Most advice on selling a course starts with the platform and ends with the price. That order is backwards. The price is really three decisions: what the student is buying, how long they get it for, and how often they pay. Once you settle those, the tool settings are mostly filling in boxes.
This guide is about choosing a pricing model for a course you sell from your own WordPress site. It walks through one-time sales, fixed-term access, subscriptions, memberships, bundles and cohorts, and it shows how each one maps to settings in Learnomy, our course plugin. It is not a payment setup guide. If you want to connect Stripe and take a first payment, follow how to sell online courses on WordPress with Stripe. If you want the broader case for selling from your own site rather than a marketplace, read how to sell online courses from your own community website. Here we stay on the decision.
One note on what is Free and what is Pro, because it changes the picture. Learnomy Free includes Stripe and PayPal checkout, one-time and recurring course pricing, membership plans, coupons and closed (externally sold) courses. Learnomy Pro adds cohorts, paid learning paths, team seats, gift codes, content drip and the subscription tools that keep members from churning. I label each feature below.
The three questions behind every pricing model
Before you look at models, answer these about your own course.
- Does the content change? A course you finish and leave alone behaves differently from a library you keep adding to.
- Does the student need you after they buy? If the value is the material, price the material. If the value is feedback, a group or a deadline, price the experience.
- Is access naturally time-boxed? Exam preparation, a seasonal programme or a certification window all have a natural end date.
Your answers point at a model more reliably than any benchmark. A course on a fixed topic that does not change fits a one-time price. A course that grows fits a subscription or membership. A course tied to a date fits fixed-term access or a cohort.
The eight pricing models in Learnomy
Every Learnomy course carries a pricing model, set in the Pricing and Access section of the course editor. Each model maps to one of five underlying access types so the catalog, checkout and membership screens agree with each other.
| Pricing model | What the student does | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Enrols with one click, no payment | Lead magnet, taster, community onboarding |
| One-time | Pays once and keeps access | Evergreen course |
| Fixed-term | Pays once, access ends after a set number of days | Exam prep, seasonal programmes |
| Recurring | Subscribes monthly or yearly to keep access | Course you keep updating |
| Members only | Enrols only if their membership plan includes the course | Library behind a membership |
| One-time or members | Buys the course outright or reaches it through a plan | Audiences that include buyers and members |
| Closed | Cannot buy here; you grant access after a sale elsewhere | Funnels you already run on another system |
| Invite only | Cannot buy here; you add students yourself | Internal training, client onboarding |
One detail saves a lot of confusion. There is no Stripe Price ID or PayPal Plan ID to create or paste into a course. You enter a price, and Learnomy creates the product at the gateway when the first purchase happens. That includes the recurring model. If you are following an older tutorial that tells you to map a course to a provider ID, it no longer applies.
One-time pricing: simple and honest
A one-time price is the right default for a course that is finished, specific and not going to change much. The student pays once, keeps access and has nothing to remember.
What it gives you:
- A clear, comparable number on the course page.
- No renewals to manage and no failed-payment emails.
- A natural fit for launch sales, because you can add a sale price with a start and end date. Learnomy only treats a sale as active when the sale price is positive, below the regular price and inside the window, and every screen uses the same rule, so the catalog card and the course page never disagree.
What it costs you:
- Revenue is lumpy. You earn when you launch or promote, and in between you earn less.
- Support does not stop when payment does. A student who bought two years ago can still email you.
- Updates are free to the student. If you add content, existing buyers receive it without paying more.
When to choose it: the course is a complete unit, you are happy for buyers to keep it for good, and you plan to bring in new buyers through marketing rather than renewals.
Learnomy guard rail: pricing locks after purchase
Once a student holds a paid or subscription enrolment, Learnomy will not let you rewrite that course’s pricing model. Existing customers must not land in a half-state. If you want to change models later, clone the course and relaunch it with the new pricing. Knowing this in advance is a good reason to decide properly before you open sales.
Fixed-term access: price the window, not the material
With fixed-term pricing, a purchase grants access for a set number of days and then expires. You set the price and the access duration, and each enrolment is stamped with an expiry date.
It suits three situations:
- Exam or certification preparation, where the material stops mattering after the exam date.
- Seasonal or time-sensitive programmes, such as a tax-year or planting-season course.
- Support-heavy courses, where limiting the window limits how long you are on call.
The trade-off is perception. Students tend to prefer lifetime access, so a fixed term needs a clear reason, such as “access runs for the length of the programme”. Say the duration on the sales page, in the checkout and in the confirmation email so nobody is surprised on day one after expiry.
