FAQ
Some answers to frequently asked questions about our subscriptions plans, payments and content.
Contact usPayments
What payment method can I use?
What currencies can I pay in for my subscription?
When will I be charged for my ESL Brains subscription plan?
Will the subscription automatically renew each month?
Account and subscription
Can I see the lessons before I decide to pay for a subscription?
You can access any of the free resources published on our page, but you won’t be able to see the paid content before you subscribe to Premium or Unlimited plans. However, you can learn about the details of each lesson from its description. Go to any lesson page and see the lesson overview. This is also where you will see the lesson availability. If it is a Premium Plan lesson, it is available for all subscribers with paid subscriptions. If it’s an Unlimited Plan lesson, it is available only to the subscribers with Unlimited plan.To find free materials go to the Lesson Search page and select the Free filter. If you want to see various lesson formats, i.e. e-lesson plans, Flipped Classroom and Critical Reading Club worksheets, then head to Discover ESL Brains content page for free samples!
How can I cancel my ESL Brains subscription plan?
How can I switch from a paid subscription plan (PREMIUM/UNLIMITED) to a free plan (BASIC)?
How can I change (upgrade or downgrade) my subscription plan if I paid using a credit card?
If you change from a monthly to annual plan, your annual plan will start from the beginning of the next renewal period. For example, you subscribed for the UNLIMITED ($12) plan on Feb 5, then on Feb 20 you decided to change to an annual UNLIMITED plan. You will then stay on the monthly plan until the end of your current monthly period, i.e. Mar 5 in this case, and then on Mar 5 your account will be charged for the annual plan and you’ll be switched to the yearly plan you selected.
How can I change (upgrade or downgrade) my subscription plan if I paid using PayPal?
Upgrading automatically is unavailable at this moment for users who pay with PayPal. If you want to upgrade to UNLIMITED monthly or any annual plans, write to us at [email protected] from the same email address as the one linked to your ESL Brains account.
In terms of downgrading, please wait until the last day of your subscription, cancel it and then set up a new (lower) subscription you want to keep.
I have a subscription plan but the content is still locked?
- Check whether you’re logged in (logged in users see their name + avatar in the top-right corner). If you’re not logged in, then please log in with the account you used for subscribing.
- If you’re logged in, check whether you have an active subscription. Go to the Subscriptiontab and see whether the subscription status is Active.
- If you can’t see any subscriptionsin the Subscription tab, it is quite likely that you’ve logged in with a wrong account. This happens sometimes when you created your account first using just your email address and then the second time you log in using Google or Facebook (and your Google/Facebook emails are different than the one you used for ESL Brains account). This way you create the second account and the second account doesn’t have a subscription so the content is locked. If that’s the case, you need to log out and log in with the proper account – if you don’t remember your username/email address used for registration, please check your mailbox for an email from ESL Brains titled Your ESL Brains account has been created!
- Check whether you have an appropriate subscription for a given lesson. Remember that the PREMIUM subscription plan does not unlock all the lesson plans!
If none of the above helped or you have a subscription with the status On-Hold or Pending-Cancellation, please write to us at [email protected] and we will look into it.
Where do I find invoices for my subscription payments?
How can I change billing details on my invoices?
- Go to the Account Details tab in the My Account page.
- Scroll down to the Billing address section
- Click Edit.
- Make changes in your data and click Save changes.
Once you do that, please email us at [email protected] with a quick note that you want your new billing details to be applied for future invoices.
How to apply an EU VAT number to an active subscription
- Go to your My Account page.
- Click the VAT ID tab (if you don’t see this tab it means your billing address is not within EU).
- Add the VAT number and validate it by clicking the Save button.
- Email us at [email protected] or message us via the on-site chat so that we can properly apply the VAT number to future renewal payments.
Lesson plans
How can I find the lesson I need?
- Use filters. Click Lesson plans in the top-left corner of the page and choose a level or a category. You can also click See all lessons in the bottom-right corner of the drop-down Lesson plans menu. This is where you can search for lessons by level, category and subscription plan. You can also click on Show more filters right under the subscription plan types to browse through the lessons by length or type.
- Browse through the topics. Go to the main page and scroll down until you find topics in rectangles. You can either use one of them or click See all topics under the rectangles.
- Use our search engine. Go to the main page and use the search box in the top-right corner.
How can I edit an e-lesson plan?
- Click File > Make a copy > Entire presentation
- Click File > Download > Microsoft Powerpoint
We allow you to edit our e-lesson plans to adapt them to your needs as long as you don’t make substantial changes and do not remove, hide or change the logo on our slides. The same applies to our printable format (PDFs). Note that we don’t make our lessons available in .doc format.
What we certainly don’t want you to do is to edit our lesson plans so that it’s not clear we created them or to use our logo or format for your own lessons without our consent.
Can I download the videos?
Are there transcripts available for the videos?
- Open a YouTube video.
- Click the More Options (…)button at the bottom of the video.
- Select Open Transcriptfrom the drop-down menu.
- Copy and paste all the lines of text that appear to an editor of your choice to have a complete transcript that you can use. To remove the timestamps, click the More Options (…)icon and select Toggle Timestamp.
TED:
- Open a TED Talk video.
- Click the Transcript link under the video player.
- Copy and paste all the lines of text that appear to an editor of your choice to have a complete transcript that you can use.