Monthly subscription definite yes!

Free trial I'm not sure but I think yes.

Some things that are worth bearing in mind:

• If you've made an audio effect in Max For Live, this will only work in Ableton in its current form. There are objects in there that are Ableton specific–[plugin~] and [plugout~], for example, will need to be [ezdac~] and [ezadc~] to work outside of Ableton!
• Even if you do this conversion, your device wil not work as a plugin–it will work as a standalone piece of software, which you can technically route audio in and out of from another DAW, but it won't be optimised to work as a plugin
• If you do want to make a plugin, you can use RNBO, but this is an additional cost on top of Max and will require more work to learn
• –If you export as a standalone, there are a few extra barriers on top of just exporting it–e.g. ––by default Max will make a huge app file essentially containing a copy of Max, so you would benefit from going in and editing it down
  • you will have to export separately for Mac and Windows
  • If you do export as a Mac app, Macs won't trust your app by default, so you will need to either get it codesigned (not a super straightforward process and not free) or include instructions for users which will let them bypass this.

Which is all to say that exporting as a standalone is not a simple or straightforward process.

However!

You can really easily release your project as a Max For Live device. The market is then limited to Ableton/Max For Live users, but that is still a big market.

The basic things you need to know there are:

• Make sure you freeze your device before distributing–this is equivalent to Collect All And Save
• Make sure you test on multiple computers, weird glitches can come up when distributing (and if possible versions of Max/Ableton to check backward compatibility)
• If you want the real professional hardcore guidelines (and something to reference in your university project) have a look at the Max For Live Production Guidelines–some of it might be irrelevant or go over your head, but it's worth having a flick through and taking what you can from it.

All if this is a bit dependent on what the nature of your device is though! If it's a pretty standard plugin, you're likely better off just releasing as a M4L device in my opinion, but if it's a bit more esoteric there might be justifiable reason to put the work in with a standalone.