A monthly or annual subscription plan allows your learners to register in one or more courses of your choice for a monthly or yearly cost. You will be able to make each course offering available for one-off purchase or subscription or both.
Benefits
Pathwright handles all of the following for you:
An easy subscription process allows anyone to subscribe via credit/debit card.
Automatic monthly or annual billing is handled seamlessly.
We securely store credit card information so you don't have to worry about PCI compliance.
We will automatically notify your subscribers by email if their card can't be charged as well as automatically cancel their subscription after four attempts if they don't update their card.
Payment history can be accessed by the learner from his or her account.
You may optionally offer Gift Subscriptions for anyone to gift access to your courses to anyone else for 1, 3, 6, or 12 months.
You may offer discount codes to give learners access for whatever number of free months you choose on a monthly plan.
Optionally send receipts to learners for their payments.
Getting ready
Activation on the current Essentials Plan (or an older plan that includes subscriptions in the feature list) is required to take advantage of the subscription feature. The Essentials Plan includes one live subscription plan, while the Complete Plan includes up to three live subscription plans and the Enterprise Plan includes up to 5 plans (i.e. both monthly and annual plans).
You will need to have a Stripe account linked to your school to accept payment by subscription.
Set up
Shoot us an email (hello@pathwright.com) or in-app chat message with the following information, and we’ll get you all set up:
Is this a monthly plan or annual plan?
What is the confirmed price* per person per monthly or annual cycle?
A title for the plan (2-4 words)
A short description of what's included in the plan in a paragraph or less or a few bullet points
Should card information be required when applying a code for free access?
A 100 px by 100 px image that represents the plan (normally these look a bit like a badge)
*Please confirm the price before requesting plan setup as the price cannot be edited once the plan is created. See FAQs below for more info.
Final steps
After the plan is set up, you will need to opt-in each course that you want to include. If you're using multiple cohorts, each cohort can be opted in individually.
To opt a cohort into a subscription plan, edit the Commerce settings.
Select any plans you want the course included in. Select "Not available for non-subscribers" if you do not want to make the course available for a single purchase price.
Gift Subscriptions
If you would like to add a gift subscription purchase option to your monthly subscription plan, email us at hello@pathwright.com or send us a chat message and let us know the following:
Which of the following intervals would you like to make available for purchase? The available intervals are 1, 3, 6, and 12 months.
Would you like this linked on your menu? Or will you be adding a custom promo page for gift subscription sales to your account?
By default, we'll add the gift subscription option as a link on your menu. If you'd like to create a full promotional page for gift subscriptions, you can create a page and add a button link with the URL we provide and we can then iframe the page into your school at no extra cost as long as it meets the requirements listed here.
FAQs
Q. Can I offer both a monthly and annual option for a single plan?
A. Yes, if you want to provide both a monthly subscription option and a yearly subscription option, this counts as two plans, and you will need to send separate details for each. Learners will need to choose whether to pay monthly or annually when they subscribe.
Q. Can my members subscribe to multiple subscription plans?
A. Learners can only subscribe to one subscription plan at a time. If they would like to switch plans, they will need to cancel, wait until the end of the billing period, and resubscribe. As long as they resubscribe under the same login on another plan that includes their courses, all their progress in their courses is automatically kept intact.
Q. Can I include private courses in a subscription plan?
A. You can include private courses in a subscription plan; however, note that the plan will be public by default.
Q. What happens if I want to change the price of a plan?
A. The price of a subscription plan cannot be edited after setup. However, we can switch out your existing plan for a new plan to allow for a pricing change up to once per quarter. If you do have subscribers on the plan we retire, they will have continued access, but if their subscription is cancelled or they lose access due to failed payments, then they will need to use the new plan to resubscribe. You can manually cancel a learner's subscription as needed.
Q. What are the pros/cons of requiring card information when a user applies a code for free access?
A. This is only relevant if you plan to offer promo codes at some point, and it simply depends on the behavior you prefer.
If you do require card information, and offer a promo code for free months on the plan, then your subscribers will be automatically billed for the next month following the end of the free period, unless they cancel first.
If you don't require card information, then we won't collect card information from users who subscribe with a free code and they will not be billed when their free access expires.
Q. How do I manage and find reports on my subscribers?
A. You can manage and track subscribers in your Pathwright account and in Stripe. Learn more about managing subscribers here.
Q. What happens when a card is declined for a subscription payment?
A. Stripe will automatically retry the payment every few days. The subscriber will retain access until the final failed attempt. The whole process takes up to 10 days by default. You can adjust the number of attempts and the timing from your Stripe account: https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic
Only the subscriber is notified about failed payments. You can see the email templates we use to notify subscribers here.
Q. What will the plans look like for learners?
A. Here is an example of what subscription plans look like in a Pathwright school. This example has both a monthly plan and an annual plan available.
Q. Where is the badge used?
A. The learner sees the badge when subscribed. Here's a screenshot that includes an example of a badge.
