Access mode

Access mode is how you determine the way in which someone can gain access to a course. To edit this for your course, go to settings.

Simplylearn has 5 course access modes to choose from: Open, Free, Buy now, Recurring and Closed

Open

The following rules apply to Open courses:

  • Free & open to anyone visiting your site
  • No registration, login or payment is required for access
  • Must be registered/logged in to track course progress

NOTE
If you have Open courses on your site, as soon as someone registers an account, they will automatically gain access to all Open courses.

Free

The following rules apply to Free courses:

  • Must be registered/logged in to access
  • No payment is required
  • “Take this Course” button is shown to users not yet enrolled.

The Free access mode is a good choice if you want an administrator to manually enroll students to the course.

Buy Now

The following rules apply to Buy Now courses:

  • Must be registered/logged in to access
  • Requires a one-time fee to be paid (no free access)
  • Take payment via Paypal or Stripe, more on this soon.

When using the Buy Now mode, you need to enter a price in the Course Price field.

  1. First, select the Buy Now access mode
  2. Then, enter your price in the Course Price field
Setting price on Buy Now course in LearnDash

NOTE
For both “Buy Now” and “Recurring” access modes, the user will be automatically enrolled into the course upon a completed payment.

Recurring

Recurring is very similar to Buy Now, except for recurring payments (as opposed to one-time payments).

The following rules apply to Recurring courses:

  • Must be registered/logged in to access
  • Requires a recurring fee (choose a billing cycle in X days, weeks, months or years)

To set up the Recurring access mode:

  1. Select the Recurring option
  2. In the Course Price field, enter the amount you’d like to charge
  3. Enter the amount of days/weeks/months/years on which you’d like the user to be billed again
  4. Choose either day(s), week(s), month(s) or year(s) from the dropdown

NOTE
If choosing day(s), you must provide a number between 1-90.

Closed

The following rules apply to Closed courses:

  • Must be registered/logged in to access
  • Manually enroll users into the course, or add them via group enrollment

To redirect the Take this Course button to a custom URL:

  1. First, select the Closed access mode
  2. Then, enter the URL where you’d like the button to go. E.g. redirect the user to a group sign-up link.
LearnDash closed course, enter Button URL