Definitely a good start. Lots of teachers don't want do deal with mastering a learning management system like Moodle or Blackboard. What I don't see is a compelling reason to pay $5/mo for something I could accomplish with a class blog or facebook page. Are there plans to allow interaction between students? Grade management? Online quizzes? These would be great value-adds to justify different pricing tiers.
The goal was certainly to target teachers who aren't willing or able to put in the time and effort to learn a full-fledged LMS.
I agree that $5/month is a slightly hard sell right now, although there are certain parts of Eduset (such as assignments) that cannot be easily accomplished with a blog. In order to fix this, we are actually in the process of implementing every one of the features you described. Soon, students will be able to post content to their classes (if the teacher allows it), making classes more collaborative. Students will also be able to turn in homework and take quizzes on Eduset, and teachers will be able to grade that work.
As for pricing tiers, does anyone have thoughts on which of these two options would be better?
1) The current model, where all features are provided free for one class, while $5/month is charged to create an unlimited number of classes.
2) The model the commenter above describes, where certain features are made pay-only.
That logic usually works, but I've found that teachers are a stingy group when it comes to paying for classroom services. I think that the risk of making the product seem too cheap is outweighed by the risk of teachers being reluctant to spend a significant amount on their classes. Wikispaces, another product partially targeted at teachers, has a $5/month option as well.
I've found that teachers are a stingy group when it comes to paying for classroom services.
What data do you have which supports this contention? Is it more of a "gut feeling"? I had that gut feeling once myself, and you know what? It is a lie. A myth. Totally contrary to empirically observable fact.
The average teacher in the United States spends $200 to $400 of her own money per year (varies with level and geography, and I've seen a few numbers quoted from different studies) on instructional supplies.
The average customer for Bingo Card Creator spends $32.50 on a program which most use once or twice per year. (Which is still cheaper than the laminated set of bingo cards they were about to buy at the teaching store. Those cards are on the shelves because they sell.) I have a trial-to-purchase conversion of about 2.3% for my online version, which is considered fairly good.
Some teachers do complain about the price. That is a good sign -- if no one is complaining that it is too expensive, you've priced it too low.
While we have a $5/month option, Wikispaces has offered a free service (no ads, same features as paid service, no strings) for K-12 teachers since early 2006. We've given away around 225K wikis under this plan. http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
I would vote for an institutional subscription model. It might be a hard sell for individual teachers (often likely out of their own pockets), but I bet you could sell the value to institutions which employ teachers.
This is the opposite of the truth for small businesses: you can sell to any teacher, all you have to do is convince her to get out her credit card. To sell it to a district, you're going to have to go through a sales cycle measured in months to years. You will have to collect rubber stamps from upwards of four different decisionmakers, three of whom have no interest in using your software, at least one of whom has incentives to kill the purchase.
Selling software to educational institutions is largely a matter of playing Enterprise Sales. I don't suggest you make that choice lightly.
I agree with the above - in its current form, I think you'd attract early adopters who, even if they love your product, might have trouble convincing others to sign up and fork out for it. With an institutional model, said early adopters (presumably those in charge of educational technology spending) can try and push it out to teachers in their school.
Along these lines, perhaps consider some way to allow those who use and love your product to bring others in with minimal friction - let them try out the product in an administrative and student role, without having to sign up and learn on their own. Most teachers I know won't try something out until they really see the value in it (i.e. students engaged, fulfills some kind of need).
We're working on adding institutional accounts. There are some complexities involved, mainly involving legal issues and various whitepapers that need to be written, but I wholeheartedly agree with your idea: early adopters are a great way to get institutions to adopt a product.
As for your second suggestion, do you think a way for current users to send potential users an invitation to try a demo account (a sandbox) would do the job?
Free for one class seems interesting but how would you distinguish between their classes? What happens if a teacher just put all their students on the one. I think you don't mind getting it to some people for free.
With each semester a teacher would have a new class right? Would it be possible to perhaps charge a one time fee for each class that is created instead of a monthly fee?
