Would anyone know what SkillSoft charges per user license? I have a potential client who purchased 250 user license. This client has asked us for a quote on our niche courses which we sell on a per use (per password) basis. It would be nice to know what SkillSoft charges for 250 user license before we finalize our proposal. Any help would be much appreciated!
We are currently using Articulate Online and charge per use/password.
That could be a tough question to answer. Having worked on the vendor side a couple times, I can tell you a lot of the pricing is based on many factors besides user seats. They usually have a library that they bundle courses with and offer additional services such as hosting and support.
Vendors usually emphasize their libraries over their specific courses. The exceptions to that are when they partner with well-known thought leaders or business consultants where the author's brand name is part of the marketing effort.
The answer you're not looking for is the one I'll offer You should price your course based on your fixed costs and estimated value rather than try to guess what one of the largest vendors will offer. Remember, their emphasis is on volume and depth more than single-course offerings.
Does anyone else offer a course similar to what you have?
Thank you for the quick response, I love Articulate for having all the avenues available. My pricing will be based on cost, but I was curious about their charges. The best thing is...I am not competing with what they have and my potential client wants what I have (love it when that happens). Just curious, thanks again!!
You're welcome and I truly hope it helped a little. Vendors are probably a lot like any company in that they have a desired price but will go higher or much lower when they see future returns.
In the big scheme of things, 250 is low for most vendors so their costs (often and from my experience) are going to be much higher than they would for a 10k seat contract. They also add dozens or more of additional courses to justify their pricing.
I think your overall question is very relevant to our community in that we're seeing more and more consultants and subject matter experts create online versions of their expertise.
You could look at places that sell retail courses such as Lynda.com, AtomicLearning.com, VTC.com and view their single and multi-seat pricing to get an idea how they discount courses. Those are all technical, software training, but they're big like SkillSoft and might give you some additional insight into the retail, single course price and what it looks like with multiple seats.
I'd begin with your single, retail seat price and go from there. Also, you mentioned Articulate Online hosting. AO is awesome for hosting and course management, but has a per seat cost to you once you reach your plan's limit. However, someone like SkillSoft already owns their architecture so the costs of additional seats for them could be substantially less.
On a totally unrelated topic, I remember back in 2001 or so when I worked for a vendor who created compliance training. We'd sell 10, 20, 50 thousand seat licenses to large companies. One of the funniest stories was the time a large company called to order one sexual harassment course. One hundred? One thousand? One hundred thousand? No... Just one, as in one course for one employee
5 Replies
That could be a tough question to answer. Having worked on the vendor side a couple times, I can tell you a lot of the pricing is based on many factors besides user seats. They usually have a library that they bundle courses with and offer additional services such as hosting and support.
Vendors usually emphasize their libraries over their specific courses. The exceptions to that are when they partner with well-known thought leaders or business consultants where the author's brand name is part of the marketing effort.
The answer you're not looking for is the one I'll offer
You should price your course based on your fixed costs and estimated value rather than try to guess what one of the largest vendors will offer. Remember, their emphasis is on volume and depth more than single-course offerings.
Does anyone else offer a course similar to what you have?
David,
Thank you for the quick response, I love Articulate for having all the avenues available. My pricing will be based on cost, but I was curious about their charges. The best thing is...I am not competing with what they have and my potential client wants what I have (love it when that happens). Just curious, thanks again!!
Keith
You're welcome and I truly hope it helped a little. Vendors are probably a lot like any company in that they have a desired price but will go higher or much lower when they see future returns.
In the big scheme of things, 250 is low for most vendors so their costs (often and from my experience) are going to be much higher than they would for a 10k seat contract. They also add dozens or more of additional courses to justify their pricing.
I think your overall question is very relevant to our community in that we're seeing more and more consultants and subject matter experts create online versions of their expertise.
You could look at places that sell retail courses such as Lynda.com, AtomicLearning.com, VTC.com and view their single and multi-seat pricing to get an idea how they discount courses. Those are all technical, software training, but they're big like SkillSoft and might give you some additional insight into the retail, single course price and what it looks like with multiple seats.
I'd begin with your single, retail seat price and go from there. Also, you mentioned Articulate Online hosting. AO is awesome for hosting and course management, but has a per seat cost to you once you reach your plan's limit. However, someone like SkillSoft already owns their architecture so the costs of additional seats for them could be substantially less.
On a totally unrelated topic, I remember back in 2001 or so when I worked for a vendor who created compliance training. We'd sell 10, 20, 50 thousand seat licenses to large companies. One of the funniest stories was the time a large company called to order one sexual harassment course. One hundred? One thousand? One hundred thousand? No... Just one, as in one course for one employee
That is too funny, thanks again David.
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