I thought Moodle was free!

[Jeffrey A. Roth]

Moodle has gained many users over the last few years as universities, colleges, departments and institutions look at trimming their budgets. Clearly many schools simply are saying NO to the high fees charged by Blackboard or other traditional learning management systems.

Moodle is a highly capable product and is available as open source software, therefore it’s worthy of consideration for an institution looking to move away from the high annual subscription fees and other hidden costs.

However, in truth Moodle is not free. In point of fact, getting Moodle to become operational can become pretty expensive.

Read the full details at:
http://www.interactyx.com/blog/us-72-000-i-thought-moodle-was-free

[Tammy Moore]

Hmm, I read the article and was a tad astounded about the numbers that were presented. Our only cost is the $50/month to rent a 20 gig server. That is a mere $600/year. We could have gone with one of the many free Moodle host sites, but we wanted our own space. We are a few home school moms, no specialized IT degrees, that have installed, maintained, customized, upgraded, and created courses for five years for their kids and the kids of other home schoolers. We can read an online manual and when the rare instance occurs that we get a technical snafoo not anticipated in the online manual, we have a busy and free forum to go to for technical help from other Moodle users at Moodle.org.

Colleges are training students in IT degree areas and training teachers to graduate to classrooms that technology is a natural part of. Why not give them some hands on experience and let them work to build the college Moodle? It is definitely nothing super complex and it is a wonderful skill to graduate with. My son took many online courses while getting his degree. One of their platforms was one that the university had created itself and the other was WebCT. He told me that he preferred the design of Moodle better than either one of those two platforms.

I think the article intentionally exaggerates the costs of using Moodle by a great deal to make competing hosted LMS services seem more cost effective.

[Jeffrey A. Roth]

There is no way to create a comparison scenario that will directly apply to all possible instances. The spirit of the article to to make people aware of the possible costs associated with Moodle that may not be initially understood.

If you and your team are able to put in the time and effort to get everything you want out of Moodle for less than the price communicated in the article - that's great! Many institutions and groups cannot. That is where TOPYX is a alternative worth looking into.

Moodle is a great product. There is no questioning that. TOPYX really isn't a competing LMS. It's more of an add-on to provide all of the same great functionality, but also to include things like social networking tools, content management, eCommerce, mobile learning technology and more - all for a price that is less than most are paying for their Total Cost of Ownership of their Moodle environment.

TOPYX is an option that may be correct for those that love Moodle, but don't have the resources to get everything out of it they need. Please feel free to contact me anytime to discuss in more details.

[Eduardo Peirano]

Wow Tammy!!!!!, you are still here and alert to our forum discussions. You joined Apr. 22, 2007, the same day College 2.0 was born. It's an honor to still have you here

Tammy and Jeffrey you are both right. Since I knew this discussion will happen this is the reason why I edited the title (removed the $72,000) of the thread when Jeffrey posted it.

I find the costs analysis from Jeffrey to be very informative but the needs of a LMS for a University, a Homeschool, or an Online Course are very different and so are the costs and support needed. We can't expect really free tools for teaching and learning.

[Jeffrey A. Roth]

In a recent article by Howard Schechter, eLearning consultant for eLearn Magazine, Mr. Schechter details the cost of implementing the traditional learning management systems. Here is what he says:

“A typical first-year budget may be in the $100,000-$200,000 range for a Fortune 1000 company, while a small business or divisional learning initiative may spend $30,000–$50,000. Smaller learning initiatives cost less because there are fewer concerns, such as tying it in with CRM software."

Read more of this informative blog post to learn valuable information about the costs of eLearning 2.0 - http://www.interactyx.com/blog/the-cost-of-elearning-2-0

[Carrie Goode]

I have never heard of TOPYX I have being using Moodle for 3 years - installed it and maintain it for 5000 people with one other person as our other duties as assigned. Thanks for sharing the cost analysis.

[Harry C. Lord]

What misleading information! $27,500 as an annual cost for customization is WAY over the top. For us it was a one time project that took two days. You can put your own figures to it. The other #'s are similarly out of line. Unless you are actually using Moodle and have been doing so for 3 or more years I do not feel that you are qualified to discuss the subject and should advise that your #'s are hypothetical, and a sales pitch for your own product!

[Jeffrey A. Roth]

The numbers quoted in this article are hypothetical. There is no way to identify the complete costs associated with Moodle for every individual instance. There are too many variables and differences. We tried to hit the middle of the road and be as representative as possible.

US$27,000 quoted in the article is for customization AND annual maintenance.

We work with many institutions that are trying to incorporate social networking, mobile learning and eLearning tools into their online programs that have attempted to use Moodle in the past or have a current instance they would like to affordably move to a completely hosted solution.

We have no intention of being misleading and stand by our numbers. There are costs associated with using Moodle that many people may not realize. We just want to let people know there are more cost efficient solutions that provide more functionality and less upkeep/management costs.

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Moodle is Free if you put on your own server.

[Michael Penney]

Seems that Interactyxs estimates for Moodle are based on the presumption that there are no commercial support partners for Moodle who can provide expert services at a reasonable price? Moodle actually has a number of Partners who provide hosting, support, training, and customization services for people who want to use Moodle without having to add IT staff or become DIY SysAdmins. These partners also provide a good deal of the funding to pay the core Moodle team of developers, documentors, testers, etc. The Moodle partner network is global, with a local partner in most countries and languages where there is significant Moodle usage. Folks can find a local partner on the Moodle partner's site at Moodle.com.

At many Moodle partners, hosting costs are based on resource usage - server size, storage space, bandwidth, etc. At Remote-Learner, for instance, we offer fully managed solutions, hosted locally or on your own network for organizations ranging from a few hundred users to 10s of 1000s. Costs generally scale well with organizational size & resource needs, etc. We offer both shared servers (like Topyx) for lowest cost and dedicated servers for greatest reliability, as well as remotely-managed Moodle appliances for folks who have already built their own own enterprise grade datacenter and network.