Watch the webinar replay above to learn if the new Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl integration paid online course solution is right for your info-product business.
While you watch, scroll down this page to read the many questions we received and answered during the webinar. More than likely, many of your questions about the new Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl integration are answered below.
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NEXT LESSON NOTE: In the next lesson, we discuss — in great detail — how Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl stacks up against all the other membership plugin and online course creation tools available to you.
That lesson clarifies the complexities of building your own premium course by breaking down the 3 necessary ingredients to sell courses on your WordPress website..
In the next lesson, you'll learn the cost of different tool 'stacks', how they work together to cover those 3 essential elements and why we only recommend the Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl combo to do it all.
Webinar Frequently Asked Questions
I am not familiar with SendOwl. What are SendOwl's membership capabilities versus typical membership plugins like Memberium, MemberPress, LearnDash, Teachable, etc.. Does it have the same capabilities and more?
That's a very complex question that is answered in great detail in the following lesson of this course.
Do I still need an email marketing tool or Email Service Provider (ESP) in addition to SendOwl?
Yes, you still need an email marketing tool. SendOwl does not replace your ESP, but does integrate directly with:
- ActiveCampaign
- AWeber
- Campaign Monitor
- Constant Contact
- ConvertKit
- Drip (Mailing List)
- GetResponse
- InfusionSoft
- Mad Mimi
- MailChimp
- MailerLite
- Sendy
What if I have apprentice as a plug-in, but use a different theme?
That's no problem at all. Thrive Apprentice is stand alone plugin that works independently of your WordPress theme.
Can I "drip" lessons using the Thrive Apprentice or the Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl integrated combo?
At this time, Thrive Apprentice does not have a course or lesson drip feature. It is a feature we're receiving lots of requests for so we are considering the development of drip functionality at some point in the future. However, we are not currently developing a drip feature.
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SendOwl does have a drip feature, but integrated with Thrive Apprentice, would only allow you to drip entire courses to subscribers.
Does SendOwl let you use a 'Pay-What-You-Want' purchase option for your courses or products?
Yes. SendOwl does allow you to set a 'Pay-What-You-Want' price for your products.
Does SendOwl handle member access to paid courses?
Yes. The Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl integration will manage that.
Why aren't you currently selling Thrive Apprentice as a separate plugin? Why do I have to purchase the Thrive Themes Membership to use it?
We always give our members exclusive access to our plugins first. It's one of the perks of being a Thrive Themes Member 🙂
We will be releasing Thrive Apprentice as a separate plugin, but not until 2019.
I'm already using the old apprentice features of FocusedBlog theme, will I be able to import my lessons in the new Thrive Apprentice plugin?
Yes. There is a course import tool from the old Apprentice feature to the new Thrive Apprentice plugin.
With SendOwl, can customers buy the course directly on my website without leaving it?
Yes. When your customer clicks your 'Buy' button, a SendOwl checkout lightbox/overlay appears so they never leave your site while purchasing your products.
Does SendOwl let you chose whether to collect VAT or not?
Yes, it does give you that choice, but we don't recommend doing that.
Can I set up a store page displaying multiple courses for sale, and allow customers to use an 'Add-To-Cart' feature for buying multiple courses in a single transaction?
Yes, you can allow customers to keep adding multiple products to your SendOwl checkout cart.
Can I include Quizzes or Tests inside my Thrive Apprentice courses?
You can set up self assessment quizzes in your lessons (like you see below), or you can insert Thrive Quiz Builder plugin short codes to include more interactive quizzes in your lessons (requires a standalone license to the Thrive Quiz Builder plugin or a Thrive Themes Membership).
However, Thrive Apprentice does not have a dedicated 'quiz' or 'test' feature.
1. Can you add your first question here?
- a) Yes, I can
- b) I think so, by clicking on the question text to change it
- c) Nope, I can't
2. Do you have to use multiple choice questions?
3. What Thrive Architect elements is this Pop Quiz box using?
- a) Thrive Quiz Builder
- b) Styled List, Content Box, Symbol Box, Content Toggle and Text Elements
- c) Styled List, Content Box, Content Toggle, Text Elements, Dividers and an Icon Element
Reveal the Answers
1. a & b
2. No, you can put the answer in here instead
3. c
I am still not totally clear why Thrive Themes thinks that SendOwl is SUPERIOR to other membership solutions like Memberium, MemberPress, etc. Doesn't the Thrive Themes website use MemberMouse presently?
