A course sale has three parts that have to happen in order without you: the buyer pays, gets a login to the lessons within a minute, and then hears from you while they work through the material. The part that breaks is the handoff between payment and access. On the WordPress.org forums, a course seller described a student whose payment went through and the order showed as completed, but who was never enrolled in the course. For the student, that's paying for nothing until someone notices.
So choose your setup by how the three parts connect, not by the lesson player. Then buy your own course before anyone else does.
Decide the format before the tool
How the course runs decides what you need from the setup:
| Format | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Self-paced recorded lessons | Instant access after payment, lessons in order, progress saved for the student |
| Lessons released over time (one module a week) | Access rules by date or by days since purchase |
| Live cohort with recordings | A fixed start date, a calendar link, recordings added after each session |
| Short paid workshop or mini-course | A payment page and one page of lessons; little else |
If you're moving an in-person course online, the self-paced format with one module released a week keeps the rhythm of a class without needing everyone online at the same time.
The three jobs, and what to check in each
Payment. A payment page with the price, what's included, how long access lasts, and your refund terms, written before the first sale. Connect a payment provider such as Stripe or PayPal. If you sell to buyers in other countries, tax on a digital product works much as it does for any digital file; our guide to selling a PDF online covers what to check before the first sale.
Access. The buyer should land in the course, or get a login email, straight after paying. Check three things in whatever you use: what triggers access (a completed payment, a specific order status, a tag), whether access can expire, and how you remove it when you give a refund.
Emails. The login email is only the start. Plan the emails that welcome students, bring back the ones who bought and haven't started, and mark progress (below).
Four ways to set it up
A course marketplace. You upload the lessons, the marketplace sells them alongside other people's courses and takes a share. It can bring buyers who are already browsing; you get less control over price and over contacting your students. Check each marketplace's rules on both before you upload.
A course platform. Hosts the lessons, the checkout and the student accounts in one place. Teachable is one: its pricing page lists the Starter plan at $39 a month with a 7.5% transaction fee, and the Builder plan at $89 a month with 0% when you use Teachable Payments; card processing fees apply on top. Teachable also lists U.S. sales tax and global VAT handling as a feature.
Your own website with a course plugin. On WordPress, a shop plugin takes the payment and a course plugin controls who sees the lessons. With Sensei Pro, for example, you link a course to a WooCommerce product, and the buyer is enrolled once the order status is Processing or Completed. That status is exactly where the handoff can fail: an order stuck in another status means a paying student with no access. This route suits someone who already runs a WordPress site and can maintain two plugins and their updates.
A funnel tool with courses and email. One tool hosts the payment page, the course and the email list, so the handoff between them is a setting rather than a connection between separate tools. systeme.io is one option of this kind, covered next.
Running a course on systeme.io
In systeme.io you sell a course from a payment page whose offer type is a digital product with the course as its resource. You choose the access type: full access on payment, partial access to selected modules, or drip content, where lectures open one by one on a delay you set, such as one every 7 days. You can also set an access date and, for full or partial access, an expiry. Payments go through Stripe or PayPal, switched on in the funnel settings.
After the purchase, the student automatically gets an email with instructions to set a password and log in. systeme.io says that enrolment email can't be customised at the moment, so send your own welcome email as well, from an automation rule started by the New sale trigger. For emails during the course, systeme.io has Course completed, Module completed and Lecture completed triggers for rules and workflows.
On its pricing page, the Free plan includes 1 course with unlimited students, up to 2,000 contacts and 3 sales funnels, and systeme.io charges 0% transaction fees on every plan; your payment provider still charges its own. The Startup plan, at $17 a month, allows 5 courses.
Its limits: the enrolment email isn't editable, the free plan holds one course, and it won't find students for you. If you want buyers who are already browsing for courses, a marketplace does that part; systeme.io doesn't.
An email plan for students
Whatever tool you use, plan these before launch:
| When | |
|---|---|
| Straight after payment | Welcome: how to log in, where to start, how long the first lesson takes |
| Day 2–3 | One practical tip from lesson 1, with a link to it |
| After each module (or weekly, for drip) | What's next, and the one thing to try before moving on |
| After the last lesson | Ask what was missing; offer the next step if you have one |
Keep each email to one action. If your tool can trigger on progress, send the module emails on completion rather than on a fixed day, so a fast student isn't told to start what they've already finished.
Before you share the payment page
- Buy the course yourself with a real card or the provider's test mode.
- Check the login email arrives, the link opens the course, and the first lesson plays on a phone.
- Check your own welcome email arrives separately.
- Refund the test purchase and check what happens to access.
- Read the payment page as a buyer: price, what's included, how long access lasts, refund terms.
Repeat the test whenever you change the payment page, the access rules or the tool.
If you don't have an audience yet
A course needs buyers before it needs a platform. If you don't have an email list, start with a free lesson or a short guide in exchange for an email address, delivered by the same tool, and sell the course to the people who used it. The number of people who take the free lesson tells you whether the topic has an audience before you record every module.