Getting started
What Inbox Academy is, and how an email course works
Last updated
Inbox Academy delivers courses by email. You write the lessons once and set how far apart they should arrive; the platform sends them to each learner on their own schedule, counted from the day that learner signed up rather than from a fixed calendar date.
There is no course website for your learners to log into, and nothing for them to install. If they have an email address, they can be enrolled in your courses.
How an email course works
Every course follows the same three steps.
You write it. A course consists of a sequence of lessons, with quizzes, assignments and decision points along the way. It can be a single path, or branch so different learners get different content. Each item carries a waiting period, such as "two days after the previous one," and these delays transform a collection of lessons into a structured schedule.
Learners enroll. Public courses have a public page. A learner can self-enroll using their email address and nothing more: no account, no password, no app. There are additional methods for enrolling users, which you can learn more about in the guide.
It runs itself. From then on the course sends itself. Each learner moves through it at their own pace, and you can watch where everyone has got to.
The schedule is per learner, not per calendar
Twenty people who sign up on twenty different days each get lesson one on their own first day. You are not sending a broadcast, you are running twenty independent courses from one piece of writing.
What you build
Lessons are the emails your learner receives, an explanation, an exercise, something to read.
Quizzes are multiple-choice questions with a passing score. Where the learner's mail client supports it, they answer without leaving their inbox. That matters more than it sounds: the login screen is where most learners quietly stop.
Assignments ask the learner to send something back — a piece of writing or a file — for a person on your team to review.
Decision points ask one question with no right answer, so learners can choose which path they take through the course.
What your learners see
From the learner's perspective, the entire course consists solely of emails. After enrolling, lessons begin to arrive. They can unsubscribe from any email at any time with just one click.
When they finish, you can have the course award a certificate automatically or not, if that is not the kind of course you are running.
Where your courses live
Everything you create belongs to an organization. You named yours when you signed up, and you are its admin.
An organization encompasses your courses, learners, and teammates, and it features a public page listing the courses available for enrollment.
What you do not have to do
Build or host a website
Ask learners to create accounts
Remember to send anything on time
Chase people who have fallen behind
Next steps
The fastest way to understand this is to build something small. The next article walks through creating your first course end to end, it takes about fifteen minutes, and you can throw the result away afterwards.