The trainer's guide

1. You decide what to charge your learners. Your site charges one way: price each course, or one monthly membership that opens every course you mark Members only. Free courses are allowed either way.
2. Learners pay you directly. Every payment goes straight into your own bank account through Razorpay. RacingOwl never touches or holds that money. Razorpay's fee on each payment and the GST on it — currently 2% plus GST, 2.36% in all — come off before the money reaches you; RacingOwl does not take a cut of your sales.
3. You pay RacingOwl a flat monthly fee to run your site — one of four plans, priced mainly by how many learners your site can hold, plus any add-ons you switch on. A subscription, not a percentage of what you earn.

1. 1Go to racingowl.com and choose "Create your site."
2. 2Fill in your site name, your site's address (this becomes yourname.racingowl.com), what you teach, your name, email, and a password. Then tick "I am 18 or over" — only an adult can run a site, because it takes payments — and "I agree to the terms of service and the privacy policy".
3. 3Confirm your email. The link is sent the moment you sign up, and until you open it the whole Manage area is replaced by "Confirm your email to continue" — so this comes before you build anything, not after. Nothing arrived? Check your spam folder, or press Resend the link on that screen. Open the link wherever the email is — on your phone is fine — and the screen on your computer notices within a few seconds and moves on by itself.
4. 4Start building. Once your email is confirmed you land on your Manage pages, where a card tells you your site is live, and you can make your first course straight away (section 4 shows how). A banner across the top says what is still to come: choose a RacingOwl plan when you are ready to publish a course or invite learners. There is no free tier, but most plans start with a free trial, it starts when you choose the plan, and nothing is charged until it ends. You can move to another plan later — up at any time, paying only the difference for the days left; down from the end of the period you have paid for (see section 2).

The signup form, and the screen that comes straight after it.

Stuck at any point once you've signed in? Every page under Manage has an Ask RacingOwl button at the bottom right, and the RacingOwl team answers you there — see section 16.

Every site runs on one of four plans. This is what you pay RacingOwl — it has nothing to do with what you charge your own learners. Courses are unlimited on every plan; what grows from plan to plan is how many learners your site can hold, how much storage you get, and what comes included.

The plan screen. The add-ons sit under each card's price, and you tick the ones you want on the same screen — one purchase, not a plan now and a reminder later.

Most plans start with a free trial — up to 60 days at the moment, shown on each card. Nothing is charged until the trial ends, and every add-on is included free while it runs. If you tick an add-on during the trial, that means "keep it after the trial"; it is charged only from your first real payment. Refer another trainer with the link on Manage → Your RacingOwl plan: they get 30 extra days of free trial, and you get a month free once their trial has ended and they stay on — up to six months (founding trainers: no limit). If a trainer referred you, your trial is 30 days longer, and the cards show it.

Add-ons

Three features are sold as add-ons rather than baked into one plan. Each one is included free on some plans and offered for a small monthly fee on others; the cards above show exactly what your plan includes and what it charges, and the price you see when you switch one on is the price you keep.

• Virtual classes — live classes over Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams, with reminders to your learners (see section 4). Some plans include it and others sell it as an add-on, as a monthly allowance of classes or unlimited; the plan cards above say which.
• WhatsApp alerts — a bundle of WhatsApp messages a month to your learners: payment receipts, failed-payment notes, membership reminders and an hour-before nudge for live classes (see section 12). Every plan carries a bundle; the top plan includes it.
• Chats — private one-to-one chats between each learner and your site, answered from one inbox (see section 11). The plan cards above say which plans include it and which sell it as an add-on.

You can switch an add-on on or off at any time from Manage → Your RacingOwl plan → Add-ons. Switching one on mid-month waives that partial month's fee; switching one off keeps it until the end of the period you've paid for.

Which plan is right for you?

The honest answer depends on where you want to be in six months, not where you are today. A rough guide:

Starter

For trying RacingOwl out with a small group — up to 10 learners — or for a trainer who teaches a fixed batch and isn't looking to grow it. Everything you need to sell a course is here; live classes and WhatsApp alerts are add-ons you can tick when you need them.

Growth

The plan most trainers should start on. Up to 25 learners, video checkpoints, and live classes and chats included — so the total is often lower than Starter plus the add-ons you'd end up wanting. If you intend to grow, start here.

Professional

For a running business: up to 100 learners, a much bigger WhatsApp bundle, and much more storage for your PDFs and pictures (videos stay on YouTube and don't count). If you already have a few hundred followers or a waiting list, this is the one.

Scale

No learner limit, every add-on included, and the largest storage. For an established academy or a trainer moving an existing audience onto RacingOwl in one go.

Plans auto-renew by default. If a renewal payment fails, you get a grace period with a visible warning before your site goes read-only — it won't just vanish without warning. Plan and add-on prices are shown without GST: 18% is added at checkout, and a GST invoice is emailed with every payment. To move to a different plan, press the plan you want under Manage → Your RacingOwl plan. Moving up takes effect the same day: the days you have not used on your current plan are credited against the new one, so you pay only the difference, and your renewal date does not move. Moving down takes effect when the period you have paid for ends; nothing changes before then. No days are lost either way. (With auto-renew on, the page takes you through the move step by step: the old auto-renew stops, you pay any difference, and you approve auto-renew again on the new plan — an auto-renew can never collect more than you approved when you set it up.) You can cancel at any time from the same page. If we ever change a plan's price, the period you have paid for keeps its price and we email you first; the new price reaches you at your next renewal. An auto-renew can never collect more than you approved, so a higher price ends it at that renewal and you set it up again at the new price. A card's approval ends when the card expires: before then, press Use a new card on Manage → Your RacingOwl plan — your current card is charged until the new card or UPI is approved, and we email you 14 and 3 days before it expires. Before Razorpay's window opens, a small box asks whether you want to approve by UPI or by card — the approval lives on the one you pick, so choose the one you actually pay from.

