Alva Courses vs Skool
Alva Courses is a Shopify app that sells and delivers online courses through the Shopify checkout you already run, with a discussion under every lesson. Skool is a community platform: a members' feed, points and leaderboards, a calendar of live calls and a Classroom for courses, paid for through Skool.
Skool is a community platform with a feed, leaderboards and a Classroom, at $9 a month plus 10% and 30¢ a payment, or $99 plus 2.9% and 30¢, as of October 2026. Alva Courses is a Shopify app ($9.99 or $14.99 a month, no transaction fee) that sells courses through your Shopify checkout, with lesson discussions instead of a feed.
Alva Courses and Skool, side by side.
Alva Courses and Skool overlap only on courses. Skool's centre of gravity is the community: a feed, levels and live calls, with courses in a Classroom tab. Alva Courses' centre is your Shopify store: courses are products in your catalogue, buyers are Shopify customers, and every lesson carries its own discussion.
| Capability | Alva Courses | Skool |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A Shopify app that adds courses to your store | A community platform with a Classroom tab for courses |
| Where people learn | Your storefront course player, reached from your store or the Shopify customer account | Your group on skool.com, or Skool's iPhone, iPad and Android apps |
| Checkout | Your Shopify checkout, discount codes and payment methods | Skool's own payments; members pay in US dollars |
| Customer records | Every buyer is a Shopify customer with an order | Members live in your Skool group; Pro can send paid members to a CRM through Zapier |
| Physical products | Same cart and order as your other products, plus a Shopify Product block in lessons | Not part of Skool: its pricing options sell access to a group or course |
| Price | Unlimited $9.99/mo · Unlimited Pro $14.99/mo · 14-day trial | Hobby $9/mo · Pro $99/mo · 14-day trial |
| Transaction fee | None from Alva; your normal Shopify payment processing applies | Hobby 10% + 30¢; Pro 2.9% + 30¢ (3.9% + 30¢ above $900); card processing included |
| Community | A discussion under every lesson, with threaded replies, links and optional images | A group feed with posts, comments, categories, pinned posts and member chat |
| Gamification | None | Points from likes, nine levels, leaderboards and courses that open at a set level |
| Live sessions | No live-call tool; a Button block can link a lesson to a Zoom or other live-session URL | Calendar of events, native live calls with recording, and webinars on Pro |
| Course builder | Sections and lessons, drip by days after enrolment, scheduled publishing, completion gating | Pages in folders, up to 200 pages a course, drip by days after joining |
| Video | YouTube, Vimeo and Loom embeds on both plans; Shopify file uploads (1 GB / 10 min) on Unlimited; Alva Video Hosting (50 GB) on Unlimited Pro | Native video upload included; YouTube, Vimeo, Loom and Wistia embeds |
| Quizzes & certificates | Quiz block in lessons; automatic completion certificates | None documented in Skool's help centre |
| Automation | Shopify Flow triggers and actions on both plans | Zapier integration on Pro only |
Skool facts come from Skool's pricing page and Skool's help centre, checked on 9 October 2026. Skool's help centre returns no articles for "quiz", and its only "certificate" result is about payment disputes, so check with Skool if either matters to you.
What Skool does well.
Skool does community well. A Skool group gives members a feed of posts and comments, direct messages, a calendar of events and live calls, and a Classroom for courses. Likes earn points that move members up nine levels, and you can hold a course back until a member reaches a set level, which rewards people for taking part.
Members post and comment in a shared feed, sorted into categories you set, with pinned posts, group rules and AutoMod, which flags likely spam accounts for admins to review. Members can also message each other in chat.
Each like earns the author a point. Points move members from level 1 to level 9, the leaderboard ranks them, and admins can lock a course until a member reaches a chosen level.
Skool Call lets admins go live in the browser or app, share screens and record. Recordings must be downloaded within 14 days. The calendar schedules events and, on Pro, webinars, each with its own access rules.
Groups that pass Skool's activity thresholds appear in Skool Discovery, ranked by growth, engagement and retention. Members can follow the community, courses, calendar and chat in Skool's apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Skool's Classroom
Skool's Classroom holds courses built from pages, grouped into folders, with up to 200 pages in a course. A page can carry an uploaded video, with hosting included in the plan, or a YouTube, Vimeo, Loom or Wistia embed, plus a resource link or file, a transcript or a pinned community post.
