We announced our current pricing back in February 2010. We've since supplemented that with a few optional items: SMS Emergency Notifications and File storage (the price of which has dropped several times the past couple years). As for Populi itself, well, we've added a thing or two, I guess. And all along we've held fast to the free essentials that make it all go for our customers: implementation, training, support—and, most important, our annual Christmas photos.

It recently struck us: our Pricing Page has remained all but unchanged for the past five years. Web companies commonly experiment with their pricing—adding new tiers, shuffling features around, annual subscription discounts, and so on. You could attribute this to the flexibility of web-based software; it's simple to justify a change in price for an easily-changed product. But such changes have never even crossed our minds. Populi's price has remained steady for five years. The service itself, on the other hand, offers vastly more than it used to. How'd that happen?

Concerning the price, we've never had a good reason to raise it. Every year, our infrastructure dollars have gotten us more—in terms of utility, service, and storage. We have Moore's Law to thank for that; the popular version purports that, every 18 months or so, computing power doubles in speed and drops in price by half. In turn, that has helped us scale up and take on more schools. That spreads our overall costs over an increasing number of customers. And finally, the revenue we take in gets plowed back into our people, our company, and serving our customers. Being privately-owned, there's no obligation to meet the preposterous financial goals of distant, disinterested investors.

Concerning the service, we've only ever had reasons to make it better. Our customers ask us for lots of good things that we want to give them. Some bigger schools need things we don't quite offer yet. The new feature we just released could use refinement. And then there's our own temperament. We’re relentlessly dissatisfied with Populi. No matter how good it is, how many features we add, or how well it all performs, there’s always some way to make it better. Now, it's not that our work is lousy. It's more that we've been given the opportunity to do this work—so why not swing for the fences?

So. We've never had a reason to raise the price, and have always been compelled to make Populi better. That's worked out well for us, and I'd wager, for our customers. Schools that came aboard in 2010 are getting a lot more than they signed up for. For that matter, so are the schools who signed up in 2011, 2012... even customers who came aboard six months ago now have something better than before.

We once likened the college software scene to shopping for a car. In a market cluttered with custom tour buses and shady used cars, Populi was the dependable Toyota minivan—affordable, room for everyone, and a great warranty. Now, imagine that you bought the minivan, and every six months or so, the dealer automatically upgraded it to the next trim level. Or installed a new motor. Or gave you a sunroof. All without you paying more or having to do anything.

That's pretty much the deal you get with Populi.