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. Clearly someone a bit technical can quickly build a moodle site for a small group or classroom.
However, in truth Moodle is not free. In point of fact, getting Moodle to become operational for a university or college implementation can become pretty expensive.
Let’s take a moment to break it down and compare it to a subscription to TOPYX®, our recently launched fully hosted learning distribution service that blends the features of a traditional LMS with embedded social networking services and community tools.
All of our assumptions are admittedly highly variable, but we have tried to be as conservative and fair as possible.
Moodle fees and costs:
Initial install and setup: First off, someone needs to download, install, and support Moodle, on an ongoing basis. Depending on the size of your organization, this could easily be full time dedicated resource in your IT department. Naturally this varies, school to school, but in order to be conservative and fair let`s assume it can be as little as a part time (50%) role for an IT professional at an average salary of US$70,000 annually.
Site branding: Do you want your Moodle site branded to your school? It may not be a huge job, but it’s probably about US$1,000 to do a reasonable job.
Customization: Next, would you like to customize how Moodle is used in your school? Again, it`s difficult to generalize, but let`s assume this will be approximately a three month project for a similar IT professional.
Content: Next, you will have to move your content from it`s your current source over to Moodle. This will be true with whatever product you choose, however, with Moodle, you are on your own unless you contract with a Moodle service provider. As this will be required whether you use Moodle or TOPYX, and the effort will generally be the same. I’ll omit it from the comparison.
Hosting: How will you be hosting Moodle?
At a high level you have two choices: Your own hardware and software, or a hosting provider.
Naturally volume will determine the hardware requirements, but at a minimum for proper execution you will want a database server and an application server. Minimum cost for these will be about US$4K each and they’ll probably need updating every three to four years. Large installations will require much larger servers.
If you choose a hosting provider, fees run from $25 per month to about $600 per month. For the simplest comparison, I’ll simply use the hosting fees of US$3.5K annually and not include outlays for dedicated hardware, even though it may be used.
Training: I am seeing many courses available for Moodle implementation and usage from a variety of sources. Moodle Programming, SQL with Moodle, Moodle implementation, etc. The list is quite extensive. Usually for "Train the trainer" and "Implementation Assistance" courses a school should very conservatively consider about US$10K in the first year.
Additional Software: As for software, you’ll also require versions of SQL. Yes, you can get them free; however, you’ll also require additional technical staff. Let’s use two weeks annual IT time to build out a conservative estimate, therefore about US$3K.
Overall Site Upgrades: Naturally, you will want to be adding functionality to your Moodle site above and beyond the initial basic setup. New features will be requested, new interfaces required and testing to be done and so one. Clearly the modifications are highly variable, however from our own experience we would expect this to be somewhere in the range of ½ of the combined Initial Setup and First Year Customization effort on an ongoing basis.
Authentication: Will you and your IT team be trying to enable single sign-on through your school authentication system. This will be more time and money. Let’s use 1-2 week’s IT time to be fair, or about US$2.0K.
Communities and social networking components:
Some tools, such as forums are included with Moodle. Many are not however. If you wish to integrate social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn you are clearly blazing new trails. This will require endless hours of coding and testing. We know, because we’ve done it! Because we don’t know if you’ll want it or need it, so to be absolutely fair, I won’t add additional cost for this with Moodle. However, if you are thinking about it, be prepared for a three to four additional person months of effort and cost at a minimum, probably around US$20k. With TOPYX it’s included and part of the platform.
Now let’s add up the tab. How much does FREE cost (US$000s)?
Moodle First Year Costs
Moodle license: 0
Install and initial set up: 35
Site Branding: 1
Customization: 17.5
Hosting: 3.5
Authentication: 2
Database: 3
Training: 10
Moodle First year Total: US$72K
Moodle costs thereafter:
Customization and Maintenance: 27.5
Hosting: 3.5
Moodle Ongoing total: US$31K