Pages can drip a set number of days after a member joins, and a course can be locked to a level or sold as a one-time Buy Now purchase inside the group. Skool's help centre documents no quiz or completion-certificate tools, which matters if your students need proof of completion.
How Skool handles money
Skool processes member payments itself and pays you every Wednesday through a Stripe Express account it creates; you can't connect an existing Stripe account. Members pay in US dollars. A group can be free, a subscription, freemium, tiered or a one-time payment.
Every option sells access to the group or a course. Skool's help centre describes no way to sell a physical product or charge for shipping.
Skool's community versus Alva's lesson discussions.
Alva Courses has no community feed, levels or calendar. It gives every lesson its own discussion: students ask questions and reply to each other under the lesson, you answer as the teacher, and each course's Comments page shows which conversations still need a reply. It is built for course questions and answers, not for a social space.
What Alva Courses' lesson discussions include
Each discussion sits under its lesson in your storefront course player. This is what it includes today:
- Comments per course. Switch them on or off in the course's Settings → Learning → Student Interaction card. New courses start with comments on.
- Threaded replies. You and your students can reply to any message, and a reply shows who it answers.
- Links and images. Web addresses become clickable links. You can let students attach up to four images to a comment, a per-course setting that starts off.
- A Comments page for each course. Search the text, filter by lesson or author, and use Needs reply to see conversations where a student spoke last.
- Your teacher identity. Set the display name and badge, such as Teacher or Instructor, that appear on your replies.
- Email alerts. Turn on Comment Notifications in Settings → Email Settings and choose the address that receives them.
- Shopify Flow triggers. Students aren't emailed when you reply, but the Course lesson comment posted and Course instructor reply posted triggers can post comments to Slack or email a student when you answer.
Moderation is simple
Alva Courses publishes a comment as soon as a student posts it. You can delete any comment, remove a single image and keep the text, turn comments off for the course, or end a student's access. There is no approval queue, and comments can't be pinned or hidden.
Students can edit or delete their own comments, and only students with access to a lesson can post. For a question that shouldn't be public, the Contact Form block sends a student's message to your private Messages inbox instead.
What Alva Courses doesn't do
Alva Courses has no feed outside the lessons, no direct messages between students, no points or leaderboards, no events calendar and no live streaming. If those are why your members pay, Skool is the better home for that part of the business.
Setup details are in manage lesson comments, links and images in comments and email students when you reply to their comment.
What changes when courses sell through Shopify.
On Skool, members pay Skool in US dollars and live in your Skool group. With Alva Courses, a course is a Shopify product: buyers use your store's checkout, discount codes and payment methods, can buy courses and physical products in one order, and become Shopify customers you can tag, segment and email.
Link a course to a Shopify product and it sells like anything else in your catalogue. A buyer can add a course, a kit and a book to one order and is enrolled once it is paid.
Every course sale is a Shopify order, so course buyers sit in your Shopify customer list. Customer Tagging adds a tag when someone buys a course, ready for Shopify customer segments.
A subscription app such as Seal, Appstle or ReCharge tags active subscribers, and Alva's Membership Tags give every signed-in customer with that tag access. If the app removes the tag, the course leaves My Courses and progress is kept.
Students start from the thank-you page, the order in their customer account or the My Courses page once you add those extensions, or from the access link in the enrolment email, which works without an account. Enrolment emails start off, so switch them on first.
Products inside lessons
The Shopify Product block shows live product cards inside a lesson, with price, stock and a button that adds to your store's normal cart, so a pottery course can sell the glaze in lesson three. See add a Shopify product to a lesson.
What each costs, fees included.
As of October 2026, Skool costs $9 a month on Hobby, with a fee of 10% plus 30 cents on every payment, or $99 a month on Pro, with 2.9% plus 30 cents. Alva Courses costs $9.99 or $14.99 a month and takes no cut of course sales. Both start with a 14-day free trial.
| Skool plan | Monthly price | Skool transaction fee | Admins | Zapier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | $9/mo | 10% + 30¢ on every payment | 1 | No |
| Pro | $99/mo | 2.9% + 30¢; 3.9% + 30¢ on payments above $900 | Up to 30 | Yes |
Sources: Skool pricing and Skool Payments FAQs, checked 9 October 2026. Both plans list unlimited members, courses, videos and live calls, and yearly billing is advertised as two months free.
