A customer who never learns to dial in the grinder or set up the camera gets less from what they bought, and asks your support team instead. Shopify brands that sell physical products want to teach customers to use what they bought, and sell that teaching too, without a second platform. Alva Courses is a Shopify app that adds courses to the store you already have: include a course with a product, sell a masterclass, offer a free course, and sell your products inside the lessons.
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Alva Courses is a Shopify app that lets product brands add courses to their existing store. Link a course to a product so buying it enrols the customer, sell a masterclass as its own product, or offer a free course. Lessons can sell your products, and progress tags feed Shopify segments and Flow.
Product brands add courses because a customer who knows how to use a product gets more from it. A short how-to course gathers scattered videos and repeat support answers in one place, gives buyers a reason to come back for refills and accessories, and can become a paid product line of its own.
A camera, an espresso machine or a set of paints can do far more than most owners discover on their own. A course that walks through setup, first use and the next skill helps customers get the result they bought the product for.
How much do I use? Which setting first? Why doesn't it look like the photo? Answer each one once, in a lesson with video, and your support team has a link to send instead of writing the reply again.
The how-to clips sit on YouTube, the guide is a PDF in the box and the best tips are buried in old social posts. A course puts them in order, in one place on your own store, under your own brand.
A masterclass, a workshop series or a trade training track is something you can price. On Shopify it sits beside your physical products, instead of on a second platform with its own login, checkout and customer list.
Alva Courses supports four course models that fit a product catalogue: a course included with a physical product, a paid masterclass sold as its own product, a free course, and a course reserved for subscribers. All four are built from the Shopify products, customer accounts and tags you already use, so you can run several side by side.
Build the course, set it to One Time Purchase, then add your physical product under Linked Products in the course's Pricing & access settings. Link the whole product, or only one variant such as a starter kit. When the order is paid, the buyer is enrolled and, with enrolment emails switched on, emailed their access link.
Leave the course's own product as its Primary product, because edits to the course are written to the Primary product. It can still be sold on its own, for customers who already own the kit. The full steps are in link a course to a Shopify product.
Choose Create new product when you build the course, and Alva Courses adds a course product to your catalogue with shipping turned off. Price it like anything else you sell. It shares the cart and checkout with your physical products, so a customer can buy the grinder and the brewing masterclass in one order.
A Free course is open to everyone, no login needed. A Free With Account course asks visitors to sign in to their Shopify customer account and enrols them when they open it. Your storefront courses page lists Free courses to everyone and Free With Account courses to signed-in customers. Add Shopify Product blocks and the lessons sell the products they use.
Selling refills or a subscription box? Membership tags grant a One Time Purchase course to any signed-in customer carrying the tag your subscription app applies, from apps such as Seal Subscriptions, Appstle or ReCharge. When the app removes the tag, access ends on the customer's next visit, and their progress is kept.
The customer pays once, through your normal Shopify checkout, and you ship the parcel as usual. When the order is paid, Alva Courses enrols the customer in every course linked to the products they bought and emails their access link. Linking a course doesn't change how the physical item is shipped or fulfilled.
The physical product, any course products and anything else in the cart are paid for together. Shopify charges shipping on the items that need it, exactly as it does today, and course products are created with shipping turned off.
Alva Courses enrols the customer in each linked course and sends a branded enrolment email. An order that unlocks several new courses sends one email listing all of them. With the thank-you page block added, the customer can open the course straight from the thank-you page.
Linking a product to a course leaves its shipping settings alone. The optional Auto-Fulfillment setting in Alva Courses only marks an order fulfilled when every item in it is a course product and none requires shipping, so orders with a parcel go through your normal fulfilment.
Refund the product's line in full and the course linked to it is withdrawn; a partial refund leaves access alone. Progress, quiz results and certificates are kept, so access comes back if the customer buys again. Details are in refunds and course access.
Product brands lean on six parts of Alva Courses: product linking, shoppable lessons, customer tags, Shopify Flow automations, completion certificates and a learning experience that stays on the store. The course builder, video, quizzes, drip scheduling and lesson comments work the same as for any other course seller.
