Solutions / Courses & coaching
Sell what you know
A course site with gated lessons, paid plans, a tutor that answers from your material, and booked 1-on-1 time — described in plain language, running the same afternoon.
The case for building it
Why build this instead of renting a course platform?
Course platforms get you live fast — inside their template, their checkout, and their idea of what a course is. The trade is permanent: your brand sits inside theirs, your pricing fits their plan picker, and the first feature they didn't anticipate — a free preview chapter, coaching sold next to lessons, a tutor trained on your material — turns into a workaround. Kliv flips the deal: the same capabilities arrive as building blocks, and you compose the course business you actually run.
How you teach is the spec. Drip lessons on your calendar, unlock modules by progress, bundle 1-on-1 time into the top tier, give alumni lifetime access — these are sentences you say, not plugins you hunt for. The system ends up shaped like your curriculum, and when your teaching evolves, you change the system instead of re-platforming.
Anatomy of the system
What the course site actually knows
A course business is more than a folder of videos behind a paywall. It has a curriculum with an order, students at different points in it, offers that unlock different doors, and a calendar — cohort starts, drip schedules, coaching slots. Here is the shape of the system Kliv would build.
Courses & modules
Your curriculum as structure — courses, modules, and the order they're meant to be taken in, including prerequisites.
Lessons
Video, PDFs, and worksheets in the built-in file store — each lesson gated by entitlement, not by an unlisted link.
Enrollments
The link between a student and a course: how they got in — subscription, lifetime unlock, cohort seat — and what it opens.
Cohorts & schedules
Start dates, drip calendars, and live-call sessions — the clock that decides what unlocks when.
Progress & completions
Which lessons each student finished and where they are now — the record that "continue where you left off" is built on.
Coaching sessions
Booked 1-on-1 time sold next to the course, tied to the same student record.
Who sees what
Rules the database enforces
- A lesson is readable only through an active enrollment — a shared URL returns nothing to someone who hasn't paid.
- Drip is enforced at the data: a module locked until week three stays locked, even for the student who guesses the address.
- A student's progress and questions are visible to them and to teaching staff — never to the rest of the cohort.
- When a subscription lapses, the gates close but progress is kept — a returning student resumes where they stopped.
None of this is a plugin stack. Curriculum, enrollment, progress, billing, and the tutor all read the same records — which is why the site behaves like one school instead of five tools.
What Kliv assembles
A shopping list of platform pieces — each one built in, each one composing with the rest.
Gated lessons & downloads
Host video, PDFs, and worksheets in the built-in file store, unlocked by subscription — the paywall is enforced by the platform, not by your code.
Plans, bundles, one-time unlocks
Sell a monthly membership, a lifetime unlock, or both — entitlements open and close lessons the moment billing changes.
A tutor that knows the material
An agent answers students' questions from a knowledge base you author — in your voice, around the clock.
Booked 1-on-1 time
Connect Calendly and sell coaching sessions next to the course — bookings happen right on your site.
Lifecycle email, handled
Welcome, receipt, renewal, and failed-payment emails go out automatically — every template yours to brand.
Ways to charge
Three ways a course business can charge
Most course businesses outgrow a single price. The library sells as a subscription, the flagship as a lifetime unlock, the intensive as a cohort with a start date and a seat cap — and one student might hold all three.
Monthly membership
$49/month
The self-paced learner working through the library
The full course library, new lessons as they ship, and the tutor trained on your material.
- Unlocks
- The active subscription opens every gated lesson; the free preview chapter stays open to everyone as the front door.
- Billing
- Renews monthly. A failed card triggers retries and recovery emails, and access narrows until billing is fixed — progress stays put.
- Refunds
- Refund requests route through your approval step before money moves.
Lifetime unlock
$499 one-time
The committed student who wants the flagship for good
Permanent access to the flagship course, future updates to it, and alumni status.
- Unlocks
- The purchase grants a permanent entitlement — this buyer and a subscriber open the same lessons through different doors.
- Billing
- One charge, one receipt. No renewal to fail, nothing to chase.
- Refunds
- A 14-day window, gated by your approval — a refund is a decision, not an accident.
Cohort seat
$1,900 per seat
The intensive student who wants the live version
A seat in the six-week cohort: dripped modules, live calls, and 1-on-1 time bundled in.
- Unlocks
- The seat opens the cohort's space on its schedule — week three unlocks in week three, for everyone at once.
- Billing
- Seats are capped and enforced at purchase; when the cohort is full, the next buyer is told so instead of oversold.
- Refunds
- Refundable until the cohort starts, through the same approval flow.
Before launch
The first week, before you launch
This is what standing up the course site actually looks like — and it ends with the school having already taught a year.
Shape the school
Describe how you teach: the courses, the order, what's free and what's paid, whether there's a cohort. Kliv builds the first preview — curriculum structure, gated lessons, the preview chapter already open.
