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Courses & Purchases

Purchases, Refunds & Subscriptions

Payments, refunds, cancellation, recurring billing, failed payments and promotional pricing in one place.

Last updated on October 27, 2026.

Prices are set in US dollars; where we can, checkout shows and charges the same price in your own currency. You can pay by card, wallet, local payment method or PayPal, and the price you see at checkout is the price you pay. Monthly access renews each month until you cancel; lifetime access is one payment for as long as the course is on ACADA. You can ask for a refund within 14 days of a charge, as long as you have completed less than half of the course, and a person answers within 3 business days. If a course goes, you get 30 days' notice, what you earned in it stays yours, and we refund you without being asked.

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

1. What this covers

This policy covers every payment a student makes on acada.ac: purchases, bundles, subscriptions, trials, discounts, failed payments, refunds and chargebacks. ACADA L.L.C., a Tennessee limited liability company (ACADA, we), takes the payment and issues the refunds; the course itself is made by its instructor. What instructors and affiliates are paid is in the Instructor Earnings & Payouts and Affiliate Commission & Payouts policies.

2. Prices, tax and receipts

  • Prices. Instructors set their own prices, in US dollars. The price shown at checkout is the price you are charged.
  • Regional prices. In countries with less purchasing power, courses cost a share of their list price: we assign every country to one of four bands (100%, 70%, 50% and 35% of the list price, never below $1.00), and a course takes part unless its instructor has turned regional pricing off for it. Your band follows the country your connection comes from when you buy; the page says “Price for [country]” when a lower band applies, and the regional price is the price everything else in this policy refers to. A monthly subscription keeps the band it started in. Discount codes apply on top. Buying at a regional price from somewhere you are not, for example through a VPN, is misuse under the Fraud & Scams policy.
  • Your currency. Where Stripe offers it, checkout shows the price in your own currency, converted at Stripe's rate for that day and shown before you pay, and that is what your statement shows. Monthly access is always charged in US dollars, because it renews; your bank converts it. The local amount beside a price on the site is an approximation from a daily rate, for orientation; the checkout figure is the one that counts.
  • Tax. Where we are required to collect sales tax, VAT or GST, it is added at checkout, shown before you pay, and listed on your receipt. Any other tax on your purchase is yours.
  • Payment. We accept debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link and the local payment methods Stripe offers for your country, all processed by Stripe; and PayPal, for lifetime access and bundles. Monthly access renews each month, so it is paid by card or wallet. We never see or store your full card number, and PayPal never shares your PayPal sign-in with us.
  • Payments that arrive later. A few methods, such as a cash voucher, are confirmed after you pay rather than at once. Your enrollment starts when the payment arrives; if it never does, nothing is charged and nothing is enrolled, and we email you so you can pay another way.
  • Receipts. Every charge gets an emailed receipt. Every payment you have made, with its receipt, is listed in Billing.

3. What you can buy

  • Monthly Access. A subscription that renews every month on the date you first paid, until you cancel it. Section 4 covers it.
  • Lifetime Access. One payment for access for as long as the course is on ACADA. Section 9 covers what that includes.
  • Free courses. A course with no price is free to join and free to leave. Nothing is charged and nothing is refunded.
  • Bundles. Several courses sold together at one price, on one access tier. A bundle is one purchase: it is refunded as a whole, and a bundle bought as Monthly Access is a single 30-day term that does not renew.

4. Monthly subscriptions

  • Renewal. Your card is charged on the same date each month, at the price you first paid. An instructor changing the course's price does not change your subscription.
  • Cancelling. Cancel at any time from Billing. Nothing more is charged, and your access continues to the end of the month you have paid for. You can undo a cancellation before that date.
  • No partial months. We do not refund the rest of a month you cancel in. A renewal charge is refunded only when it was a mistake: you were charged after cancelling, or charged twice. Tell us within 14 days.
  • Upgrading to Lifetime. Switch from Billing at any time. The unused share of the month you have paid for is credited against the lifetime price, and the subscription ends.

5. Free trials

An instructor can offer 3 or 7 free days before the first charge. One trial per person per course.

