What a programme portal costs: build, buy or white-label

When a consultancy asks what it costs to take a programme online, the usual answer is "it depends". That is true, and not much help when you are trying to decide whether to do it at all.

So here are the numbers. There are three ways to put a leadership programme into a portal of its own: build one, buy a platform and set it up yourself, or have a white-label portal built and run for you. I sell the third, so I will give you our prices in full. The other two come from published price lists and agency estimates from this year, converted to euros and rounded.

The short answer

Building your own platform with an agency starts at around €30,000 for a basic first version and runs past €100,000 for a full one. Keeping it running then costs roughly a quarter to two fifths of the build price every year.

Buying a platform costs from about €30 to €400 a month for a course platform, or about €5 to €8 per active user a month for a corporate learning platform, often with a yearly minimum around €10,000. On top of that comes your own time to build the programme inside it, and an AI coach is a separate product and a separate bill.

A white-label portal, built and run for you, is what we do. It costs from €4,900 to set up, then €6 per active delegate a month, with a minimum of €110 a month. That includes the portal, an AI coach trained on your programme, nudges, hosting and all AI usage.

What you are actually paying for

Quotes are hard to compare because they cover different things. A programme portal that does its job usually has six parts:

1. The portal itself. Logins, the sessions in order, progress, the workbook, on any device.
2. An AI coach. Trained on your programme, answering delegates between sessions and passing personal questions to your facilitators.
3. Nudges. Emails and notifications triggered by what each delegate has done, not by the calendar.
4. Your brand. Your name, your colours, ideally your own web address.
5. Payments and logins. So a client can buy places or team seats and delegates get access straight away.
6. Hosting and care. Someone who keeps it running, secure and up to date, and changes it when your programme changes.

When you compare prices, check which of these six each quote includes. A cheap monthly fee that covers only the first one is not cheaper.

Route 1: build your own

A custom platform gives you exactly what you want. It is also the most expensive route by a distance.

Agencies that build learning platforms publish estimates from around €30,000 for a basic first version to between €100,000 and €250,000 for a full one. A basic version typically takes three to four months. Those figures are for the platform alone. An AI coach, content setup and design are often extra.

The cost that catches people out comes after launch. Hosting, security updates, fixes and changes usually run at a quarter to two fifths of the build cost every year. And if the platform includes AI, the AI itself is billed by use, so the bill grows with every question your delegates ask.

When it makes sense: you are a large firm, you have your own technical team, and your programme needs something no existing platform can do.

Route 2: buy a platform and set it up yourself

There are two kinds of platform to buy.

Course platforms charge a flat monthly fee, from about €30 to €400 a month depending on the plan. They are built for selling courses to the public: videos, quizzes, a checkout. A branded mobile app, where it exists, often costs extra.

Corporate learning platforms usually charge per user, around €5 to €8 per active user a month. Many have minimums, either a set number of users or a yearly contract of around €10,000, plus setup fees from about €1,000 to over €10,000.

Both look affordable on the price list. The cost that does not appear there is your time. Someone has to design the portal, load every session, write the emails, set up the logins, answer the support questions and keep it all working. For a small consultancy that is usually the founder, in the evenings.

Neither kind comes with an AI coach trained on your programme. Some offer AI features, so ask what they are for. A tool that helps you write course outlines is not the same as a coach that answers your delegates from your material and knows when to hand over to a person. Here is what that kind of coach does inside a leadership programme.

When it makes sense: you have someone in the team with the time and the interest to build and run it, and you do not need an AI coach.

Route 3: a white-label portal, built and run for you

A white-label portal is a ready system, set up in your brand, with your programme inside it. Delegates see your name, not ours. You send the material, and the provider builds, hosts and runs it.

The term covers a wide range. Many white-label coaching apps are made for solo coaches and personal trainers and often start under €100 a month. They are built for one coach with individual clients, not for a consultancy running cohorts for client organisations, with a client who wants to know whether it worked. The white-label platform guide for consultancies covers what to look for.

Our prices

Here is what we charge, the same as on our pricing page:

• Setup: from €4,900, once. Your programme as a portal with logins and progress, an AI coach beside every session trained on your material, and nudges triggered by progress. All in your brand, live in about six weeks.
• Then €6 per active delegate a month, with a minimum of €110 a month. AI usage, hosting, monitoring and updates are included. There is no second bill.

What that means in a year, if the number of active delegates stays the same each month:

From the second year, only the monthly part remains.

Some pieces are priced separately, and fixed before we start:

• Presenter videos, your sessions re-produced with an avatar or animation: from €320 for eight sessions.
• Another programme on the same platform: from €1,100.
• Voice, so the coach can talk and listen: €290, then €3 per active delegate a month.
• Website and payments, and evaluation for your clients: priced on the call, because they depend on what you already have.

When it makes sense: you want your programme online in your brand, with an AI coach, without building or running anything yourself.

Questions to ask any provider

Whichever route you look at, these questions show the real price quickly:

• Is AI usage included, or billed on top as delegates use it?
• Is there a monthly or yearly minimum?
• Who hosts it, updates it and fixes it, and is that in the price?
• Whose data is it? Can you export it and leave?
• Does the AI answer from your material only, and what does it do with personal questions?
• What does a second programme cost on the same platform?
• Can clients pay through it, and do delegates get their login automatically?
• Is it in your brand, on your own web address?

If a quote cannot answer these in a sentence each, the price on it is not the price you will pay.

Questions consultancies ask about cost

Why per active delegate and not per seat? Because you should pay for the people using it, not for every name ever enrolled. A cohort that has finished stops counting.

Is the AI billed separately? Not with us. Usage is included in the monthly price, so a busy cohort does not produce a surprise bill.

Can we start small? Yes. You can start with one programme and one cohort, then add more programmes on the same platform.

Is there a cheaper option for coaches? If you are a coach with individual clients rather than a consultancy running programmes, the AI coach on its own is from €890 to set up, then €4 per active client a month, with a minimum of €90 a month.

Where to start

Look at what you already pay for in time and tools to run your programme between workshops, then compare it with the routes above. If you are still deciding what should go online at all, start with taking a leadership programme online without losing the room. For most consultancies running one to a handful of programmes, building from scratch is out of proportion, and doing it yourself costs more evenings than it saves.

If you want to see what yours would look like before you decide, the programme portal page shows the whole system, and I'll build a companion from your website, free. See your own companion

Robert, founder of Thinkable Systems