Two things worth knowing before you press anything. A move down is scheduled rather than immediate, and you can undo it at any time before it lands at the end of the period: the plan page shows the change waiting, with a button to cancel it, and nothing about your site alters until then. A move up shows you a quote first, the difference for the rest of the period once your unused days have been credited, and nothing is charged until you confirm it.

Before you can charge for a course, activate payments — this is how learner money reaches your bank account.

1. 1Go to Manage → Payments.
2. 2Fill in your business email and phone, business name and type, contact name, address, bank details (account number, IFSC, account holder name), and PAN. Below that, fill in Billing details — your legal name, address, state and GSTIN if you have one. These appear on the receipts your learners get. Without a GSTIN, RacingOwl pauses new sales just under ₹20 lakh of collections in a financial year; entering one lifts the pause straight away. Billing details has its own Save billing details button; it is saved separately from Activate Payments.
3. 3Choose "Activate Payments."

Once activated, sale money lands straight in this account — RacingOwl never holds it.

Learners outside India. A learner abroad pays on your site with a card issued where they live. Your price stays in rupees, their bank converts it, and the money reaches your bank account in rupees like any other payment. Razorpay's fee is higher on such a card: as of now about 3.9% of the payment, GST included, and Manage → Earnings shows the exact amount beside each payment. A membership's auto-renew works on these cards too. No bank sends an advance notice for a card issued outside India, so the reminder before each charge comes from RacingOwl, and the first time the learner's own bank may ask them to confirm the charge. If it holds the payment, we email them what to do and try once more a day later.

If you ever need to, you can disconnect your Razorpay account from the same Manage → Payments page. Orders already placed and payouts already made are not affected in any way; what changes is that new sales pause until you connect again.

Go to Manage → My courses and choose New course (on a brand-new site, the dashboard offers Create your first course). Give it a title — that's the only thing required to start. You'll land in the course builder, which has four tabs. Type it however you like — your site shows course, module and lesson names with Capital Letters, so a page of them reads as one page, while Manage keeps exactly what you typed.

Each course's own page under Manage also shows a readiness checklist: what is still missing before the course is worth publishing. It is a checklist, not a gate. It tells you what is missing, but it does not stop you publishing, so use it as a last look rather than a hurdle. Lesson text is plain text: a blank line starts a new paragraph. Reorder modules and lessons with the up and down arrows (there is no dragging), rename a module with Rename on its header, and change a lesson later with Edit lesson under its row — its type stays what it was. Delete module warns you which live classes go with it, and nobody invited to them is told, so cancel those first. Beside Publish there is Make unlisted: the course stays out of your catalogue and the marketplace, but anyone you give the link to can open it and enrol; Unpublish puts it back to draft. Unpublishing or archiving takes a course off sale, but anyone already enrolled keeps it.

A course only certain people can reach

Beside Publish and Make unlisted there is also a Private setting, and it is usually the one people really want when they pick Unlisted. Make private limits a course to the people you choose: everybody else gets nothing at all, link or no link. Choose them on the course's Details tab, under Who can reach it — tick whole groups (see section 9), name individuals, or both. Build the list first and make the course private afterwards; nothing on that list does anything until you do. The rule worth knowing: the list decides who can join. Anybody already enrolled keeps the course even after you take them off the list, so you can reorganise your groups in March without cutting somebody off halfway through something they paid for — to take a course away from one person, refund them in full. Somebody refunded in full, or who leaves your site, loses a private course and comes off its list until you name them again. A private course can be free or priced like any other, and a priced one can only be bought by the people on its list.

Content

Add a module (a chapter), then lessons inside it — text, a YouTube video (set it to Unlisted, not Private), a PDF up to 30 MB, an assignment, or a live class. When a learner comes back, Continue opens the last lesson they opened. New to recording or to YouTube? See Recording your lessons and Putting your videos on YouTube.

The Publish/Draft control lives on every tab, not just Details — a course with no lessons can't be published. Archive, beside it, takes a course off sale and out of your catalogue without touching anyone already enrolled; Unarchive puts it back as a draft, ready to publish again. Delete appears only on a course nobody has ever enrolled in — a draft or a mistake — and asks you first; once anyone has enrolled, even someone later refunded, archiving is the only way to retire it.

Details

Title, subtitle, short and full description, card image, "what you'll learn," "who this is for," level, language, format, whether it awards a certificate, which collection it belongs to, tags, and its price (on a site that charges through the membership, Who can take it instead: Free or Members only). A course in a collection says Part of and the collection's name on its page, linking to it in your catalogue, and once any course is in one, Manage → My courses groups your list by collection.

Quizzes

Add a pass mark, an optional time limit, how many attempts are allowed, whether it must be passed to complete the course (this also drives certificates), and whether to shuffle question order. Then add questions, of any of ten kinds. Any of those settings can be changed later from Change the settings on the quiz card, even after learners have sat it: attempts already sat keep the result they were given, and only new attempts are measured against the new settings.

