Marketplace reviews vs. organization clients
Two ways to work with students on Draftl — one-off paid reviews and ongoing advising relationships.
Updated July 2, 2026
Draftl gives you two distinct ways to work with students, and understanding the difference shapes how you set up your organization. Marketplace reviews are one-off, paid essay reviews purchased by any student on the platform. Organization clients are students you invite into an ongoing advising relationship. You can run both at the same time — most consultants do.
Marketplace reviews: transactional and open to everyone
Once your listing is approved, any student on Draftl can find you under Find a Reviewer, browse your review offerings, and purchase one — no prior relationship required. They pick one of their essays, optionally attach a note for you, and pay through Stripe checkout. At the moment of purchase, Draftl takes an immutable snapshot of their essay (title, prompt, content, word count). That snapshot is what you review.
The request lands in your Review Queue, where you claim it, add inline comments anchored to the text, write an overall summary, and click Deliver review within your offering's turnaround window. The student then reads your feedback and rates the review from 1 to 5 stars, which feeds your public listing's average.
The relationship ends there. You never see the student's other essays, their live drafts, or their progress — just the one snapshot they paid you to review. It is a clean, bounded transaction. See Delivering essay reviews from your queue for the full workflow.
Organization clients: an ongoing advising relationship
Organization clients work completely differently. You invite a student by email from your Clients page (Invite client), and once they accept, they join your organization. From that point on:
- You and every advisor in your organization automatically get commenter access to all of their essays — live documents they are actively writing, not frozen snapshots.
- Their progress shows up on your Home dashboard and Analytics page, including essay titles, types, scores, and word counts.
- They can book 1-on-1 meetings through your booking packages.
- They receive every broadcast you send to your organization.
This is the model for students you advise over a season or a full application cycle. You can organize them into groups (like "Class of 2026") and communicate with all of them at once through broadcasts, which reach every client by email and in their dashboard. Managing clients, groups, and broadcasts covers the details, and Meetings and booking packages explains how clients book time with you.
Side-by-side comparison
| Marketplace reviews | Organization clients | |
|---|---|---|
| How the student connects | Finds your public listing in Find a Reviewer and buys an offering | Accepts an email invite you send from the Clients page |
| What you can see | One immutable essay snapshot from the time of purchase | All of their essays, live, with commenter access |
| What you deliver | Inline comments plus a written summary, by a due date | Ongoing comments, meetings, and broadcasts on your own cadence |
| Payment model | Per-review price set on your offering, paid at purchase | Meetings paid through booking packages; advising itself is arranged between you and the client |
| Relationship duration | Ends when the review is delivered and rated | Ongoing until the client leaves your organization |
| Where it lives | Review Queue | Clients, Home, Analytics, Broadcasts |
The two models coexist
Nothing forces a choice. Your organization clients can also buy your marketplace offerings — useful when a client wants a formal, deadline-bound review with a written summary on top of your regular commenting. And a marketplace customer who loves your review is a natural candidate for a client invite afterward.
Payments for both reviews and paid bookings flow through the same Stripe Connect account, with the same 10% platform fee. See Getting paid on Draftl.
Which fits when
Reach for marketplace reviews when you want to reach students you have never met, earn ratings that build public credibility, or offer a low-commitment entry point (a $0 or low-priced offering works well for this). Reach for organization clients when you are working with a student across multiple essays and months — the live essay access, meeting booking, and broadcasts are built for sustained advising.
If you are just launching, do both from day one: submit your listing for marketplace approval and invite your existing students as clients. The consultant launch checklist puts every step in order.