When it comes to licencing online video content amongst the first things you’ll want to know is just how much it’ll cost – especially if budget is tight or the purchase of a solution such as Online Video Tutorials represents an unbudgeted item.
We ‘Googled’ the term ‘Online Video Tutorials’ and Google (you’d think we’d have used Bing being a Microsoft Office training provider!) told us that there were ‘about 25,000,000 results’! That’s a lot of people offering the same or a variant of the same product. With that comes a wide variety of prices as each supplier wants to offer the most attractive deal. We’ve seen prices range from £250 per user down to less than £1 per user depending on the number of licences your business needs. In general terms though you would expect the cost of using Online Video Tutorials to train your people to be a fraction of the cost of more traditional Classroom or e-Learning styles. In our experience you should expect to save anywhere up to 80% on more traditional learning options.
So, getting down to business, the most popular price offerings are: –
- Monthly subscriptions
- Pay as you go
- Pay annually in advance (often with a deal e.g. 12 months for the price of 10 months)
- A single annual payment
- Multi-Year Licences
- Enterprise Licences
Some suppliers also have an ‘Auto-Renew’ system whereby the onus is on you to give adequate notice to terminate the licence otherwise you could find that you are obliged to pay for a year that you don’t necessarily want. Check those terms and conditions!
As an individual or small business, you’re more than likely to opt for a Monthly subscription as in most cases you can cancel access to the video content whenever you like, subject of course to the terms and conditions attached to that particular supplier.
If you’re a larger Company, most tend to favour a single payment for access to the content as this is the simplest way to manage the accounting and it’s unlikely that you’ll be purchasing a licence for a short term unless the purpose for using the content is part of a software upgrade programme. Even then a single payment is generally the preferred option. In most instances such payments are annual and therefore renewable on the anniversary of the licence period.
If you feel that you’re likely to be licencing the product for more than a single year, then a Multi-Year Licence may be just the thing for you as many suppliers tend to offer extremely good rates for the 2nd and 3rd years. A word of caution here though is that the current trend is seeing licence prices reduce and you could well find that you have contracted for a price that may well be higher than the market value a year on. Commercial best practice here will ensure you get a good deal. Many content providers now add new content on a regular basis to ensure that the value of the overall product remains intact.
You’ll find that the price you’ll pay are generally attached to the number of licences you need and in most cases these prices will be ‘banded’. For example: 100, 200, 500, 1000, 5000 licences and so on. For those organisations that employ many thousands of people it may be better to opt for an Enterprise Licence. Although the licence price may be high, the associated annual cost per user makes this type of investment worthwhile, that is of course if your take up is as you expect it to be. Don’t be afraid to start smaller, test the water, market the content and when engagement is riding high, expand your activities further.
How can Mi Crow help?
If you’re interested, then please check out www.microw.com/pricing to find out more about our pricing plans!