Ten kinds of question

Pick the kind first and the form changes under it. Multiple choice and true or false have one right answer. Multiple answers is tick-all-that-apply, marked all or nothing — every right box ticked and no wrong one. Fill in the blank takes any answer on your list, one per line, ignoring capitals and spaces. A number is right within the tolerance you set (3.14 ± 0.01). Put in order and matching are shown to learners shuffled. Dropdown in a sentence puts a menu where you type three underscores. Every one of those is marked the moment the quiz is submitted, and the key is printed under each question on the Quizzes tab so you can check it. The last two kinds, a short written answer and an essay with a word limit, are marked by you — see Marking, next.

Marking written answers

A quiz with a written answer in it is submitted without a score. The learner sees the questions the machine has already marked, and "awaiting marking" in place of a result; they cannot start again, and the course cannot complete around it. The attempt appears under Manage → Marking, and the Manage menu counts what is waiting. Open it: the learner's words, the word count against the limit, your model answer if you wrote one, and a score box out of the points you set on the question (10 unless you changed it). There is also a Feedback for the learner box: a line back to them, optional, shown beside their score, the same box an assignment's mark has. Save once. Every question counts the same; a written answer earns the fraction of its points, so 8 out of 10 is worth 0.8 of a question. The score, the pass, any certificate and a notification to the learner all follow. A mark cannot be changed afterwards. An essay over its word limit is refused before it is submitted, so you never mark one. When a learner hands in written answers or an assignment, or finishes a course, you get a notification straight away, and one email each morning sums up what is waiting — sent only when something is new.

Assignments

For work that is more than a quiz answer — a worksheet, a project, a piece of writing — add a lesson and choose Assignment. Write what to hand in, choose what it is marked out of (10 unless you change it), and decide whether it must be marked before the course is complete; leave that ticked and the course, and its certificate, wait for your mark. Your learner reads the brief and hands in up to five files — a PDF, photos, Word, Excel or PowerPoint files, a text file or a zip, 25 MB each — or simply types the answer. They can change it until you mark it. Handed-in work appears under Manage → Marking beside quiz attempts; open it, read what they wrote, open their files, give points and feedback, and save. They are told straight away. Made a slip? Open the marked work and use Change the mark: the points or the feedback change, nothing else moves, and the learner is told. If the work itself needs another go, Reopen for another try, under Assignments you marked recently, hands the work back with your feedback kept. Assignments are on every plan; the files learners send count against your site's storage, and only they and you can open them. Once work is marked, Clear the files from marked work, under the assignment on the course's Content tab, removes the handed-in files to free that storage, and keeps every mark, your feedback and anything they typed. If a learner leaves your site or closes their account, their handed-in files stay for 90 days and are then removed automatically.

Video interactions (Growth plan and above)

Add a checkpoint question that pauses a video at a chosen timestamp until the learner answers. Any kind the machine marks can sit there; the two written kinds cannot, because the video would wait for ever.

On a plan without this feature, this exact form is still visible — saving shows an "Upgrade your plan" prompt instead of failing silently.

Releasing lessons over time (Growth plan and above)

A lesson can open later than the course does, and when it opens for a learner — on their day, or because you removed the rule — they are told, by the bell and by email. When you add a lesson — or under Release in any saved lesson's row — set days after enrolling, a not before date, or both; with both, the later one wins. Leave both blank and the lesson is open the moment somebody enrols, which is every lesson you made before this existed. A held-back lesson stays in the outline with the day it opens ("unlocks in 2 days", "unlocks on 12 October 2026"); its content is hidden and it cannot be marked done until then, so the course cannot be finished around it — a learner who enrols later gets the same rhythm, counted from their own day one. The course page says "releases 2 days after enrolling" beside the lesson before anyone enrols, so buyers know what they are buying. Change a rule and it changes for everybody, including people already enrolled; Remove the rule opens the lesson at once. On a plan without the feature the boxes are replaced by a note, and removing a rule still works.

Adding a live class

Inside the Content tab, choose "Live class" as the lesson type instead of text/video/PDF: a date, start time (IST), length, and a joining link you paste in from Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams (just the link, with or without https:// in front; Meet's Copy button copies the whole invitation, so keep the part that looks like meet.google.com/abc-defg-hij). RacingOwl doesn't create the meeting for you — set it up wherever you normally would and just paste the link here. The separate "Virtual classes" tab is for managing classes you've already scheduled this way, not for creating new ones. Live classes are included on some plans and sold as an add-on on others (a monthly allowance of classes, or unlimited) — the plan cards in section 2 say which. Everyone enrolled gets the invitation by email, with a calendar entry, and an hour-before reminder on WhatsApp if you have that add-on. Learners never see the meeting link itself: a Join button appears on your site fifteen minutes before the start, and it works only for people enrolled on the course. You can move or cancel a class from the Virtual classes tab, and everyone invited is emailed the change. Every learner joins through that button, so each click is counted: the Virtual classes tab shows "12 of 18 joined (clicked the link)" for every class, with a list you can download as a spreadsheet. It says joined, not attended — a click is all RacingOwl can see. A class can also repeat: tick "Repeats every week", choose the days, and paste one joining link that stays the same each week (in Google Meet, Create a meeting for later; in Zoom, a recurring meeting with no fixed time). Each class in the series is its own, with its own reminder and its own joined list, and you can move or cancel one without touching the rest. The Virtual classes tab shows the series, where you change the days, the time, the link or the last date for every class to come, or stop it. New days or a new time rewrite every class still to come and email everyone enrolled once, with a calendar file that replaces the old one; classes already held stay as they were. You can record your live classes too — here is how.

