Pricing is often the first question that most people ask when it comes to e-learning and online learning in general. We get that. However, don’t get too bogged down in the detail of pricing models until you are confident that the learning solution you have identified fulfils your business need. You can easily end up spending lots of money on both applications (like a learning management system) and then filling it with rubbish content. Quality over quantity in our books!
Breaking down the pricing models, you will tend to find there aren’t really that many variations. The most common ones are: –
- All you can eat – normally a monthly or annual fee where you can consume all the content you like, as much as you like. No fees per user, or per person. Usually this pricing model is still calculated based on the number of employees within your business. Double check whether you can put the content on your own LMS or not?
- Per User – a pretty traditional model, where essentially every time you want to add a user or add more courses, there will be a cost associated (this way of working seems to be fading out fast)
- Credit / Seat Model – as popular as the ‘all you can eat’ the credit model allows organisations to only buy the number of seats that actually need when they need it. You’re not getting locked into long contracts (unlike a per user model) and usually credits can be used across all different types of courses. Top up as needed
- Custom – sometimes, depending on what you’re doing, you’ll end up in a situation where you’ve spent a small fortune on an LMS, so the content will come for free. Other times you’ll have included some bespoke work or opted for a multi-year deal. All of these options can radically impact the pricing mechanisms used
There’s no right or wrong to pricing. Just choose what is right for your business and your budget. Some organisations prefer very fixed pricing, others (if not most now) want to know they’re getting good value for money and they’re only paying for what they need.
Head on over to the Mi Crow pricing pages to see how we offer flexible pricing that caters for both the ‘all you can eat’ and credit model. Our approach is “Learning Made Easy” and we apply that to the way we do business too. We’ll work with you and your budget to find the pricing solution that fits.
