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Instructors

Instructor Agreement

The contract between ACADA and instructors: what you own, what you license, what you are paid, and how it ends.

Last updated on October 25, 2026.

You own what you make and you decide what it costs. You keep 70% of what students pay, we keep 30%, and you are paid once a sale has cleared its refund window. In return you license us to run the course for your students, you keep it honest, working and within our content rules, and you treat your students' data as theirs. Either side can end this: you by retiring your courses on 30 days' notice, we by the steps in our enforcement policy.

This summary is for orientation only. The sections below are the operative terms.

1. Scope and acceptance

This agreement is between you and ACADA L.L.C., a Tennessee limited liability company (ACADA, we), and covers every course you publish on acada.ac. You accept it when you switch your account to an instructor account, which you need before you can make or publish a course, and again each time you keep a course published after a change to it (section 14). It sits on top of the Terms of Service, which apply to you as they do to everyone. The Course Content Policy, Community Guidelines, Acceptable Use Policy, Academic Integrity policy and Account & Identity policy are part of this agreement; the figures in Instructor Earnings & Payouts are the figures this agreement refers to.

2. Definitions

  • Course means everything you publish under one title: its modules and lessons, the files in them, its landing page, and its room.
  • List price means the price you set for an access tier, before any discount.
  • Our share means the part of a student's payment ACADA keeps under section 6.

3. Eligibility

You can publish a course if you are 18 or older, hold one account in your own name under the Account & Identity policy, and have not had an instructor role closed for fraud. To be paid, you need a payout method that meets section 6. We do not check your qualifications or experience; the Educational Disclaimer tells students so.

4. Your content

You own it. Everything you publish stays yours. Nothing here transfers ownership to us or to your students.

You promise it is yours to publish. You have the rights you need for everything in the course, including material you licensed from others; it copies nobody's work; and what it says about you, and what it teaches, is true. The Course Content Policy and the Copyright & DMCA policy set out what happens when that is not so.

What you license to us. So that we can run the course, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to:

  • Host and deliver it: store it, convert files between formats, and show it to enrolled students and, for lessons you mark as previews, to visitors.
  • Show it in the marketplace: use its title, description, thumbnail, preview lessons and your name in course listings, search, emails about the course, and our own marketing of ACADA.
  • Keep our promises to students: let a lifetime buyer keep a personal copy when the course closes, and keep students' records of the course after it is gone, both as the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy sets out.
  • Use our providers: pass it to the services that host, process payments for and send email for ACADA.

The licence lasts while the course is on ACADA, and afterwards only for copies students already hold, for their records, and for what the law requires us to keep. We do not use your course to train AI models. The ACADA Assistant reads it when one of your students asks about it, and nothing more.

What we license to you. While your course is published, you may use the ACADA name and logo to say that it is on ACADA, on the terms in the Trademark policy: the file from acada.ac/brand, unaltered, never as your own brand. That licence is non-exclusive, carries no fee, can be withdrawn by us on notice, and ends when this agreement ends.

5. Publishing and pricing

  • Publishing. A course must meet the Course Content Policy's minimums to publish. Publishing a course carries a one-time fee per course, set out in Instructor Earnings & Payouts. We do not review a course before it goes live.
  • Prices. You set the price of each access tier, at or above the floor for that tier in Instructor Earnings & Payouts, or you make the course free, which gives Lifetime Access at no charge. You can change a price at any time; a student already subscribed keeps the price they first paid.
  • Regional pricing. Students in countries with less purchasing power pay a share of your list price: we assign every country to one of four bands (100%, 70%, 50% and 35%, never below $1.00), the same for every course, and publish the table in the Editor. Regional pricing is on for every course unless you turn it off in Course Settings; off means every student pays the list price. We may change a band or move a country between bands, and we tell you 14 days ahead when we lower a band.
  • Bundles and trials. You may sell your own courses together in a bundle at a discount, and offer a free trial. Both are on the terms in the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy.
  • Our discount codes. We issue discount codes to students, including one every student earns by completing a course. What they take off comes out of our share, not yours, down to the minimum share of ours set out in Instructor Earnings & Payouts.

6. What you are paid

  • The split. You receive 70% of what a student pays for your course, and we keep 30%. Our share covers payment processing, hosting and the platform. Apart from our own discount codes, which section 5 covers, every percentage is of the price the student actually paid, so a sale at a regional price pays you 70% of that regional price; the Instructor Dashboard shows which band each sale was made in.
  • What comes out of your share. The commission you set for affiliates on a course, and whatever you agreed to pay collaborators under the Collaborator Terms. A discount you set on a bundle, or give students an affiliate refers, is taken off the price before the split, so it reduces your share and ours in proportion.
  • Refunds and chargebacks. When a payment is refunded or charged back, every share of it is reversed, yours included, except an affiliate commission that has already cleared: the affiliate keeps it, and it is not taken from you. A partial refund reverses the same part of each share. If it had already been paid out to you, it comes off your next earnings. We absorb the fee a bank charges for a chargeback.
  • The hold. A sale becomes withdrawable once it has cleared the hold in Instructor Earnings & Payouts, which matches the student refund window. Until then it shows as clearing.
  • Withdrawing. You withdraw from the Instructor Dashboard once your cleared balance reaches the minimum in Instructor Earnings & Payouts. Instructors in the United States are paid through Stripe Connect, which collects the tax details those payouts need; instructors outside the United States can use Stripe Connect or PayPal.
  • Taxes. What we pay you is yours to declare. You are responsible for every tax on it, wherever you are.