Recurring course pricing: when the course is a living thing
A recurring course charges per month or per year. Use it when the course keeps growing and the student is paying for ongoing access to new material.
It works best when you can answer yes to both of these:
- Will there be something new in the course every month or two?
- Is a student likely to open it regularly, not once?
If the answer to the second is no, you will see cancellations after the first cycle, because people do not renew things they do not use. A recurring price on a finished course is a common cause of disappointed students and refund requests.
For subscriptions, a few operational details matter:
- Failed renewals are handled by retry settings. With Learnomy Pro’s subscription tools, you choose a retry cadence (Conservative, Standard, Aggressive or Off), and the subscription is cancelled only after the last retry fails.
- Members can pause and resume, or switch plan with a fair credit for unused time. Both are Pro features.
- Free trials are available on membership plans, with the trial length set in days.
Learnomy Pro also reports monthly recurring revenue, churn and lifetime value, which is how you find out whether your recurring model is working rather than guessing.
Memberships: one price for a group of courses
A membership plan sells access to a set of courses for a recurring fee, or for a single payment with lifetime access. Learnomy Free supports unlimited paid plans and up to three free plans, with monthly or yearly billing, free trials and cancel at period end.
This is the most flexible way to price a library, and it is also what most people mean by a bundle in Learnomy.
Two ways to build a plan
| You want to sell | Set it up as |
|---|---|
| Access to your whole catalog | A plan with no courses ticked, with your courses set to Members only |
| A fixed bundle of specific courses | A plan with exactly those courses ticked under Courses included |
| Permanent access to a bundle | Billing interval set to One-time (lifetime access) |
| A free tier that collects sign-ups | A free plan at price zero |
When you tick courses, members are enrolled in them the moment they subscribe. If you change the list later, current members are updated in the background: courses you add are given to them, and courses you remove are taken back unless another plan or purchase still covers them. Their progress is kept.
Lifetime memberships
Choosing the One-time (lifetime access) interval changes the whole experience. The card reads as a one-time price, the button says Buy, the member has no renewal date and no Pause, Cancel or Change plan options, and Learnomy never expires it. This is a legitimate way to sell a bundle outright, with one thing to weigh: lifetime access to a growing library means every future course you add is also included, so be sure that is a trade you want.
Combining a plan with a course price
The One-time or members model lets a course be bought outright or reached through a plan. A plan member sees a small “Buy to keep forever” link on the course page. If they buy, they keep the course even if the plan ends. For a mixed audience this is useful because it gives members an upgrade path and gives non-members a way in, without you building two catalogs.
Bundles beyond memberships
A membership is not the only bundle. Learnomy Pro adds two more.
Paid learning paths. A learning path chains courses into an ordered sequence with a path certificate at the end, and it can be sold as a single product. A student enrols once and receives every step. A path can be sequential, so later steps unlock only as earlier required ones are finished. Learnomy declines to sell a path whose required course has been unpublished, which stops someone paying for something they cannot finish.
Team seats and gift codes. Spaces let you sell seat bundles to companies, with a branded portal and a roster. Gift codes let one person pay for a membership that someone else redeems; a purchase covers 1 to 500 seats, and the codes expire 90 days after issue. These suit selling to employers and giving, where the buyer and the learner are different people.
| Bundle type | Tier | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Membership with ticked courses | Free | Libraries and academies |
| Lifetime membership | Free | Selling a set of courses outright |
| Paid learning path | Pro | Career tracks with an order |
| Team seats | Pro | Selling training to businesses |
| Gift codes | Pro | Gifting and corporate giveaways |
Cohorts: a delivery format with its own economics
A cohort is not a price. In Learnomy Pro, a cohort is a scheduled batch of one course, with a name, a start and end date, a seat cap and a status. The cohort form has no price field, so you set the price on the course, then run the course in batches. Students who buy are placed into the open cohort automatically, as long as there is room under the seat cap, which defaults to 30 in the admin form.
Pricing a cohort therefore means pricing the experience around the content: live sessions, feedback, a group that moves together and a deadline that keeps people going. That justifies a higher price than self-paced material, and it also means you cannot sell unlimited seats, since your own time is the real limit. If you are weighing the format itself, our guide to running a cohort programme on your own site covers the teaching side.
A few cohort points matter for revenue:
- Close enrolment on purpose. Switch status from Open to In progress yourself when the start date passes, since status changes are manual.
- Seats are scarcity you control. A cap is a feature you can say on the sales page, so make sure it is real.
