Our growing PayForCourses FAQ
What is PayForCourses?
PayForCourses is an online shopping service from HowToMoodle that enables you to set up a familiar, branded and fully featured product catalogue and shopping cart to sell your online courses.
Purchasers of your online courses have their Moodle/Totara Learn accounts created automatically and they're given access to their purchased courses - also without intervention by you. They can also buy courses for others and self-manage the account creation and enrolments later.
PayForCourses is a separate, simple site that typically sits alongside your Website and Moodle site.
How does PayForCourses connect with my Moodle/Totara Learn site?
We use a custom plugin plus other, standard, functionality in Moodle. But don't worry, because we take care of all that for you.
What Version of Moodle/Totara Learn are supported?
Moodle 3.4 upwards.
Totara Learn 11
Can I sell using multiple currencies?
No, PayForCourses only supports a single currency.
Does PayForCourses support subscriptions.
Not at the moment.
How does PayForCourses handle VAT?
There are flexible options for dealing with tax see our article here.
Can I bundle products together?
Yes, there are plenty of options, see our article on bundles.
Can I suggest other products during the sales process?
Yes, have a look at this article for upselling and cross-selling options.
Can my customers build their own bundles?
Yes, to some extent. You can create bundles with optional products that your customers can add if they wish. It's a neat way to upsell.
I'm worried that poor reviews will affect my business. What can I do?
You're products are amazing so don't worry about it. If that doesn't reassure you read on:
- Not every review is going to be glowing - you can't please all of the people all of the time.
- Genuine feedback from paying customers is like gold dust. Mediocre feedback is a a great cue to put your great customer service into practice - turn detractors in to promoters.
- Ratings are averaged so one grump isn't going to make a big difference.
- You get to review comments before they're made public.
- And finally, you can disable reviews altogether if you want to.
Does PayForCourses support time limited sale periods?
Yes, for single products and simple bundles. You can read about it here.
How can I offer discounted products?
There are a few options:
- Offer a discount on a single product or a simple bundle for a time-bound period.
- Create a bundle that contains discounted products.
- Create and distribute discount coupons.
Can I sell any product type with PayForCourses?
PayForCourses is intended to provide a service for selling online courses and automatically managing LMS account creation and enrolments. You can create virtual products or digital downloads. There are no shipping options so PayForCourses isn't suitable for sales of physical products.
Whoah! Aren't you just selling something I can get for free or cheap elsewhere?
You bet, we've cooked up a service with selected open source components, a dash of proprietary goodness, a sprinkling of careful configuration, all folded together by our design, hosting and development experts. There's some more about this here.
What does "off-site" payment processing mean?
No payments are processed on the PayForCourses site. Your purchasers are redirected to the site of the payment processor e.g. PayPal, Worldpay to process the payment. Purchasers are returned to the PayForCourses site when the transaction is concluded.
Do HowToMoodle take a cut of my sales?
Absolutely not. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
How does branding work with the PayForCourses service?
We'll do our best to faithfully reflect the header and footer areas of an existing website, LMS site or a detailed worked example of your branding so that your customers have an end to end branded experience. Any branding of the cart and account pages will be minimal to keep them clean and functional.
Can I issue refunds?
Refunds are issued directly from your chosen payment processor. You can change the status of an order refunded and record details in PayForCourses.
Are there any reports?
Yes, loads of them.
Can I sell courses for multiple people or just to individual buyers?
Both. You decide, on a per course basis, if a purchaser can buy multiple enrolments on a course and distribute them later.
Can I sell bundles of courses for multiple people or just to individual buyers?
Bundles can only be bought for enrolments of the purchaser.
Why doesn't PayForCourses support XYZ payment processor?
Probably for these two reasons:
- The processor does not target its services to UK sellers.
- It doesn't offer an off-site payment processing option.
Is it possible to specify a maximum enrolment duration?
Yes (and No). It depends on how the online course is sold:
- As a standalone product or as a product in a bundle - Yes. This is because the enrolment in the LMS uses the Manual enrolment method which can be set up for a maximum enrolment duration on a per course basis (in the LMS).
- When purchased in multiples for later allocation to participants - No. The method used for this is Cohorts which don't have an enrolment duration option. We have seeking resolution to this issue on our road-map. It's a hard one to resolve but we'll get there.
Can I host PayForCourses myself?
Sorry, No. PayForCourses is service provided exclusively by HowToMoodle.