LifterLMS Payment Plans, Free Trials and Sale Prices, with Examples

A payment plan can be the difference between a sale and a "maybe later". Letting someone pay a $600 course in six instalments, or try a membership free for a week, removes the main objection for a lot of buyers. LifterLMS supports both without any add-on; you build them in the access plan editor.

This article explains how LifterLMS payment plans, limited recurring payments, trials and sale prices work, then walks through five worked examples you can copy. It also covers the billing rules that surprise people, such as what happens to a subscriber who joined during a sale.

The basics of access plans, such as visibility and members-only availability, are covered in LifterLMS memberships and access plans explained. Here we stay on pricing. You will need a payment gateway that supports recurring payments, such as Stripe, for anything except one-time sales.

The pricing fields on an access plan

Open a course or membership, scroll to the access plans area and add or edit a plan. The Plan Pricing section holds these fields:

Field	Options	What it means
Plan Type	Paid, Free	Free plans skip payment entirely
Price	Amount	The regular charge per payment
Frequency	one-time payment, every, every 2nd ... every 6th	Anything other than one-time makes the plan recurring
Plan Period	day, week, month, year	The unit for the frequency
Plan Length	for all time, or a number of periods	For all time is an open-ended subscription; a number makes it a limited plan
Trial Offer	No trial offer, Enable trial	Recurring plans only
Sale Pricing	Not on sale, On Sale	With Sale Price, Sale Start Date and Sale End Date

Access is set separately, under Expiration Settings: Lifetime Access, Expires after a length of time, or Expires on a date. Keeping billing and access apart in your head is the key to every structure below.

How Plan Length counts payments

Plan Length is the field people misread. The dropdown is labelled in periods, for example "for 6 months", but LifterLMS counts it as a number of payments. Behind the scenes the order stores it as the billing length, and the remaining payments are that number minus the successful payments already taken. The pricing table states it plainly as "for 6 total payments".

With a frequency of "every" one month, six months and six payments are the same thing, so there is no confusion. It only matters if you combine a longer frequency with a length: "every 2nd month for 6 months" produces six payments, two months apart, over a year. Check the wording on your pricing table after saving, and stick to "every" for payment plans unless you really mean it.

The available lengths depend on the period: up to 6 years, 24 months, 52 weeks or 90 days.

LifterLMS payment plans: pay in instalments, keep the course

A payment plan in LifterLMS is simply a recurring plan with a fixed Plan Length and lifetime access.

• The first payment is taken at checkout.
• LifterLMS schedules each following payment and charges the saved payment method on the due date.
• After the last payment, no more charges are scheduled. With Lifetime Access, the student keeps the course.
• If a payment fails, the order goes on hold and access is paused while the retry rules run. If the student cancels part way through, access ends with the plan.

Admins can adjust a plan on a single order. The order screen shows Remaining Payments and has a Modify Remaining Payments option, useful when you agree an extra instalment or waive the last one for a customer.

Free and paid trials

Trials are available on recurring plans only. Choose Enable trial and set:

• Trial Price: 0 for a free trial, or a reduced amount for a paid trial.
• Trial Length and Trial Period: for example 7 days or 1 month.

At checkout, the buyer pays the trial price and the order's first regular payment is scheduled for the day the trial ends. Two behaviours are worth knowing:

• A free trial still collects payment details. LifterLMS requires a payment method so the first regular payment can be charged automatically. If you want people to try content without a card, use a free access plan on a sample course instead.
• The trial is not one of the counted payments. A trial plus "for 6 months" means six regular payments after the trial, not five.

Students who cancel during the trial keep access until it ends, and are not charged.

Sale prices and how long they last

Choose On Sale, enter a Sale Price and, optionally, dates. Without dates the plan is on sale indefinitely. With dates, the sale starts at the beginning of the start date and runs to the end of the end date, in your site's timezone. The pricing table shows a SALE label, the regular and sale prices, and "sale ends" with the date when an end date is set.

On a one-time plan that is all there is to it. On a recurring plan, there is a rule to plan around: the order records the price at the moment of purchase. Someone who subscribes during the sale pays the sale price for every renewal, for as long as the order runs, even after the sale ends for new buyers. Coupons work the same way: a percentage or fixed discount on a recurring plan applies to every payment on that order.

That makes a sale on a subscription a permanent discount for early buyers. Sometimes that is exactly the "founding member" offer you want. If you only meant to discount the first month, use a paid trial instead.

Worked examples

1. Pay in full or in six instalments

A $600 course with two plans on the same course:

• Pay in full: Price 600, Frequency one-time payment, Lifetime Access.
• 6 monthly payments: Price 110, Frequency every, Plan Period month, Plan Length for 6 months, Lifetime Access.

The instalment plan totals $660. A small premium for paying over time is normal and nudges buyers to pay in full. Mark the pay-in-full plan as featured if you want to highlight it.

2. Monthly membership with a 7-day free trial

Price 29, every month, for all time. Enable trial, Trial Price 0, Trial Length 7, Trial Period day(s). The buyer enters a card, gets seven days of access, and is charged $29 on day seven and monthly after that until they cancel.

3. A $1 trial for 14 days

Same as example 2, with Trial Price 1 and Trial Length 14 days. A paid trial filters out people who would never convert, and the $1 charge confirms the card works before the first full payment.

4. Launch sale on a one-time course

Price 299, one-time payment, On Sale, Sale Price 199, Sale Start Date your launch day, Sale End Date seven days later. The price reverts to $299 automatically at the end of the last day. No one needs to remember to change it at midnight.

5. Annual plan alongside monthly

Plan A: 39 every month, for all time. Plan B: 390 every year, for all time. The annual plan is ten months' price for twelve months' access. Put both on the same membership and feature the annual plan.

Common mistakes

• A payment plan without Lifetime Access. If the plan's access expires, students may lose the course even though they paid every instalment. Check the Expiration Settings on every instalment plan.
• Reading Plan Length as a duration with a longer frequency. Check the "total payments" wording on the pricing table.
• A sale on a subscription by accident. Every sale-time subscriber keeps the lower price.
• Trials on a gateway without automatic renewals. If renewals are manual, as with PayPal accounts without Reference Transactions or the manual gateway, the trial ends with a payment the student has to make themselves.
• Not testing. Run each plan through checkout in your gateway's test mode and check the next payment date on the order.

Frequently asked questions

Does LifterLMS support payment plans without an add-on?

Yes. Payment plans, trials and sale prices are part of core access plans. You do need a payment gateway add-on that supports recurring payments to charge the instalments automatically.

Can a student switch from a payment plan to paying the balance?

Not by themselves in core. An admin can record a manual payment for the balance and reduce the remaining payments on the order.

Can I offer a trial on a one-time purchase?

No. Trials are only available on recurring plans. For a one-time course, offer a free preview lesson or a short free course instead.

What happens to existing subscribers if I change a plan's price?

Existing orders keep the price they were created with. The new price applies to new purchases.

What to do next

Pick one structure from the examples, build it on a staging copy, and run a test purchase for each plan with your gateway in test mode. Look at the order afterwards: the next payment date, the remaining payments and the total should match what you promised on the sales page. The LifterLMS access plan options documentation is a useful reference while you build.

If you need pricing the access plan editor cannot express, such as upgrades between tiers with credit for time already paid, deposits, or instalments tied to cohort dates, our LifterLMS consulting service will tell you what is possible with settings and what needs custom work. Send us your pricing idea.