A course can have several linked products, and one product can be linked to several courses, so a single purchase can unlock a setup course and an advanced course together. Link at variant level when only the bundle variant should include the course, and the other variants sell as they always have.
The Shopify Product block shows up to 12 products in a lesson with live prices, sale prices and availability, in Card, Banner, Compact, Grid or Inline link layouts. Add to cart uses your store's normal cart and keeps the student in the lesson by default. Put the refill in the lesson that uses it up.
Customer Tagging adds a tag you choose when someone buys a course. Progress Tags keep a not-started, in-progress or completed tag on each student, so a Shopify segment, Klaviyo or Mailchimp can nudge buyers who never opened the course. Tagging starts when you switch it on, so earlier students stay untagged until they make progress.
Alva Courses adds triggers and actions to Shopify Flow. Course completed can tag graduates, send a Klaviyo event or award points through a loyalty app such as Smile.io. The Enroll customer in course action enrols anyone you tag, which suits wholesale buyers and staff training.
Award a completion certificate automatically when a student finishes, with its own design per course, and email it as a PDF once the certificate email is on. Mark a quiz Required to complete lesson and set a Passing Score, so a barista basics or installer course certifies people who passed.
Students learn in a branded course player on your storefront, open it from the enrolment email without an account, or find it under My Courses in their customer account. Emails can come from your own domain, and the player's interface follows your storefront language in 35 languages.
Alva Courses charges a flat monthly price with no per-sale fee and no per-student charge, so a course included with a best-seller costs the same whether ten customers enrol or ten thousand. The deciding question is video: embedded or short videos fit Unlimited, while long product demos you upload directly need Unlimited Pro.
Both plans are paid, both start with a 14-day free trial, and neither takes a cut of course sales. You choose a plan on Shopify's plan selection page when you install. See the full pricing page for the complete breakdown.
Most surprises come from how courses and products are linked, not from the course itself. Check which product is Primary, match each course's pricing type to the price of the products linked to it, plan where shoppers will find the course, and test a real order with a physical item before you announce anything.
Alva Courses writes edits to a course's title, description, image and price to its Primary product, and a new course image replaces that product's photos. Choose Select existing product with a physical product and it becomes Primary, so create the course with Create new product and add the physical product under Linked Products.
A One Time Purchase course takes linked products priced above zero; a Free or Free With Account course takes products priced at zero. A course included with a physical product is therefore One Time Purchase, even though the customer only pays for the product.
Your storefront courses page shows free courses to everyone and a customer's own courses once they sign in. A One Time Purchase course isn't listed there before someone buys it, so link its product page or a collection from your menus.
The player's buttons and messages follow the storefront language, but course titles, lesson text and quiz questions show exactly as written. Teaching in several languages usually means one course per language, each with its own product.
Tick Send enrollment emails in Settings first, because it starts switched off. Then place a test order that includes the physical product, check that the enrolment email arrives and the course opens, then confirm the order still waits for your normal shipping. Send yourself a test enrolment covers the course side.
Product brands mostly ask how a course rides along with a physical product: whether buying the product enrols the customer, what happens to shipping and fulfilment, whether guests can open the course, how products sell inside lessons, how to follow up on progress, and what Alva Courses costs.
These Alva Courses guides go deeper on the parts product brands use most: selling products inside lessons, automating follow-up with Shopify Flow, picking a course idea that fits your catalogue, and teaching in more than one language. Selling craft or cooking kits? The artists & makers and cooking instructors pages cover those courses.
Where to place products in a course, which layout to use, and what to check before a shoppable lesson goes live.
Tag graduates, send course events to Klaviyo and enrol customers automatically with Alva Courses triggers and actions.
Course ideas that pair with what a store already sells, from brewing and skincare routines to craft kits.
What the course player translates for you, what you write per language, and how to run one course per market.
Install Alva Courses from the Shopify App Store, build a short how-to course for your best-selling product, link the course to that product, and switch on enrolment emails. The next customer who buys it gets an enrolment email and starts learning on your own store, while the parcel ships as usual.