# What It Costs to Run Your Classroom and Your Checkout as Two Systems

> Most teaching software runs the class or takes the payment, rarely both. The hidden cost is reconciliation — here is how to measure yours before you buy.

Published 2026-09-28 · by Renu Rawat · 11 min read
Source: https://prolaud.com/blog/classroom-and-checkout-one-system

Ask a teacher what software they use and you get a confident answer: Zoom, or Meet, or whatever the school provides. Ask them how they know which students paid this month and the answer slows down. There is usually a spreadsheet involved. Often there are two.

This is the part of choosing software for online teaching that nobody demonstrates, because it does not happen in the product. It happens on the last Sunday of the month, with three browser tabs open, working out whether Priya has paid for the sessions she attended and whether the person who paid on the 4th is the same person who joined on the 6th under a different name.

## The three shapes of teaching software

Every tool in this category is one of three things. Knowing which one you are looking at tells you more than any feature list, because it tells you what work is left over for you.

**The question is not which is best. It is which leftover work you are willing to do.**

| Shape | What it does | What it leaves you | What it costs |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A room | Runs the live class. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams. | Payment, enrolment, records — all of it | A low monthly fee, plus your own time |
| A marketplace | Lists your course, finds buyers, takes payment | Little, and that is the appeal | A percentage of every sale, forever |
| A platform | Runs the class AND the checkout on one student record | The teaching | A flat fee, whatever you earn |

A room is the right answer more often than platform vendors admit. If you teach six students you have known for years and they pay you by UPI on the first of the month, a video link and your memory are a complete system. Adding software to that is not an upgrade, it is homework.

A marketplace is the right answer if what you lack is students rather than infrastructure. You are buying distribution, and a percentage is what distribution costs. The trade is that the audience belongs to the marketplace: it can change its terms, its ranking, or its mind, and your students came to it rather than to you.

A platform is the right answer when you have the students and the work of administering them has started to cost you evenings.

## Measuring the reconciliation tax

Most advice about teaching software compares features. Features are easy to compare and mostly irrelevant, because the thing that actually consumes your time is not in any feature list. It is the gap between systems.

*Three systems, each correct on its own, and one person holding them together.*

Here is how to measure it honestly, before you decide anything. For one month, keep a note of every minute you spend on these five tasks. Not an estimate — a note, written down as it happens, because the estimate is always lower than the number.

1. Exporting an attendance report and matching the names in it to names in your payment records.
2. Answering "did my payment go through?" or "which link is the class?" from a student who has both, somewhere.
3. Chasing someone who attended but has not paid, and checking twice before you send the message because getting that wrong is embarrassing.
4. Issuing a receipt or invoice by hand because the payment happened somewhere the class does not know about.
5. Working out, at month end, what you actually earned.

Multiply the total by what an hour of your time is worth — not your hourly teaching rate, but what you would pay someone to do this instead. That number is the real price of keeping the two systems apart, and it is the number to compare a subscription against. Most teachers who do this exercise are surprised twice: once by the total, and once by how much of it is the third item.

## Why the gap is worse than it looks

Reconciliation time is the visible cost. There are two invisible ones, and they are larger.

The first is what it does to the student. A separate checkout means a separate link, a separate confirmation, and a separate place to look things up. Every one of those is a moment where someone who meant to enrol does something else instead. You do not see these, because a person who gives up does not write to tell you. You only see the ones who write to ask where the link is — and for every one of those there are several who did not bother.

The second is that you stop knowing things. When attendance and payment live on one record, questions like "who has missed two sessions in a row" or "who is due to renew next week" are things you glance at. When they live apart, they are small research projects, so you stop asking them. The information was always available; the cost of retrieving it is what made it disappear.

> **A useful test:** Try to answer this in under a minute, right now: which of your students attended at least three sessions last month but have not paid this month? If you can, your systems are fine. If it would take ten minutes of cross-referencing, that is the gap, and it is costing you more than the ten minutes.

## What integrated checkout actually changes

When the classroom and the checkout are the same system, the reconciliation does not get faster. It stops existing, because there is nothing to reconcile — attendance and payment were written to the same student record as they happened.

In practice that means the enrolment link and the class link are the same link; a payment grants access without you doing anything; the receipt and, in India, the GST invoice are issued automatically; and the answer to "has this person paid" is on the same screen as "did this person turn up". Prolaud is built this way, and the money settles directly into your own Razorpay or Stripe account — it is not held and passed on.

It is worth being precise about what that does and does not solve, because integrated does not mean unlimited. On Prolaud, the free Starter tier covers 5 students, Pro is ₹1,499 a month and covers up to 1,000, and the tiers above that remove the cap. The commission is 0% on every tier, including the free one.

## Flat fee or percentage: the shape of the choice

A percentage and a flat fee behave very differently as you grow, and the difference is easy to see if you write it down rather than reason about it.