You need one meeting room, not one per class. Make it once — in Google Meet choose Create a meeting for later; in Zoom, a recurring meeting with no fixed time — and paste its link when you schedule the class. From then on RacingOwl does the inviting, the reminding and the Join button; you open the meeting tool again only to teach. A repeating class uses the same link every week, and a second room is only needed for a second group taught at the same time.

Saving a class invites everyone enrolled, and anyone who enrols later, before it starts, is invited by themselves — email, calendar entry and reminder. From the Virtual classes tab you can also invite particular learners, and Send invitations emails only the people who have not had this class's invitation yet, so pressing it twice never sends a second copy. Your learners also see a Live classes link in your site's bar whenever they have one coming up; it lists every class across their courses with you, the next first.

Your site charges learners one way, and you choose which under Manage → Membership offer, in the How you charge card: Price each course, or One monthly membership. Free courses are allowed in both, and you can switch at any time.

Option A — Price each course

Set a price directly on a course's Details tab (shown above), or leave it blank to make the course free. Each learner pays once for that specific course and has it forever. No membership is offered.

Option B — One monthly membership

1. 1Go to Manage → Membership offer, choose One monthly membership under How you charge, and set a price (₹/month) if the card asks for one.
2. 2On each course's Details tab, under Who can take it, choose Free (anyone can take it) or Members only (included in the membership). Nothing is sold on its own: a course that had a price becomes Members only and keeps that price, so if you switch back it is on sale at that price again.
3. 3A member opens every Members only course on your site, including ones you publish later, for as long as their membership stays active: the course page shows them Enrol — included in your membership, and anyone else sees Join the membership to open this course. They can pay each month themselves, or tick Renew automatically each month so the card or UPI they authorise is charged every month until they turn it off; a current member can also press Turn on auto-renew later, on the membership page. Before an authorised card expires, Use a new card on the same page moves auto-renew to a new card or UPI, and the member is emailed 14 and 3 days before. If a membership lapses, the unfinished courses opened through it close within the hour and show Rejoin to continue; finished courses, courses bought separately and certificates stay, and paying again reopens the rest where they left off. Before Razorpay opens, the member is asked whether to approve by UPI or by card.

Billing is monthly only. To raise the price later, use the scheduled price-change tool — existing members keep the old price until the date you set and get emailed in advance. A member's auto-renew is approved for the price they joined at, so a price change stops it at the changeover, and they can turn it on again at the new price.

One feature covers both a plain sale price (no code) and a typed coupon code — a code is simply the same kind of discount with a word attached.

A discount takes either a percentage or a fixed amount off, and a percentage can carry a cap on the most it will ever take off a single order. You can ask for a minimum order before it applies, give it a start and an end date, limit the total number of times it can be redeemed and the number of uses per person, and choose who it is for: everyone, first-time buyers only, people with an active membership, or named people you pick one at a time from your learners. Once it exists you can pause and resume it, edit it, or delete it from Manage → Discounts, and the Discounts list shows how often each was used and how much revenue it has given up, so you can see what a sale actually cost you.

A useful trick: 100% off + "first-time buyers only" + one use per person gives you a free-trial pattern. The learner is enrolled with no payment and still gets a numbered ₹0 invoice naming the code. A code that takes the whole membership price works the same way, with a ₹0 invoice for each free month. If the learner also ticks auto-renew, the free month starts once their card or UPI is authorised and the first charge comes when it ends — a free trial that keeps a card. A code that takes only part of the price cannot be used with auto-renew.

Go to Manage → Settings to set up how your site looks and reads.

Colours come from a curated, contrast-checked set with a live preview, so your text always stays readable.

"What to call it" — pick from site/school/academy/institute/centre/studio/practice. This changes the word used in your own dashboard and in a few headings on your site's pages, such as "About this academy". Any PNG, JPEG or WebP logo is printed on your certificates; if an old logo is missing from them, upload it again. Optional: if you use Google Analytics, paste your measurement ID (it starts with G-) under Settings → Google Analytics and your learner-facing pages report to your own account for visitors who agree to it (see below). Only the ID is accepted, never a script; leave it empty and nothing is sent to Google. Under "Certificate template", choose the border your certificates are printed on — sixteen designs; see section 13.

The same Settings page has a Storage section showing how much of your plan's storage your site's uploads are using, against the allowance for your plan in section 2. If a file would take you past it, the upload is refused and tells you how much is used and what the limit is; nothing you already have is ever deleted. Remove files you no longer need, or move up a plan. Videos live on YouTube and don't count.

Once a measurement ID is set, visitors to your site see a small bar along the bottom of the page: “(your site's name) uses Google Analytics cookies to count visits”, with a link to how RacingOwl handles their data and two equal buttons, No thanks and Accept. Google Analytics loads only for visitors who press Accept; anyone who presses No thanks, or ignores the bar, is not counted, so expect your Analytics numbers to be lower than your real visits. The answer is remembered by that browser for your site for about six months, and Cookie choices at the bottom of the page opens the bar again to change it. With no ID set there is no bar, and your Manage pages never show one.

