How Much Is That EdTech Product Costing?
The other day I spent hours looking up EdTech products that are freemium (or just outright not free) looking up their cost. First, I do not think free is sustainable or a good idea necessarily. High quality products require talented people to create, market, sell, maintain, and provide professional development around. Unless you are a billion dollar company that can afford to spend millions on giving away EdTech to schools, free is not a business model.
However, it was eye opening to see all of the costs in one place. I multiplied all the monthly charges by 12. $15 x 12 = $180!!!!!!! Whoa, if I saw a sticker price of $180 I would laugh and say no way yet a low price of $15 a month feels like a steal! That is half to almost an entire days pay for some teachers!
Many of the EdTech products I looked up did not put pricing on their website. As my dad used to tell me, if price was a selling point they would put it out front. I used the checkbox feature in Google Sheets to automatically tally up how much it would cost a teacher to pay out of pocket if they were to buy several EdTech tools. It’s not hard to get to $1000 quickly! And this doesn’t at all include how much teachers spend out of pocket on pencils, classroom supplies that are not EdTech tools, and professional development books and conferences.
Site licenses bring the cost way down but it can be challenging to get your school to buy all the site licenses you want, especially when only a fraction of the staff will use it.