How are the different course access types different?

In this article, you’ll learn about the different content access options for your courses.

What you'll need:

A systeme.io account
A course

There are four ways you can provide registered students access to your course:

Full access: With this option, students will have instant access to all modules and lectures. Any delays set between lectures are ignored.
Drip content: With this option, students will progressively have access to modules and lectures, according to the delay you have set.
Partial access: With this option, students only have access to specific parts of the course (i.e., to specific modules selected by the instructor).
Partial access with drip: With this option, students only have access to specific parts of the course (i.e., specific modules), and the lectures within those modules are released gradually according to the delays you have set.

Here is an example of how to set up a delay for courses and lectures:

We will configure a course to provide access to a new lecture every day.

When creating the lecture, you can specify how long to delay before it becomes available to the student. The delay is in days and begins after viewing the previous lecture (1).

When creating the first module, we set a delay of 0 days to its first lecture.

This way, the student will immediately have access to the first lecture as soon as they register for the course.

For every lecture that follows, we will set a delay of 1 day.

In this way, a new lecture will unlock for the student every day.

Note: Make sure the lectures are activated.

We recommend reading the following article to learn how to activate the lectures. Click here.

Note: When providing drip access to a course, it's not possible to set an expiration delay. Expiration delays will only work for courses that provide full access.

To learn more, we recommend reading How to sell an online course.

Modifying access delays: what you need to know

When the access type is set to Drip content, if you modify the delay of a lecture before it is unlocked, the system automatically recalculates the remaining waiting time based on the new delay.

Example:

A module contains 3 lectures, all initially configured with a delay of 1 day:

Lecture 1: Delay of 1 day
Lecture 2: Delay of 1 day
Lecture 3: Delay of 1 day

Let's assume it has been 2 days since the student enrolled. The status would be:

Lecture 1: Unlocked
Lecture 2: Unlocked
Lecture 3: Not yet accessible, as only 2 days have passed since the student enrolled. It is necessary to wait another 1 day for lecture 3 to be unlocked.

At this point, the instructor modifies the delay of lecture 3 from 1 to 5 days.

Result:

Lecture 1: Still accessible
Lecture 2: Still accessible
Lecture 3: Since the delay was increased from 1 to 5 days, this lecture will now unlock 5 days after Lecture 2.

Partial access with drip: what you need to know

When combining partial access with drip content, the selected modules follow the same pacing rules already configured in your course. Instead of unlocking everything at once, students progress only through the modules included in their access while lectures continue to drip over time.

Example 1: Selling tiered access from a single course

Imagine you have a course with 10 modules and a 7-day drip schedule. Instead of duplicating the course to sell different versions, you can use the same course to sell multiple offers:

Half Course Offer: Grants "partial access with drip" to the first 5 modules. The student gets a new lecture every 7 days.
Full Course Offer: Grants standard "drip content" access to all 10 modules.
Upgrade Offer: Unlocks the remaining 5 modules for students who bought the Half Course. The system will smoothly continue the same 7-day drip schedule for the new modules.

Example 2: Dripping non-consecutive modules

If your course drips one module every 7 days, and you grant a student partial access to only modules 1, 3, and 5:

Module 1: Unlocks immediately upon enrollment
Module 3: Unlocks 7 days later
Module 5: Unlocks 7 days after Module 3

Example 3: Upgrading during an active drip schedule

If a student purchases an upgrade to unlock more modules before their earlier modules have finished dripping, the newly unlocked modules will only begin releasing after the existing drip sequence completes, maintaining your exact delay intervals.

Notes to remember:

Specific dates: If you configure the course to grant access on a specific date, the drip schedule will begin from that date.
Expiration rules: Course expiration rules always take priority. They will end a student's access on the expiration date, even if their content is still dripping.
Switching access types: If you switch a student between partial-based access types, the platform preserves their progress whenever possible. Already opened content will remain available while maintaining the existing drip progression.
Our system automatically updates the schedule based on the new value, as long as the lecture has not yet been unlocked.
Even if access is imminent, a change in the delay can postpone the unlocking date.