Can You Charge One-Time Payments on Skool? Sell Individual Courses and Digital Products

Selling online courses and membership communities is a great way to start a business online, because of the flexibility that it provides to creators.

However, to fully leverage the benefits of this business model, you need a platform that gives you all the flexibility you need to structure your program the way you want without unnecessary limitations.

For example, creators often want to sell membership access to a community while also offering individual online courses and digital products sold at a one-time fee. Or you might want to offer an installment plan for your most expensive courses, offer multiple payment options for your members, and so on!

Choosing the right community and course platform is crucial for creators who need this kind of flexibility.

Today, we are going to talk about Skool, a community platform, and we are going to see if you can charge one-time payments and sell individual products using Skool. We are also going to show you a better alternative to Skool, which offers more flexibility on how you can sell community access, online courses, digital products and more!

Can You Charge One-Time Payments on Skool?

No, you cannot sell anything for a one-time payment on Skool. This means that you cannot sell an individual course separate from your community or sell community access for a one-time fee.

As far as the time we wrote this article (May 2024), one-time payments are not a possibility in Skool.

This can be extremely limiting for creators, and can negatively impact their ability to grow their business, sell more product offerings and increase their revenue potential.

Skool doesn't provide enough flexibility to accommodate every business model of content creators. You can only sell membership access to a community along with its courses. As an example, you cannot sell an online course individually, it must be included as part of the membership community.

Also it is important to mention that on Skool you cannot sell any digital products (other than their basic online courses). Digital products may be downloadable files such as templates, PDFs, worksheet, or events such as webinar access, coaching calls, workshops etc...

We wrote a whole article on this here: Can You Sell Digital Products on Skool? Best Platform to Sell Digital Downloads

Skool may appear to be a good platform initially, especially when you're just starting out with your business and require only a few features and a simple interface.

However, if you begin using Skool and then realize that you have outgrown it, migrating your community to another platform later on can prove to be a significant hassle for your members.

This is because you may not be able to retain the messages of past members, or you may have to use two separate platforms, one for community and another for other digital products and learning content.

So which platform is a better option in terms of flexibility, ease of use, and competitive pricing?

Heights Platform is a better option compared to Skool, as it offers more features, more flexibility and a better learning experience for your members. Heights offers everything that Skool does, but more! For example, you can sell individual courses, digital products, community channels for a one time fee (and of course you can have membership settings such as subscriptions and installments).

A Better Skool Alternative to Charge One-Time Fees

Heights Platform is an online course and community software that is powered by AI.

It offers all the necessary features and flexibility that are required to build and grow an online business and create a thriving community.

There are four pricing plans available in Heights to suit different needs. The Challenge plan starts at only $19/month and is perfect for creators who run challenges in their business. The Pro plan, at $99/month, is the most comprehensive plan for Heights creators.

Heights Platform offers everything creators need to build a profitable business, from powerful AI features to course creation, community building, and marketing tools like a website builder and an affiliate program.

In comparison, the features offered by Skool are less than what you would get in Heights Platform's Basic plan, which costs only $49/month.

Thanks to its various features and AI tools, Heights Platform can cater to all the needs of creators. You can create your own space with your branding and sell courses, digital products, challenges, coaching, and community access for free or paid, at a one-time fee, installments, or subscription. The list goes on and on.

On the other hand, Skool only provides one option to monetize a community. A community can either be free or paid with a monthly subscription model. However, you cannot have multiple payment options available for your members. You can only choose one.

What Payment Options Can You Charge With Heights Platform?

Now let's see in more detail which payment method you can use with Heights Platform, and how you can deliver your learning courses and community to your students.

Sell Individual Products for a One-Time Fee

You can easily create and sell online courses, challenges, digital products, and community channels, and you can sell them individually for a one-time fee.

On most Heights Platform plans, you can create unlimited courses and digital products. This means that you can have multiple online courses and digital products and sell them individually for a one-time payment. New students will be able to join your program for free, browse around the products you offer, and then purchase one or more courses, paying an individual fee.

