If you are using an external payment solution, you'll need to enroll students into your Thinkific course after they make a purchase. You'll also need a way to manage enrollments in the case of a cancellation or failed payment.
This article is only for course creators using a payment gateway that we do not have a direct integration with. If you prefer to use our built in payment integrations, check out Stripe and PayPal.
In this article:
How to Enroll Students After Purchase
How to Enroll Students After Purchase
If a student makes a purchase on your external payment solution, you will need to enroll them into your Thinkific course after accepting payment. Since your external solution does not have a built in integration with Thinkific to enroll students after purchase, we have a few options for managing your enrollments:
- Use Zapier to Automate Enrollments
- Manually Enroll Students
- Bulk Enroll Students
- Issue Coupon Codes
- Build a Custom Solution Using Our Public API
Manual enrollments and coupon codes are available on all paid plans. All other options are available on our Pro plan plus Growth Package or higher.
Use Zapier to Automate Enrollments
If you are looking for an automated solution for handling enrollments that doesn't require developer support, we highly recommend looking into Zapier! Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect applications without a built in integration together through actions and triggers.
For example; a student purchases your course on an external payment solution like Clickfunnels (trigger) and then that student is enrolled into your Thinkific course (action).
Learn more about Zapier here: Integrate with Zapier
Manually Enroll Students
If you are not managing large numbers of students, you can always manually enroll each student after they make a purchase on your external payment solution.
Learn how to manually enroll students here: Create and Enroll Students
Bulk Enroll Students
If you are selling your courses in bulk and want to manage enrollments for large numbers of students at one time, you can use our Import Students from File feature and then Bulk Enroll your students!
Issue Coupon Codes
Another option for enrolling students is to issue coupon codes. With this option, you will still need to integrate with one of our built in payment integrations and price your course. You can then issue 100% off coupon codes to allow students who already purchased outside of Thinkific to enroll for free.
Learn about coupon here: Create Coupons
Build a Custom Solution Using Our Public API
If you are looking to set up an automated solution without using Zapier, another option is to build a custom solution using our Public API. We do not provide support for custom solutions, however if you are looking for developer support, check out our Thinkific Experts Marketplace!
How to Manage Cancellations
If you have set up a payment plan or subscription in your external payment solution, you'll need a way to remove course access if your student wants to cancel.
Since you are using an external solution, students will not have the option to cancel in their Thinkific account. If your student would like to cancel, they will need to reach out to you directly to request a cancellation.
Once a student has requested a cancellation, you'll need to make sure to:
- Cancel their payment plan or subscription in your external payment solution
- Set an expiry date on their enrollment in Thinkific
In the case of a subscription, typically you'll want to set the expiry date in Thinkific to match the date of what the student's next billing date would be. This way they will still have access to their course until the end of their current billing cycle. Alternatively, if the student should lose access to the course right away, you can simply unenroll them from the course.
If you are looking for a more automated way to unenroll students, also check out Zapier! Depending on what triggers are supported in your payment solution, you can set up a zap to unenroll a student if their subscription is cancelled.
Learn more about Zapier here: Integrate with Zapier
How to Manage Failed Payments
If you have a payment plan or subscription in your external payment solution, we recommend applying course expiry dates to ensure that students will automatically lose access to your course in the case of a failed payment.
To help automate this, we recommend using Zapier. With Zapier, you can add an expiry date to the enrollment. Essentially you will want each recurring payment to trigger a zap that re-enrolls the student with a new expiry date.
For example, if you have a monthly subscription and your student pays on Jan 1st, you would set up a zap that enrolls the student with an expiry date 31 days from payment. After each new payment, the student's enrollment would be extended out another 31 days. If a payment ever failed, they will simply lose access to the course at the end of the billing cycle.
Learn how to set that up here: Zapier: Add an Enrollment Expiry Date
Looking to set up an automated solution without using Zapier? Many of our course creators have built custom solutions using our Public API. If you are looking for developer support, check out our Thinkific Experts Marketplace!