StraighterLine monthly membership is billed automatically—cancel before

[sanantone]

@pws thats what subscription means.

For subscriptions like Amazon Prime or a magazine, you're expecting it to renew every month. If you only need 1 or 2 SL courses—and especially if they don't explicitly say that the renewal is automatic and that there aren't any refunds, even one day after the renewal—then you could easily lose $100 by forgetting about it (which I'm sure some have). That's what I mean.

But anyway...

If Straighterline didn't have a membership fee, then they would just charge $150+ per course. Since they have a subscription model, the price customers pay per course stays low. The more courses you take, the more money you save. I guess the closest examples would be Costco and Sam's. In short, you're paying a monthly fee to have access to Straighterline, and you pay a price for each course you want to take. Ed4Credit, in comparison, charges by the course, and each course costs $195. 

I can't remember what's shown to the student when he or she makes a purchase, but the terms and conditions tell customers that there is automatic renewal. Automatic renewal is also mentioned on the billing and refund webpages.