Manage → Dashboard is your at-a-glance view: active courses, enrolments, earnings and certificates for the period you choose, charts of enrolments and completions over time, enrolments by course and where learners drop off, your next live classes, the course you last edited, and recent enrolments. It also warns you when your site is close to its learner limit. Two cards help a new site along: once a course is published and nobody has joined yet, an Invite your learners card's Invite learners button opens the invitation form (section 9); and Turn on phone alerts takes you to the one switch that sends new chats, reports, sales and work to mark to your phone (section 15) — Not now hides that card.

Manage → Earnings is the money-focused view: what reached you after refunds and Razorpay's fee on each payment, the sales and fees behind it, a full payment history, and — kept apart at the foot — the money you recorded as taken yourself.

Razorpay's fee on each payment is taken off before the money is sent to you, so this figure is what is sent to your bank.

Every payment you make to RacingOwl gets a GST invoice, emailed to you and kept under Manage → Your RacingOwl plan → Billing & History (with an All invoices page for the rest). Your learners get their own receipt for every purchase automatically, so you don't need to raise anything by hand. That includes a ₹0 receipt, naming the code, when a discount takes the whole price of a course. The same goes for a membership month that a discount pays for in full.

Further down the page, Receipts and credit notes lists every receipt and credit note your site has issued, each with its PDF, and Download CSV gives you the ones for the period you chose, ready for your accountant. Refunds are the site owner's to give, from this page. Open Refund under any course payment: the box already shows the full amount that has not yet been refunded, so sending it as it is refunds everything, and typing a smaller figure makes it a partial refund. Razorpay returns the money to whatever the learner paid with — including the part already paid out to you — and it can't be recalled once sent. A full refund ends the learner's access to that course; a partial one changes nothing about access; and a course they had already finished stays finished, certificate and all. Every refund raises a credit note against the original receipt, numbered in the same series, and emails it to the learner, so both sets of books stay straight. The note you can add is for your own records and is never shown to them. A membership is refunded one month's payment at a time, from the same Refund control on that month's row: a full refund of a month that is still running ends that month now, and an older month can be refunded without touching the current one. A month you recorded as paid outside RacingOwl can't be refunded here, because that money never came through RacingOwl. A course that a discount made free has nothing to refund. The Razorpay fee shown against each payment on Earnings includes the GST on it — 2% plus GST, 2.36% in all — so what reached you is already after both. Refunding a running membership month in full also stops that learner's auto-renew, if they had turned it on. Launch offer: RacingOwl pays the Razorpay fee on your refunds, until 19 April 2027. Razorpay keeps its fee (about 2.36% — ₹23.60 on every ₹1,000) when a payment is refunded, and your learner still gets back everything they paid. As a launch offer, RacingOwl pays that fee for you on every refund you issue until 19 April 2027. It is a launch offer only: from 20 April 2027, the fee on a refund is yours, and it is taken from your earnings.

If emails from your site could not be delivered, your dashboard shows a red card saying how many. Each one was tried five times over about half an hour before it was given up on, and the card lists who it was for, what it was — a welcome message, an enrolment confirmation, a certificate — and the mail provider's own reason, which is worth sending to us if it makes no sense. Once the cause is fixed, Try again puts every failed email back in the queue at once, each with a fresh five tries, and sends them straight away. When nothing has failed there is no card at all.

Manage → Learners shows everyone who's joined your site: total count, a sortable table, and a chart of where in each course learners tend to stop — useful for spotting a module that's losing people. Somebody who has finished everything they took with you (no course open, no membership running) is marked Not counted on your plan — still listed, but no longer taking a place — and Remove beside Chat takes a learner off your list; both are explained under the plan-is-full heading below.

Above the table, Download CSV — all learners saves everyone as a spreadsheet file, not just the page you are looking at. It has one row per learner, sorted by name, with their name, email address, the day they joined, how many courses they are on, how many they have finished, their certificates, lessons done and lessons available, their progress as a percentage, when they were last active, and their groups. Narrow the page to one course first and the button becomes Download CSV — this course, and the file holds only that course's learners. It is the same people and figures the table shows, and it is yours to keep. A last column, Counted on plan, says Yes or No: No means they have finished everything they took and no longer take a place on your plan.

Bringing the class you already teach

If you already teach thirty people somewhere else, Manage → Learners → Invite learners is the quickest way to bring them across. Paste their email addresses — one per line, or separated by commas; a column copied from a spreadsheet works too — add a line in your own words, and send. Nothing is created for anybody: each person gets an email with a link, and an account exists only once they follow it and fill in a short form: their name, a password, their age — I am 18 or over, or I am under 18, and a parent or guardian agrees to me using RacingOwl — and a tick to agree to the terms of service and the privacy policy. Somebody who already has a RacingOwl account simply enters the password they already have, and answers the age question and ticks the terms in the same way. Tick a group and everybody who accepts lands in it.

The email goes out with your name in the subject, and replies go to your site's contact address (or your own, if the site has none), because a message that reads as coming from their teacher gets opened and one that reads as coming from a company they have never heard of does not — so your own line at the top is worth more than anything else on that form. Links last a week and work once; invite somebody again and they get a fresh one. Above the table, Invited, not joined yet lists everybody who has not taken theirs up, which is the list to work through on the morning of your first session, Remind sends the email again with a fresh link — once a day per person, and it counts as one of the 200 — without touching the groups you chose for them, and Withdraw kills a link you sent by mistake. Two limits: your own email address has to be confirmed first, and a site can send 200 invitations a day. If more than one in ten of a site's invitations from the last day bounced (once five or more have gone), new ones pause until those are a day old, so check the addresses before trying again. Invitations go out under your site's name from RacingOwl's own invitations address.

