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Ask HN: Is it a smart move to give out discount for students?

5 points by tuangeek ↗ HN
I run an API service and was recently contacted by a professor at a university asking for a discount for a subscription with my service. They are asking for more than 1 million request, which would run for about $1k. However it would only cost me about $100 in server cost. I want give it to them $1 so I have some kind of record and accountability if my service gets abused.

What are the pros and cons? What would you guys do in my situation?

8 comments

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scott31
Tell the professor to teach about FOSS and to stay away from SaaS offerings. It is also ethically wrong to ask students to pay for a proprietary service as part of their university education
whyhow
This is how you end up with students who are not prepared for the workforce because they haven't been trained on the tools that businesses actually use.

There is nothing ethically wrong with asking students to purchase proprietary services, but it is tone deaf to make them buy absurdly expensive software.

makeee
I don't see any issue with giving them a discount as long as you're covering costs (and future support requests). I do this fairly frequently when people reach out and ask if I have a discount for students, although generally don't do more than 30% off.
tuangeek
I did just this. I gave them a price that would cover the cost of running the server.
saluki
Just give it to them as a free account, I expect the account would be tied to the professors email address for a record.

I would print up some cool stickers of your logo and send them to the professor to handout to the students using your API.

Maybe give them a tutorial on ways to limit/cache API requests so they don't overload your servers.

Good will like this could go a long way leading them to recommending you when ever they can in the future.

Everyone loves stickers they will end up on their laptops and computers and will be a reminder to use your service in the future.

tuangeek
Lol I love the sticker idea! But since this is a side project of mine I don't actually have the resource or design skills to create sticker. But really cool idea though.
notahacker
Is your service the sort of thing that students will learn to work with and then want to use in their corporate job afterwards? That's the pro.

Is your service the sort of resource that the university would happily pay $1k without blinking if you didn't offer a discount? That's the con. (Universities pay for some very expensive subscription services for courses, and sometimes even individual research students can budget that much from whoever's funding their research)

Without knowing more, I'd guess something students won't use anywhere near as many API requests as the professor thinks, and might not be used by students later in life either though...

tuangeek
Well the professor wants to use it for a research project. So I don't think it will be used by students. I went ahead and offer the service for $100 for the duration of the project.

Thanks for your input.