Introduction

On the platform, learners may have the option of purchasing subscriptions for themselves. 

A subscription comprises a collection of courses and learning plans, from one or more catalogs. When a user subscribes, they gain access to all the included content for a predefined period of time, for example one year. 

• The content included in a subscription consists of one or more catalogs, defined when you configure the bundle. 
• The cost and duration of access are defined when you configure the plan. 

For how to configure subscriptions see the article Creating and managing subscription plans.

Tip: Learners will see available for purchase only subscriptions that have a single license plan, and for which they have visibility, meaning the user belongs to one of the groups or branches assigned to the subscription bundle. 

Learners can browse the subscriptions available to them for purchase in two places:

• The Subscription plans page. This is a built-in page that you can make available in the user menu. It will show only single-license subscriptions set as visible to the user’s group or branch. 
• The Public catalog page. If the public catalog is configured, non-authenticated users can also view a subscriptions catalog tab in the login page. This will show only single-license subscriptions that are visible to all users (assigned to root branch + descendants). 

The Subscription plans page 

On the Subscription plans page, learners can browse the various subscriptions available to them, and if desired initiate a purchase. This chapter provides instructions for this workflow.

Tip: As noted earlier, learners will see here only single-license subscriptions, for which they have visibility. Power Users will instead also see multi-license and multi-seat subscriptions here. For information about this see the article Purchasing subscriptions as a Power User. 

Browse and purchase a subscription plan  (as a learner):

1. In the User menu, select Subscription plans. 
2. The page will show the list of subscription bundles available to you. A bundle is a collection of content that you can subscribe to. You can click the right and left arrows to scroll through all the available bundles. 
3. On any card, click What’s included to browse the courses and learning plans included in that bundle. These will be displayed further down on the page. You may need to scroll down to see them. You can Search or user filters to help you look through the content.
4. If you find a bundle that you would like to purchase, on its card click Choose your plan to see the purchase options. Once again, these will be shown underneath, and you may need to scroll down.
5. The Available plans area may contain one or more purchase options. For example you may be able to subscribe to that bundle for different durations, at a different price. 
6. Select the desired purchase option and: 
   • (for renewable subscriptions) Click Pay. The Stripe payment method will be automatically selected. If this method is not available on your platform you cannot proceed with the purchase. 
   • (for non-renewable subscriptions) Click Add to cart. From here you can proceed to the shopping cart where you can select a payment method and finalize your purchase. 

Please note that if the subscription plan being purchased is renewable (with either manual or automatic renewal) then Stripe must be used as the payment method, and the user cannot apply a coupon to the purchase. For non-renewable subscriptions, any configured payment method can be used, and coupons can be applied in the normal way.  

Accessing the subscribed content

Once a learner has purchased a subscription, in the Course catalog page they will see that all the content included in the subscription is marked Subscribed, and they are able to freely access and enroll in any of those courses. 

Visibility note: Catalogs inherit bundle visibility. This means that if a learner has visibility of a subscription bundle (and so is able to purchase it), then they automatically gain visibility of any catalogs in the bundle at the time of purchase. For more information see the article Creating and managing subscriptions > Visibility of catalogs in bundles. 

Managing purchased subscriptions

Learners can check on the subscriptions they have purchased in the Subscriptions area of the header bar. 
→ The Subscriptions area is visible only for subscriptions that a learner has purchased for themselves. If the learner has a subscription seat or license assigned to them by a Power User, or if they have a license directly purchased on their behalf by a Power User, it will not be visible here. 

In the Subscriptions area, the learner can check the expiration dates of their subscriptions and, depending on the type of plan, terminate or renew them. The possible available actions are: 

Renew - For a manually renewable subscription. This will trigger a new payment and renew the subscription for an additional period of time. 

Terminate - For automatically renewed subscriptions. This will prevent automatic renewal of the subscription once its expiration date is reached. The subscription will still remain active until that time.Please note that if the user terminates a subscription with automatic renewal, then that subscription can no longer be renewed from this area. The user will have to buy a new one from the Subscription plans page. 

For non-renewable subscriptions, no action is available in this area. When the subscription expires, the user will need to subscribe again to the plan from the Subscription plans page. 

Subscribing from the public catalog page 

On platforms where the public catalog is configured, non-authenticated visitors may be able to browse subscriptions and initiate a purchase from the sign-in page. Here, the Subscriptions catalog tab will show any subscriptions with a single-license plan that are visible to all users. For details see the chapter Configuring the public catalog > Subscriptions catalog tab.  

→ This ensures that any subscription plans visible on the public page remain visible to the user once they have signed-in.

Visitors can click What’s included to browse the content of the bundle and then Choose your plan to select a payment option, in a similar fashion to that described in the chapter Browse and purchase a subscription plan (as a learner).

Once the visitor selects a plan and clicks Pay or Add to Cart, they will be prompted to sign in (or create an account) to finalize the payment.