Student Can't Access a Course After Paying

A student paid but cannot open the course. Work through these checks in order. Caching is the last thing to suspect, not the first — in most reports the enrollment is inactive because of an order status, and clearing a cache will not bring it back.

#1. Is this actually a caching problem?

Open the course as the affected student, or in a private window, and look at what the browser gets:

• The page loads but says the student is not enrolled, or the curriculum is locked — an enrollment or order problem. Continue to step 2.
• A 500 error, a blank white screen, or a PHP fatal error — not caching either. Go to How to debug errors in Masteriyo and turn on logging.
• The student sees a stale version of the page, or content belonging to a different logged-in user — this one is caching. Skip to step 6.

#2. Does the enrollment exist, and is it active?

Open Masteriyo > Users and find the student. An enrollment is either active or inactive, and an inactive enrollment looks exactly like "no access" to the student even though the record still exists.

Masteriyo keeps an enrollment active only while the order that paid for it is Completed. Every other order status leaves it inactive. That is what step 3 checks.

#3. Check the order status

Open Masteriyo > Orders and find the order.

Native Masteriyo checkout — access is active only while the order status is Completed. Pending, On hold, Cancelled, Refunded and Failed all leave the enrollment inactive. If the payment succeeded at the gateway but the order never moved to Completed, investigate the gateway callback rather than the enrollment.

WooCommerce — a Completed order enrolls the student. Access is removed when the order moves to any status listed under Masteriyo > Settings > Integrations > WooCommerce > Unenrollment Status, which defaults to Cancelled, Failed and Refunded.

Easy Digital Downloads — the same Unenrollment Status setting applies, on the same settings screen.

Lemon Squeezy — unenrollment defaults to Refunded only.

So a refund removes course access by default. If you refund for an unrelated reason, expect the student to lose the course as well.

#4. Is the buyer the same account as the learner?

Access belongs to the account that owns the order. Two mismatches account for most of the rest:

• The course was bought as a guest, or with an email address that does not match the account the student signs in with.
• Someone bought it on behalf of the student — a manager, a parent, an administrator.

The order is fine in both cases; the enrollment simply belongs to a different account. Enroll the right user directly — see How to add a student manually to a course.

#5. Is the course itself restricting access?

Confirm the course is not the reason: check whether it is still a draft, limited to a group, gated behind a prerequisite, scheduled to start later, or set to Coming Soon.

#6. Caching

If step 1 pointed at caching, follow How to configure caching plugins and exclude the Masteriyo pages from your caching plugin, your host's page cache, and your CDN.

#About "Clear Cache" in Masteriyo Tools

Masteriyo > Tools > Utilities has a button labelled Clear Cache. Despite the label, it does not clear a cache.

Use it only when you have identified genuine duplicate enrollment records — after a failed import, for example — and only with a current backup. It will not restore access for a student whose enrollment is inactive because of an order status. Steps 2 to 4 are what fix that.

#Still stuck?

Collect the course ID, the student's user ID and email address, the order ID and its current status, and the log from How to enable error logging in Masteriyo. Then open a topic on the WordPress.org support forum if you are using the free version, or contact support with your license key if you are on Masteriyo Pro.

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