Groups

Manage → Groups is your own filing: a name and a list of the people on your site — “Tuesday class”, “the advanced group”, “2026 batch”. Nothing more. Your learners never see a group, and being in one changes nothing for them on its own; each person's groups show as small labels under their name in the learner table. Groups earn their keep three times over: give a whole class access to a private course in one tick (see section 4), put everybody you invite into a group as soon as they join, and record that a whole class has already paid you. Add and remove people at any time — taking somebody out of a group takes nothing away from them and tells them nothing. Somebody who leaves your site drops out of the count but stays in the group, so if they come back in June your filing is still right.

When they have already paid you

Moving a class across in the middle of a month is the awkward bit: they have paid you in cash to the 30th, and you do not want RacingOwl asking them for money again on the 12th. Manage → Learners → Record a payment you took yourself is the answer. Tick a group or name the people, give the last day their money covers, and they are in straight away with nothing owing until the day after that date. From then on it behaves like any other paid month: they are reminded before it runs out and can pay by card when it does. You can note what they paid and why, for your own records — your learners never see either. Everything you record is listed under Payments you recorded yourself on the Learners page and, kept apart from the figures, under Recorded by you at the foot of Earnings. It is deliberately not counted in your RacingOwl earnings and raises no receipt or invoice, because that money never came through RacingOwl. This needs your site to charge through One monthly membership first (How you charge, under Manage → Membership offer), because the time up to the date you give is recorded as a paid period of that membership.

If an invitation cannot be delivered — a mistyped address, a mailbox that does not exist — its line under Invited, not joined yet says so, with the reason the mail provider gave. Check the address and invite them again, which clears it. RacingOwl can tell you when an email failed; it cannot tell you that one was read.

When your plan is full

When your site reaches its plan's learner limit, somebody who tries to join is told the class is full — never that they are not allowed — and can press Ask the teacher to make room for you. You get an email, and they appear under Waiting to join at the top of Manage → Learners, longest wait first. Let them in takes a place on your plan like any other join, so if there is still no room you are shown how to move to a larger plan instead. Once you let them in, they are emailed that they can join. Not now clears the request without telling them; they can ask again. Somebody you invited who accepts while you are full goes straight onto the list without having to ask. RacingOwl never removes anybody already with you; room comes from a bigger plan, from a learner who has finished everything they took, or from Remove on the Learners page (see below).

Each plan holds a set number of learners (see section 2). A meter at the top of Manage → Your RacingOwl plan shows how close you are, and you're emailed as you approach the limit. When a site is full, nobody is removed by RacingOwl — everyone already with you keeps everything — but new learners are turned away until there is room, and your course pages say so. Room comes three ways: a bigger plan; a learner who has finished everything they took with you (no course open, no membership running) gives their place back by themselves — they stay on your Learners page, marked Not counted, and take a place again only if they enrol in something new; and Remove on a row of Manage → Learners takes a learner off your list yourself, for a class that is over or somebody who signed in and never enrolled — it does what their own Leave does, and they are emailed. Whether you price per course or sell a membership makes no difference to the counting.

Learners can also go. From their own RacingOwl account a learner can leave your site — they come off your learner list and your count, their enrolments end (including paid ones, so a refund question may come first) and so does an all-access membership with you, with no refund (any auto-renew they had turned on stops too), and they stop receiving your emails; what they posted stays under their name, and their receipts and certificates stay too. Enrolling, posting, writing a chat or signing in on your site again rejoins them, counted like any newcomer. A learner can also delete their RacingOwl account altogether, which leaves every site at once and removes their name, email and photo everywhere: their posts then read "Deleted learner", but the invoices for what they paid you stay, as tax law requires, with the name and address printed on them, and so do their certificates. Nothing in either case needs anything from you. Since 6 October 2026 you can also take a learner off your list yourself, with Remove on the Learners page: it does the same things a leaving does, and they are emailed.

Emailing your learners

Manage → Email learners sends one message to everyone who has joined your site, or to the learners of a single course — the thing a WhatsApp broadcast list does well, done by email from your site's own name, with a reply address that reaches you. Each learner gets their own copy, and the count beside the choice is your dashboard's own number: anyone who has enrolled, bought, posted or signed in on your site and hasn't left. Staff, visitors who only looked, and anyone who has left are never included.

It's plain text — a subject and a message, a blank line for a new paragraph, no attachments — and the bottom of every email says why the learner received it and that leaving your site from their RacingOwl account is how they stop these. There is no separate unsubscribe, so write as you would to a class, not as an advertiser; you're limited to three emails a day for the same reason. Everything you've sent is listed under the form, with who it went to and when.

Each course has one discussion — a single running conversation, not a list of separate topics. From the course's discussion page you can switch it on or off and choose who can view and post.

Only learners who've finished a course can leave a review. You'll see the star distribution and can post one public response per review; you can hide a review from your own site if it needs it. Separately, your Topics page lets you post site-wide announcements, pin threads, and close them to new replies.

Anyone — you or a learner — can edit their own post in place with the Edit link under it, rather than deleting and rewriting; a post whose words changed is marked "(edited)" so nobody is misled by a reply to the old version.