There are various options available with Heights for selling your products. You are not restricted to selling courses with a one-time fee.

You have the freedom to mix and match different ways to sell your products. For instance, you could sell a course for a one-time fee, followed by offering membership options for a collection of courses and products, providing free or paid community access, and more.

Let's see more ways to sell content access in Heights Platform:

Sell Membership Access to Your Whole Program

You can choose to gatekeep everything you create inside your account and sell it at a monthly or annual fee. This setting is the most similar to Skool community membership model, but on Heights, this is only one of the many ways you can choose to structure your program!

With this option, your courses, communities, digital products and more, will be available to all of the students who enroll in your membership and pay a monthly or annual price.

Sell Selected Products at a One-Time Fee, Installments or Subscription

If you want to offer multiple payment options to your students, you can do that too!

You can group together multiple products and sell them as a bundle for a one-time fee, subscription payments, installments, or a combination of these payment methods.

For example, a lot of creators like to offer an installment option for students who cannot afford to pay the whole course price at once.

You could sell a course and some other products (such as a community channel or a digital download) for, let's say, a one-time payment of $850 and also have the option to pay in three installments of $300 each.

This way, you make your installment overall revenue more profitable, while also offering this option to your students.

This is just an example of a way you can use this feature, but you are definitely not limited to this!

Charge a Pay-What-You-Want Fee

Another payment method that you can use in Heights Platform is the pay-what-you-want method.

Under this pricing model, you allow students to choose the amount they want to pay for a product you are selling.

This pricing plan can be very useful for a specific marketing campaign or if you are interested in collecting donations from students.

Additionally, you can combine this pricing model with one-time, installment, or subscription payment plans. Pay-what-you-want pricing also comes with its own "days of access" setting, allowing you to expire access to students at a different time from those who didn't use the pay-what-you-want pricing option.

For instance, you can offer pay-what-you-want access for a week or lifetime access for a one-time payment of $299.

How to Collect Payments With Heights Platform vs Skool

On Heights Platform, you can easily collect credit card payments from your students by connecting your bank account to either Stripe or PayPal.

We have chosen these two payment processors because they are simple to use for both creators and students, and they offer high levels of security.

The best part is that Heights Platform does not charge any transaction fees on the amount you earn!

Additionally, Heights Platform offers a range of payment options such as one-time fees, installments, recurring payments, pay-what-you-want fees, or any combination of these.

On the other hand, Skool only allows creators to charge monthly or annual subscription fees.

New members get access to your community and any courses you offer, and Skool acts as a merchant of record to process all transactions on its site. However, Skool charges a 2.9% fee, the same as Stripe, but without the $0.30 per transaction charge.

Skool's handling of transactions means that they have the ability to raise transaction fees in the future, and they do not currently offer integrations with other payment processors.

Heights Platform is not involved in handling creators' money.

This means that the platform will never charge a transaction fee, and everything you earn is entirely yours.

With Heights Platform, you can connect with Stripe or PayPal to handle transactions, both of which are trusted and secure online transaction financial services.

When you make a sale on Heights Platform, the funds from your earnings go directly to your Stripe or PayPal account. You never have to wait for a payout from Heights Platform, and all your sales go directly to your Stripe or PayPal account.

Start Your Online Course & Community Business Using Heights Platform

The platform that creators choose to host their content on can greatly affect their ability to monetize it the right way.

Skool's limitations, such as only offering the option to charge subscription payments, without being able to sell courses or community channels individually, can restrict growth opportunities and hinder revenue potential for creators.

On the other hand, Heights Platform is a better alternative that offers creators flexibility, diverse monetization options, and powerful AI features to build thriving online communities and businesses.

With Heights, creators can easily sell individual products, provide membership access with various payment options, and even implement innovative pricing models like pay-what-you-want.

Start your free trial today with Heights Platform to see it for yourself!