11 Must-Haves for Your Course Terms and Conditions

CreatorsWebsite & bloggersEntrepreneurs
Written By Selene Snippe

Want to protect your course content and your hard-earned money? These are the must-have terms every course creator needs in their course terms and conditions.

Creating your own online course is a lot of hard work, and if you’re anything like me, you want to take all the measures you need to protect your course from copycats, refund chasers, and content leeches.

As a lawyer myself who drafts contracts for course creators like you, I am giving you the 11 essential protections you need in your course terms and conditions. 

I will tell you what you need in your course terms and conditions, including:

  • IP protections training course terms and conditions should have to protect against theft and misuse

  • Fee & payment terms your course terms and conditions template must include to ensure you get paid & keep your money

  • Disclaimers & liability protections your course agreement must include to protect against unrealistic expectations & claims

After learning about what you need in your course terms and conditions, you will have everything you need to safeguard your course content and your hard-earned money.

This post is all about the essentials all course terms and conditions must include for course creators to protect your course, income & business.

Ultimate Course Terms and Conditions

Must-haves for your training terms and conditions

Let’s get into it! Here’s what your course terms and conditions need to cover.

1. License to use: Make it clear students don’t own your content

When students purchase your course, they’re not buying ownership of your content. They’re simply getting a license to use it—and you need to spell that out.

Your course terms and conditions must state that the student’s license is:

  • Non-exclusive, meaning you can give this same license to anyone else (you can sell access to as many students as you want)

  • Non-transferrable, meaning they can not give the rights they have to use the content to someone else, basically transferring the contract to someone else

  • Non-sublicensable, meaning the student does not have the right to give the same license the student has to someone else (while keeping the license themselves, too)

  • Limited, meaning that not all your rights are transferred to the student, just those specified in the course terms and conditions (an unlimited license would mean the student has the right to use the course content without limitation in the same manner as you can)

  • Revocable, meaning you still have the right to revoke the license and basically stop the student from using the course content, so if the student does not comply with your terms, you can stop the student from accessing your course content

2. Protect your course from copycats

Your course terms and conditions must specify what your students may use your course content for and, more importantly, what they may not use it for.

It happens all the time that students repackage course materials and resell them as their own.

To protect yourself from these copycats, include these essentials in your course agreement:

  • Explicitly state that the course content is for personal use only

  • Also, state that students cannot use your content for commercial purposes

  • Make it clear they can’t create competing courses using your materials

3. Protect your course from the ‘Charity Bee’ (sharing is not caring)

Some students don’t mean to be malicious, but they share your content for free—with friends, family, or even the public. They’re what Icall the “Charity Bee.” 

They are pollinating the world with your content for free!

To prevent that from happening, you want to include the following must-haves in your course terms and conditions:

  • Explicitly state that students cannot share course content and materials with third parties

  • Prohibit students from sharing login details or granting access to others

  • Include the right to revoke access if they violate these rules

4. Disclaimers to protect against unrealistic expectations & claims

Some students may think that just by following your course, they will attain certain answers or results that they will not get in practice. They think taking your course guarantees success. 

If they don’t get the results they expect, they might blame you and make claims against you.

To protect yourself against refund disputes and legal claims, your course terms and conditions must include crucial disclaimers, including a results & outcomes disclaimer that includes the following:

  • Results depend on the student’s own effort, skills, and circumstances

  • Disclaim liability for their outcomes or lack of success

  • You do not provide guarantees, warranties, or refunds based on student satisfaction

But there are more crucial disclaimers you need to include in your course terms and conditions to protect against all kinds of liability. For the complete list of disclaimers you need, read these blog posts:

5. Payment structures: structure them wisely

You need to consider your pricing and your potential students’ budgets:

  • Do you only allow students to pay the full fee upfront to get access to your course?

  • Or do you want to offer those students the possibility to pay the fee in instalments?

Your course terms and conditions need to spell out these payment details:

  • Can students only pay the fee upfront in full or also in installments?

  • If students can pay the fee in instalments, when must each instalment be paid?

  • If students can pay the fee in instalments, do they get full course access immediately or gradually? Pro tip: Restrict course access to match payment completion—this way, if they stop paying, they don’t get everything.

  • What happens if a student misses a payment?

Don’t forget to state in the course terms and conditions that the student agrees to and gives you permission to charge their payment accounts or credit cards automatically.