A detailed answer to this question is explained in the next lesson of this course.
However, to answer this question briefly, we currently use MemberMouse because we sell software and not online courses or info-products.
SendOwl is superior to the other membership plugins available especially because it handles EU VAT/MOSS for selling digital products like online courses.
I’m a full Thrive Themes Member. Do I have access to start setting up and using the Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl integration now?
Yes, it's now available for Thrive Themes Members to use in the recent Thrive Apprentice update!
Will I be able to create a forum for my online courses using Thrive Apprentice?
Thrive Apprentice does not currently support creating forums for your online courses.
Does Thrive Apprentice allow for gamification of lessons?
No. Gamification is currently not a feature of Thrive Apprentice.
Can I sample a course on Thrive Apprentice platform so I can SEE what it's like as student before investing in the Thrive Themes Membership?
Yes you can! Sign up for our free Thrive University courses to see what Thrive Apprentice is like as a student. All our courses are built with the Thrive Apprentice plugin.
What are benefits of purchasing a Thrive Themes Membership if I already have Thrive Architect as a separate plugin?
If you purchase a Thrive Themes Membership, you get instant access to all of our Thrive Themes plugins, including early access to Thrive Apprentice (available now only to Thrive Themes Members).
Our plugin suite includes other amazing tools for online marketers and solopreneurs like Thrive Leads (email capture opt-in forms), Thrive Quiz Builder (lead generation quizzes), and Thrive Optimize — the landing page A/B testing add-on to Thrive Architect.
Using Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl, can you sell individuals courses as well as multiple course bundles?
What video hosting service should I use for my online course videos?
There's several options to choose from.
Our current recommendation is Vimeo Pro (though their prices recently increased).
You can also look in to using other video hosting services solutions:
- Wistia (quality but pricey)
- Amazon Web Services + a free video player tool (affordable and secure, but complex to setup)
- YouTube if you're in a pinch (it's free, but you can't get rid of the YT play button which looks bad and people can share your videos so it's not secure for premium course content).
So separate video hosting is important to save my website hosting bandwidth and prevent lesson videos from slowing down my site, correct?
Yes! We don't ever recommend hosting your online course lesson videos on your own site. Always host on 3rd party like Vimeo, Youtube or Wistia depending on what you're using the video for.
With Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl, can I still use Thrive Ultimatum to make limited-time product offers on my paid courses?
Is there any way to import courses that have already been created from other virtual learning environment or LMS tools?
Does SendOwl work with Zapier to expand its functionality?
Yes, SendOwl is available on Zapier.
Does SendOwl have a "failed payment" service to keep attempting to collect payments that fail when someone purchases a subscription style product?
"Yes it does. SendOwl allows you to set up a Dunning process that will cut off access to your subscription products if failed payments aren't rectified in a certain amount of time. Check out their help page about it here.
Is it possible to restrict purchases to customers from certain locations?
Yes, SendOwl lets you block buyers from entire countries, states or regions such as the EU. You can also choose to block buyers from all other countries in the EU except your own.
How does SendOwl solve the EU VAT issue if a customer is a resident of one EU country but is visiting and buying from a different country? Do we just ask them and take their word for it? Wouldn't that still leave us legally exposed?
SendOwl takes care of this by recording the user's IP address, recording their payment billing address, and asking the customer what EU country they're registered in. If the data is inconsistent, SendOwl can be instructed to notify you and hold the payment for review.
You can read SendOwl's comprehensive help article about this here.
Based on SendOwl's user statistics, the concern of being legally exposed by an EU customer trying to "trick" you appears to be negligible as explained in the help article.
Do you have new video tutorials for the SendOwl integration?
Yes, the tutorial videos for setting up SendOwl with Thrive Apprentice can be accessed from the Thrive Apprentice dashboard.
Can SendOwl also be used with my Thrive Themes plugins to sell ebooks?
Yes, you can use SendOwl to sell other products like eBooks and place SendOwl checkout buttons for all sorts of digital products on your Thrive Architect built sales pages.
Are there plans to make Thrive Themes integrate with WooCommerce?
