Pricing an invitation, and comping places

Every invitation has a price per place. It can be zero.

Places you sell

Set a price per place and the invitation gets a purchase page as well as a redemption link. You send the buyer to the purchase page; they pay by card; the places become usable.

The buyer and the learners do not have to be the same people, which is the point. A training manager buys fifty places and then distributes the redemption link to fifty colleagues, none of whom sees a price.

Give the card to the buyer rather than taking their details yourself. The purchase page asks who is buying and takes the payment from them directly — so you never handle anybody’s card, and they get the receipt.

Places you give

Leave the price at zero and the invitation works immediately — no purchase step, just the link.

Use it for places your own organisation is absorbing: staff, scholarships, a partner you have agreed to cover, a replacement for somebody who left.

What comped places cost you

Free to the learner is not free to you. Places you give away are billed to your site as manual enrolments — currently $5 each — on the next nightly run. An invitation for 50 comped places is a $250 charge.

That is the same charge as adding fifty people to a course by hand, because it is the same thing: you are putting people on a course without a learner paying for it. It is worth knowing before you round a number up.

What sold places cost you

The buyer’s payment goes to your Stripe account. Grapevine takes its fee from the transaction rather than billing you separately for those enrolments.

Changing the price

Affects places not yet bought. Anybody who has already paid, paid what it cost at the time, and nothing is adjusted either way.

Deciding what to charge

Two things worth knowing when you set the number:

• The price is per place, not for the block. Fifty places at 20 is a thousand.
• If the invitation covers a bundle, the price is per place for the whole bundle — one payment, access to every course in it.