Askademic strongly believes education should be accessible, affordable, and still high quality. That is why we keep prices lower than the other guys while still offering competitive compensation to attract and retain the best tutors and teachers. We also want all students to be aware of exploitive tutoring pricing. To help raise awareness, we’ve highlighted some tricky marketing tactics that companies apply to their pricing to make it seem like they have great deals when really they cost more.
Without naming our competition, we found that most online tutoring sites use pricing tactics that are less than transparent to their customers. For example, one platform displays the cost per minute. Sure, 82¢ per minute seems reasonable at first, but when it adds up, you’ll find yourself paying about $50/hour of tutoring. Other platforms also try to sell tutoring sessions in bulk instead of per hour AND charge more per extra minute. This online tutoring service, which will remain nameless, charges $69 for two hours (without providing one-hour options) and 58¢ per additional minute. This isn’t Costco! Bulk buying isn’t always cost-effective! Another platform charges $24 per “session” without directly disclosing how long their sessions are. We can be hopeful and assume the sessions are the typical one-hour intervals. However, we can’t be certain. It could actually be 30-minute sessions. Before you know it, you end up paying $48 for one hour of tutoring. A different example allows tutors to set their own pricing. Of course, many individual tutors base their prices on their own perception of their value while not considering the students nor the tutoring service platform as a whole. This results in some $10/hour sessions from tutors who know they have a limited understanding of certain subjects. Contrastingly, it also results in $70+/hour sessions from the most expert tutors in their studies. While this pricing strategy might empower tutors, it’s not exactly beneficial to students. To be fair to both parties, we make an effort to screen our teacher hires very well to ensure they’re qualified to be instructing our students. If they pass our standards, they can receive competitive compensation, all while maintaining the same hourly rate to students.
To put these dishonest and over-priced examples in perspective, we averaged the costs of some well-known tutoring services. We found a large difference between a simple one-hour session: Askademic- $17.99, Others (avg): $39. With a price difference like this, there is no question who to come to for homework and language help! If you don’t believe us, check out other websites yourself and make sure to compare their pricing to ours!
We also offer 2 hours of free sessions to new students to demonstrate the value of learning with our esteemed teachers. Sign up today to access your free classes.
