Looking to pre-sell a course or community? Make your product available for pre-order to allow students to purchase it in advance of the release date!
New to pre-selling? Make sure to check out our Guide to Pre-Selling
In this article:
How to Publish Your Course for Pre-Order
Customize Your Pre-Order Label
About This Feature
Thinkific has a unique publish state called pre-order that gives you the option to sell your course or community without allowing students immediate access to your content. When you are ready to launch your product, you can simply update the publish state to give students access to your content!
Offering products for pre-order is a great way to validate the demand for your course or community before investing resources into creating all of the content. It also works well for products that you are currently working on, and want to display as upcoming features!
Here are a few ways you can use the pre-order publish option:
- Use it to pre-sell your course or community
- Use it as a lead capture - this works great for both paid and free products, as students can enroll without accessing any content yet
- Extend your customers the chance to "sample" a piece of the content you have to offer, by giving them a glimpse of what the finished product will look like
- ...and much more!
How It Works
Pre-order is a publish state available in your course or community settings. Once a product has been published as a pre-order, the following will apply:
- Students can purchase your product
- Students cannot access any of your product content
- On product pages that include your course or community card, a fully customizable Pre-order label will display
- On the Student Dashboard, students will see Coming soon
The Publish state can be changed at anytime. You can publish the full version of your product to give students access to your content, or unpublish if you no longer want to sell the product.
Communities that are set to pre-order will not show on the Student Dashboard until they are published.
Important Considerations
- This feature is available on all Thinkific plans
- Pre-order requires site theme version 1.13.0 or higher. If you are not on an updated theme, the pre-order publish state will not be available within your settings.
- It is not possible to set Bundles or Memberships to pre-order. However courses or communities in a pre-order publish state can be included within a bundle or a membership.
- Digital Downloads and Coaching & Webinars cannot be set to pre-order.
- If you have set an enrollment duration in your pricing settings for your pre-order product, it will start counting from the day the product is purchased by your student.
How to Publish Your Product for Pre-Order
Make sure to price your product before continuing if you want students to pay for your pre-order! Note that if you set an enrollment duration, this will start from the moment the product is purchased even if it is in a pre-order state.
Publish Your Course for Pre-order
- From your Admin Dashboard, go to Products
- Select Courses
- Click on the desired Draft course
- Click the Publish button then click Set to preorder
- Click Set to preorder
Publish Your Community for Pre-order
- From your Admin Dashboard, go to Products
- Select Communities
- Locate your community, click the ellipses (3 dot icon) and select Edit
- Click the Publish button then click Set to preorder
- Click Set to preorder
Student Perspective
When your product is in the pre-order publish state, students will see several indicators on your product pages and within their Student Dashboard letting them know.
Product Pages
On your site product pages, a pre-order label will automatically be created and added to your course or community cards. The location in which these cards will appear depends on whether you have created a pre-order community or a pre-order course. Learn more about Product Cards here.
You'll see it displayed on various section types and pages including:
- The All Products page
- Product and Selling Site Builder Sections
- The Bundle Includes Site Builder Section
- Categories Sections
For more information, check out the articles below that explain the landing page layout for each product type:
Student Dashboard
On the Student Dashboard, which a student will see as soon as they log in to your site, the pre-order course will display Coming soon. For pre-ordered communities, they will not appear on the Student Dashboard until the community is published.
Unlike a fully published product, students will not be able to click on the course or bundle card to enter the Course Player or view lessons.
Customize Your Pre-Order Label
You have the option to fully customize your pre-order text! Learn how here: How to Customize Your Pre-Order Label
Next Steps
Once you are ready to release all of your course or community content, check out these articles: