We are in the market for a Learning Management System. We develop our own courses and also plan to purchase some of the courses the system offers.
We understood that we would be charged per registration for each course their system offers.
Now they are saying we will also be charged per use for courses that we develop. They say this is standard industry practice. Have you experienced this?
I have never run into that practice with the 4 commercial LMS systems I have used. With user generated content we have always been allowed to use the LMS without any additional charges.
I have used iLMS (Inspired LMS) and SumTotal and neither one charges for courses uploaded, only user licenses. However, I have heard of some systems that do, but we chose not to go with them for that reason.
What!!! Never heard of... Business standard, as far as i know, is billing per user. No matter if you have 2 or 2000 course (However, if you have 2000 courses you probably have more users)
That sounds like an upsell to me, but one that would suddenly disappear if you explained you are going elsewhere.
It is in my experience, a non-standard revenue-generation position from them. It is a practice, but it is not "standard" in any way that I have come across.
Ask the question is it license-related? Content that you create belongs to you and your organization, so they cannot charge for it. They can charge for additional space and the number of licenses to access the content. Perhaps they are presenting the information to you incorrectly?
I concur with all of the other comments here. Having worked with a number of vendors over the years, I can say that I've never come across a billing practice like this. In my experience, most vendors bill on the basis of active users, though some will agree to a flat monthly rate.
This kind of standard may be a model some companies are trying to move towards. Kind of a SAS (Software as service) model. Though it is very strange there would be a license fee as well.
Hi Melissa, I've heard of these things but usually in some sort of SAAS Service level agreement where you outsource the entire management of your LMS. Since they are uploading, testing etc they become 'consultants' of sorts paid for the work they do.
If that is not your thing and want to manage your LMS yourself ask if that is possible as well or else check out all those other LMS's
I agree with Jeff. I implemented LMSs in the past and we never charged per your discussion. At my current employer, we have a vendor hosting the LMS yet we upload our own courses without any additional charges.
In the LMS search I just went through, I never saw double charges. LMS companies tend to either charge by active users (some throw in inactive users) and some by course enrollments. Some do both. Though, I don't recall seeing anyone charging per course uploaded...they tend to limit bandwidth and size of files being uploaded, but I didn't see a per course charge. The system we're likely going to go with does both (per user and per course enrollment, but unlimited course creations) and it was confusing in our contract, but they meant it to be an either/or charge, not both. So that does sound kind of odd and expensive.
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I have never run into that practice with the 4 commercial LMS systems I have used. With user generated content we have always been allowed to use the LMS without any additional charges.
I have used iLMS (Inspired LMS) and SumTotal and neither one charges for courses uploaded, only user licenses. However, I have heard of some systems that do, but we chose not to go with them for that reason.
What!!! Never heard of...
Business standard, as far as i know, is billing per user. No matter if you have 2 or 2000 course
(However, if you have 2000 courses you probably have more users)
That sounds like an upsell to me, but one that would suddenly disappear if you explained you are going elsewhere.
It is in my experience, a non-standard revenue-generation position from them. It is a practice, but it is not "standard" in any way that I have come across.
At face value, it is not industry practice.
Ask the question is it license-related? Content that you create belongs to you and your organization, so they cannot charge for it. They can charge for additional space and the number of licenses to access the content. Perhaps they are presenting the information to you incorrectly?
I concur with all of the other comments here. Having worked with a number of vendors over the years, I can say that I've never come across a billing practice like this. In my experience, most vendors bill on the basis of active users, though some will agree to a flat monthly rate.
This kind of standard may be a model some companies are trying to move towards. Kind of a SAS (Software as service) model. Though it is very strange there would be a license fee as well.
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Hi Melissa, I've heard of these things but usually in some sort of SAAS Service level agreement where you outsource the entire management of your LMS. Since they are uploading, testing etc they become 'consultants' of sorts paid for the work they do.
If that is not your thing and want to manage your LMS yourself ask if that is possible as well or else check out all those other LMS's
I agree with Jeff. I implemented LMSs in the past and we never charged per your discussion. At my current employer, we have a vendor hosting the LMS yet we upload our own courses without any additional charges.
In the LMS search I just went through, I never saw double charges. LMS companies tend to either charge by active users (some throw in inactive users) and some by course enrollments. Some do both. Though, I don't recall seeing anyone charging per course uploaded...they tend to limit bandwidth and size of files being uploaded, but I didn't see a per course charge. The system we're likely going to go with does both (per user and per course enrollment, but unlimited course creations) and it was confusing in our contract, but they meant it to be an either/or charge, not both. So that does sound kind of odd and expensive.
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