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Learning Platform Pricing Comparison
When it comes to choosing a cloud-based learning platform, we understand pricing should be fair, transparent and above all, represent value. We review the four major costs involved in online learning platforms and how Tribal Habits provides you with favourable options for each.
Upfront costs
Before coming to Tribal Habits, a lot of our customers express their surprise at the lack of pricing information available from other providers. They speak of hidden fees or surprise costs that were incurred before they’d even created any online training or enrolled a single learner!
Set-up costs – Some older learning platforms can require considerable effort to provision a new organisation portal while some online learning vendors use set-up costs as a way to improve margins (particularly as a way to coerce organisations into longer contracts to ‘spread set-up costs over many years). Set-up costs for these learning platforms can range up to $25,000 or even more.
Implementation fees – Many complicated online learning platforms may require an implementation fee. This may include costs for upfront training of staff, help from the platform provider in setting up parts of the platform or ‘consulting’ services which are required to otherwise use the platform. Implementation costs for these learning platforms can range up to $50,000 or even more.
At Tribal Habits, there are no upfront costs when you subscribe to an Active plan – There are no set-up costs, no implementation costs, no cost for admin training sessions and no branding costs. It is completely free to set-up your Tribal Habits portal and initial admin training sessions are included at no cost. We have recently introduced an Essentials plan to our customers, providing access to our platform for smaller organisations, those companies with less of a learner base, or with seasonal or irregular usage requirements. This plan includes a small platform fee, billed annually which covers your portal and hosting.
Ongoing subscription costs
Online learning platforms typically utilise a subscription model – this means you pay a regular subscription to maintain access to your platform and avoid cancellation of your account. Subscriptions should eliminate large upfront costs and incentivise the online learning platform to maintain a high support standard and provide regular improvements.
Plan costs – Plan costs are on-going online learning costs associated with the volume of activity in your platform. The most common plan cost is a ‘per user per month’ charge and there are predominantly two types of ‘users’ – active and stored. Many learning platforms will charge based on the number of ‘stored’ users an account has and will take into account every user you’ve created or enrolled, regardless of whether that user has even accessed your portal. This method is simple but can be very inefficient if the majority of your users are not accessing your portal every month.
At Tribal Habits, we use ‘active’ users (or actual users) to calculate your subscription rate – In this case, only users who log into your Tribal Habits portal are counted towards your costs. This method most closely aligns the value you receive with the costs you are paying.
Hidden costs
When assessing which learning platform to chose, it’s critical that you understand your total cost of ownership from the start. Many platforms provide competitive subscription pricing, but then reveal hidden costs you weren’t made aware of.
Online training creation – This is the biggest hidden cost in online training – where will your online training content come from? Almost all online learning platforms are designed to host modules, not to create them. This results in the need to source your online learning modules elsewhere, for an additional cost. Some platforms will claim to have the tools you need to create content yourself, but the tools are simple – often providing nothing more than some basic text, a few images and simple quizzes. This means you will either need to pay for expensive eLearning Authoring software (and learn how to use it, or pay an external consulting to create training for you) or subscribe to a separate online training library (which is often unbranded and time-consuming to integrate).
At Tribal Habits, we have integrated online training creation features – In fact, Tribal Habits was designed as an online training creation platform from the ground up, so the ability to create fully interactive online training is included in all plans. At Tribal Habits, we have several libraries of ready-made training. Unlike other learning platforms, this training is presented stylishly in your organisation’s branding and can even be edited by your organisation for a plug-and-play solution.
Online storage costs – Storage costs are on-going online learning costs associated with the amount of content stored in your online learning portal. This is often a hidden and unexpected cost, typically associated with older online learning platforms. Organisations may find that a certain amount of storage is initially free on these platforms. However, as usage grows and more content is added to the platform, a storage fee can suddenly be charged.
At Tribal Habits, there are no storage fees at all – ‘Costs of storage’ are built into our plan costs so there are no storage surprises.
Support Costs – Support costs are on-going online learning costs associated with receiving support for your online learning platform. For most online learning platforms, there are no additional support costs – support is included in your package and/or plan costs. However, some online learning platforms charge extra for certain levels of service. For example, they may provide email support (which can take 2-3 days to respond) for all packages, but more responsive live chat support may be an additional on-going cost (typically a certain percentage of your overall subscription cost).
At Tribal Habits, we offer the same level of support for all packages with no additional fees – Four Admin training sessions are included with all plans, and all admins, on all plans have access to live chat support, extensive knowledge base articles with search and additional email or Microsoft Teams support for more complex issues.
