Acadly Pricing Transition Plan — Spring 2023 and Beyond
Everything you need to know about changes to our pricing structure
Dear users 👋
My name is Christian Storm (LinkedIn). I’m a co-founder of Acadly and its Chief Strategy Officer. Previously I co-founded Turnitin in the late ‘90s while a graduate student at UC Berkeley (Biophysics ’03) and served as its Chief Technology Officer until 2014. (For those astute observers, yes, I did manage to work seven days a week completing my PhD while building a company… can’t say I miss those days).
This announcement serves as a pivotal event in the history of Acadly. As such it behooves me to share the story and context behind the upcoming transition (as opposed to switch), why we’ve arrived at this decision, and what lies ahead for us.
First things first
Before we get started, I would consider this communication a success if we can have an opportunity to talk to you. You can do so in one of these ways:
- Schedule a one-on-one call with me
- Schedule a one-on-one call with Vaibhav, co-founder at Acadly
You can also write to us at support@acadly.com with your questions or feedback. We would truly appreciate it!
My own story
In the ~25 years I’ve spent building products and organizations that serve higher-ed, I’ve learned that not only is it difficult to solve the big problems in colleges and universities, it’s also no mean feat for companies to build sustainable business models around their solutions. This part is crucial. A viable business is a win-win for companies and customers. I believe products have to continually adapt and improve radically in the face of existential threats. This couldn’t be truer for both Acadly and higher-ed given the last three years. Rapid adaptation is the surest way to give a product a chance to improve and evolve and, most importantly, live on.
Even when we built Turnitin, we weren’t a runaway success. It was difficult to convince universities that academic dishonesty was a widespread issue, and there were times we doubted if we could turn the solution into a successful business. It’s not that we doubted the scale of the problem or the validity of the solution, but we certainly doubted our ability to convince customers to purchase the service or raise capital to sustain our efforts. It took years operating on a shoe string budget (and friends and family $$) to figure out the second part.
We’re at similar crossroads again and the most important part of this effort is you.
What is happening?
Acadly’s pricing is changing, but not all at once.
So far, we have had a free version of Acadly for higher-ed instructors (called Acadly Basic) and a paid version (called Acadly Pro).
We’re making two key changes to this pricing structure:
- We’re moving to a “free trial” model (more on that below)
- We’re introducing a student-pays pricing model in addition to the existing instructor-pays model
How does this impact you this semester?
As part of our transition plan, we’ve ensured that existing users, and new users who wish to use Acadly in the Spring 2023 semester, will be eased into this new pricing strategy. This means that:
- In Spring 2023, you will still be able to use a part of Acadly for no cost
- If you do plan to upgrade, you will be able to use Acadly at a discounted price
You can view our general pricing here, but the pricing applicable to you (current users of Acadly) is part of the email you will receive from us on Dec 7, 2022. It will also soon be made available to you for reference within the product.
If you’re not sure about the new pricing structure, please reach out to us at support@acadly.com and we will be happy to answer your questions and concerns.
What happens after this semester?
New users will be able to use Acadly for no cost initially (in one semester for one course). Beyond the trial period, instructors will be free to choose between one of two ways to pay for access to Acadly:
The student-pays model
Under this model, the students will pay:
- $5 / student / course for access to Acadly Basic
- $10 / student / course for access to Acadly Pro
The instructor-pays model
We haven’t announced a standard professor-pays pricing structure so far, because we’re still unsure of a fair and affordable price for our users. Through Spring 2023, we will continue to address this on a case-by-case basis, before deciding upon a standardised price.
If you’re interested in paying for Acadly yourself (instead of asking students to pay for it), please write to us at support@acadly.com
Why is Acadly moving to this new pricing model?
Acadly is still in its infancy. We deliver more capabilities than most (if not all) of our alternatives, but we’re still investing heavily into the product. Our current endeavor of launching Acadly 3.0 is a testament to our commitment towards your success. Here’s the announcement, if you missed it.
While we continue to make investments into being the best version of ourselves, we must focus on making Acadly a sustainable business as well.
Have we tried alternative pricing strategies?
Yes. Even though all our competitors never did so, we started by keeping Acadly completely free for instructors and students. To give you a glimpse into our pricing history:
- Acadly was launched in 2017 as a completely free product
- Acadly Pro was launched in July 2020, but the only part of Acadly that users had to pay for was our Zoom integration. Our initial pricing structure was to charge instructors based on the number of courses they wanted to upgrade to “Pro”. We priced it nominally ($75 for one course, $125 for two courses, and $25 per each additional course beyond that) to cover the cost of providing the solution.
- Acadly Enterprise, which was announced in January 2021, has been our primary revenue generation product tier so far. However, selling the enterprise version has not been a dependable or predictable strategy. It’s not that we didn’t foresee this, but we wanted to swim against the tide nevertheless. We will continue to work on Acadly Enterprise and are bullish about its future, but this strategy cannot shoulder the entire burden of revenue-generation.
We’re here for you
As I said earlier, the most important part of this effort is you. Knowingly or otherwise, you’ve played an enormous role in shaping Acadly and will continue to do so.
We are committed to ensuring that we stay the most affordable in-class technology tool out there and would love to work with you on a number of things — product feedback, design inputs, the quality of our support, adoption of Acadly Enterprise at your university, spreading the word about Acadly, and of course, the small matter of zeroing in on a standard instructor-pays pricing.
I hope to stay in touch!
Yours sincerely (the fall guy),
Christian Storm, PhD
Co-founder at Acadly
