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Tutor matching platform development

For founders and education networks launching an open marketplace where tutors register themselves and parents or students post what they need, and who want onboarding, matching, trial lessons, scheduling, packs, progress notes, payouts and disputes designed around their subjects, levels and commission model.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A tutoring marketplace in its early days is a founder with a list of tutors and an inbox of parents.

  • A parent writes asking for a maths tutor for a Year 10 student, two evenings a week, online.
  • The founder scans the list, emails three tutors, and the first to reply gets the parent's number.
  • From there the platform is blind: whether a trial lesson happened, whether lessons continued, what was charged and whether the tutor turned up.
  • Tutor qualifications were a degree certificate photographed on sign-up and a note saying "checked"; nobody can say when, or whether the tutor still holds the check the parent assumes they do.

Where it gets harder

Money leaks at every step.

  • Tutors are paid directly by parents, so the commission the platform planned to take is either chased after the fact or quietly skipped once the two sides have each other's details.
  • Lessons are rescheduled by text and missed without a record, so when a parent asks for a refund for lessons that never happened there is nothing to look at.
  • Progress is described in a phone call, if at all, and the student who had a different tutor last term has no notes to carry forward.
  • The founder knows how many tutors have signed up but not how many are active, which subjects are short of supply, what the trial-to-regular conversion is, or which tutors have been flagged by more than one family.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom tutor matching build normally covers:

  • Tutor self-registration with subjects Levels, teaching mode, hourly rates within bands you allow and availability, where qualifications and any background check are recorded as supplied with a document and date, or as returned by a connected check provider, and shown on the profile as recorded items with dates
  • A requirement post from a parent or adult student with subject Level, goals, mode, frequency and budget
  • Matching that ranks tutors by subject and level Availability overlap, mode and distance for in-person lessons
  • A trial lesson booked and paid through the platform Free or priced as you decide
  • Lesson scheduling against tutor availability With an online lesson link generated per lesson
  • Lesson packs bought up front With the balance held and released per completed lesson
  • Progress notes written By the tutor after each lesson and shared with the parent and student
  • Parent and student accounts With a student able to see the schedule and notes without seeing payments
  • Reviews after a set number of completed lessons
  • A dispute route for missed lessons and conduct
  • Commission on each release with payouts to tutors on a schedule

How discovery works

Discovery follows one family from requirement post to the fifth lesson with you: your subject and level taxonomy, whether tutors set their own rates, what you require from tutors before they are visible, whether the trial lesson is free and who absorbs it, how online lessons are delivered, whether packs or pay-per-lesson suit your market, what the cancellation window is for a lesson, and how commission is calculated. Each answer becomes a named stage in the scope document: register, post, match, trial, schedule, lesson, note, release.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Delivering the video lesson itself, which comes from a connected meeting provider
  • Curriculum content and assessment
  • Employment of tutors. The platform records who taught whom, when, what was noted and what was paid