  • Starting one. A trial needs a card on file. Nothing is charged when it starts, and you have full access for the trial period.
  • Before it ends. We email you at least 2 days before the trial ends, with the date and the amount.
  • Cancelling. Cancel from Billing at any point during the trial and nothing is charged. Your progress is kept if you enroll later.
  • When it ends. Your card is charged the price shown when you started, or less if the instructor has lowered it since. A discount code you entered when you started applies if it still works that day. A Monthly trial becomes a monthly subscription under section 4; a Lifetime trial becomes Lifetime Access. The refund window in section 7 runs from this charge, not from the first day of the trial.
  • If the charge fails. Your access is paused and we email you. Update your card in Billing and we try again within a day. If your bank asks you to approve the charge instead, access pauses the same way until you approve it from the email we send.

6. Failed payments

If a renewal charge fails, we email you the same day and keep your access open for 5 days from the renewal date while Stripe retries the card. Update your card in Billing and we try the payment again straight away. If no charge has gone through after those 5 days, your access pauses until one does, and the course shows where to update your card. If Stripe gives up, the subscription ends; you keep your progress and can enroll again whenever you like. If your bank asks you to approve a renewal, the same applies, and the fix is approving it from the email we send rather than changing your card.

7. Refunds you can ask for

You can ask for a refund of a course, a bundle, the first payment of a subscription or an upgrade to Lifetime Access when both of these are true:

  • Within 14 days of the charge. Counted from the day your card was charged. For a trial, that is the day the trial ended, not the day it began. For an upgrade, it is the day you upgraded.
  • Less than half complete. You have completed fewer than half of the course's lessons. For a bundle, fewer than half of the lessons across all of its courses.

Renewal charges are not refundable, apart from the mistaken ones in section 4. A free or fully discounted enrollment has nothing to refund. Once you have upgraded, a request covers the upgrade charge, not the monthly payment before it; refunding an upgrade returns what the upgrade cost and ends your access to the course.

How to ask. Open the course, go to Billing, and choose Request refund. Tell us in a sentence what went wrong; it goes to us, not to the instructor. A person reads every request and answers within 3 business days. An approved refund goes back the way you paid, in the currency you paid, tax included, and usually shows on your statement within 5 to 10 business days (a PayPal refund usually within 5). Your access ends when the refund is issued, and a refunded monthly subscription ends with it; your progress is kept. If your bank sends a refund back, for example because the card has been closed, we put your purchase back as it was and contact you to return the money another way.

If we decline. We tell you why in writing. If you think we have it wrong, reply to that email and say what we missed; a different person reviews it within 5 business days. That review is final.

8. Refunds we make without being asked

Some refunds do not depend on section 7. We issue them ourselves within 5 business days of the event and email you.

  • A course is removed. When we remove a course for breaking our policies, a monthly subscriber gets the current month back, and a lifetime buyer gets the share of the price matching the share of the course they had not completed.
  • A course is retired, or its instructor leaves. When an instructor retires a course, closes their account, or has their instructor role closed because they are under 18, students get 30 days' notice, as section 10 sets out. On the closing date, a monthly subscriber is refunded any paid days past it, and a lifetime buyer is refunded as above.
  • A child's account. When we close an account that belongs to a child under 13, every active paid access on it is refunded in full. A parent or guardian who did not permit a purchase by a student under 18 can ask for a full refund within 14 days of it, as the Age & Child Safety policy sets out.
  • An accessibility barrier. When a barrier in a paid course is not fixed within 30 days of your report, the purchase is refunded in full, as the Accessibility policy sets out.

Where only one course in a bundle is affected, we refund that course's share of the bundle price, and the rest of the bundle continues.

9. What Lifetime Access means

Lifetime Access is one payment for access to a course for as long as the course is on ACADA. It is the course's lifetime, not yours or ours. While the course is here, it includes:

  • Every update. Everything the instructor adds to or changes in that course, its room, and any files the instructor makes downloadable. Not a separate course by the same instructor, even a new edition, and not other courses.
  • No expiry. It never ends through inactivity. A later price change, or the instructor no longer offering lifetime access to new students, does not touch it.
  • Your certificate. A certificate you earn is yours to keep, stays in your portfolio even after the course is gone, and still verifies at acada.ac/verify, as the Credential Policy says.

