

Ask HN: What is a good price for software that you license to schools? - wahwah

I have an idea for a piece of software that could be utilized by middle and high schools. The software would be run on my server. Basically I would charge each school a fee to let all of their students use the software. I was thinking of charging them a monthly or annual fee, what do you think a reasonable price would be?<p>I really have no idea how much companies charge for this sort of thing.
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fractallyte
Find out how school budgets work, and know who you're selling to.

If you intend to enter at the whole-school level, you'll probably be dealing
with school managers or the school district, and annual software subscriptions
are often in the range of hundreds of dollars, or greater. It can be tough to
deal in this area (politics, 'preferred' partners, etc.).

Particular departments (math, science, history, etc.) have more limited
capitation, but there's usually less bureaucracy. So if you're marketing
toward a particular subject, it may make sense to approach a department head
and find out what their needs and resources are.

(Note that this is not country-specific, so it really depends on where you
are...)

In any case, you must know your market! Find out how much other educational
software companies charge, attend expos, and (if possible) try to meet
teachers or school managers as part of your effort to set a realistic
(affordable) price.

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b1twise_
I've worked at a fairly affluent private school, so I'll give you feedback
based on that. However, you don't really give enough information for me to
tell you what your product might be worth to a school.

\- Charge annually. Schools are full of paperwork and approval processes. A
once a year ritual of approval is easier than agreeing to a monthly bill.

\- If it's less than 1k there's a lot less friction towards approval.

Caveats are that schools do prefer to host their own software (usually on
windows) and can be willing to shell out large amounts of money for the right
product (Blackbaud).

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masterzora
This is impossibly little information to go on. What's the idea? What kind of
competition exists? Are you targeting the more moneyed schools, the less
moneyed, the in between, all of them? What are the costs to you? Is this
something schools need (or can you convince them it is), is it just a "nice to
have", or is it more of a "well, we need to spend this year's budget somehow"?
There's not nearly enough information here to remotely begin answering that
question.

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mindcrime
My advice: go read @sgblank's _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ first.

That said, pricing is a very complex subject... volumes (literally) have been
written on pricing theory. There isn't any easy, off-the-cuff answer.

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abbasmehdi
There is one easy answer: optimize revenue by tweaking this differential:
revenue = profit margin * volume.

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plasma
I'd first work out how much its costing you to produce / maintain / support :)

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abbasmehdi
Go talk to a school...

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wrjrpn
What's the value of your product?

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abbasmehdi
What are you building?

