Subscriptions Summary and Scenarios
The subscription feature in EthosCE allows you to sell access to your courses for a set amount of time. When a user buys a subscription, they’re given a unique role—that can give them discounts or even free access to certain courses. You can choose which courses offer these benefits. The EthosCE team will set up these roles for you when the subscription feature is turned on. Your role might be called "subscriber," “member,” or it could have a different name based on what you chose during setup.
Creating a Subscription Product
Watch the video below for a step-by-step guide on how to create a subscription product.
When you create a subscription product in EthosCE, it is important to manually share the link to that specific page with your users, because the product page exists globally on your site, but it's not linked to any course.
Here are some easy ways to share it with your users:
Email the link directly to specific people.
Post the link on your homepage using a custom content block.
Add the link to your site's main menu so it’s easy to find.
Role-based Pricing for Subscribers
When a learner buys the subscription product, the system will automatically give them the “subscriber” role that has been set up. If your site has the role-based pricing feature turned on, you can then offer a special course price just for users with that role, for instance, a discounted or free rate for subscribers.
Setting Up Pricing for Subscribers
Once role-based pricing is set up on your site, you’ll see extra price fields under the “Price” tab when you edit a course. These fields let you set different prices for each subscriber role—like “Golden Member,” “Member,” etc.
To offer a special price to subscribers, just enter the amount you want them to pay in the field under the subscriber role.
Keep in mind: subscribers will only see their discounted price—not the regular course price—when they go to enroll.
Limiting Course Access to Subscribers
Let’s say you’ve created a course and you want only people with a subscription to be able to enroll; you can set up your course so that only users with the “Subscriber” role can access or enroll in it. This means anyone who hasn’t purchased the subscription won’t be able to take the course.
| Steps for restricting enrollment based on roles. |
|---|---|
1 | Navigate to the desired course. |
2 | Click edit. |
3 | Click course settings. |
4 | Click pre-requisites. |
5 | Select the checkbox next to the subscriber role in the “Restrict enrollment to roles” section. |
6 | Click save. |
Offer Special Discounts to Subscribers on Other Products
In addition to courses, you can sell other products on your site, and give subscribers a special discounted price.
For example, imagine you’re selling access to a documentary for $59.99. Regular users will see that full price, but subscribers—such as those with the “Golden Member” role—will automatically see the discounted price of $25.99 instead. The system handles this automatically, so subscribers won’t even see the higher price when they go to purchase.
To learn more about creating a product, please visit our creating a product page.
On-Demand Subscriptions Training Course
To dive deeper into how subscriptions work in EthosCE, visit our self-paced training site and take the Subscriptions training course.