TCO Calculator: per-user SaaS vs your own Moodle
Per-user SaaS looks cheap, but it grows with your user count. Your own learning environment on Moodle™ has no per-user licence. Enter your numbers and see the multi-year comparison.
Total cost over 3 years
Official Moodle hosting, standard plans up to 750 users — the cheapest start, but no custom plugins, integrations or branding beyond the basics.
An efficient owned Moodle setup (the low end of the range) is already cheaper here than per-user SaaS. Only a fully managed environment with custom work, integrations and a 24/7 SLA comes out more expensive short term. Compared to that fully managed variant, owning becomes cheaper from around 1612 users; with a leaner setup the break-even is lower.
What assumptions do we use?
- One-time build for 1.000 users: €6.000 – €40.000. Larger numbers need more: SSO, integrations, custom work and high availability.
- Annual hosting + maintenance at this user count: €4.200 – €12.000 per year, including backups, monitoring, security and administration.
- The range runs from an efficient baseline setup with light management to a fully managed platform with high availability and a 24/7 SLA. The price per user drops as you grow, thanks to economies of scale.
- SaaS cost = users × price per user × years. Transaction fees and SaaS add-ons are not included; in practice SaaS often comes out higher.
- This is an indication, not a quote. The exact price depends on your situation; request a no-obligation quote for a fixed price.
Curious what this means for your organisation?
Request a free consultation. We run your situation through and give a fixed price indication, with no obligations.