Comparisons and advocacy

I'd really like to see this too, as there is very little information about it about.  I guess they do a lot of "deals" with pricing which is why it's not public.

If people feel shy about publishing their numbers, perhaps they could message Harry privately and he could compile an anonymous table here for us all to refer to.

I think we'll need to know:  country, education sector, number of students, price per year.

Well, for BB basic for 7500 users we're paying a base of ~$7000, + $4000 for SSL, + $.75/user for MS SQL.

For 20,000, the basic license probably won't be available, and you'll have to choose between hosted (ASP) or enterprise. Enterprise used to start at ~$60,000, but there are per/student fees and other issues, and I think it's ranging ~$100,000/year now.

Not sure about WebCT CE, I think they are in the range of $10,000/year. From what I've heard of Vista, it's at least $100,000 year and more than that for most campusses.

This is something that would be nice feature of the edutools comparison site, IMO.

One thing I've heard or read about Blackboard is that they charge per user per course, meaning a user that is enrolled in 5 courses counts as 5 users. This combined with the first-hand experience I've had with Bb un-userfriendliness in terms of enrolling makes me suspicious that they deliberately make unenrolling difficult.

- Students could not unenroll themselves up until the version of last year
- Now a self-unenroll options exists but is turned off by default - the teacher has to turn it on. The problem is that the teachers that don't bother to unenroll the students at the end of a course also don't bother turning this option on
- I've heard from one teacher that there is no way to mass-unenroll the students - you have to take them out ONE AT A TIME!!! Argh!

I could ask what my university pays, I've heard figures of over 20.000 euro but I am not sure. I'll see if I can get some figures.

This might help a little: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LSH/is_4_5/ai_95447612

Excerpt: The University of South Dakota system--a WebCT customer--may end up paying a whopping $275,000 to serve 25,000 students in its state system-up from $60,000, says Warren Wilson, director of Regent Information Systems.

-- Art

Thanks for the info everyone.

My apologies but work commitments have kept me away. Will set a table up and post it later today.

Regards
Harry

Hi Harry,

Sorry for posting this late. I dug this up from my computer files.

"......
......"

Source is here:

http://www.irrodl.org/content/v5.3/technote6.html

My favorite quote comes from a response from WebCT User Community Relations Director, Dr. D.J. Volchuk:

WebCT Vista and Campus Edition are competitively priced in the market place. The various products and license offerings including Campus Edition, Vista Core and Vista Enterprise are specifically tailored to meet the needs of institutions of all sizes not just large educational and training institutions with huge budgets. WebCT Standard Edition has not been available since 2003. WebCT Campus Edition version 6.0 will be released in spring 2005, and will continue to meet the needs of our Campus Edition customers for years to come.

WebCT has been extremely flexible in developing pricing models to meet the needs of our customers. Pricing has remained flat for Vista since its release in 2002. Campus Edition increases have ranged from 7 percent - 10 percent per year, and WebCT offers customers the option of multi-year contracts that lock in prices over the contract period.

WebCT has ALWAYS incorporated the feedback of our customers into the product. There are several very active WebCT Advisory Boards who provide us with specifically this type of input, as well as a suggestion box at the website, and input through all of the WebCT representatives who regularly visit our customers campuses.

WebCT is financially sound and strong and certainly not in the throes of its last hurrah.

Hi all

My humble apologies on such a tardy response, unfortunately my "real" work has kept me away until now.

Thanks to everyone that has supplied information

It does seem to be extremely difficult pinning costs down due to the amount of variables and deals that seem to be done. What I tried to do was extract some info from the posts above and collate it based on recent (post 2003) costs that are reliable (my apologies if I missed anyone out, not implying lack of reliability just my lack of attention!). As there may well be issues of confidentiality I put down actual costs from people here as "A Moodler".

Not as comprehensive as I would wish but at least a start:

Source	Cost/yr	Students	Platform	Country	When	Extra cost/comments
A moodler	US$9500	1400	Blackboard basic	USA	2005-2006
A moodler	US$7000	7500	Blackboard basic	USA	2005	SSL = US$4000; MS SQL = US$0.75/user
http://www.e-teaching.org/technik/produkte/webctsteckbrief	US$15,000	6000	WebCT Campus Focus	Germany	?	Incl German plugin
http://www.e-teaching.org/technik/produkte/blackboardsteckbrief	US$5000 US$25,000 US$50,000	? ? ?	Blackboard 5 Level 1 Blackboard 5 Level 2 Blackboard 5 Level 3	Germany	?
http://www.spectatornews.com/news/2004/02/02/CampusNews/Desire2learn.To.Replace.Webct.Blackboard-594170.shtml	US$3.3 million + US$4/student	?	Ball park figures for a version of BB and WebCT over a five year period	USA	2004	"When evaluating the cost, we considered license fee, plus five years maintenance, plus installation costs,"
http://www.cvc4.org/newscopy/Current_Events/may_update.asp	US$1000 US$2000 US$4000 US$6000 US$7500 US$15,000 US$3750 US$7500	100 200 400 600 3000 6000 25 courses unlimited courses	WebCT level 1 WebCT Campus Focus Blackboard (?)	USA	2003-2004	Does not include hosting costs
http://www.siena.edu/cot/resources/COURSEWARE%20COMPARISON%203.html	US$4000 US$15,000 US$10,000 US$5000 US$25,000 US$50,000	Unlimited Unlimited? Support ? ? ?	WebCT basic WebCT Campus WebCT Blackboard Level 1 Blackboard Level 2 Blackboard Level 3	USA	?	Support for 1 Admin Support for 1 Admin Premium support Course manager only CM + Portal Manager Advanced CM + PM
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~natalieb/CMSsummary.htm	US$60,000 US$90,000 US$50,000	? ? ?	Web CT Web CT Vista Blackboard (?)	USA	2004	17,137 students using it 13.122 students using it

I hope it proves usefull to some, for my part, doesn't matter, have convinced the powers that be to run a 12 month trial and am in the process of setting the site up now so be warned . . . may be a few questions to the community soon!

Our regional service center in Upstate New York (US) pays $7500 annually for a 3000-user Basic Bb license. We have, however, just receive notice from Blackboard that a 30% price increase will take effect July, 2006. ($9800)

Needless to say, this is a windfall incentive for our region to consider a full adoption of Moodle. This, coupled with Blackboard's polite refusal to take into account the needs of the K-12 user community will make arguing the case for Moodle like shooting fish in a barrel.