7. Running your course

  • Keep it honest, accurate and working. The Course Content Policy and Academic Integrity policy set the standard: deliver what the landing page promises, keep the material true and current, fix broken content and confirmed errors within 14 days of notice, and never cut the core content students paid for.
  • Your students' data. You see students' names, progress and the work they hand in, so that you can run the course. Use it for nothing else: no exporting it, no contact lists, no marketing to them outside ACADA.
  • A student's email, if they share it. A student can choose to share the email address on their account with you, for one course; it shows in the Instructor Dashboard under Students only while their choice is on and their access is live. You may email them about that course: its lessons and updates, your office hours, their work in it. You may not sell, share or pass the address on, add it to a list for other courses, products or newsletters, or keep it after it leaves the list. Stop when a student asks, whatever the list says. A student who withdraws the address, leaves, is refunded or expires drops off the list at once, and you delete any copy you made. Breaking this is a breach of this agreement, and a student's complaint is a report under the Community Guidelines.
  • Payments stay on ACADA. You may sell the same course anywhere else; this agreement is not exclusive. But you may not steer ACADA students to pay for it, or for any part of it, elsewhere, and you may not take payment for it outside ACADA.
  • Everything else you do here is under the Community Guidelines and the Acceptable Use Policy, as it is for every account.

8. Our promises to your students bind you

Students buy on the terms in the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy, and those terms apply to your course. In particular: a refund we make under that policy is reversed from your share; Lifetime Access means access for as long as the course is on ACADA; when a course closes, its students get 30 days' notice, lifetime buyers may download it, and every student keeps their progress, certificate and achievements; and the course room carries on as a group chat after the course. Reviews of your course follow the Reviews & Ratings policy, which does not let you remove or reward them.

9. Independence

You are an independent instructor. You are not our employee, agent, partner or franchisee, you cannot make commitments on our behalf, and we do not direct how or when you make your courses. You are responsible for complying with the laws that apply to you and to what you teach.

10. Ending this agreement yourself

You can retire any course from the Instructor Dashboard at any time. A course with students closes 30 days after you retire it: sales stop at once, students are told, they keep access until the date, and the refunds in the Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions policy are made from your share. A course nobody enrolled in is deleted at once. Closing your account works the same way for every course you have, on the terms in the Account & Identity policy, and everything we owe you is paid first.

Unpublishing is not ending it. You can also unpublish a course from the Instructor Dashboard, which takes it off the marketplace and stops new enrolments while every student already in it keeps full access, their progress and anything they earned, on the same rule that stops a course with students being deleted: what a student paid for is theirs. An unpublished course is a draft you can edit and publish again whenever you like, and publishing it again does not charge the publishing fee in section 5 a second time. What you owe those students under section 7 — keeping the material working, fixing confirmed errors, not cutting the content they paid for — is unchanged while they are still in it. Unpublishing does not end this agreement or any subscription; to end the course, retire it.

11. Ending it by us

If you break this agreement or a policy it includes, we follow the steps in the Account Enforcement & Appeals policy: a written warning, then restrictions, then closure of your instructor role. We close it at once for fraud: buying your own courses, abusing chargebacks or refunds, publishing stolen work, or misrepresenting who you are. Every decision can be appealed under that policy.

When we close your instructor role, your courses close with 30 days' notice, or at once when the reason is their content. Earnings from genuine sales are paid out once they clear the hold, with no minimum. Earnings from fraudulent sales are withheld, and whatever those sales cost us in refunds and chargebacks is deducted from what is left. While a closure for fraud stands, nothing is paid out automatically; we pay what came from genuine sales by hand.

12. What survives

After this agreement ends: the licence in section 4 continues for copies students already hold, for their records and for what the law requires; refunds and chargebacks on sales made before the end are still reversed from what we owe you; section 13 continues; and any money either side owes the other is still owed.

13. Responsibility and liability

You are responsible for your course and for what you say about it. If someone brings a claim against us because of your course, your conduct, or a promise you made about either, you cover what it costs us to deal with it, including reasonable legal costs, and you help us handle it. We are responsible for the platform: the limits of our liability to you are set out in the Terms of Service, and nothing here takes away a right the law where you live gives you.

14. Changes to this agreement

When we change this agreement, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds an obligation, changes what you are paid, or changes the licence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect and email every instructor. If you do not accept a change, retire your courses before it takes effect; a course already closing stays on the terms it was published under until it closes.

15. Governing law and contact

The law that governs this agreement, and how a dispute is resolved, are set out in the Terms of Service. Questions about this agreement go to support@acada.ac.

16. Related policies