We are thinking to move away from Canvas due to their poor support.
We have 3000 students.
Would it be cheaper to migrate and manage 3000 students on Moodle than on Canvas?
Thankis
The Moodle Kitty Cat was on Canvas all this time?
The question is about the cost, not about the quality? That sounds more like something for the Comparisons and advocacy forum.
The irony was not lost on me..... 
Well Moodle Kitty Cat's Canvas saga is well documented:
- "Moodle vs C. Biz decision." https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=393678#p1587088
- "Moodle's market value?" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=394299#p1589706
- "C to Moodle (Best migration strategy)" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=393684#p1587100
And before we start another Canvas vs Moodle discussion, there have been plenty of such discussions in the past. Here is the standard: "Canvas vs. Moodle" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=368215#p1484866.
I doubt anybody can answer that... except someone trying to sell you Moodle or Canvas services, I suppose.
Oh yes, here is a front-line Moodle salesman: "Moodle is free, free as in freedom!" (Free as free beer too, but that is a side-effect.)
I have no clue what Canvas costs. Also, you don't mention if you will be self-hosting or going through a Moodle Partner. If you plan to use a Moodle Partner, one place to start is to compare quotes (I guess).
Were you paying for Canvas support?
For the benefit of Moodlers, like myself, I would be curious to know what you Canvas costs?
Were you paying for Canvas support?
For the benefit of Moodlers, like myself, I would be curious to know what you Canvas costs?
Moving to the Comparisons and Advocacy forum as suggested by Visvanath..
Are you paying for Tier One canvas support? If so, DON'T - unless your students and staff are using it daily. We saved a five figure sum off our annual bill (might be a smaller saving for you, as we have about 5-6x as many users as you) by ditching it at renewal (and we know of other customers ditching it too). We admins can call them at will, which is the important thing.
The answer to your second question is 'probably' (we had moodle for years, then in a political decision taken by someone no longer here we ended up with canvas). I don't know if I can tell you exactly what we pay for canvas, but it's not cheap. A hosted moodle would be much cheaper. For starters, canvas charge you about a five figure sum (for our size anyway) just to have access to their SQL database (Postgres) - and the data is at least a day old! They are working on a newer version (4 hours old), but we're looking at next year til we get that - so currently have to use a (nowhere near as fast) 'hammer the API' approach, which takes hours to get the volume of data analysed that we need for our online activity reporting.
We are agreed that we will be looking properly at whether to renew or not long before the next renewal. But switching from any hosted system means we (as an HE provider) would have to offer access to the old one if someone started their HE course on one system but we moved to another as the primary for the FE side.
"We saved a five figure sum off our annual bill (might be a smaller saving for you,"
Support in all/any of it's forms is one of the most expensive part of having a VLE. Hosting is a commodity. With Moodle you have a choice of sources for support, and in my experience that support can be anywhere in the world. With other systems you frequently have less choice.
Support in all/any of it's forms is one of the most expensive part of having a VLE. Hosting is a commodity. With Moodle you have a choice of sources for support, and in my experience that support can be anywhere in the world. With other systems you frequently have less choice.
To clarify, Tier One support is the option where ANY user can ring canvas 24/7 365 days a year. Our staff/students barely used it.
The important thing to us, is that if us admins need to speak to someone urgently then we can - though when ticking the 'email copy of announcement' that was posted to all users the other month, their email system didn't even TRY and stagger the release of 10s of thousands of emails. Our college domain's email Security appliance thought instructure.com was actively carrying out a DoS attack on us!
The important thing to us, is that if us admins need to speak to someone urgently then we can - though when ticking the 'email copy of announcement' that was posted to all users the other month, their email system didn't even TRY and stagger the release of 10s of thousands of emails. Our college domain's email Security appliance thought instructure.com was actively carrying out a DoS attack on us!
Some things don't change I see. Oh well, let's go over it again. As Dave Perry says, you pay for access to their PostGres database. Why? Why pay for use of a product that is available for you to use at the cost of your hardware, which you will need irrespective of the service you provide or use, and the tech support personnel that you will employ anyway to support the technology you have in place to provide the services you do. The thing is that there is so much hype around SAAS that common sense is often lost in the shuffle of numbers that few academic leaders can really follow anyway, in other words, it is a complete nonsense. I have always been a great fan of self-sufficiency, why pay someone to do what you can easily do yourself? What is most concerning is data security. I have yet to get a satisfactory answer about the ownership of data, your data, stored on Instructure's servers. Who really owns it? My bet would be Instructure's sales team would say, 'the Client', but in the case of insolvency, it would be counted an asset of Instructure. In short, you are paying to give away your own data and that makes no sense to me at all.
