RFP vs RFI vs RFQ
An RFI gathers information and awards nothing. An RFQ asks for a price against a specification you have already written. An RFP asks vendors to propose an approach and is scored against published criteria. Choosing the wrong one costs a district months.
| Instrument | You are asking for | Award basis | Negotiation after | Typical calendar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RFI — request for information | Market intelligence | No award | n/a | 3–6 weeks |
| RFQ — request for quotation | A price against your specification | Lowest price meeting the spec | Limited | 2–5 weeks |
| IFB — invitation for bid | Sealed bids against a precise spec | Lowest responsive, responsible bidder | Essentially none | 6–10 weeks |
| RFP — request for proposal | An approach, plus price | Weighted evaluation, best value | Yes, with the selected proposer | 12–20 weeks |
| Co-op or piggyback ride | Nothing — someone else already competed | The lead agency's award | Within the contract's terms | 1–4 weeks |
Choosing correctly
The decision is driven by one question: can you specify what you want precisely enough that price is the only remaining variable?
For a commodity — 400 identical access points — the answer is yes, and an RFQ or a sealed bid is right. For school-home communications the answer is usually no, because the differences that matter are not specifiable as a parts list: how the audience resolves against a live roster, what the platform does when a roster export arrives truncated, whether delivery reporting distinguishes carrier acceptance from arrival, how translation is applied. An RFP scored on published criteria is the honest instrument for that.
An RFI is for when you genuinely do not know what the market offers or what it costs. Its failure mode is using it as a substitute for research a competent team could do in a week. In this category, pricing is largely obtainable without one: several vendors publish figures, and the ones who do not have published pricing pages that resolve to a contact form.
Thresholds matter too. State law sets the value above which formal competitive procurement is required, and using federal funds brings a further set of procurement standards with their own micro-purchase and simplified-acquisition thresholds. Those numbers have been revised in recent years, so take the current figure from your business office rather than from a purchasing manual written in 2019.
A weighting model that survives a protest
Publish the weights in the solicitation, score against them, and keep the scoresheets. A defensible split for a school-home communications award:
| Criterion | Weight | Score it on |
|---|---|---|
| Functional fit | 30% | A scripted demo of your five real scenarios, not a feature grid |
| Security and data privacy | 20% | The DPA terms accepted without amendment, plus how tenant isolation is enforced and tested |
| Total cost over five years | 20% | Licence, modules, usage at your worst month, implementation, renewal caps |
| Implementation and migration | 15% | A named plan with dates, and what happens to your existing data |
| Accessibility | 10% | A dated Accessibility Conformance Report, and what it admits |
| References and viability | 5% | Districts of your size and SIS, contacted directly |
Two notes on that last row. Weight it low deliberately — references are self-selected and every vendor has three happy districts. And be explicit in the solicitation about how a new entrant is scored, because a criterion that silently requires five years of references is a barrier you did not intend to write.
Calendar, planned backwards from go-live
Communications platforms go live in July or August or they do not go live. Working back from a 1 August cutover:
- Late July: staff training and a pilot send to a small audience.
- July: roster integration, contact data cleanup, template migration.
- June: contract executed and data privacy agreement signed. This step slips more often than any other.
- May: board approval, which happens on the board's calendar rather than yours.
- April: evaluation, demos, reference calls, recommendation.
- March: proposals due, typically 3–4 weeks after issue.
- February: RFP issued.
- January: requirements written with the people who send the messages, not only with technology staff.
That is seven months, and it is why districts that start in April end up riding a co-operative contract instead. Riding one is legitimate. Riding one because you ran out of calendar is how a district ends up in a five-year agreement it never evaluated.
Kastr publishes its price so that this process can start with a number: $3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students, $3.25 from 5,000 to 14,999, $3.00 at 15,000 and above, one tier, everything included.
Questions people actually ask
When should a district issue an RFI instead of an RFP?
When you genuinely cannot specify requirements or estimate cost, and need to understand what the market does before committing to a scope. An RFI awards nothing and adds weeks. If published pricing and a handful of demos would answer the question, skip it.
Can a district award from an RFQ without scoring vendors?
An RFQ is normally awarded on price against a specification, so formal weighted scoring is not the mechanism. That only works when the specification is complete enough that every conforming quote is genuinely equivalent, which is rarely true for software.
How long does a school district RFP take end to end?
Plan seven months from writing requirements to go-live for a summer cutover: requirements in January, issue in February, proposals in March, evaluation in April, board approval in May, contract and DPA in June, implementation in July. Board calendars and contract review are the steps that slip.
Must price be the deciding factor in an RFP?
In a sealed competitive bid, usually yes — lowest responsive and responsible bidder. An RFP exists precisely to allow best-value award against published weighted criteria. State law governs which route is available at which value, so confirm the rule that applies to your district.
One price. Every feature. Locked for three years.
$3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students. No tiers, no add-on modules, no per-message fees. Published on the site because you should not have to book a call to learn a price.