ClassDojo pricing: what is free, what families pay, what districts are quoted
ClassDojo's pricing is unusual enough that the ordinary question — what does it cost? — has three different answers depending on who is asking. This page separates them, because a board approving a free product should see all three.
| Payer | What they get | Published cost | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| The district | District console, school-wide messaging, roster support | $0 | Published |
| The district, for add-ons | Additional district capabilities | Not published | Unpriced |
| The teacher | Full classroom product | $0 | Published |
| The family | Dojo Sparks, inside the same app | $9.99 per month | Published |
| For comparison — Kastr: $3.50 / $3.25 / $3.00 per student per year to the district, $0 to teachers, $0 to families, family monetisation contractually prohibited at §9.4 | |||
Approximately one family in twenty subscribes to the consumer tier. ClassDojo's district page describes paid add-ons without naming a price for any of them.
The household arithmetic a board has probably not seen
"Free" is accurate from the district's side of the ledger. It is worth showing a board the other side, because the money does not disappear, it moves.
Take a district of 6,000 students, roughly 4,200 households. At the published Sparks rate and a five per cent conversion rate on a $9.99 monthly subscription, that is about 210 households paying roughly $120 a year each, or in the region of $25,000 a year flowing out of your community into a vendor. The same district on our rate pays $19,500, from the district budget, with nothing collected from families.
We are not presenting that as a gotcha. Conversion rates vary, some families genuinely want the consumer product, and nobody is obliged to buy it. The point is narrower: the comparison "free versus $19,500" is not the real comparison, and a board deciding on the basis of the first framing is deciding on incomplete information. Run the numbers for your own enrolment before the meeting.
What to ask about a free-to-district product
Free changes the questions, it does not remove them. Six worth asking in writing:
- "What is the revenue model, precisely?" Consumer subscriptions, add-ons, data, advertising, something else. Get it named.
- "May we opt our families out of in-app marketing for the consumer product?" If the answer is no, that is your answer about whose channel it is.
- "What is the contract term, and what are the notice provisions?" Free products frequently come with terms of service rather than negotiated agreements, which means they change unilaterally.
- "What are our export rights, and are they in a contract?" Our answer is §7.1: complete machine-readable export on demand, without notice, without fee. Being exact about today's state — we run that export for you on request; there is no self-serve button yet, and we would rather say so than let a nicer sentence sit on a pricing page.
- "What does the price become if the free tier ends?" A free product with no priced successor is an unpriced future contract.
- "What are the add-ons and what do they cost?" A published product with unpublished add-ons has a price; you just have not been told it.
The asymmetry worth naming. A district can compare two published prices in five minutes. Comparing a published price against a free product with unpriced add-ons and a consumer revenue stream takes a finance analyst and a values conversation. That difficulty is not accidental, and it is not unique to ClassDojo — ParentSquare publishes no figure at all.
How our pricing is built, for the comparison
So the arithmetic is checkable rather than rhetorical: $3.50 per student per year below 5,000 students, $3.25 from 5,000 to 14,999, $3.00 at 15,000 and above. One tier at every size. Every feature included — no modules, no add-ons, no per-message fees, no separate voice line.
Three worked examples: a 1,400-student district pays $4,900. A 6,200-student district pays $20,150. An 18,000-student district pays $54,000. Those numbers are fixed for 36 months under §3.2, and from year four the annual increase is capped at the lesser of CPI-U or five per cent. Anything we ship during the locked term is included at no additional charge, which removes the usual incentive to hold capability back for a paid module.
What that money does not buy, and we would rather you knew now: no single sign-on, no attachments or photo sharing, no push notifications, no behaviour module, no SOC 2 report, and no customer references, because we are pre-launch and have none.
Questions people actually ask
How much does ClassDojo cost a school district?
Nothing for the core district product — ClassDojo for Districts is free. Paid district add-ons exist and no price is published for them, so the practical answer is $0 plus whatever an add-on conversation produces.
What is ClassDojo Plus and what does it cost families?
It is the consumer subscriptions sold to families inside the app — Dojo Sparks at a published $9.99 a month, and ClassDojo Plus at a price published nowhere. Roughly one family in twenty subscribes. That revenue stream is how a product that is free to your district is funded.
Do ClassDojo's district features cost money?
The core district console is free. Additional district capabilities are described on their site as paid add-ons with no published price, so you will need to ask. Get the figure in writing before you build a budget around free.
If ClassDojo is free, what is the catch for a district?
There is no hidden charge to the district. The trade is that your official school channel also carries a consumer product marketed to your families, and that the cost has moved from your budget to household budgets that are not evenly able to absorb it. Whether that trade is acceptable is a board decision, not a technical one.
Can a district block ClassDojo from marketing to its families?
Ask them directly and get the answer in writing, because it is the question that determines whose channel it is. For contrast, Kastr's §9.4 removes the possibility entirely: we may not market or sell to district families, and may not take family-facing subscription, fee or transaction revenue, ever.
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.