Business Requirement Document (BRD)

This Business Requirement Document defines the commercial and product vision for EduNest LMS, a production-ready, self-hosted Learning Management System sold on CodeCanyon. It is written for buyers, project sponsors, and stakeholders who need to understand why the product exists, who it serves, and what it must deliver to be successful as a brandable platform for selling and delivering online courses.

Vision

EduNest LMS exists to let course creators, coaches, training businesses, and academies launch a credible, full-featured online course store and learning portal in hours instead of months — without building one from scratch.

The product is delivered as a single self-hosted Next.js 16 application the buyer fully owns and controls. It serves four experiences from one codebase: a public storefront (/), a learner portal (/learner), an instructor portal (/instructor), and an admin/CMS panel (/admin). The core ships lean and English-first, with advanced capabilities unlocked through CreativeCape license keys so an academy can grow exactly as far as its audience demands.

Vision statement: Give anyone the power to run their own online course business — owned, branded, and monetized on their terms.

Goals

#	Goal	Description
G1	Time-to-launch	A buyer can install via the wizard and go live quickly on standard serverless hosting.
G2	Ownership	The buyer owns the code, data, and infrastructure — no per-seat SaaS fees.
G3	Sell courses	Catalog, cart, checkout, and enrollment work end to end out of the box.
G4	Deliver learning	Drip-aware course player, progress tracking, quizzes, and certificates-ready content model.
G5	Extensibility	Premium add-ons unlock via purchase codes / license entitlements without code surgery.
G6	Quality	Production-grade security (encrypted secrets, JWT, RBAC) and a clean, conventional codebase.

Business Objectives

Sell a complete product, not a starter kit. A working storefront, three role portals, and an admin CMS ship ready to use.
Tiered revenue model. A free core (course selling and delivery) drives adoption; 93 built-in add-ons (53 channel integration providers + 40 premium LMS features) drive upsell.
Protect intellectual property. Premium add-ons are gated by CreativeCape licensing — entered as a purchase code in admin and verified offline by RS256 signature.
Reduce support load. A self-service install wizard, in-product documentation, and consistent conventions minimize buyer questions.
Enable resale & white-label. The product is fully brandable (theme, logo, copy) so buyers can deliver client academies.

Scope

In Scope

Public storefront: course catalog, course detail with curriculum and reviews, bundles, instructor profiles, blog, membership/pricing pages, cart, and checkout.
Cart & checkout with coupons and gift cards, tax, and pluggable payment gateways (PayPal built in as the online gateway, plus Cash-on-Delivery / Bank Transfer offline methods).
Enrollment & learning: automatic enrollment on paid orders, drip-content unlocking, lesson player, progress tracking, quizzes/surveys/assignments, and learner↔instructor messaging.
Learner portal (/learner): my-courses, my-bundles, progress, grades, calendar, orders, subscriptions, wishlist, messages, notifications, analytics, account.
Instructor portal (/instructor): course/bundle authoring, students, enrollments, earnings, payouts, statements, quizzes, surveys, submissions, reviews, analytics.
Admin/CMS (/admin): learning management, customers, orders, revenue, marketing (coupons, gift cards), CMS pages and homepage sections, settings, integrations, and license/add-on activation.
Install wizard (/install), R2/S3-compatible media storage, and admin configuration of integrations.

Out of Scope (Optional via Add-ons or Buyer-Supplied)

Hosting, domain registration, and SSL provisioning (buyer responsibility).
Third-party service accounts — SMTP/email provider, SMS, WhatsApp, payment gateway credentials — supplied by the buyer.
Premium LMS capabilities delivered only as licensed add-ons (e.g. certificates, advanced exams, forums, gamification/points).
Premium channel providers beyond the free defaults (e.g. Stripe, Razorpay, SendGrid, additional storage/analytics/chat providers).

Stakeholders & Personas

Persona	Description	Primary Needs
Store Owner / Admin	Operates the academy day to day.	Catalog control, order fulfilment, revenue reporting, settings, licensing, integrations.
Instructor	Creates and sells courses and bundles.	Course authoring, enrollments, earnings & payouts, student communication, analytics.
Learner	Buys and consumes courses.	Easy purchase, an organized portal, a clear lesson player, progress and grades.
Buyer / Developer	Purchases and deploys EduNest.	Easy install, clean code, license control, extensibility.

Persona Notes

The Store Owner/Admin works in /admin, behind the admin session (admin_token) with a fine-grained resource:action permission matrix.
Instructors and Learners share one member session (member_session, 30-day JWT); an accountType field routes them to /instructor or /learner.
The Buyer/Developer is served by the /install wizard, deployment guides, and the conventional Next.js App Router architecture.

Business Rules

BR-1 — Enrollment on paid order. A learner is enrolled in the purchased course(s) only when the order reaches the paid status; enrollment is created automatically at that moment (no extra manual step for online payments).
BR-2 — Offline orders need admin "mark paid". Orders placed with an offline method (Cash-on-Delivery / Bank Transfer) are created as pending. The admin must open the order and Mark as Paid, which fulfils the transaction and creates the enrollments.
BR-3 — Bundles and memberships grant access. Buying a bundle enrolls the learner in its courses (source: bundle); buying a membership/pricing plan grants its listed courses and bundles (source: membership). Free or fully-discounted courses enroll immediately (source: free).
BR-4 — Drip controls access, not ownership. Enrollment grants ownership; lesson and bundle drip rules (immediate, days-after-enroll, on a date, or after the previous item) decide when content unlocks. Locked lesson content is withheld server-side.
BR-5 — Premium add-ons require a license. A premium channel provider or LMS feature serves only when unlocked by a valid CreativeCape entitlement or per-add-on purchase code; localhost/dev hosts are unlocked for development.
BR-6 — Secrets are encrypted at rest. Integration credentials (gateway keys, SMTP passwords) are stored AES-256-GCM encrypted and never returned in plaintext to clients.
BR-7 — Admin actions are permission-gated. Admin operations are checked per route against the role's resource:action permissions; system/super roles bypass the matrix.
BR-8 — Instructor earnings on paid sales. When a paid order fulfils a priced course with an instructor, an instructor-earnings record is created for later payout.

Success Metrics

A buyer installs through the wizard and reaches a working storefront and admin without manual database setup.
A learner can browse the catalog, check out, and immediately access a purchased course (or after admin "mark paid" for offline orders).
Coupons, gift cards, bundles, and memberships apply correctly at checkout and grant the right access.
Drip rules, lesson completion, and progress percentage behave as documented; courses flip to completed at 100%.
Premium add-ons activate cleanly via purchase code and remain valid offline, surviving brief license-server outages through the grace window.
The product earns and sustains a strong CodeCanyon rating, with support handled through creative-cape.com.