How to offer free sections in a paid course

In LearnWorlds, you can create various types of courses with sections, enabling you to better organize your course. Additionally, you can customize the accessibility settings for each section within your course.

To attract users, you can offer Free sections within a  Paid course. This allows users to gain insight into your course content. Through a free preview, users can access selected pieces of content (course sections). If users click on any course sections not included in the free preview, they will be prompted to purchase the course.

This is a great tactic to keep your audience involved and tempt them to buy your course to get access to its full content.

You can discover the various statuses for Course Section Access here. A course section can be in Draft, Soon, Free, or Paid status, and you have the flexibility to modify the status of your section as needed.

Set up free sections in a paid course

Here's how you can set some sections as Free in your Paid course:

1. Create a course.

2. In the Access tab, set the course's Access to Paid.

3. In the Course outline tab, click on the sections you wish to set as Free, and in the side form, select the Free option.

Give access to the free sections of a paid course

When offering free sections inside a paid course, it’s important to understand how navigation works.

By default, the Automatic Enroll button will always redirect users to the checkout page, even if your course includes free sections. To allow users to access free sections, you need to provide alternative entry points.

• Course contents section: Add a Course Contents section to your Course Page so users can directly click and access free learning activities.
• Direct links: Share URLs to specific free activities (note: users must be logged in).
• Custom button (recommended): Add a custom button (e.g. below the Enroll button) that redirects users to the first free section.

Course contents section

This is the most straightforward way to expose free content on the course page. To set it up,

1. Go to Course page layout
    
2. Click Edit course layout
3. Click + Add Section
4. Select Course Contents
5. Save your layout

Once added, visitors can view the full course structure. Sections set as free are marked with a “Free” badge, and when users click on them, they are taken directly to the activity to start exploring.

Direct links to free activities

Another option is to guide users directly to a specific free section. How to use it:

1. Open your course as an admin
2. Navigate to a free activity
3. Copy the URL from your browser
4. Share this link (e.g. landing pages, emails, buttons)

You can create a button on your page and set its action to redirect to this URL.

When users click the link, they are taken directly to the free section. You can customize the button text to something like “Get a free preview of the course.” Once users complete the free section and attempt to access paid content, a prompt will ask them to purchase the course to continue.

For this option, users must be logged in to access the activity. If they are not logged in, they will be prompted to sign in first.

Custom button

This is the recommended approach to improve user experience and reduce confusion. How to set it up:

1. While in your site builder, add or select a Button element.
2. Set the button label (e.g. Start Free Preview).
3. Select to send users to a course section specific, choose which one you want to show and hit save.

You can place this button in the hero section of the page. By default, the hero section includes an Automatic Enroll button that directs users to purchase the course. You can remove this button, add a new one, and customize it as described above.

Ensure that your Site Navigation allows non-enrolled users to access course pages and free content.

Give access to free sections via course card

Inside your site builder, your can edit the course cards to send directly to the coyrse player instead of the course layout page. 

1. Click on Edit cards.

2. Navigate to When clicked → Not enrolled → Go to course player.

3. When users click on that course they will be redirected to the free sections induced in the course and be asked to pay if they want to access the paid activities.

This is how the flow will look like for the users: 

Another option would be to add a Courses Ccontents section to the Course Layout page .

1. Click +Add Section, and add the Course Contents section.

A “Free” label will automatically appear next to the sections you have set as free. When users preview the course, any attempt to access locked sections will trigger an upgrade prompt, and the Automatic Enroll button will direct them to the payment page to purchase the full course.

User analytics and progress can be tracked after the user progresses to the paid content, thus after purchasing the course.