Guides
Working out what your school actually needs
Long-form guides to buying and running school software when your school is small. Every price is read from the vendor's own published page and dated, anything we can't confirm is marked unconfirmed rather than guessed at, and each guide names the schools we are the wrong answer for. We sell one of the products in these tables; every source is listed at the foot of each guide so you can check us.
Pricing across all guides last verified July 2026.
Founder's guide
How to start a microschool
Most of what you need is not national. Here is the sequence that applies everywhere, the money picture from the only census that counts these schools — and then the part that decides everything, which is which state you are in.
Read the guide About 11 minutes · updatedBuyer's guide
Microschool management software
Fourteen options small schools actually shortlist, what each really costs at three school sizes, and — since we make one of them — the sizes and situations where ours is the wrong answer.
Read the guide About 12 minutes · updatedPricing guide
What a student information system really costs
Every published price we can source, at three school sizes — and the five costs that never appear on a pricing page.
Read the guide About 9 minutes · updatedThe detail behind the guides
These guides compress work that lives in full elsewhere on this site. If you want the long version of any single claim, it's here.