It's possible we may develop this in the future, but we're not currently working on it.
Can you use Thrive Apprentice with Stripe without SendOwl? Or are there plans to remove SendOwl from the process in the future?
You can use Stripe as your payment processor on a sales page for one of your Thrive Apprentice courses, but Stripe can't restrict access to the course, which is exactly why we made a deep integration with SendOwl so it can take care of that technical hurdle for you.
Can I configure my Thrive Apprentice courses for other languages?
Yes, you can translate all text and labels to whatever language you need, but you can't create a single, multi-lingual course. Each course you set up should have a dedicated language.
Do you recommend SendOwl's "Standard", "Self-hosting" or "Subscription" plan if I want to sell online courses on my WordPress website?
One of the Standard plans is all you need.
My site uses a different content builder tool like Beaver Builder. Will I still be able to use Thrive Apprentice?
It should. Thrive Apprentice is a stand alone plugin independent from your theme and primary builder tool you use to create your blog posts and pages with.
However, you must currently be a Thrive Themes Member to get access to the Thrive Apprentice plugin.
If I create a course using Thrive Architect landing pages (instead of Thrive Apprentice), would SendOwl still be able to restrict access to my course pages?
Thrive Apprentice is what restricts your course content. So you could use SendOwl to accept payments, but it would not restrict access to your Thrive Architect built course pages.
You must build your courses in Thrive Apprentice and setup the Apprentice integration with SendOwl to get both payments and content restriction working for your premium courses.
Can I use Thrive Quiz Builder to reinforce concepts I'm trying to teach in my lessons?
To add quizzes yes! To restrict access to the next, no.
What is Stripe and is it included with SendOwl?
Stripe is a payment provider (like PayPal). SendOwl integrates with Stripe, but you need to sign up for Stripe separately.
How does SendOwl compare to WooCommerce?
Check out the next lesson to this course. It explains covers this point in detail.
Do you have to buy Thrive Apprentice and SendOwl separately? How much are they?
Currently, Thrive Apprentice is only available for Thrive Themes Members ($228 per year which works out to $19 per month).
SendOwl has to be purchased separately at $9, $15 or $24 per month depending on the number of products you're selling and features you need. SendOwl bills by the month and can be cancelled at any time.
How does the TA+SendOwl stack compare, feature-wise with big name online learning platforms like Kajabi?
Check out the following lesson to this course to learn all about about that.
If I have multiple free lead gen courses built with Thrive Apprentice, will my users be able to access more than 1 of them with a single opt-in account instead of having to register for each course individually?
Yes, if they have a "free" account they will have access to all your "free" courses.
What payment processors does SendOwl currently integrate with?
SendOwl integrates with the following payment processors:
- PayPal
- Stripe
- ApplePay via Stripe
- Alipay via Stripe
- Bitcoin
- BitPay
- Bancontact
I already own a few of the Thrive Themes plugins like Thrive Leads, Thrive Architect, and Thrive Ovation. I can't use Thrive Apprentice right now, correct?
Can SendOwl do upsells?
If you signup for the $24 per month SendOwl plan, you get access to the SendOwl upsell feature.
Is it possible to use Thrive Apprentice with other membership plugins?
For sure you can, it's just more difficult to setup from a technical perspective, more costly, will miss many critical features like affiliate marketing, and won't help you manage EU VAT MOSS calculation and collection when appropriate.
If you want to learn more about the pros and cons of other membership plugins, move on to the next lesson in this course.
How does Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl solution compare with LearnDash?
The answer to this question is covered extensively in the next lesson of this course. Click the next lesson button below to learn all about it!
Can we create multi-lingual courses with Thrive Apprentice? Is there some sort of integration with WPML (WordPress Multi-Lingual) or similar plugin?
No that's not an option. You could create multiple courses in different languages, but not one course in several languages.
Is SendOwl also a Thrive Themes product or is it a third party product?
SendOwl is a third party product.
How does Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl compare against membership plugins like MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro?
We explain how Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl compare to all the other membership plugin and online course tools available in the next lesson of this course. Click the next lesson below to learn all about it!
On To the Next Lesson
Click the "next lesson" button below to learn all about how the Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl online course solution stacks up against the other membership plugin and online course creation tools.
