Overview

Mahara covers portfolios for study, professional development, work-integrated learning, assessment, showcasing and presentation, and employability. That breadth makes it useful beyond course assignments, including professional development and work-related evidence. Its focus remains learning and assessment rather than simply publishing a polished public website.

Users can share portfolios with an individual, a group, or the public, with access limited by time frame or assessment task. Comments, feedback, group portfolio creation, and forum discussions support review and collaboration around the work. The open-source license permits copying, use, and modification subject to conditions including sharing source code with copies and applying the same license to derivatives. Catalyst maintains Mahara.

Key features

Evidence, reflection, and assessment

Mahara gives learners a place to collect evidence and reflect on experience, with work mapped to competencies or registration requirements. That makes it a better fit for structured learning and professional evidence than for teams seeking a general-purpose publishing tool. Portfolios can be submitted to learning management systems through LTI for marking, while comments and feedback support review outside formal grading.

Sharing and collaboration

Granular sharing works for portfolios that should be private during development, visible to a class or group, or public as a showcase. Time- and task-based restrictions can help align access with assessment windows. Group portfolios and forum discussions add collaborative workflows, though the available facts do not establish broader project-management capabilities.

Integrations and deployment

Mahara supports LTI connections to LMS platforms and a wider web services suite for deeper integrations. LTI 1.3 Advantage is experimental and has been tested only with Brightspace, so organisations on other LMS platforms should verify compatibility before committing to an assessment workflow.

Self-hosting is supported through traditional Linux-server installation. Docker instructions are intended for development and testing; the images can inform Kubernetes deployments, but the environment should be secured before a Docker-based live site is used. This flexibility suits teams able to own deployment and security work, not those seeking a turnkey hosted service.

Pricing

Mahara is free, with a free plan. The free model avoids a software subscription, making it attractive to institutions that can provide their own hosting and operational support. Self-hosting means infrastructure and maintenance remain part of the deployment decision.

Platforms

Mahara supports Android, iOS, Linux, web, API access, and self-hosted deployment. The combination of mobile access and server control can suit distributed learning communities, while teams should assess their own integration and hosting requirements.

Who it's for

Mahara is a strong fit for schools, universities, and organisations using portfolios in learning, professional development, and assessment. It is particularly relevant where learners need to gather evidence over time and share it selectively with peers, assessors, or the public. It is less suitable for buyers who need a managed website builder or an LMS integration that depends on unverified LTI 1.3 support.

Pros and cons

Pros

Free and open source, with permission to modify and self-host under license conditions; suitable for teams that want deployment control.
Individual, group, and public sharing with time- or assessment-based restrictions supports both private review and presentation.
Feedback, group portfolios, and LTI submission connect portfolio work with collaboration and assessment.
Web services extend integration options beyond LTI.

Cons

LTI 1.3 Advantage remains experimental and tested only with Brightspace, creating uncertainty for other LMS setups.
Live deployment requires security work, and self-hosting places operational responsibility on the organisation.
The daily-resetting demo erases user-created content unless portfolios are exported beforehand, limiting its usefulness for ongoing evaluation.

Alternatives

For a learning-focused portfolio system, Mahara is the more relevant choice; for a simpler public portfolio website with a capped free tier, consider Portfoliobox, whose free plan allows 30 images and five pages on a Portfoliobox subdomain. Zarla instead offers an AI website-builder free plan with 75 AI credits, 10 pages per site, preview-only publishing, and unlimited lead-capture forms.

Framer is another freemium web-building option, while Gesso offers a free portfolio capped at 10 artworks and three images per artwork. Wfolio may suit users prioritising storage, with 120 GB on its free plan. For journalism portfolios, Journo Portfolio offers paid publishing plans. Base44 is a freemium app builder, and Zenfolio is a paid option with a free trial.

Browse Portfolio Website Builders or Eportfolio Software for more options.

Verdict

Choose Mahara if your learning community needs a free, self-hostable portfolio system for evidence, feedback, and assessment, and can manage deployment securely. Its main advantage is the combination of open-source control and learning workflows; look elsewhere if you need managed hosting or depend on LTI 1.3 with an LMS beyond Brightspace.

	Mahara	Penguin
Free plan	No	Yes
Free trial	No	No
Paid from	—	$1/mo
Open source	No	No
Platforms	Android, api, iOS, Linux, self-hosted, Web	Web
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Custom domain	—	Yes
Published projects	—	5 projects
Portfolio analytics	—	Yes
Video hosting	—	Yes

Mahara vs Penguin

Mahara

Penguin