maven and Circle, with the choice depending on whether you want a course-first or community-first experience.

My recommendation

I’d start with Maven if the core product is the cohort itself.

Maven is unusually purpose-built for cohort-based courses: you can define cohort start/end dates, lock the student portal until a particular date, release modules on a schedule, create recurring live sessions, integrate Zoom, and keep discussion inside the cohort community. Maven Help Center Maven Help Center Maven Help Center

That gives you a fairly clean model:

• Payment → enrollment
• Enrollment → access to that cohort
• Cohort → scheduled curriculum
• Cohort → private chat/community
• Events → live calls
• Zoom → optional recording automatically surfaced to students

Maven also keeps the community open after the cohort ends, which can be useful if you want alumni access rather than immediately cutting people off. Maven Help Center

maven.com

When I'd choose Circle instead

I'd choose Circle if community is going to be a major part of the product, rather than simply the place students discuss the course.

Circle lets you combine course spaces, announcement/discussion spaces, chat, events, and live sessions within a community. Its live events also have granular visibility/access settings, and Circle supports scheduled live rooms and recordings. Circle Circle Circle

The important distinction is:

circle.so

What I'd avoid initially

I wouldn't build a stack like Teachable/Thinkific + Slack + Zoom + Zapier unless you have a specific reason. It works, but you're now synchronizing enrollment, permissions, cohort dates, cancellation/refunds, Slack membership, Zoom access, and course access across multiple systems.

For a paid cohort, access control is part of the product, so having it centralized is valuable.

My default stack would therefore be:

Maven + Stripe/payment processing + Zoom (if you prefer Zoom for calls)

If you expect the business to evolve into multiple cohorts + an ongoing paid community + alumni + memberships, I'd lean toward:

Circle + Stripe + Circle Live

If you tell me your price point, cohort size, cohort length, whether students should retain access after graduation, and whether you're selling one cohort at a time or continuously, I can narrow this down to the most appropriate setup and access-control architecture.