What the fees mean in practice
On a $30-a-month membership, Skool's fee is $3.30 per payment on Hobby and $1.17 on Pro. With 100 paying members, that comes to $339 a month on Hobby and $216 on Pro, plan price included.
Skool's Growth Boost is on by default. It promotes your group in Discovery and off-site ads, and takes a 30% commission on every payment from members Skool brings in, for as long as they stay. Turn it off in Settings → Discovery if you don't want that.
Skool processes payments itself, so its fee also covers card processing. With Alva Courses, the other costs sit in Shopify: your Shopify plan, your payment processing rates and, for recurring memberships, a subscription app. Price those for your own store before you compare totals.
| plan | Unlimited $9.99/mo Everything to sell courses | Recommended Unlimited Pro $14.99/mo Adds Alva Video Hosting |
|---|---|---|
| Courses, members & comments | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Lesson discussions with images | ||
| Quizzes, certificates & drip | ||
| Shopify Flow triggers & actions | ||
| Alva Video Hosting (50 GB, no per-video limit) | — | |
| Transaction fee | None | None |
| 14-day free trial |
Plans are chosen on Shopify's app pricing page when you install, and billed through your Shopify invoice. There is no free plan. Full details are on the Alva Courses pricing page.
Which one fits your business?
Choose by what members pay you for. If they pay to belong, for the conversation, the calls and the leaderboard, Skool is built for that and Alva Courses isn't. If they pay for structured lessons and you already sell on Shopify, Alva Courses keeps courses, customers and products in one store.
Choose Alva Courses if you…
- Already sell on Shopify and want courses in the same checkout
- Sell physical products, kits or books alongside lessons
- Want course buyers in your Shopify customer list
- Need quizzes, completion certificates and drip in the course
- Want lesson Q&A rather than a social feed
- Prefer a flat monthly price with no percentage of sales
Skool may suit you better if you…
- Sell membership of a community, with courses as a bonus
- Want points, levels and leaderboards to drive participation
- Run regular live calls and events from one calendar
- Want members to follow along in a mobile app
- Hope to find new members through Skool Discovery
- Don't have, or don't want, a Shopify store
Running both
Some creators keep a Skool group for the community and sell courses through Shopify. Nothing connects the two, so students have two logins and two separate member lists.
If you want community spaces inside Shopify itself, Tevello is a Shopify app that pairs courses with communities; see Alva Courses vs Tevello. For running a paid membership on Shopify, read how to create a membership site on Shopify and the guide for membership creators.
Moving courses from Skool to Shopify.
Moving from Skool to Alva Courses is a rebuild, not an import: Alva Courses has no Skool importer. Recreate each course in the builder, upload or embed your videos, link the course to a Shopify product, then enrol existing members from a CSV file. Posts, levels and Skool progress stay behind.
- Install Alva Courses from the Shopify App Store and start the 14-day free trial. Your Skool group keeps running while you set up.
- Rebuild the Classroom. Turn each Skool folder into a section and each page into a lesson. Upload video to Alva Video Hosting on Unlimited Pro, or embed it from YouTube, Vimeo or Loom.
- Add the course extras you want: a Quiz block, a completion certificate, or Require lessons to be completed in order so lessons open one after another.
- Link the course to a Shopify product and set its price. For a monthly membership, pair a subscription app with Membership Tags.
- Import your members from Members → Bulk Import CSV: email, name and up to ten course columns per row, up to 1,000 lines a file. Skool's help centre doesn't document an export of member emails, so check what your Skool admin offers or use your own list. The enrolment email for imported members is optional and starts off.
- Test, then switch. Place a test order, post a test comment, then point your members at the store.
The CSV format is in import members with CSV, and the membership setup is in grant course access with membership tags.
Weighing a Shopify app against any separate platform, not just Skool? Read Shopify course app vs standalone LMS, or see the Kajabi alternatives roundup for all-in-one platforms.
Alva Courses vs Skool: common questions.
Sell courses on Shopify — no cut of your sales.
Install Alva Courses from the Shopify App Store, rebuild one course, link it to a product and place a test order while your Skool group keeps running. Both plans include a 14-day free trial.