Before You Book The Demo: What Vendor Websites Leave Out

A Price That Was Real And Still Wrong

This spring, a software company I work with took a demo call that nearly didn't happen. The person on the other end said they had almost not called. They'd looked up what the product cost, and Google's AI summary told them it ran well over $100,000 a year.

The company is small and sells to school districts, and that figure is nowhere near what a typical customer pays. The number was real, though. It came from a public procurement document for the company's largest customer. Their own site didn't mention price anywhere, so that procurement figure was the only one out there for the AI to find.

That call stuck with me. Anyone shortlisting an LMS or an authoring tool this year has probably started where that caller started, by typing a question into a search engine or an AI assistant. What comes back depends on what vendors have chosen to publish, and most of them publish less than you'd expect.

What Vendors Leave Off Their Websites

This year my team reviewed the websites of close to 2,000 education companies, from ed tech vendors to online learning providers, and recorded what each one makes public. Not all of them sell to corporate L&D teams, but the pattern will look familiar to anyone who has shopped for learning technology.

Here's what we found among the companies that actively publish on their sites. Fewer than 1 in 4 put any pricing up. Roughly a third had a case study. Only about 1 in 10 said anything about what implementation involves, and technical documentation turned up on about 1 in 14. A page comparing the product with its alternatives was rarer still, at about 1 in 20.

Most of what they do publish is explainer articles, trend pieces, and opinion. That content is fine for learning about a topic. It doesn't help you choose between three vendors.

Why The Gap Matters More Now

A missing pricing page used to mean you had to book a call. Now it means an AI assistant answers the question for the vendor, using whatever it can find. As in the story above, that might be a contract a much larger customer negotiated for a different set of services.

The same thing happens with questions beyond price. Try asking an assistant whether a platform works with your HR system. You'll get a confident answer either way. If the vendor has never written that answer down in public, the assistant has to piece one together from whatever else is out there.

The Familiar-Name Problem

Something else fills the gap, and it's harder to notice. I was talking recently with a researcher who runs independent efficacy studies on ed tech products. She told me the school and district leaders she hears from are swamped with vendor emails and calls. They've stopped sorting through them and go back to the people and companies they already know and trust.

I'd be surprised if an L&D leader's inbox looks any different. Falling back on familiar names is a sensible way to cope, and it has a cost. The vendor you already know, or the one with the biggest booth at last year's conference, isn't always the best fit for your learners. A newer or smaller company with a better product never makes the shortlist, because finding out the basics about it takes a meeting you don't have time for.

Five Things To Ask For In Writing Before The Demo

If I were choosing a learning platform, I'd treat the vendor's public information as the first screen. Whatever is missing, I'd ask for by email before agreeing to a meeting.

1. A price range for an organization my size, and what's in it. Implementation, support, and content licenses are where quotes drift apart.
2. Results from a customer like us, ideally in the same industry with a similar number of learners, and the name of someone there I could call.
3. How it connects to what we already run. I'd name the HR system, the single sign-on, and the content standards (SCORM, xAPI) in the email, so the answer can't be vague.
4. What the first 90 days would ask of my team: who has to do what, and roughly how many hours.
5. Where learner data lives, who can see it, and how we'd get it out if we left.

A vendor with a good product can usually answer all five in one reply. If the only answer is a calendar link, you've learned something about what working with them will be like.

How To Check What AI Tells You

AI assistants are useful for building a first list. I use them that way myself. Before a number goes into a business case, though, I'd want to know where it came from. Ask the assistant for its source. Then look at how old it is and whose contract or review it was. After that, send the same question to the vendor and compare the two answers.

It doesn't take long, and it would have saved the caller in my story from nearly ruling out a product over a number that was never meant for them.

A Note For Vendors

Plenty of people reading this sell learning technology. Most of what I've described is cheap to fix. The company from that demo call has since put a starting price on its website. It's a small fraction of the figure the AI had been quoting, and it took one page.