Make it yours
Refine in conversation: your brand, your section names, the tutor's voice and its limits. Every change lands in the preview before a single student sees it.
Load the real material
Upload the lessons, author the tutor's knowledge base from your notes, and create the actual offers — the membership, the lifetime unlock, the cohort with its start date.
Try to break it
Sign up as a free student and hunt for the paid content. Buy a seat, fail the card on purpose, ask for a refund — watch the recovery emails and the approval step do their jobs.
Then rehearse a year
In the Sandbox, with simulated money and simulated time, fast-forward twelve months: subscriptions renew, a card expires in March and recovers in April, the September cohort fills and closes, a cancellation keeps its access to the period's end. When you publish, the school has already taught a year — before its first real student.
Bespoke, without the bespoke risk
Custom software used to mean a budget, a contractor, and a maintenance contract. This is a different deal.
Enterprise-grade parts
Sign-in, permissions enforced at the database, billing, audit, email — the components under your bespoke system are the same hardened pieces every Kliv app runs on. You compose proven infrastructure; you don't commission code from scratch.
Changes ship in order
When your process changes, say so — the change is built in conversation, you review it in a live preview, and nothing reaches your users until you publish. Commerce changes can even be rehearsed in the Sandbox with simulated money and time.
Nobody can sunset it
Off-the-shelf tools get re-priced, redesigned, and retired on a vendor's schedule — and your workflow goes with them. Your Kliv app changes only when you change it. It's your product, not a seat in someone else's.
Say it in one sentence
“Build me a course site with video lessons unlocked by a monthly plan, a free preview chapter, an AI tutor that answers from my course notes, and a page to book 1-on-1 coaching calls.”
This is genuinely how it starts — describe it, then refine in conversation.
Build or buy
Why not just rent a course platform?
| Off the shelf | With Kliv | |
|---|---|---|
| Your curriculum's shape | A fixed course → module → lesson template; cohorts, prerequisites, and coaching live in workarounds. | Modeled the way you actually teach — drip, cohorts, prerequisites, and 1-on-1 time in one structure. |
| Cost structure | A monthly plan plus, on many platforms, a share of every sale — the bill grows with your success. | You own the system; students check out on your own Stripe account. |
| Mixing offers | Subscription or one-time, whichever the plan picker supports. | Membership, lifetime unlock, and cohort seats in one catalog — one student can hold all three. |
| The tutor | A generic help widget, if anything. | An agent trained on your material, answering in your voice, current the moment you update the knowledge base. |
| Your students | An audience on their platform, exportable to CSV. | Rows in your own database — segment, email, and invite them to the next launch without permission. |
Your curriculum's shape
Off the shelf: A fixed course → module → lesson template; cohorts, prerequisites, and coaching live in workarounds.
With Kliv: Modeled the way you actually teach — drip, cohorts, prerequisites, and 1-on-1 time in one structure.
Cost structure
Off the shelf: A monthly plan plus, on many platforms, a share of every sale — the bill grows with your success.
With Kliv: You own the system; students check out on your own Stripe account.
Mixing offers
Off the shelf: Subscription or one-time, whichever the plan picker supports.
With Kliv: Membership, lifetime unlock, and cohort seats in one catalog — one student can hold all three.
The tutor
Off the shelf: A generic help widget, if anything.
With Kliv: An agent trained on your material, answering in your voice, current the moment you update the knowledge base.
Your students
Off the shelf: An audience on their platform, exportable to CSV.
With Kliv: Rows in your own database — segment, email, and invite them to the next launch without permission.
Common questions
Do I need separate tools for payments and video hosting?
No. Checkout, subscriptions, and receipts are part of the platform, and lessons live in the built-in file store — gated by entitlement, so access closes the moment a subscription lapses and reopens when it renews.
Can I sell a monthly plan and a lifetime unlock at the same time?
Yes. Recurring plans and one-time purchases coexist in the same catalog, and both grant entitlements — a lifetime buyer and a subscriber can unlock the same lessons through different doors.
What does the AI tutor actually know?
Exactly what you give it. You author a knowledge base from your course material, and the tutor answers from that — in your voice, with limits you set. Update the knowledge base and the tutor is current.
Can I drip lessons on a schedule?
Yes — per cohort or per enrollment date. The unlock is enforced at the data, so a module scheduled for week three opens in week three even for the student who finds the URL early.
What happens to a student's progress if they cancel and come back?
Progress is kept. Lapsing closes the gates but not the record — when they resubscribe, they resume exactly where they stopped, which makes winning them back worth the email.
Can I move an existing course over?
Yes. Your videos and worksheets upload into the built-in file store, and your student list imports into your own database — then you decide who gets what entitlement, so alumni keep the access you promised them.