A few more tools on the thread itself. On a topic, or under any message in a course discussion, you or the person who asked can mark one reply the Accepted answer; it gets a badge so the next person with the same question can spot it. A post the keyword filter held shows you a Release to the discussion button; press it once you have read it and it is fine. Anyone, you or a learner, can follow a thread with Notify me of new replies and stop whenever they like; replies arrive as notifications, not emails. And a topic on your Topics page can be featured on your site's home page, as well as pinned or closed.

Learners can write to you privately from a Chats link in your site's menu — a question before they buy, a doubt mid-course, anything. Every learner gets one chat with your site that lasts as long as they learn with you: no tickets, nothing to open or close. Some plans include Chats and others can add it as an add-on (the plan cards in section 2 say which).

The inbox: learners on the left, the open chat on the right.

You answer from Manage → Chats, one inbox for the whole site. Opening a chat marks it read; archive one to tidy it away, and it comes back the moment the learner writes again. You can also write first, from the Chat link beside a learner on the Learners page. A message that matches a dangerous-language pattern is held for your review before the other side sees it — the same protection your discussions have. Read it, then press Release to the conversation if it is fine or Remove it if it is not: removing takes it out of the chat for both sides, and RacingOwl keeps a copy. A held message your own side wrote cannot be released from here — remove it and write it again; if it was a false alarm, RacingOwl releases it. Until a held message is released or removed, the chat shows a Held tag in your inbox.

With this add-on, your learners get a short set of WhatsApp messages from RacingOwl's verified business number, in your site's name: a receipt when they pay, a note if a payment fails, a reminder three days before a membership ends (not sent to a member who has turned on auto-renew; their reminder email says what will be charged instead), and "starts in about an hour" before a live class. Nothing else — no marketing, no chat. The first three go by email as well; the class nudge is WhatsApp only, because the invitation email already put the class in their calendar. Getting a verified WhatsApp business line normally takes days of paperwork and a dedicated number; here you get it by ticking a box.

Switch it on when you choose your plan, or later from Manage → Your RacingOwl plan → Add-ons. A learner receives alerts only once they've verified a number: on their own account page at racingowl.com → Your profile → Notifications, they enter their WhatsApp number once and confirm a six-digit code, and it then works on every site they learn with. You can't add numbers for them — verifying is how they say yes. On your site, the My learning page asks any learner without a verified number to add one, and links straight there.

The Add-ons card under Manage → Your RacingOwl plan: the meter, the small print, and the class-reminder switch.

The add-on comes with a bundle of messages per billing period, sized by plan (the cards in section 2 show yours). The same Add-ons page shows a running meter. Going past the bundle never cuts your learners off: each extra message is charged at a small per-message rate, shown as owed on your plan page and added to your next payment — a renewal you pay by hand, or a plan move — never taken at the moment the message goes. If what you owe for extra messages stays under ₹50 for three months, it is written off. Sending pauses only if you reach three times the bundle, and starts again next period. Verification codes and your own alerts are never counted, and the class reminder has its own switch if you'd rather not send it.

There's a single switch: on a course's Details tab (shown in step 4 above), "Awards a certificate on completion" — on for every new course, and yours to switch off for a course that shouldn't award one. A learner finishes a course when every lesson is marked done and every quiz marked "must be passed to complete the course" has been passed. At that moment, if the switch is on, a certificate is issued automatically — a PDF with their name, your site's name, the course and a serial number that anyone can check at racingowl.com/verify. The learner's "you finished" email carries the certificate as a PDF, and they can download it again from their own My learning page at any time. The same switch puts the certificate badge on your course in the marketplace. Under Manage → Settings → Certificate template, pick one of sixteen border designs; "See a sample" opens the design with your own logo and name on it. The change is immediate and complete: certificates are produced fresh at every download, so one earned before you switched comes back in the new design too, and no old version is kept. Beside each certificate on My learning, Add to LinkedIn opens LinkedIn's form for adding a certification, already filled in with the course, your site as the issuer and the serial number.

Separate from your site's branding: Manage → Your instructor profile lets you set your name, profile picture, a short bio, your highest qualification (picked from a list) and anything more about your qualifications, and the year you started teaching. This appears on your course pages and About page as your instructor card. If RacingOwl names you a founding trainer, a Founding trainer badge also appears on your course cards, above your course titles and on your courses in the marketplace. RacingOwl staff switch it on; there is nothing for you to set.

You and your learners both get emailed for the moments that matter: welcome to the site, enrolment confirmed, course completed (with the certificate attached as a PDF), a new learner signed up, a new enrolment, a payment received, a plan renewing or failing, and password-related mail. The bell in your header counts your unread notifications from every site you run or learn on and opens them in one list on racingowl.com, where Mark all as read clears them all and Mark as read beside one clears just that one; once you switch phone alerts on there, they reach your phone too (the Turn on phone alerts card on your dashboard goes straight to the switch); replies, reviews, chats and reports never come by email. If you verify a WhatsApp number on your own account page (racingowl.com → Your profile → Notifications), you also get your money-and-reports alerts on WhatsApp — a sale, your plan renewing, a failed payment, something reported on your site — free, and separate from the learner add-on (the Add my WhatsApp number card on your dashboard goes straight there). Each morning you may also get one email summing up work waiting to be marked and learners who finished — only when something is new. Holds and flags by the keyword filter reach your bell and phone, not WhatsApp.

