Subscription plans offer cost predictability and convenience for consumers, providing access to desired services or products regularly at a fixed, manageable price. Additionally, they often come with added benefits such as exclusive content, discounts, or upgrades, enhancing overall value and customer satisfaction.
In this article, you will find further guidance on creating and showcasing subscription plans for your courses, ultimately boosting your revenue opportunities for the long term.
Subscription Requirements
To use subscriptions in your LearnWorlds school, make sure you have:
- A Pro Trainer plan or higher.
- Integrated Stripe as your payment gateway.
Create Subscription Plans
To offer a subscription-based product in LearnWorlds, you first need to create a Learning Program.
During the setup process, you’ll be prompted to choose whether the program is free, a one-off purchase, or subscription-based.
To get started:
1. Go to the Courses & Programs tab and click Programs/ Subscriptions.
2. Click the Create program/subscription button to open the setup wizard.
The wizard will guide you through several setup steps:
- Choose between a Learning Path or a Learning Collection; you can change the type later in the General Program settings.
There are two ways to organize your Learning Programs:
Learning Path: A structured sequence of courses that guides learners step by step through a recommended curriculum.
Learning Collection: A flexible library of courses that allows learners to explore content at their own pace.
- Name your Learning Program. Optionally, you can add a description and a cover image.
- Set the Program’s URL by adding your preferred course ID at the end of the URL.
The original ID of your Learning Program cannot be changed once the product is created. While you can customize the program’s URL on the Access Page, the underlying ID will remain the same. You can find more details here. - Set the Program's access, which can be set as Draft, Public, or Private.
- Select the Subscription payment option. You can switch between Free and One-off payment at any time. If your program is set to Subscription, it cannot be changed to another payment option.
- Add a price and the billing interval of your subscription plan.
- Choose the default theme layout for your learning program page or apply a layout from another program.
- Click on Finish, and your program is ready.
- If you decide to add more courses to the plan while users are subscribed, they will automatically gain access/synced to them.
- If you change the number of trial days, price, and/or interval of a subscription, this will not affect the remaining trial days of the registered users.
Manage Subscription Plans
The Plans tab in your admin dashboard gives you a complete overview of all active subscriptions and installment plans across your school. In the plans page, you can monitor, review, and manage user payment plans directly from LearnWorlds; no need to log into Stripe.
Refer to this article for detailed steps on managing your subscription plans.
Users' Subscription Management
Users can manage their subscriptions via their Account page. They can view information about their active subscription plans and installment plans, including the next billing date. If they wish to stop their subscription, they can do so by clicking the Cancel button.
Important Notes
- When an admin creates a subscription plan in LearnWorlds, it will be synced to Stripe. The other way around, creating a subscription plan in Stripe, will not sync it to LearnWorlds.
- Once you connect your Stripe account and create your subscriptions and installments, you should not connect to a different Stripe account; otherwise, you will not be able to receive payments from the users who purchased a subscription or installment while you had connected the first account.
- If your users have already activated their subscriptions, you should not change the currency since your existing customers will not be able to pay in the new currency.
- Deleting a product that was purchased with a recurring payment does not mean that the recurring payment will stop automatically. The recurring payment (either payment or subscription) should first be canceled prior to deleting the product itself.
- When a user is enrolled in a subscription with trial days (and while they are still in their trial period), if they decide to change their subscription plan to a different one, the remaining trial period is not extended, as, systemically in Stripe, it shows that the user has already benefitted from the free trial offer, for the current activation, regardless of the plan.
- Once a user starts a free trial for a subscription, they are not eligible for another one in the same product, regardless of whether they cancel before it ends or let the trial run its full length.
- If you manually enroll a user in a subscription through your school, this will not synchronize with Stripe, and no payments will be processed. To ensure the user is charged, you also need to manually add the user to the subscription through Stripe.
- When purchasing a subscription, the card of the user needs to be stored in your Stripe account for upcoming recurring payments. Since this part of the process is not a transaction, the amount displayed in the card authentication and 3D Secure will be 0. If the user's bank approves this procedure, then the card will be charged the actual amount of the subscription.
- According to Stripe policy, when you start processing live payments from your customers with Stripe, you won’t receive your first payout until 7–14 days after receiving your first successful payment. You can find out more here.
- Suspending a user account does not automatically cancel or pause their active subscription. The subscription will continue to renew, and any associated payments will still be processed via Stripe unless manually canceled by the user or the admin.