It is tied to your account and is not transferable. It ends with the account, whether you close it or we close it for breaking our policies, with no refund in either case. It ends early only when the course goes, as section 10 sets out.

10. When a course goes

A course anyone has enrolled in is never simply deleted. Whoever ends it, what you earned in it stays on your account: your progress, your certificate, and the skills, achievements and time recorded. Access ends on the closing date.

A course coming off sale is not a course going. An instructor can unpublish a course at any time: it leaves the marketplace and takes no new students, and nothing changes for anyone already in it. You keep full access, your progress and everything you earned, your monthly subscription renews as before, and you can leave and rejoin it as usual. Nothing in this section applies, because nothing has ended. If the instructor publishes it again, it is simply on sale again.

  • The instructor retires it, or leaves ACADA. Sales stop the day they decide. You are emailed the same day with the closing date, 30 days later. Until then you keep full access to finish. A lifetime buyer can also download the course's lessons and files during that time, for their own use only. On the closing date, the refunds in section 8 are issued.
  • We remove it. A course that breaks our policies is removed at once. The refunds in section 8 follow within 5 business days.
  • A copyright notice pauses it. A course named in a copyright notice is paused while the notice is resolved, under the Copyright & DMCA policy. You are emailed the day it pauses. If it is back within 14 business days, your access resumes and a monthly subscriber gets the paused days added to their period; if it is not, the refunds in section 8 follow within 5 business days of that date.
  • ACADA closes. If we ever shut the service down, we give at least 60 days' notice by email, and certificates stay downloadable until the end.

The course room is not deleted with the course. Whoever ends the course, the room carries on as an ordinary group chat with the same members.

11. Leaving and rejoining a course

You can leave a course at any time from inside it. Leaving removes the course from your dashboard, sidebar and portfolio, and keeps your progress. It does not end access you have paid for, so you can rejoin from the course page at any time before that access ends and pick up where you left off. Leaving a monthly course also stops its subscription: nothing more is charged, and your access runs to the end of the month you have paid for. If you rejoin before then, the subscription carries on. Leaving does not extend the refund window.

12. Discount codes and bundles

  • Codes. A discount code is issued by ACADA, can be used once per person, and expires on the date it states. One code per purchase; codes do not apply to bundles.
  • First payment only. A code applies to the first payment; for a free trial, that is the charge when the trial ends. A monthly subscription bought with a code renews at the course's full price.
  • The completion discount. When you complete a course, you get a code for 20% off any one course, valid for 30 days. One per completed course.
  • Bundles. A bundle's price is set by its instructor and is never above its courses bought separately; an instructor can take up to 50% off.
  • Refunds of discounted purchases. A refund returns what you actually paid, never the list price. A code used on a refunded purchase is not reissued.

13. Chargebacks

If something is wrong with a charge, ask us first. A refund request in Billing, or a message to support@acada.ac, is faster than your bank and does not put your account at risk. A chargeback opened with your bank, or a dispute opened with PayPal, ends your access to the course at once while it is reviewed, and we give the bank or PayPal our records. If the decision goes our way, your access returns. A chargeback on a monthly subscription also ends the subscription, and winning it does not restart it: subscribe again from the course to keep going. A chargeback on a course you have completed, or on a charge we have already refunded, is fraud under the Fraud & Scams policy, and closes the account.

14. Timelines

  • A course closing. 30 days' notice; ACADA itself, at least 60.
  • Trial reminder. At least 2 days before the trial ends.
  • Failed renewal. An email the same day; access kept for 5 days.
  • Failed trial charge. Retried within 1 day of a card update.
  • Refund request. Answered within 3 business days; a second review within 5.
  • Refunds we issue ourselves. Within 5 business days of the event.
  • Refund on your statement. Usually 5 to 10 business days after it is issued.

15. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date shown at the top. If a change adds a rule or a consequence, we post a notice in the app at least 14 days before it takes effect.

16. Related policies