Hi Colin
You wrote:
> The thing is that there is so much hype around SAAS that common sense is often lost in the shuffle of numbers that few academic leaders can really follow anyway, in other words, it is a complete nonsense.
Need to be shouted in the corridors of those "academic leaders". The "Open" group of academics in a big local institution is living with the pain of Office365 starting and stopping their SMTP service at their will.
Those "academic leaders" use webmail, I presume.
You wrote:
> The thing is that there is so much hype around SAAS that common sense is often lost in the shuffle of numbers that few academic leaders can really follow anyway, in other words, it is a complete nonsense.
Need to be shouted in the corridors of those "academic leaders". The "Open" group of academics in a big local institution is living with the pain of Office365 starting and stopping their SMTP service at their will.
Those "academic leaders" use webmail, I presume.
Hi Visvanath,
>Need to be shouted in the corridors of those "academic leaders".
>Need to be shouted in the corridors of those "academic leaders".
Made myself extremely unpopular doing exactly that..
<Begin name = 'rant"> Seems no-one wanted to know. I'd had enough anyway, time to move on after I realized that digital technologies are still considered as something nasty in some academic circles. One bully too many.</End>
I got told a few years ago that my shouting about college wide failings while we were going through major change (at the hands of people who were upsetting a lot of people) had been twigged by top brass. Whilst they didn't say 'be quiet' or fire me, I was asked to tone it down a bit - so I did, but didn't stop - things don't get fixed if things aren't called out if it's something you can't fix yourself.
In more recent ish times, the current leadership team (we've had a few) have been quite willing to listen to what I have to say, as long as it's not worded too bluntly 
We are heavy 365 users, and have very little trouble with it. I haven't used the full fat Outlook client in years either (apart from the iOS app on my phone, which I only installed when we went into lockdown 1).
Hi Dave
Do you or users send e-mail through Office365 SMTP? A group of users, a good number of IT professionals amoung them, have evidence that "Office365 starting and stopping their SMTP service at their will" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=433962#p1746493. (I can PM a detailed technical discussion, if you want.) Is it not the case in your institution?
Do you or users send e-mail through Office365 SMTP? A group of users, a good number of IT professionals amoung them, have evidence that "Office365 starting and stopping their SMTP service at their will" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=433962#p1746493. (I can PM a detailed technical discussion, if you want.) Is it not the case in your institution?
I'm not based in IT, but work with them a lot - checked with our email admin, and we're running Hybrid mode (so emails going in/out are processed on prem in both directions). Maybe that's why?!
Hi Dave
I fear, we are talking different things.
> so emails going in/out are processed on prem in both directions
Am I correct to say that your users are either on web-mail or work in clients which connect to your on premise servers to send mail? For the IT group I am talking about, the web-mail, OWA kind of things are insufficient/inferior. They use proper e-mail clients (MUA), which connect to Microsoft servers directly to send mails (or at least how I understood, I am luckily not directly involved). They have been spending so much time "debugging" the issue, you know e-mail is mission critical, until they found out that the SMTPAuth service they have been using just come and go.
I fear, we are talking different things.
> so emails going in/out are processed on prem in both directions
Am I correct to say that your users are either on web-mail or work in clients which connect to your on premise servers to send mail? For the IT group I am talking about, the web-mail, OWA kind of things are insufficient/inferior. They use proper e-mail clients (MUA), which connect to Microsoft servers directly to send mails (or at least how I understood, I am luckily not directly involved). They have been spending so much time "debugging" the issue, you know e-mail is mission critical, until they found out that the SMTPAuth service they have been using just come and go.
So no point in comparing notes, if you use different services.
On your last point, I can't confirm this for certain, as I haven't seen the full paperwork - but I know our lawyers scrutinised the contract on renewal (which wasn't done before clearly as they found pages of clangers), which I think caught Instructure out as they expected it to go through pretty much unchallenged once we'd hacked down the invoice lines we didn't want. Still, their legal team had to rewrite parts of the contract - and I assume data ownership was sorted out to be how it should (our benefit, not theirs) in those legal talks.
