When a student purchases your course or joins your community, Thrive Academy handles the entire entry experience automatically. Account creation, enrolment, and first login all happen in under 60 seconds with no password, no registration form, and no friction. Inside the community, students have a unified experience — a social feed, structured course content, gamification, and account management — all in one place, under your branding.
Note that during our testing phases, students will be migrated once you get the go-ahead from our team, as product linking and purchasing is not yet available.
Thrive Academy puts community at the centre of the learning experience. Students don’t land in an isolated course player — they land in your community activity feed, with courses, discussions, and gamification all accessible from a single sidebar. Every account is tied to the student’s email address, meaning one login gives them access to every community they belong to across all creators on the platform.
How Students Access Your Community
Students access your Community in two ways:
After a ThriveCart purchase: Checkout automatically triggers account creation and enrolment. The student receives a magic link email within 30 seconds — one click lands them directly inside your Community. No separate account creation or login required.
Direct sign-up (free or invitation communities): Students arrive at your community landing page, create an account using their email, and enter via your chosen access model (Public, Free but Private, or Invitation Only).
On their first entry, students move through an onboarding overlay that guides them to complete their profile, set a learning goal, and earn their first gamification points — before they ever open a lesson.
When joining for the first time, students are given the opportunity to set up their profile, including a profile picture, customizing their display name, and adding an optional short bio. If no photo is uploaded, their display name initials are used in their profile icon.
They walk through an onboarding process that gathers information about their goals in the community, and then launches them directly into courses, communities, or events.
Completing each stage in the onboarding process grants them XP, as set up under Gamification > Point Rules > Onboarding.
Magic Links and Passwordless Login
Thrive Academy is passwordless by default. Magic links are the primary login method, so students never need to create or remember a password unless they choose to.
Immediately after purchase, students are emailed a magic link to access the community or course.
How magic links work:
- Login magic links expire after 15 minutes and are single-use
- Signup and welcome magic links (sent on first purchase) expire after 24 hours
- Students can request a new link at any time from the login page by entering their email and clicking Send magic link — it arrives in under 30 seconds
- After 3 resend requests, students are directed to contact support (a spam prevention measure that resets after 24 hours)
Returning student login options:
Students visiting the login page can authenticate via:
- Magic link (recommended) — enter email, click Send magic link, click the link in their inbox
- Password — only available if the student chose to set one after their first login
If a student belongs to communities from multiple creators, they’ll see a community selection screen after logging in, showing each creator with a badge indicating which is new or last visited.
Setting a password (optional): After first login via magic link, students see an optional prompt to set a password for faster future access. This is entirely skippable, and the platform never requires it. Students who do set a password can always use either method going forward.
Tip: Remind students that if they forget which email they used to sign up, they can try multiple addresses on the magic link screen — they’ll only receive a link for the one that matches their account.
Adding Students Manually
Creators can grant access to students who haven’t purchased — useful for beta testers, team members, complimentary access, or manual enrolments.
To add a student manually:
- From the main Thrive Academy dashboard, navigate to Students
- Click Add Student
- In the modal, complete the following fields:
- Full Name (required)
- Email (required)
- Course (required) — select the course to enrol them in
- Community — select the community to add them to
- Generate Password (optional) — to create a temporary password that can be shared with your new student
- Click Enrol Student
If the email address doesn’t already have an account, the system creates one automatically. The account starts with no password set — the student authenticates via magic link until they choose to add one.
Helping students who have lost login access:
If a student can’t log in or hasn’t received their magic link:
- Direct them to https://lms.thrivecart.com/auth/student/signin to request a fresh magic link
- Confirm the email they’re using matches the one on their purchase
- If they’ve locked themselves out after failed password attempts, their account unlocks automatically after 15 minutes, or they can reset via Forgot Password?
- For students who no longer have access to their original email address, the account recovery process requires creator intervention to update the email on the account.
Navigating the Community as a Student
When a student enters your community, they land in the activity feed — a live stream of posts, announcements, and community activity. From here, everything is accessible from the left sidebar:
Sidebar navigation includes:
- Members — A full list of members within the community, where members can message each other
- Leaderboard — Community XP rankings (if gamification is enabled)
- Courses — A list of all courses the student is enrolled in, with progress indicators per module
- Spaces — Discussion areas such as Announcements, General, Q&A, Student Wins, and Resources. Space visibility depends on the student’s access level (public Spaces are always visible; private or secret Spaces show a locked gate if the student doesn’t have access)
The top navigation bar gives students access to:
- Their inbox — Where they’ll have access to any direct messages sent by other community members, including the course creators, admins, and moderators
- Earned XP and Gamification — The badge icon opens their gamification dashboard showing all points earned, a calendar of login and learning activity, as well as any badges that they have earned.
