Ask three vendors what preschool management software costs and you’ll get three answers that can’t be compared: one quotes per child, one quotes a flat annual licence, one refuses to quote at all until you take a demo.
This is a breakdown of how the pricing models actually work in India, what a 30-child preschool should expect to pay, and which costs tend to surface only after you’ve signed.
Disclosure: we make Mazhali, a preschool app. Our own prices are listed below alongside the general market ranges so you can judge for yourself.
The three pricing models
1. Per-child, per-month
The most common model. You pay for each enrolled child, typically ₹25–₹80 per child per month, sometimes with a minimum.
- Good: cost tracks enrolment, so a small school pays a small bill.
- Watch for: whether you’re billed on enrolled children or active seats, and what happens between academic years when children graduate but haven’t been removed yet.
2. Flat monthly or annual fee
A single price for the school, often banded by size (up to 50 children, up to 150, and so on). Typically ₹500–₹5,000 per month depending on the band.
- Good: predictable, and cheap per child once you’re near the top of a band.
- Watch for: the cliff. Enrolling child number 51 can jump you a whole band.
3. One-time licence + annual maintenance
Older, usually desktop-era vendors. A large upfront figure (₹25,000–₹1,50,000) plus 15–20% a year in “annual maintenance”.
- Good: feels cheaper over a long horizon if the product genuinely never needs replacing.
- Watch for: the maintenance fee is not optional in practice — it’s what buys you updates and support. And a one-time licence gives the vendor no recurring reason to keep improving the product.
4. “Free” for the school, paid by parents
A fourth model worth naming: the school pays nothing and parents are charged a per-child app fee, or the app carries advertising.
Be careful here. You’re handing a vendor a billing relationship with your parents and, often, permission to market to them. The economics have to come from somewhere — if it isn’t the school, it’s your parents’ attention or their data.
What a real school actually pays
Rough all-in monthly cost, market-typical:
| School size | Per-child model (₹40/child) | Flat-fee model | One-time licence (amortised over 3 yrs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 children | ₹400 (often below the vendor minimum) | ₹500–₹1,000 | ₹1,000–₹2,000 |
| 30 children | ₹1,200 | ₹1,000–₹2,000 | ₹1,200–₹2,500 |
| 60 children | ₹2,400 | ₹2,000–₹3,500 | ₹1,500–₹3,000 |
| 150 children | ₹6,000 | ₹3,500–₹6,000 | ₹2,000–₹4,000 |
The pattern is consistent: per-child pricing favours small schools; flat fees favour large ones. The crossover is usually somewhere between 40 and 80 children.
For reference, Mazhali’s published pricing is a free tier, then ₹499/month up to 10 children, ₹50/child/month for children 11–40, and ₹35/child/month beyond 40 — a flat floor with per-child rates that step down as you grow. A 30-child school pays ₹1,499/month; annual billing takes roughly 17% off.
The costs that aren’t on the pricing page
This is where budgets actually break.
Setup or onboarding fee. ₹2,000–₹15,000 one-time, often described as “data migration” or “training”. Sometimes genuinely earned, sometimes a way to make the monthly headline look smaller. Always ask whether it’s waivable.
SMS charges. Frequently billed separately at ₹0.15–₹0.25 per SMS, and they add up faster than anyone expects: a daily update to 60 parents is roughly 1,800 messages a month. Ask whether notifications go by SMS or by app push — push costs nothing, SMS does not.
Payment gateway fees. If you collect fees through the app, expect 1.5–2.5% + GST on card payments. UPI is typically cheaper or free. Find out whether the vendor adds its own commission on top of the gateway’s, and who absorbs the fee — you, or the parent.
Per-user or per-staff charges. Some vendors price by staff logins as well as children. If you have five teachers and two admins, confirm they’re included.
Storage limits. Photos are the whole point of a preschool app, and they’re also the biggest cost driver for the vendor. A “5 GB included” line usually means an overage charge later, or aggressive compression.
Branded / white-label app. Your school’s own name and icon on the App Store and Play Store is almost always a paid add-on — ₹1,000–₹5,000 per month, sometimes with a setup charge. It’s a real cost for the vendor too: Apple’s developer programme alone is around ₹8,000 a year per account.
GST. Most published prices are exclusive. Add 18%.
Exit costs. Ask what a full data export looks like, in what format, and whether it costs anything. A vendor that can’t answer this quickly has told you something.
Free tiers: what they’re really for
Most free tiers are shaped to be genuinely unusable past the trial stage — one class, no parent accounts, no notifications. That’s not dishonest; it’s how the vendor stays alive. The useful question isn’t “is there a free tier” but “what’s the first thing that will force me to pay, and how much is it?”
For most schools that trigger is the same: the moment you want parents to actually receive daily reports.
Questions to put to every vendor
Ask all of these in writing before you sign:
- Is the price per child, per staff member, or flat?
- Is GST included?
- What is the setup or onboarding fee, and is it waivable?
- Are SMS charges separate? At what rate?
- What are the payment-gateway charges, and do you add a commission?
- What’s included in storage, and what happens when I exceed it?
- What does the price become at 2× my current enrolment?
- Is the price locked for the contract term, and what’s the renewal increase?
- Can I export all my data, in what format, at what cost?
- What’s the refund policy if we cancel in month two?
If a vendor won’t answer question 1 without a sales call, that’s your answer to the rest.
How to actually decide
Cheapest-per-month is the wrong test. A slightly more expensive app that your teachers actually use every day is worth far more than a cheap one that gets abandoned in week three — at which point your real cost is the whole subscription plus the staff time you spent migrating.
Three rules that hold up:
- Model your cost at 2× enrolment, not today’s. Growth is the point.
- Run a pilot with one class for a month before committing school-wide.
- Insist on a clean data export path before you put a single child’s record in.
Next, work through How to Choose a Daycare App: 12 Questions to Ask Any Vendor — pricing is only one of the twelve, and rarely the one that decides it.