Every product can unlock content in your workspace: groups, courses, hubs, forums, badges, calendars and events. You choose this once on the product, and every buyer gets it automatically after paying, without you adding anyone by hand.
If Payments is off in your workspace, switch it on under Settings > Features first. Changing what a product unlocks takes Manage Catalog (Products, Prices, Coupons).
Choosing what a product unlocks
Open a product and go to the Access section. Gift cards don't have one, since they only carry credit. The section has a tab for each kind of content:
- Groups are always available.
- Courses and Hubs appear while those features are on, which they are by default.
- Forums and Badges appear once Community is on under Settings
Features.
- Calendars and Events appear once Events is on.
Click Add, search for what you want and pick it. Remove takes an item off the product again. A product can unlock any number of items, and different products can unlock the same item.
A course still marked as draft shows a Draft badge. Buyers get it only once you publish the course, and then everyone who bought the product gets it at once.
When buyers get access
Access is granted as soon as an order counts as paid. At that moment the buyer gets an account for the email address they used at checkout, or their existing account is used, and everything the product unlocks is added to it.
- Card, wallet and PayPal payments unlock right after checkout.
- Payment methods that settle later, such as SEPA Direct Debit, also unlock right away, before the money arrives.
- Payment by invoice depends on the mode under Payments > Settings
Payment methods: Grant access on purchase unlocks right away, while Grant access on payment received waits until you mark the order as paid. See Offline payment methods.
Changing a product that has buyers
Changes on the Access tab apply to future purchases. People who already bought the product are not updated:
- One-time buyers keep what they got when they paid. The exception is courses: every time you publish a course, everyone who bought a product that unlocks it and still has active access gets it. Ended subscriptions and subscriptions whose access is suspended by a pause or by dunning are left out. Add any other new item to them by hand if they should have it.
- Subscribers get newly added items with their next successful payment.
- Removing an item from a product does not take it away from anyone who already has it.
To give existing buyers a new course without touching every member, add the course to a group they already belong to.
When buyers lose access
Access is removed in these cases:
- A full refund of a one-time purchase removes the access from that purchase. Partial refunds and refunds of a single subscription payment don't remove anything. A lost chargeback, on Stripe or PayPal, and setting the order to Refunded by hand remove access like a full refund.
- A payment that is declined later, such as a SEPA Direct Debit, marks the order as failed. Access is removed 3 days later unless the buyer pays through the link in the failed payment email.
- A Stripe or PayPal subscription cancelled at the end of its period keeps access until that date and removes it then. One-time products bought in the same order stay.
- A subscription cancelled with Immediately loses its access right away. One-time products bought in the same order stay.
- A free subscription without a payment provider, for example a trial from an invitation, ends when its trial ends.
- A pause, if Access during a pause under Payments > Settings > Subscriptions is set to Suspend access. Access comes back when the subscription continues. With Keep access, nothing changes. A product can override this setting under its own Pause section.
- Failed subscription payments, depending on the final step you set under Dunning: Pause access until paid removes access until the buyer pays, and Cancel the subscription ends it for good. For an invoice order with Grant access on purchase, both Revoke access, the invoice stays open and Revoke access and cancel the order take it away. See Dunning and overdue payments.
A payment plan that has been paid in full is not a cancellation: the buyer keeps access for good. See Trials and installment plans.
Only the access this order granted is removed. Access you granted by hand stays, and so does an item that another order of the buyer still covers, as long as that order is paid, processing, shipped or delivered.