What does an LMS cost over three years?
The honest answer is a range, not a number — and it depends on your headcount, your content volume, your integrations and who runs the platform. This calculator uses the numbers you enter, on purpose: we have not looked up any vendor price list, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Key facts about this cost model
- What it is
- A transparent arithmetic model of the six cost categories an LMS actually has. You fill in the numbers; it does the sum.
- What it is not
- Not a quote, not a market benchmark, and not a claim about what any vendor charges. We do not publish other vendors' prices, including estimates of them.
- The licence line
- OpenLMS is HK$0 for the platform for every customer, so that line is zero. Every other line is real money on both sides and is included in the total.
- Where the data goes
- Nowhere. The calculation is JavaScript in your browser. No server call, no cookie, no analytics on this page.
- What to do with the result
- Use it to decide which questions to ask vendors — including us. If the commercial total is lower because your volume is small and you need no configuration, that is a real answer.
- Missing an important cost?
- Hosting, implementation, migration, content and operations are the six standard categories. If your situation has a seventh, ask us and we will add it.
Three-year total cost of ownership
Fill in what you know. Every field has a sensible default you can overwrite.
The six cost categories, defined
| Category | What it covers | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Software licence | The right to run the platform, per seat or per module, usually renewed annually | The vendor sets the price |
| Hosting & infrastructure | Servers, database, file and media storage, backup, disaster recovery, bandwidth | You, or your hosting provider |
| Implementation & configuration | Translating your org structure, approval policy, roles and reports into the system | Scoped as a deliverable |
| Data & course migration | Extracting, mapping, transforming and verifying your existing records and content | Scoped as a deliverable |
| Courseware development | Instructional design, authoring, packaging and localisation of learning content | Quoted per course or programme |
| Maintenance, training & support | Keeping the platform patched, upgrading, fixing and operating it | Retainer or hourly |
No rows match your filter.
Three things that change the answer more than headcount
How much history you are carrying
Migration cost scales with history depth and the number of report definitions to rebuild, not with logins. A large system with shallow history is cheap to migrate; a small system with a decade of custom reporting is not.
Who operates the platform
The licence is HK$0 either way, but somebody has to patch, upgrade, back up and fix. That is the line most often missing from an open-source business case, and it is why we scope operations as a separate deliverable rather than hiding it inside "support".
How much content you need built
Content is frequently the largest single line in an LMS project and the one least affected by the platform decision. Choosing a platform before content is scoped is how organisations end up paying twice for the same courseware.
Questions about LMS cost in Hong Kong
Is an open-source LMS always cheaper?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. If you have very few users, need a working system immediately, and have nobody to run the platform, a commercial licence can be the cheaper total. The saving appears at volume, over time, or where the platform has to be adapted to your processes rather than the other way round.
Why is the platform free when you still charge for services?
Because our commercial engine is hosted subscriptions, courseware development and implementation work — not seats. We do not need licence revenue to survive, so we do not charge for it. Every price we do charge is published: HK$30 per user per year hosted, HK$30,000 for on-premise installation, HK$1,500 per man-day for customisation. That is a genuinely different incentive from a vendor whose revenue depends on how many accounts you open.
Are there hidden third-party component fees?
The platform core is GPL open source with no per-seat or annual charge. Where an optional component is commercially licensed — for example a proprietary authoring tool or a commercial support contract from an upstream provider — we say so explicitly in the scope rather than folding it into a number. We will not present an open-source core as if it were a zero-cost total.
What does the government funding actually cover?
That depends on the scheme and on the scope of work you submit. The Innovation and Technology Fund lists Learning Management System among fundable service categories, and schools may have separate per-school support. Funding eligibility is assessed against a specific proposal, not against a software product name, so the scope document matters more than the platform choice. We can prepare a scope that is structured to be assessed.
What is the cheapest honest answer?
For an organisation that already has a working system, the cheapest decision is often to keep it for another renewal cycle and gather the data you need to compare properly. That is not a sales position; it is the correct answer for a substantial share of the organisations we speak to.
Want the scoped version of this number?
Tell us your modules, user groups, workflows, content volume and deployment preference. You will get a fixed-scope proposal with the assumptions written down — not a price list.