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An education network wants a marketplace where parents post requirements in a handful of exam subjects, tutors must have a recorded check before they appear, the trial lesson is free to the parent with the platform absorbing it, and lessons are sold only in packs of a size the network sets. That is a different build from an open platform where any tutor lists any subject at any price, and the scope document says which one is being built.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following one family from requirement to the fifth lesson and one tutor from registration to first payout
  • A written scope document naming each stage from registration to release, with what is out of scope
  • Design of the tutor profile, the requirement post, the match list and trial booking, the lesson schedule with notes and the parent payments view, on mobile for parents, students and tutors and desktop for the admin
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of tutor records, recorded qualifications and existing family accounts from your current tool or spreadsheets, where relevant
  • Training for the admin and support roles, with a short written guide for missed-lesson disputes
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts, your subject and level taxonomy, current tutor list, the documents you require and the commission and pack rules you apply today.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the founder, whoever handles tutor applications and support and two active tutors; the scope document, the pack and commission model and the milestone plan are agreed.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the tutor profile, the requirement post, the match list, the trial booking, the lesson schedule with progress notes and the pack balance, reviewed with a parent and a tutor.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: tutor registration and recorded qualifications first, then requirements and matching, then trial lessons, scheduling and lesson links, then packs, held payments, notes, reviews, disputes and payouts.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Your team runs three real requirements through matching with invited tutors, holds trial lessons on the generated links and buys and consumes a test pack.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Matching weights, rate bands, cancellation windows and note templates are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Tutors and families migrated, meeting-provider links and payment hold and payout runs tested on accounts you control, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    Requirements, lessons and payouts run on the new platform; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers with capture-and-hold for packs and split payout to tutors
  • Video meeting providers generating a link per online lesson
  • Background and identity check providers, recorded as a result and date against the tutor
  • Calendar feeds so tutors and families see lessons on their own devices
  • Email, SMS and push notification providers for lesson reminders and progress notes
  • Mapping and postcode services for in-person lesson distance
  • Accounting software for pack sales, commission, refunds and payouts

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

An exam-focused network with platform-absorbed trials

The situation

An education network wanted a marketplace limited to exam subjects at two levels, where parents never pay for a trial and tutors cannot appear until a check has been recorded.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because the visibility gate, the platform-funded trial and the note-before-release rule tie the commission model to the lesson workflow in ways a generic marketplace script does not allow.

The scope we would propose

  • A fixed subject and level taxonomy that tutors choose from rather than type
  • A visibility gate that keeps a tutor profile hidden until a background check result is recorded as returned by the connected provider, with the date shown to parents
  • A free trial lesson booked by the parent and credited to the tutor by the platform from its own commission account
  • Packs of eight or sixteen lessons bought up front with the balance held and one lesson released after each tutor-and-parent confirmation
  • A progress note template per subject that the tutor completes before the release is triggered
  • A dashboard of trial-to-pack conversion by subject and tutor

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Subject and level taxonomy and whether tutors set their own rates within bands
  • Online, in person or both, and the meeting provider for lesson links
  • Free or paid trial lesson and who absorbs it
  • Packs, pay-per-lesson or both, with held payments and the payment provider
  • Check-provider integration and a visibility gate for tutors
  • Progress note templates and whether they gate payment release
  • Parent and student accounts and what each may see
  • Volume of tutor and family records to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Tutor matching package

Self-registered tutor profiles with recorded qualifications, parent and student requirement posts, ranked matching, trial lessons, lesson scheduling with online links, packs with held payments released per lesson, shared progress notes, reviews, disputes and tutor payouts.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Would the package do, or do we need a custom build?

An open marketplace where tutors register, parents post requirements, trials and lessons are booked and packs are held and released per lesson is usually covered by the tutor matching package through configuration. A custom build is the honest answer for visibility gates tied to check results, platform-funded trials, or notes that gate payment release. Discovery is where we tell you which.

How is this different from a tutoring platform for an agency?

Here tutors register themselves, set their profile and rates within your bands, and compete for requirements; the platform takes commission on each lesson. An agency platform runs the agency's own pool of tutors with the agency assigning and invoicing, which is a different topic under education.

Does the platform verify tutors?

No. Qualifications are recorded as supplied by the tutor with the document and date, and any background check is recorded as returned by a connected check provider with its date. Parents see what was recorded and when. Whether a tutor may be visible is your decision, and the wording never claims the platform has confirmed anyone.

How do packs and payouts work?

A parent buys a pack and the balance is held. After each lesson, confirmation from the tutor and the parent, or the parent's silence after a window you set, releases one lesson: commission to the platform, the tutor share into the next payout run. Unused lessons are refundable under rules you set. That money is your platform collecting from parents and paying tutors through your payment provider, separate from what you pay us.

Who owns the platform afterwards?

You do. Source code and your data, including tutor records, requirements, lesson history, progress notes and payout history, are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed.

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