
Ask HN: Is it a smart move to give out discount for students? - tuangeek
I run an API service and was recently contacted by a professor at a university asking for a discount for a subscription with my service. They are asking for more than 1 million request, which would run for about $1k. However it would only cost me about $100 in server cost. I want give it to them $1 so I have some kind of record and accountability if my service gets abused.<p>What are the pros and cons? What would you guys do in my situation?
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scott31
Tell the professor to teach about FOSS and to stay away from SaaS offerings.
It is also ethically wrong to ask students to pay for a proprietary service as
part of their university education

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whyhow
This is how you end up with students who are not prepared for the workforce
because they haven't been trained on the tools that businesses actually use.

There is nothing ethically wrong with asking students to purchase proprietary
services, but it is tone deaf to make them buy absurdly expensive software.

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notahacker
Is your service the sort of thing that students will learn to work with and
then want to use in their corporate job afterwards? That's the pro.

Is your service the sort of resource that the university would happily pay $1k
without blinking if you didn't offer a discount? That's the con. (Universities
pay for some _very_ expensive subscription services for courses, and sometimes
even individual research students can budget that much from whoever's funding
their research)

Without knowing more, I'd guess something students won't use anywhere near as
many API requests as the professor thinks, and might not be used by students
later in life either though...

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tuangeek
Well the professor wants to use it for a research project. So I don't think it
will be used by students. I went ahead and offer the service for $100 for the
duration of the project.

Thanks for your input.

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saluki
Just give it to them as a free account, I expect the account would be tied to
the professors email address for a record.

I would print up some cool stickers of your logo and send them to the
professor to handout to the students using your API.

Maybe give them a tutorial on ways to limit/cache API requests so they don't
overload your servers.

Good will like this could go a long way leading them to recommending you when
ever they can in the future.

Everyone loves stickers they will end up on their laptops and computers and
will be a reminder to use your service in the future.

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tuangeek
Lol I love the sticker idea! But since this is a side project of mine I don't
actually have the resource or design skills to create sticker. But really cool
idea though.

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makeee
I don't see any issue with giving them a discount as long as you're covering
costs (and future support requests). I do this fairly frequently when people
reach out and ask if I have a discount for students, although generally don't
do more than 30% off.

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tuangeek
I did just this. I gave them a price that would cover the cost of running the
server.

