QuikAuthor

Customer and Partner Training

The People You Most Need to Train Are Not on Your Payroll.

Train customers, partners and franchisees without per-seat pricing. Branded courses, share links, certificates and SCORM export on every plan.

Your customers have bought something they do not yet know how to use. Your resellers are selling a product they half understand. Your franchisees are running your brand in a building you have never visited. Every one of them needs training, and not one of them has a staff number.

That is the audience most training platforms handle worst, because their pricing and their sign-up both assume an employee: a corporate email address, a record in the HR system, and a seat somebody has already budgeted for. External learners break all three assumptions at once, and the platform responds by billing you for each new one.

QuikAuthor prices the author, not the audience. You pay for the people building courses. Up to 200 active monthly learners are included on Pro and Team, only active learners count towards that, and any course can be opened through a public share link by someone who has no account at all.

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A staff member showing a product on a tablet to a customer in a store

Why Do Internal Training Tools Break on External Audiences?

The content is rarely the problem. A product walkthrough is a product walkthrough whoever watches it. What breaks is everything around the content: how a learner gets in, who pays for their seat, and whose name they see when they arrive.

The Usual Way

  • Per-seat licences that bill for every customer you train, so the programme gets more expensive the better it works
  • A sign-up flow that expects a corporate email address and an entry in your HR system
  • A learner portal that carries the vendor's brand, not yours, in front of your own customers
  • Seats you keep paying for months after a customer finished the one course they needed
  • Standards export gated behind an enterprise contract, which is the one thing a partner with their own system asks for
  • A separate tool and a separate contract from the one your internal training already lives in

The QuikAuthor Way

  • Author-seat pricing, so your plan covers the people building the courses rather than the people taking them
  • Up to 200 active monthly learners included on Pro and Team, and only active learners count
  • A public share link for any course, openable by anyone without a QuikAuthor account and revocable at any time
  • White-label branding on every plan including free, so the training looks like it came from you
  • SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 export on every plan, so a partner can host your course inside their own system
  • One library and one tool, with external programmes sitting alongside your internal ones

Which External Audiences Does This Cover?

External training tends to get treated as one problem. It is really several, and they want different things from the same content library.

Customers

Product training, onboarding and how-to content for the people who bought what you sell. Success here is a customer who stops raising the same ticket, which is why the content wants to be short and findable rather than comprehensive.

Resellers and Channel Partners

People who sell your product without working for you. They need product knowledge, positioning and answers to the objections they actually hear, and they need it to look like it came from you rather than from an authoring tool.

Franchisees

Independently owned sites running your brand to your standard. The content is highly standardised and the audience turns over constantly, which makes a per-registered-user licence the worst available pricing model.

Installers and Field Service Partners

Third parties who fit, service or support the product on site. Mobile matters more than anything else for this group, because the learner is on a roof or in a plant room rather than at a desk.

Suppliers and Contractors

Site induction, access rules and safety content for people you do not employ but are responsible for. This is the external audience where completion evidence genuinely has to stand up afterwards.

Members and Professional Audiences

Associations and professional bodies delivering training to a membership. QuikAuthor does not take payment on your behalf, so the membership or the fee is handled wherever it is handled today and the training sits behind it.

What Changes When the Learner Is Not an Employee?

Six things, and only one of them is about the course itself.

Getting In Has to Be Easier

An employee can be told to create an account. A customer cannot. QuikAuthor learners never sign up manually: they receive a direct link by email, set a password on first access, and from then on see everything assigned to them in their own Learner Dashboard. For content that needs no tracking at all, generate a public share link and send it to anyone, including people without a QuikAuthor account, and revoke it whenever you choose.

The Brand Has to Be Yours

White-labelling is included on every QuikAuthor plan, free included. Upload your own font files, set your colours and your logo, choose button shapes and styles, and save a global branding profile that applies to every course automatically. An external learner should not be able to work out which tool you used.

The Audience Is a Market, Not a Headcount

An internal audience is a number you already know. An external one is not. QuikAuthor counts active monthly learners rather than registered accounts, so a customer base of a thousand people costs you for the ones who actually trained this month.

Proof Still Has to Exist

Branded completion certificates are issued automatically when a learner finishes a course, carrying your logo and colours, and learners can download and share them. Completions, pass rates and individual question responses are all recorded, and the reports export for whoever asks for them.

Language Stops Being Optional

AI Translation covers 20 languages and translates the whole course, including video transcripts and subtitles, while preserving your design, layout and formatting. A partner network across six countries is one build rather than six.

Some Partners Will Want the File

SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 export is included on every plan, and the package is a standalone file rather than a wrapper that calls back to us. A reseller with their own learning management system can host your course inside it, and it keeps working regardless of what happens to your subscription.

How an External Programme Gets Built

Four steps, and the first one is mostly copying and pasting.

1

Start From What Already Exists

Customer-facing knowledge is rarely missing, it is scattered. Upload the help article, the installation PDF, the recorded demo or the partner deck. The AI Asset Converter transcribes and structures video, audio, PDF, Word and PowerPoint into lessons.

2

Let the AI Do the Structuring

The AI turns the source into ordered lessons and drafts knowledge checks from what the material actually says. Every course opens in the full lesson builder afterwards, so the product team corrects a draft rather than writing one.

3

Brand It and Add the Interaction

Apply your branding profile, which is included on every plan, and swap in any of the 70+ interactive templates. A customer who is not obliged to finish needs a reason to, and a knowledge check is a cheaper reason than a video.

