Firefly - too expensive these days?

[DavidHorton]

Hi all,

 

I'm just wondering if anyone is finding the high cost of Firefly a barrier to renewal, given the prevalence of things like MS Teams? We're in the FF ecosystem and as such don't particularly want to foist another technology change on the staff and parents, but our renewal cost works out at an eye-watering £45 per user...

 

Any opinions?

 

David.

[supportman]

It was too expensive years ago let alone today We chose Microsoft Teams for education and its brilliant.

 

I have no idea why people continue to pay for VLE's when such a good free product exists from both Microsoft and Google.

[Wubbalubbadub]

It was too expensive years ago let alone today We chose Microsoft Teams for education and its brilliant.

 

I have no idea why people continue to pay for VLE's when such a good free product exists from both Microsoft and Google.

 

This! Firefly has mainly been targeted at private schools i believe?

[colly72]

We use Firefly and are largely happy with it. It is expensive but for us, coming from a SIMS Learning Gateway/Moodle/Staff Intranet environment, it was a good way of us consolidating all our platforms under a single pane of glass. I'm not sure how we could publish reports to parents re MS Teams/Google, although I agree they are excellent products. If we were purely using it as a VLE, then I would agree, it's overpriced.

[yac2016]

Wow £45 per user...can't be right?

[DavidHorton]

'Fraid so. £7500 + VAT per year and (as a Y3-8 prep school) only 200 users who are capable of using it...

[supportman]

We use Firefly and are largely happy with it. It is expensive but for us, coming from a SIMS Learning Gateway/Moodle/Staff Intranet environment, it was a good way of us consolidating all our platforms under a single pane of glass. I'm not sure how we could publish reports to parents re MS Teams/Google, although I agree they are excellent products. If we were purely using it as a VLE, then I would agree, it's overpriced.

 

We publish reports using TASC insight parent portal currently.

[Andycat]

It was too expensive years ago let alone today We chose Microsoft Teams for education and its brilliant.

 

I have no idea why people continue to pay for VLE's when such a good free product exists from both Microsoft and Google.

 

Can you set/track/notify homework with Teams?

 

We too are looking at moving away from Firefly next year...

[supportman]

Can you set/track/notify homework with Teams?

 

We too are looking at moving away from Firefly next year...

 

Teams 'for education', yep! Its brilliant as a homework tracker. Works best when you combine it with SDS so you have all your class lists as groups from Sims.

 

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/create-an-assignment-in-microsoft-teams-23c128d0-ec34-4691-9511-661fba8599be

 

Or a nice video here:

 

[yac2016]

Google Classroom or MS Teams is all you need...just think of the money saved!

[Danp]

We have Firefly and for the most part very happy with it. It's not cheap, but when we signed up it was the only feasible option for us at the time. We are playing around the MS Teams at the moment.