- Late buyers are not lost. If a cohort is full when someone buys, they keep their access and can join a later cohort.
- Watch at-risk members. Cohort progress flags students who have been inactive or are well behind schedule, which protects your completion rate and your refund rate.
Closed and invite-only: pricing that happens elsewhere
Sometimes the sale does not happen on your WordPress site at all. A closed course has no Buy button and no checkout. You sell it on another platform, a CRM or a sales call, then grant access in Learnomy by hand, by CSV, or automatically through a signed enrolment webhook. You can add an optional button on the course page that links out to wherever it is sold.
Invite only goes a step further. Nothing is for sale and nobody can enrol themselves, which is the correct model for internal training, a class you run, or a client’s team.
Both are in Learnomy Free and need no payment module switched on.
Coupons, trials and sales without cheapening the product
Discounting is part of pricing, and it is easy to damage a price by overusing it.
- Coupons in Learnomy Free support percentage and fixed discounts, usage limits, a per-user limit, a minimum purchase and start and end dates. On a recurring plan, a coupon applies to the first payment only, so an early-adopter offer does not discount the membership forever.
- Sales use a sale price with a window, which is better than a permanent coupon when you want a launch week.
- Trials on membership plans let people sample before paying, at the cost of some people never converting.
Use deadlines you will actually enforce. A “last day” that quietly extends teaches your audience to wait.
Matching your situation to a model
| Your situation | Model to start with | Add later |
|---|---|---|
| One finished, specific course | One-time, with a launch sale window | A membership if you build more courses |
| A growing library of courses | Membership with courses ticked | Lifetime plan for early buyers |
| Course that updates monthly | Recurring | Yearly option |
| Exam or event-driven course | Fixed-term | Cohort around the exam date |
| Course where feedback is the product | One-time course run in cohorts | Learning path for the series |
| Selling to employers | Team seats | Gift codes |
| A funnel you already run elsewhere | Closed | None needed |
None of these is permanent, but changing a course that already has paying students means cloning it, so start with the model that matches how you intend to teach.
Checking that the model is working
Do not measure a pricing model by feel. Learnomy’s commerce overview shows monthly recurring revenue, active subscribers, lifetime revenue and total transactions, and the transaction ledger records every charge, renewal and refund. Look for patterns that tell you the model is wrong:
- Many cancellations at the first renewal usually mean a recurring price on a course that did not need one.
- Many refund requests after a launch can mean the sales page promised more than the course delivers, or the guarantee window is too long for your support capacity.
- Low enrolments on a cohort can mean the dates, not the price, are the barrier.
Refund terms are part of pricing. In Learnomy you set a refund policy and guarantee days under the Checkout settings, and a refund removes the access that the money paid for. If you want to stop shared logins from eroding sales, see how to stop course account sharing.
Where Reign fits
If your courses sit inside a community, the pricing page, membership page and course catalog should look like part of the same site. The Reign theme is built for that, and our comparison of WordPress LMS themes shows how Reign and Learnomy are positioned against the alternatives. You can find the course plugin in the Wbcom store at wbcomdesigns.com/downloads/learnomy.
Frequently asked questions
Which pricing model is best for a first course?
For most first courses, one-time pricing is the safest. It is easy to explain, it needs no renewal logic and it lets you add a launch sale. Move to a membership or recurring model once you have several courses or a reason to keep adding material.
Can I change a course’s pricing model after students have bought it?
Not on the same course. Once at least one student holds a non-pending paid or subscription enrolment, Learnomy refuses to rewrite the pricing model. Clone the course and relaunch with the new pricing. Free enrolments do not lock the model.
Does Learnomy need Pro to take payments?
No. Stripe and PayPal checkout, one-time and recurring course pricing, membership plans and coupons are in Learnomy Free. Pro adds cohorts, paid learning paths, team seats, gift codes, content drip, and subscription tools such as pause, plan changes with proration and payment retries.
Can I sell a bundle of courses?
Yes. The simplest way is a membership plan with the courses you want ticked, which can be recurring or a one-time lifetime purchase. With Pro you can also sell a learning path, which is an ordered sequence of courses with a certificate at the end.
How do cohorts work with pricing?
A cohort has no price of its own. You price the course, then run it in scheduled batches with a seat cap. Buyers are placed into an open cohort automatically while there is room, and a buyer who arrives when it is full keeps access and can join a later cohort.
Do I have to create products inside Stripe or PayPal first?
No. You enter the price in Learnomy and the gateway product is created when the first purchase is made. That includes recurring courses, so there is no provider ID to copy.