Case study · Online tutoring marketplace

Gotute

A tutoring marketplace connecting students with verified tutors for one-on-one sessions, with slot-based booking, Zoom or Google Meet delivered classes, and an escrow-style wallet that holds payment until a session actually happens.

Client

Abiomye Industries Pvt. Ltd.

Based in

India

What we built

A Laravel & Livewire tutoring marketplace with booking, wallet & disputes

Live site

gotute.com

The brief

Booking a tutor means
trusting a stranger with money.

A tutoring marketplace has to solve a harder problem than a normal storefront: a student pays for a session that hasn't happened yet, delivered by a tutor they've never met, over a video call, with no physical product changing hands to prove anything went wrong.

That meant Gotute needed more than a booking calendar and a payment button. It needed a way to verify tutors before they could list, a way to actually deliver the session, and a way to settle money fairly when a student and tutor disagree about what happened, without every disagreement turning into a manual, ad-hoc mess for the platform to sort out.

The build

A marketplace with
real trust built in.

We built Gotute on a Laravel and Livewire foundation, then layered in the parts that actually make a tutoring marketplace work: subject-based slot booking, tutor verification, an escrow-style wallet, and an admin-mediated dispute system.

Fixed time-slot booking

Tutors publish available slots per subject, including group slots that hold more than one student, and students book directly into an open slot.

Zoom & Google Meet sessions

Every confirmed booking gets a real meeting link generated automatically on Zoom or Google Meet, with the event also synced to both sides' Google Calendar.

Escrow-style wallet

Session payments sit in a pending state tied to the booking rather than landing in a tutor's balance the moment a student pays.

Tutor identity verification

Tutors upload identity documents that go through an admin approval queue before they're able to list and take bookings.

Admin-mediated disputes

Either side can raise a dispute on a booking; a threaded conversation brings student, tutor, and admin together before an admin decides the outcome.

AI-assisted profile writing

A GPT-4o-mini-backed "AI Writer" helps tutors draft their bio, education, experience, and session descriptions instead of starting from a blank field.

The unlock

Money doesn't move
until the session does.

In a marketplace where strangers pay each other for a service that hasn't happened yet, releasing payment the instant a student books is asking for trouble the moment a session gets missed, cut short, or disputed.

So payment sits in escrow tied to the booking itself, not a tutor's balance, until the session clears. If both sides are fine with how it went, the money simply becomes available. If not, it stays frozen until an admin actually looks at it.

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STEP 1

Payment goes into escrow

A student's payment is captured via Stripe or Razorpay and held against that specific booking as pending funds, not credited to the tutor yet.

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STEP 2

Session happens, funds clear

Once the session completes without a dispute, the pending funds move into the tutor's available wallet balance automatically.

STEP 3

Disputes freeze the money

If either side disputes the session, the funds stay locked until an admin resolves it, refunding the student or releasing the tutor's pay, not whoever complains loudest.

Under the hood

Built like a real
services marketplace.

Past the booking and escrow flow, Gotute carries the operational tooling a two-sided marketplace needs to actually run, from payouts to platform-wide oversight.

Stripe & Razorpay checkout

Session payments run through Stripe or Razorpay, captured at booking time and held against that session rather than settled immediately.

Google Calendar sync

Every booking creates a calendar event for both student and tutor, kept separate from the actual Zoom or Google Meet link itself.

Post-session ratings

Students rate and review their tutor after each session, feeding directly into that tutor's public profile.

Tutor credentials on profile

Tutors upload certificates and credentials as part of a resume-style profile section, alongside their bio and experience.

Withdrawal requests

Tutors request payouts from their available wallet balance against a saved payout method; admin approves each request before it's marked paid.

Configurable platform commission

The platform's take rate is an admin-configurable setting, not a number hard-coded into the booking logic.

Role-based access

Admin, tutor, and student roles are enforced platform-wide via Spatie permissions, not ad-hoc checks scattered through the code.

Real-time via Laravel Reverb

Websocket broadcasting keeps things like booking status and conversations updating live instead of waiting on a page refresh.

Built on a Laravel foundation, extended for tutoring

Rather than starting a marketplace from zero, we built on a Laravel base and put the real engineering effort into the tutoring-specific layer: subjects, slot booking, escrow wallet, disputes, and verification.

A full admin operations console

Platform insights, user and identity approval, platform-wide bookings, the dispute queue, commission and payout settings, and subject taxonomy all live in one admin panel.

Built for scale

Not a booking form,
a two-sided marketplace.

Three roles, one platform

Admin, tutor, and student each get a permissioned view of the same underlying booking, wallet, and dispute system.

~230 backend files

Roughly 230 files across models, Livewire components, services, and controllers in the application layer alone.

Escrow-based trust, not blind payment

Every booking's payment sits in a pending state until the session clears or a dispute resolves it, one way or the other.