How to Create Limited-Time Access to your Course
When you design your courses, you’ll want to consider how long you want your content to be available. Should students have lifetime access to your course, or should they have a limited amount of time to consume the content before their access expires?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question, so Zippy Courses gives you the option to choose what makes the most sense for your course. By default, courses in Zippy Courses will never expire for students, and they’ll be able to access your content indefinitely.
But, if you want to limit your students’ access to a course to a specific time period, you can use Zippy Courses’ scheduling and launch window tools in order to time how long a student can access your course.
There are a few different ways you can set up your course to expire. This guide will explain the three main ways you can set this up: through the Course, through a Launch Window, or by setting up a Schedule Override.
Expiring access by course
If you simply want all students’ access to expire after a certain amount of time, the easiest way to set your expiration is in the course itself. To access this option, click on Zippy Courses in your WordPress dashboard, and click on Edit next to the course you want to add an expiration date to.
From there, click on Units and Lessons, and then click on Configure underneath the Schedule heading.
When you click on this option, you will see a menu appear that includes all of your course’s scheduling options. You can learn more about all of these options in our Scheduling guide. The option we want to edit is the option labeled When does access to this course expire?
By default, this option will be set to “Access to this course does not expire,” meaning students who purchase this course will keep their access to the course indefinitely. To change this, select the second option, and enter a number of days after which the student will lose access to the course.
In the example above, a student will retain access to the course for 90 days, and then their access will expire. This affects all students who register for the course, even those who may have purchased your course already.
Expiring access in a launch window
Launch windows provide an alternate method for timing the access for your course. Just like how you can use a launch window to set a Start date for your course, you can use the same launch window to set an End date for your course.
To set the End Date, click on your Products menu in Zippy Courses, select your product, and click on the Launch Windows tab
You can use these options to have all of your students start and end on the same date if you’re running an interactive course, where you want students to start and complete lessons at the same pace.
Expiring access through a scheduling override
The final way you can add an expiration is through the Scheduling Override tool, which is available from your Products menu under the Product Details tab.
To enable these override options, first click on the option labeled “Override course scheduling details for owners of this product.” When you check that box, you will see a series of override features that you can add to your Product.
To set an expiration date, scroll down to the Expiration Date feature and change the toggle to Yes to activate this option. Then, set your Expiration date under the Settings column of the scheduling override box.
In this example, anyone who purchases this product will automatically have their access expire after 30 days. You can use this feature to create a “timed trial period” of your course for free, or at a reduced price.
How an expired course will look to a student
When an expiration date is set on a course, students will have their course content display and drip normally until the course’s expiration date.
When a student passes their expiration date, they will see a message on all course Units and Lessons indicating that their access has expired:
TIP: Zippy Courses doesn’t include any sort of warning before access to a course expires, so make sure that you clearly state on your Product or Course page that students can expect their access to expire after a certain number of days!