6. Refunds & satisfaction guarantees

Refund policies are one of the biggest pain points for course creators. Thus, your course terms and conditions must have an ironclad refund policy stating whether you will offer refunds or not.

You may want to provide a satisfaction guarantee to your students, meaning they can get their money back if they are not satisfied with the course content or if it was not what they expected.

Thus, your course terms and conditions must state the following:

  • State whether you allow refunds or not. So, even if you don’t offer refunds under any circumstances, you should still explicitly state that in your course terms and conditions.

  • If you do, what’s the deadline to request one? Specify in your course terms and conditions the period during which a student may request a refund.

  • Is the refund subject to certain conditions? If so, what proof or conditions are required for a refund (e.g., completed coursework)? Do they only get a refund if they have completed all the homework or only 50% of the homework? Does the student have to show that the student did the homework by providing copies by email?

  • What will the refunded amount be? Is it 100%? 50%? Is the amount subject to how much of the course is completed? For example, if a student only finishes 20% of your course, should they get a full refund if they have not even tried? Or do they get a refund equal to 20% of the fee in that case? Do they not have the right to a refund at all? 

7. How long do students have access?

Consider how long students may access your course. Will that be for a limited time only because that is what they pay for, or do they get lifetime access?

Many use the term “life-long access,” but what does that even mean?

Because the “lifetime” could mean:

  • The life of your customer

  • The life of your business

  • The life of that specific course

I’m pretty sure some customers and your business will outlive your course, so you need to clearly specify that lifetime access means the period until which your course is discontinued.

Otherwise, some students might ask you for compensation when you stop providing the course!

8. Course updates: do students get them?

Another must-have for your course terms and conditions is a clause on course updates.

If you make major updates to your course five years later and the value increases by 200%, should they still receive access to that without paying additional fees?

Your course terms and conditions must clearly state whether or not students get access to new versions for free.

That way, students know what to expect and won’t demand access to a newer version because their version of the course is not outdated.

9. Bonus offers & future add-ons

You may also want to offer additional or bonus content and materials to your course in the future.

Those bonus modules could be considered as not being part of the course content, which would mean that the protections that apply to your course don’t apply to those extra modules.

This is something that is often overlooked but could create MAJOR issues in the future.

To ensure you are fully protected, you want to include a provision in your course terms and conditions stating that your terms will also apply to any of those (future) bonuses and add-ons.

10. Private student groups & community access

Many course creators offer their students the opportunity to connect in private groups within their course or on Facebook.

If you run a Facebook group or private community, clarify that:

  • It’s NOT part of the course itself. The group may end for whatever reason or get hacked, especially if it’s on another platform, like Facebook, which will most likely be the case. You have no control over that, so you should not be responsible. You want to ensure that your students will not make any claims against you for not providing them with all course features. It’s a “nice-to-have” and not a “must-have.”

  • You are not responsible for what students post. This is one of the essential disclaimers you need for your course.

  • You have the right to remove members if necessary. You may not be responsible for what students say, but you also want to be able to remove a student from the group if they cause mayhem. That way, you can still control what happens (to an extent) and keep it a positive space.

This prevents entitlement issues and keeps your group drama-free.

11. Compliance with laws (privacy & data protection)

When a student purchases your course and creates an account to access your course, you are collecting personal data from your students. 

Thus, you must comply with privacy and data protection laws.

Here’s how:

Not complying could lead to legal trouble and fines.

Now, you know about all the must-haves for your course terms and conditions! Having strong terms and conditions isn’t just about protecting your business—it’s about making sure you get paid, keeping your content secure, and avoiding unnecessary headaches.

The ULTIMATE course terms and conditions template

Want a course terms and conditions template that includes all the must-haves?

Instead of trying to piece together a contract from scratch, grab my online course terms and conditions template—it includes all of these essentials and more!

My training course terms and conditions template is fully customisable for your specific course and your (business) needs.

Purchase your course terms and conditions now!

More essentials for your online course terms and conditions template

This blog post just covers a few of the most important terms for your online course terms and conditions template. Learn more about all the essentials you need in your course agreement in these blog posts:

This post was all about the essentials your course terms and conditions must have to protect your course content & your money.

You can get your course terms and conditions on this page of my contract shop!

Selene Snippe
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