- Profile & Settings — Avatar, display name, learning goals, notification preferences, and billing
- Notifications — Tracks all activity on their content such as DM’s received, if someone has replied or reacted to their post, community announcement has been posted, or dripped lesson content access has been granted
Viewing courses: Students click into any course from either the left or right sidebar to access the lesson player. The course discussion spaces remain visible within the course, so students stay connected to the community while learning.
Tracking Progress: Video lessons save their position automatically and mark complete at 80% watched. Text lessons complete after the student scrolls to the bottom and spends at least 30 seconds on the page.
Content they can’t access yet shows a locked state with a clear message about what’s required to unlock it — whether that’s completing a previous lesson (sequential drip), waiting for a date (date-based drip), or not having the right tag (tag-based access).
Understanding Achievements, XP, and Leaderboards
Thrive Academy’s gamification system rewards students for learning activity and community participation. Creators can choose from three preset configurations — Light Touch, Engagement Booster, or Gamified Mastery — or customise point values individually. To see more on setting gamification and customizing XP in your community, see our guide on gamification here.
Example XP:
| Action | Default XP |
| Course completion | 500 XP |
| Quiz passed | 100 XP |
| Lesson completion | 50 XP |
| Discussion post | 25 XP |
| Helpful comment | 10 XP |
Achievements: Students earn points and unlock badges based on milestones in their learning and community activity. Each badge has a rarity level — Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Legendary — and triggers an in-platform celebration modal showing the badge animation, XP earned, and an option to share the achievement to the community feed.
Leaderboard: Ranks students by XP within the community. Students can toggle between Today, This Week, This Month, and All Time views. Participation and visibility on the leaderboard can be adjusted by the creator in Community Settings, and individual students can opt out in their profile privacy settings.
Students earn their first XP during the onboarding overlay itself — before they’ve completed a single lesson. This is intentional: it introduces the gamification loop from the very first session, which significantly improves early engagement.
To review their XP and badges earned, students can click on the badges icon in the top right of their browser, where they’ll see a full overview of all points, levels, badges, and their daily streak count.
Farther down the page, they’ll also see details of their full activities, badges, and activity calendar.
Viewing and Messaging Members
Within the Members tab in the top-left sidebar, students have access to the community members list. From there, they can search and message other community members,
Hovering over a member will show their enrolled and completed courses (if any), as well as the number of posts they’ve created and how many days they are into a learning streak. Each member can create an “About” via the bio in their profile settings that will be public, and the preview will also show the badges that they’ve earned.
Any community member can message individual community members by clicking the “Message” button beside their name.
Messages can also be reviewed by clicking the inbox icon in the top right corner of their dashboard, which will show all messages sent and received.
Clicking “+ New” will allow them to generate a new message to community members, and clicking more than one member will generate a group chat:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
- Q: Why didn’t my student receive their magic link email after purchasing?
- A: Confirm the student’s email matches the address used at ThriveCart checkout. Ask them to check their spam folder. Magic link emails expire after 24 hours — if expired, they can request a new one from the community login page.
- Q: My student says they can no longer access the community — what should I check?
- A: First, confirm their purchase status in ThriveCart. If a refund was processed or a subscription payment failed, their access tags will have been removed automatically, which revokes community access. To restore access, reapply the relevant tag from the student record. If the tag is in place and they still can’t enter, check whether the community’s access model has changed or whether the student is using the correct login email.
- Q: Can a student be part of multiple communities from different creators?
- A: Yes. A student’s Thrive Academy account is universal — one login gives them access to every creator’s community they’ve joined. After logging in, students who belong to multiple creators see a community selection screen where they can choose which community to enter. They can switch communities at any time using the community switcher in their sidebar.
- Q: A student says their XP or achievements aren’t showing — how do I resolve this?
- A: Confirm that gamification is enabled for the community in Community Settings. If a specific achievement isn’t appearing after the trigger condition was met (e.g. course completion), use Resend Achievement from the student’s Actions menu. XP awards from Sequences (e.g. Award XP on Quiz Passed) require the relevant Sequence to be active — verify the trigger and action are correctly configured in the course builder under Sequences.
- Q: Can a student request a magic link more than 3 times?
- A: After 3 resend requests within 24 hours, the system directs the student to contact support. This is intentional — it prevents link sharing and spam. After 24 hours, the resend limit resets automatically and the student can request a new link from the login page as normal.
- Q: A student wants to cancel their subscription — how do they do it?
- A: Students can manage their subscription directly from their Profile → Billing within the community. If they cancel, access is revoked automatically when the cancellation processes. If they need a refund, that is handled through the standard ThriveCart refund process, which will also revoke access automatically.