What I do know, is that our canvas instance is hosted in AWS' Irish facility - so the data is at least not in the States.
> "...our canvas instance is hosted in AWS' Irish facility..."
And for some silly reason, I think that is actually an issue. We all know the 'Net is ubiquitous and cannot be brought down by terrorists, or nuclear weapons, or simple human error, that everyone backs-up everything on those same servers in huge server farms, that tech firms and their debtors never disagree, that creditors are always happy with tech firms. Did I miss anyone? Or am I just being overly paranoid? I suggest that so many people have fallen in love with the idea of the power that such technologies offer that they overlook the essential concept of self-sufficiency.
I can't argue legal terms as IANAL, but I know that there is very little that stands between a Banker and his money, and the Landlords and Tenants Act (or local variation thereof) definitely doesn't side with the Tenant. I doubt any pre-existing agreement on data ownership will stand up in a Court in the case of the collapse of the Service Provider, especially if the Creditor turns the server off.
And for some silly reason, I think that is actually an issue. We all know the 'Net is ubiquitous and cannot be brought down by terrorists, or nuclear weapons, or simple human error, that everyone backs-up everything on those same servers in huge server farms, that tech firms and their debtors never disagree, that creditors are always happy with tech firms. Did I miss anyone? Or am I just being overly paranoid? I suggest that so many people have fallen in love with the idea of the power that such technologies offer that they overlook the essential concept of self-sufficiency.
I can't argue legal terms as IANAL, but I know that there is very little that stands between a Banker and his money, and the Landlords and Tenants Act (or local variation thereof) definitely doesn't side with the Tenant. I doubt any pre-existing agreement on data ownership will stand up in a Court in the case of the collapse of the Service Provider, especially if the Creditor turns the server off.
I realise that various answers (certainly by me) have touched on specific points. So here are some more general ones.
If you personally or someone else at the institution have experience of moodle support, you could do it in house - don't make it more complicated than necessary, and if you want to do something that isn't documented on here a moodle partner could probably help (and do it in a tidy fashion).
The less you change it (apart from using recoginsed plugins), the easier upgrades will be - that was a bit of pain I never really dealt with previously (when we were a moodle house) but the colleague who did all that is now retired.
I did get an updated draft costing last year or so, on having a moodle partner locally (an hour from us) - and I think it was going to be around £20k (based on 17k users) - but that was with them doing all the maintenance, and with some training bundled in.
Personally, I find canvas support hit and miss. Sometimes they give you a great answer (e.g. when I've needed help understanding their APIs), and sometimes they just miss the point completely. Maybe not un-typical.
I also find they are not very good at all, for listening to feature requests. An 'idea' can have 200+ votes, run for years, and still never gets on their radar.
I have complained about this repeatedly, most recently in their last user survey, and finally a senior person who's name was put to this survey actually responded saying he would get the one idea sorting raised (FYI, it's the issue that you can't use Sections to control Module visibility - we know moodle has been able to do that for topics using all sorts of requirements, including groups - more frustratingly, they have written code to do this for Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes so it wouldn't be that hard!).
If you personally or someone else at the institution have experience of moodle support, you could do it in house - don't make it more complicated than necessary, and if you want to do something that isn't documented on here a moodle partner could probably help (and do it in a tidy fashion).
The less you change it (apart from using recoginsed plugins), the easier upgrades will be - that was a bit of pain I never really dealt with previously (when we were a moodle house) but the colleague who did all that is now retired.
I did get an updated draft costing last year or so, on having a moodle partner locally (an hour from us) - and I think it was going to be around £20k (based on 17k users) - but that was with them doing all the maintenance, and with some training bundled in.
Personally, I find canvas support hit and miss. Sometimes they give you a great answer (e.g. when I've needed help understanding their APIs), and sometimes they just miss the point completely. Maybe not un-typical.
I also find they are not very good at all, for listening to feature requests. An 'idea' can have 200+ votes, run for years, and still never gets on their radar.
I have complained about this repeatedly, most recently in their last user survey, and finally a senior person who's name was put to this survey actually responded saying he would get the one idea sorting raised (FYI, it's the issue that you can't use Sections to control Module visibility - we know moodle has been able to do that for topics using all sorts of requirements, including groups - more frustratingly, they have written code to do this for Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes so it wouldn't be that hard!).