How Much Does It Cost To Develop An eLearning Platform?

Cost Of Building An eLearning Platform
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Summary: How much does it cost to build an eLearning platform? Important factors that influence the development cost.

Cost Of Building An eLearning Platform

Inspired by the success of Coursera and Udemy, you are planning to develop your own eLearning app or site. The growth of the global digital education industry is forecasted to continue over the next five years. This is why many companies have decided to introduce their own solutions into the market. And, here comes the first challenge: defining the cost to build an eLearning marketplace. Before you start the development itself, you need to pay attention to estimating the cost and formulating a development plan.

This article will be helpful for those who want to know more about building an eLearning platform and estimating the development cost for their educational product.

A Closer Look At eLearning Marketplaces

In brief, eLearning aims to share knowledge and develop skills using advanced technologies. It is an innovative approach to education that makes the process more convenient, adaptable, and accessible.

An eLearning marketplace allows students to learn anywhere at any time. It can be an application, a website, or a learning management software (LMS) solution.

The Advantages Of An eLearning Website

The answer to the vast popularity and rapid growth of this industry is its numerous advantages:

  • Learners can access courses or educational programs at any time and from any place in the world, which has become a big demand during the pandemic.
  • Courses are available on any device, even a mobile phone.
  • eLearning solutions provide an enhanced educational experience and the process is more engaging and innovative.
  • Learners get access to different types of content like videos, audio, illustrations, games, etc.
  • No limits to education.

4 Factors That Influence The Cost Of Building An eLearning Website

1. Complexity

This factor is defined by the needs of the audience and the willingness to correspond to them. Interactivity is an essential quality of online learning that guarantees enhanced learner involvement. The more personalized platform you build, the costlier the eLearning development will be.

2. Developer Rates

Depending on whether you go for an outsourced developer team or hire in-house staff, your expenses can vary greatly. The rates of offshore and nearshore teams can range from $19 to $79 per hour. We would like to highlight that you need to discuss your project with a developer team and choose the necessary developer roles. Pay attention to the technology stack because the more specific and complex this aspect is, the more you will need to spend on specialists. While working with outsourced developers, you receive all the desired technical expertise in one place.

3. Content Type

Choose the types of content you want to involve in your solution. They may be images, videos, animations. If you need customized content, the expenses will increase. Off-the-shelf tools are a more affordable option but they don't promise excellent quality.

4. MVP Features

There are numerous advantages to the MVP approach. Employing it will significantly reduce time-to-market and cut the cost of building an online learning platform. You should decide on the essential functionality for students, teachers, admin panels, and landing pages.

Clarify Your Business Goals First

If you are willing to make a customized solution, you should determine your educational solution development objectives. For different companies, they may vary from training staff to building an international online school.

When you have a definite vision of your goals, tailoring the software according to them becomes much easier. Don’t neglect the important process of business analysis and market research before you move on to development. It will significantly optimize your time, developer team effort, and other valuable resources.
– Andrey Onopriyenko (Chief technology officer at KeyUA)

So, What Is The Cost Of Building An eLearning Platform?

As you can see from the factors above, the final development cost depends on each project. The price very much relies on the development team size, the platforms you want to launch your product on, peculiarities, and design requirements.

As a rule, a Udemy-like platform with a similar feature set may cost around $20,000 for both Android and iOS apps. However, if you want to introduce any add-on features, be prepared to spend extra money on them. A custom mobile app employing AR and VR technologies requires at least $40,000.

Remember that it’s just an approximate estimate and while running your project, you need to proceed from your cooperation model, developer team size, and rate. If you want to optimize your expenses, outsourcing seems like an ideal opportunity. An in-house team is beneficial in the long run, but the hiring and training process is rather demanding. Consider the technologies to be used. If you pick the right ones, it will simplify the maintenance and make your eLearning solution more scalable and prepared for improvements.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, the cost to create an eLearning platform depends on two significant factors: the desired functionality and the model of cooperation with your developer team. Your software should have essential features standard for all products in this industry and unique ones that will become its highlights for users. The developers you collaborate with need to be experienced in developing similar products and have expertise in all the necessary technologies.

We hope that this article assisted you in calculating the cost of eLearning website development and optimizing your effort.