Two layers keep your site safe, and only one of them is something you do:

• On your own site, you can hide a review and control who's allowed to post in discussions.
• Automatically, everywhere on RacingOwl, a keyword filter reads new discussion posts, chat messages and reviews, and a course's title, subtitle, descriptions, audience and outcomes whenever they are saved — not lesson text, quiz questions or PDFs. Language associated with dangerous or illegal content holds the post from public view and alerts platform staff immediately; ordinary bad language stays visible but still lands in your Reports list. In a chat only the dangerous kind is held, and a held message waits in the chat itself for you to release or remove; it does not go to Reports. Anyone can also flag a post, review, or course by hand. The filter also sends you a notification whenever it holds or flags a discussion post or a review, and a chat with a held message shows a Held tag in your Chats inbox until it is released or removed. A review the filter holds is hidden and left out of your rating. A course whose own words are held is hidden at once, quietly, so nobody enrolled is told; you are emailed the reason, and a person at RacingOwl looks at it and restores it if the match was wrong.

Wherever a report comes from — someone flagging a post, review, or course by hand, or the filter catching it automatically — it arrives in one place: Manage → Reports. You're notified whenever something lands there. Open it to see what was reported and why, with the most serious first. Go and look takes you to the post or review, where you can remove or hide it if it needs it; then close the report with I have dealt with this or Nothing wrong here. Separately, RacingOwl itself can suspend a site over content or conduct. If that ever happens you are emailed, and Manage says so with an address to write to. While suspended, every page of your site shows that it is unavailable, with the reason, and your courses leave the marketplace. RacingOwl can also hide a post, a review or a course after a report: the author of a hidden post or review is told a moderator removed it, and if a course is hidden, the site owner is emailed the reason and nobody can open that course, including learners already enrolled.

When RacingOwl hides one of your courses, everyone enrolled on it is told too: a notification in their bell, and an email saying the course is no longer available and can no longer be opened. The email does not give them the reason, which stays between you and RacingOwl. It tells anyone who paid that they can ask your site for a refund, through Chat or by replying to one of your emails, so that request comes to you (refunds are in section 8). The course leaves their All my learning list, their to-do list and their scores, and anything they earned on it, such as a certificate, is still theirs. If you think it was a mistake, or you have changed the course, tell us through Ask RacingOwl. RacingOwl can restore the course, which opens it again to exactly the people it was open to before, and you are emailed when that happens.

Once your site exists and you've signed in, every page under Manage has an Ask RacingOwl button at the bottom right. It is a direct line to the RacingOwl team while you set up: a question about your plan, a course that won't publish, a word on a screen you don't understand. It isn't there before you sign in, and your learners never see it. It is between you and RacingOwl, and separate from the Chats your learners send you (section 11).

The chat window, open over a Manage page: your question, the automatic reply, and the answer from the RacingOwl team.

Write your question and press Send. When you start a new question, an automatic reply comes straight away — inside the staffed hours shown on the window, Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm IST, it says someone will join you in this window; outside them, that your message is safe and we will answer when we open — and the team is told you are waiting. You can close the window and carry on: the answer appears in the same chat, and when a reply is waiting the button shows a number on the next page you open. It is one conversation that stays with your site, so there is nothing to open or close.

Help is built into the product first. Most pages under Manage carry a "?" beside the controls that need explaining, and the first time you open a page a short tour points out what matters — both go quiet once you've seen them, and the compass button at the bottom right replays the tour. If something is confusing or missing, choose "Help make RacingOwl better" in your account menu and tell us; it reaches the RacingOwl team directly. Then, the usual suspects:

A published course isn't showing in the marketplace

Check it's actually published — not draft, unlisted, private or archived, and not taken down by RacingOwl or on a suspended site. A lapsed RacingOwl plan doesn't hide the course; it blocks new purchases, so learners can see it but not buy it.

A learner can't complete a quiz

Check the pass mark and attempts allowed — "you've used all your attempts" is expected once they've used them up. If the quiz has a written answer in it, their attempt is waiting for you under Manage → Marking; nothing moves until you score it.

A learner says a lesson is locked

That lesson has a release rule — so many days after enrolling, or a date. The outline tells them when it opens. To open it now for everybody, use Remove the rule under the lesson on the Content tab. If the course page says Rejoin to continue instead, their membership has lapsed; paying again reopens the course where they left off.

Payments aren't going through

First check Setting up payments: Manage → Payments should say your payments are activated. If it does, the learner's own bank, card or UPI app has most likely declined the payment — ask them to try again or pay another way. If it keeps failing, write to support@racingowl.com with the learner's email and the time they tried.

A learner paid but closed the window before it finished

Nothing is lost. RacingOwl hears about the payment from Razorpay itself, and checks again a little later, so the learner gets the course and the receipt on their own, usually within half an hour. If they paid for a course they still can't open after that, write to support with the time they paid.

A live class link doesn't work

RacingOwl only stores the link you pasted, and learners always join through your site, so a new link reaches them without a new invitation. For a repeating class, use Change the days, the time, the link or the last date on the Virtual classes tab. For a single class, cancel it and add a new live class with the new link; learners are emailed the cancellation and the new invitation.

You're stuck and want to ask RacingOwl

Once you've signed in, every page under Manage has an Ask RacingOwl button at the bottom right. Open it, write your question and press Send. You'll see an automatic reply at once: inside the staffed hours, Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm IST, it says someone will join you; outside them, that we will answer when we open. The answer appears in the same window, and the button shows a number when a reply is waiting.