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Buying Courses – purchasing options
Buy Standard User Licenses
When you buy/purchase a course product at the standard pricing (including automatically applied standard volume discounts but excluding special promotional pricing) or are granted access to a course product purchased at the standard pricing through the website, you are purchasing a User License or are being granted a User License. This applies to discounted and free course products unless otherwise stated.
A User License is required to get access to a course. This applies to all products including individual courses, course bundles, and group volume courses. A standard User License period lasts for no more than 12 months and allows access to the course content for the period of the User License, which commences on the date of purchase, regardless of when a user is enrolled in a course. This standard 12 months access does not apply to products sold with non-standard discounts or as part of a special promotion and also does not apply to Audit and Organisational Self assessment courses. In those cases, the period of access related to the promotion or special discount will be stated in the offer or special course details.
Course material can be accessed as many times as required within the User License period, even if the course has been completed by a user. Once the User License expires access to the content will be disabled and user history for a course will normally be deleted automatically.
Note: When access to a course expires, a new User License can be purchased for the same course. A user enrolled in the course is able to repeat the course from the beginning, provided that the user data relating to the expired course has first been deleted, including being removed from all groups that include the expired course. We can help with managing this process if your plan is to enroll employees and repeat the same courses annually. Please plan ahead and contact us to arrange support for annual re-enrollment.
Enrolling in a course that has been purchased previously, typically by a group leader, means that access will be limited to the User License period commencing on the date when the course was purchased and not when the user enrolls in the course.
See also details of discounts and promotions below. We also offer customisable Enterprise Licenses.
Buy Course Bundles
Course bundles are simply multiple different courses bundled together and are a more cost-effective way to purchase courses as a discount is applied. A bundle is purchased through a standard User License just like any individual course.
Buy Group Courses
This is the recommended method for companies to purchase standard User Licenses. A group purchase allows an individual person (a “Group Leader”) to purchase individual or bundled courses with a standard User License for many users at once and then enroll the users in bulk to the courses. All users invited to the group get access to all the courses available to the group until the User License expires. A group leader can purchase and create multiple groups, which is useful for managing different user groups that require different courses. Note that once users are invited into the group they are automatically enrolled in all group courses. Once enrolled an individual user can be removed from the group but it is not possible to reallocate that group place to another user. Consider the unlimited option if you would like greater flexibility in inviting users to groups and enrolling users in group courses.
See Also our detailed article on groups…
Buy Periodic Course Assessments
There is an option to purchase a one-time access standard User License to a standalone course assessment. These standalone course assessments are the same assessments included in the original course. Standalone course assessments do not include any course material. Why? Assessments are a cheaper alternative if, for example, you want to assess the knowledge of an individual without requiring them to complete training. This may be more relevant to someone who is more routinely performing a job function and does not require periodic training, unlike more general employees. These assessments are aligned to existing course content but are generally harder to pass. There is only one attempt possible for assessments for example, and they are usually time-limited. If the user fails to achieve the passing grade then they can always purchase a User license for a full course. If a User License for a periodic assessment is purchased, the user has 12 months in which to complete the assessment. This is useful if purchased as part of a group as the assessment can be issued to multiple employees at different times within the User License period.
Buying internal audit, self assessment, and Implementation guide-type courses
These courses are special course types, that are part of our auditing and implementation toolkit. These courses are more focused on taking the student to the next step beyond general awareness. They are aimed at and generally restricted to those students who have previously completed specific courses for senior managers who are responsible for implementing Information Security or Privacy Management systems but are at the beginning of a journey of knowledge. We provide the following types of courses.
The following have limited access for 30 Days free of charge having taken a prerequisite course:
- Self-assessment audits for use when working with a consultant
- Self-assessments to help gauge the degree of alignment with general best practices
The following can be purchased at any time at full price with a standard 12 month User License:
- Guides to implementation (These are purchased normally and generally have a standard 12 month User License to access materials unless stated otherwise)
- Self-assessment audits for use when working with a consultant
- Self-assessments to help gauge the degree of alignment with general best practices
NOTE: For details of which courses are available and under what terms please review the course-specific details, which can be found here:
Unlimited for groups
When purchasing courses for groups of users, then normally once a user has been invited to the group, they can be removed from the group but it is not possible to reallocate their group access to another user. That is fine for smaller organisations and those that don’t have a high number of staff changes.
For larger organisations and those in situations with a high number of staff changes that need more flexibility then Unlimited for groups provides the ability to make unrestricted changes to users without the need to repurchase. This helps with situations where training courses are not accessed and completed when expected and so the courses need to be reallocated to other employees.
With unlimited for groups, once you purchase the standard User License you can invite and remove users from the group without restriction. Unlimited for groups can be purchased for a specified maximum number of users who can then access and complete courses within the group during the 12 month User License period commencing on the purchase date. The group leader can then make an unrestricted number of changes to enrollments in the group during the User License period.
Whilst the number of changes the group leader can make to enrolled users is unlimited the total number of completed courses cannot exceed the number of courses purchased. Also, be aware that if a user is removed from a group then any training progress and completion records are no longer available to the group leader and may be deleted from the system.
Remember that purchasing an Unlimited for groups product only applies to the individual course/product. Unlimited for groups courses are available for minimum volume purchases. Please refer to specific unlimited products for details or contact us for pricing and more information.
Discounts and promotions
When you buy/purchase a course product at a special promotional price or are granted access to a course product through the website which was previously purchased at a promotional price, then a non-standard promotional User License applies. Promotional User Licenses may include limitations and non standard conditions of access. Reference should be made to the terms of the promotional pricing details at the time of purchase.
We offer standard volume discounts and special standard rates for charity and not-for-profit organisations. See a more detailed guide on discounts…
Enterprise Licenses
For larger organisations, we have options that provide additional features typically required by enterprises. These provide greater flexibility to manage and customise the training for the larger organisation. All products can be purchased in a tailored enterprise License which then provides access to purchased course products for a period of 12 months. Enterprise Licenses can only be purchased through our sales team.
Enterprise Licences are defined by the unique combination of 1) selected courses and 2) the maximum aggregate number of course enrollments expected across all courses
For example, if you select a package of 3 courses and 1000 enrolments then you can choose which employees to enrol on which courses. In the example, you could enrol 900 on one course and then 50 on each of the others, or you could enrol 500 on one course and then 250 on each of the other two. It is up to you to decide and you can change your mind on the employee allocation if your situation changes. It all depends on what course allocation you expect.
Enterprise Licenses:
- Can be purchased for a specified number of course enrolments: 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 3000
- Include access to all courses included in the enterprise package
- Support multiple custom course groups, that we configure for you to include a specific subset of courses for a specific group of users. You then manage who to enrol in each group
- Each training group can include your own training support materials for example links to your won company policies, procedures and other external resources that will be accessible to users.
- Users can be added to multiple groups. You decide and manage the group membership. Users will be enrolled in all courses in each of the groups for which they are a member, so for example, if a user is a member of two groups and each group has one course, then the user will contribute two-course enrollments to the total purchased.
- You can make unlimited changes to group course enrollments but once the aggregate number of completed courses reaches the number of enrollments purchased, further course enrollments are not permitted.
Optional features and extensions for enterprise products include:
- An option to restrict access to specified IP addresses
- An option to restrict access to specific user email domains
- An option to white label the training site with branding
Enterprise Licenses can only be purchased through our sales team. For information and details of pricing, please contact us with details of the requirements including preferred options and we will provide you with options for a tailored solution.