4

Choose How Each Audience Gets In

Assign it by email for the audiences you need to track, share a public link for the ones you do not, or export a SCORM package for the partner who runs their own system. The same course supports all three.

What Does It Cost to Train a Large External Audience?

The number that decides this is not the plan price, it is how the platform counts learners. QuikAuthor counts active monthly learners, so somebody who registered in March and did nothing in April does not appear in April's figure.

Pro is $69 per author per month, or $799 per year, and includes up to 200 active monthly learners. Team is $2,000 per year for three authors on otherwise identical terms. The free plan covers 25 courses and up to 50 active monthly learners with no credit card and no expiry, which is enough to test a real programme rather than a demo.

Above 200 active monthly learners, additional learners are charged on a published ladder that gets cheaper as the audience grows:

  • 201 to 500 learners: $1.00 per learner per month
  • 501 to 750 learners: $0.80 per learner per month
  • 751 to 1,000 learners: $0.65 per learner per month
  • 1,001 to 2,500 learners: $0.50 per learner per month

So a partner programme where 500 people train in a given month sits on Pro at $69 for the author plus $300 for the 300 learners above the included 200, and drops back to $69 in a quiet month. Compare that with a per-registered-user licence, where the 500 keep billing whether they train or not. Current figures for every plan are on the pricing page.

Where QuikAuthor Is Not the Right Tool

If you need to sell the training.

QuikAuthor does not take payments, run a checkout or operate a course store. If the business model is selling courses to the public, you need a platform built to handle money, and the training itself can still be authored here and exported.

If learners must find and enrol themselves.

There is no self-service catalogue an unknown visitor can browse and register against. Access is either assigned by you or opened with a public share link, which covers most customer and partner programmes and does not cover an open public academy.

If the programme has to be driven by your CRM.

QuikAuthor has no packaged integration with a CRM, so enrolment does not fire from a deal stage or a support ticket. Open API access is available on Enterprise plans, which makes it a build rather than a setting.

If you need spaced repetition.

QuikAuthor does not have spaced repetition. If drip-fed reinforcement over weeks is the core mechanic of your partner programme rather than a nice addition, say so before you choose.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is customer and partner training?

Customer and partner training is any programme aimed at people who use or sell your product without being employed by you: customers, resellers, channel partners, franchisees, installers, contractors and members. The content overlaps heavily with internal training. What differs is access, branding and billing, because an external learner has no corporate email address, no record in your HR system and no seat anybody has budgeted for.

Why does per-seat pricing not work for external training?

Because the size of an external audience is a market rather than a headcount, so a licence priced per registered user makes a programme more expensive the better it works. QuikAuthor prices the author instead. Up to 200 active monthly learners are included on Pro and Team, only active learners count towards that figure, and additional learners are charged on a published ladder that falls from $1.00 to $0.50 per learner per month as the audience grows.

Do external learners need a QuikAuthor account?

Not necessarily. For a course you want to track, learners are invited by email, set a password on first access and then use their own Learner Dashboard, so they never sign up manually. For a course that needs no tracking, generate a public share link and send it to anyone, including people without a QuikAuthor account. You keep full control and can revoke access at any time.

Can training for customers be branded as ours rather than QuikAuthor's?

Yes, and on every plan including free. Beyond logo and colours you can upload custom font files, choose button shapes and styles, and set a global branding profile that applies automatically to every course you build. That matters more for an external audience than an internal one, because the training is customer-facing material and carries your name.

How many external learners does a QuikAuthor plan cover?

The free plan supports up to 50 active monthly learners. Pro and Team each include 200. Beyond 200, additional learners are charged on a tiered rate: $1.00 per learner per month from 201 to 500, $0.80 from 501 to 750, $0.65 from 751 to 1,000 and $0.50 from 1,001 to 2,500. Only active learners count, so a dormant registration in a quiet month does not bill.

Can a partner host our course inside their own LMS?

Yes. Courses export as SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 packages compatible with virtually every modern learning management system, including Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, Cornerstone and SAP SuccessFactors, and the exports include resume functionality and score tracking. The package is standalone rather than a link back to our servers, so it keeps working independently of your subscription. Paid plans include unlimited SCORM export and the free plan includes 10 lifetime exports.

Can you sell courses to customers through QuikAuthor?

No. QuikAuthor does not take payment, run a checkout or host a course store, so the commercial side of a paid academy has to live somewhere else. What it does do is build the training and export it, which means a membership organisation can collect fees however it already collects them and use QuikAuthor for the content behind the paywall.

How do you prove an external learner completed the training?

With completion data and a certificate rather than a read receipt. Assign the course, set a due date, and automated reminders chase what is outstanding. QuikAuthor records completions, pass rates and individual question responses, exports those reports for audits or account reviews, and issues a branded completion certificate automatically when a learner finishes, which the learner can download and share.

Can one course serve partners in several countries?

Yes. AI Translation supports 20 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Turkish, Indonesian, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese. It translates the whole course including video transcripts and subtitles, and preserves your design, layout and formatting, so a partner network is one build rather than one per market.

Train the People Who Are Not on Your Payroll.

Build one customer or partner course and send it to a real audience before you pay anything. The free plan includes 25 courses, up to 50 active monthly learners, custom branding and every AI feature, with no credit card and no expiry.

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Related reading: Learner Management · Branding and White Label · Trainers and Consultants