Do the arithmetic with your own numbers and your own platform's rate rather than a rate quoted in an article — including this one. Rates change, tiers have exceptions, and "zero commission" is sometimes a feature of the most expensive plan rather than a property of the product. Take your monthly revenue, multiply it by the rate you are actually charged, and compare that single number to a flat subscription.

**Rates shown as illustrative percentages, not as any named platform's pricing — check what you are actually charged. The point is the shape: one column is flat and the others are slopes.**

| Monthly revenue | At a 5% rate | At a 15% rate | At a 25% rate | Flat ₹1,499 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ₹20,000 | ₹1,000 | ₹3,000 | ₹5,000 | ₹1,499 |
| ₹50,000 | ₹2,500 | ₹7,500 | ₹12,500 | ₹1,499 |
| ₹1,00,000 | ₹5,000 | ₹15,000 | ₹25,000 | ₹1,499 |
| ₹2,00,000 | ₹10,000 | ₹30,000 | ₹50,000 | ₹1,499 |

The crossover is usually lower than people expect. What makes a percentage feel safe is that it costs nothing when you earn nothing — which is genuinely valuable while you are finding out whether anyone wants what you teach. What makes it expensive is that it keeps scaling after you have found out.

## Classroom features: the four that get used

Since the room matters too, it is worth saying which parts of it you will actually touch. Across most teaching practices it comes down to four: sharing your screen, writing on something, knowing who turned up, and recording the session for whoever missed it.

Breakout rooms are the feature people most often believe they need and least often use. If you teach conversation — languages, interview practice, anything where students must talk to each other rather than to you — they are essential and you should choose on them. If you tutor one to one, or teach to a group that asks questions rather than working in pairs, they will sit unused.

> **Where Prolaud is weaker:** If breakout rooms are central to how you teach, Zoom is still the better room and this article will not pretend otherwise. Prolaud's breakouts work in a desktop browser but are not yet true sub-rooms with their own media, and mobile breakouts were removed. The rest of the comparison is in our virtual classroom software breakdown.

Recording is worth a moment's thought beyond "does it record". Ask where the file goes, who pays to store it as the library grows, and — this one catches people — who owns it. If you intend to sell recordings later, the answer to the third question is the one that matters.

## When a plain video call is still the right answer

There is no prize for using more software than your practice needs, and a platform you have not grown into is a second job. Stay with a video link and a payment you handle yourself if most of these are true:

- You teach a handful of students and you can name all of them without checking.
- Payment is simple — a fixed monthly arrangement, or UPI straight to your account.
- You are testing whether a course idea has any buyers, and committing to a platform first would be putting the tooling before the demand.
- Your students already reach you somewhere that works — a WhatsApp group, a school's system — and a new login would be a step backwards for them.
- Month-end takes you ten minutes and does not bother you.

The signal to move is not a student count. It is the first month you postpone the reconciliation because you cannot face it, or the first time you realise you have been teaching someone free for six weeks.

## What to check before you commit to anything

Whichever shape you choose, four questions are worth asking before you move your practice onto it. All four are about what happens later, which is when the cost of choosing badly arrives.

1. Can you export your students, including their payment history, without asking anyone? If the export is a support ticket, your records are not really yours.
2. Whose domain do students land on? Your own domain is an asset you keep; a subdirectory on someone else's is one you rent.
3. What happens at the tier boundary — does it refuse the next student, or quietly charge you? Both are defensible. Not knowing which is not.
4. Who owns the recordings, in writing? Not what support says. What the terms say.

[See how it works](https://prolaud.com/features) — Live classes, enrolment and payment on a single student record, on your own domain. Free to start — 5 students, 0% commission, no card.

## The short version

- Teaching software is a room, a marketplace, or a platform. Each leaves you different work; pick the leftover you can live with.
- Measure your reconciliation time for one month before comparing prices. It is almost always the largest number in the decision, and the one nobody quotes.
- A percentage costs nothing at zero and scales with your success. A flat fee is the opposite. Do the arithmetic at the revenue you expect, not the revenue you have.
- Four classroom features get used: screen share, a whiteboard, attendance, recording. Breakout rooms matter enormously to some teachers and not at all to most.
- A plain video call is a complete answer for a small practice. Move when month-end starts to hurt, not when a comparison table tells you to.

## Frequently asked questions

### What software do I need to teach online?

At minimum, a way to hold the class and a way to get paid. That can be a video link plus UPI, and for a small practice it is genuinely enough. The question is whether those two things need to know about each other — which becomes true at the point where matching attendance to payments starts taking real time each month.

### How much does online teaching software cost in India?

It depends on the shape. Video tools charge a small flat monthly fee and leave payment to you. Marketplaces charge a percentage of each sale. Platforms with integrated checkout charge a flat subscription — Prolaud is ₹1,499 a month on Pro, which covers up to 1,000 students at 0% commission, with a free Starter tier for up to 5.

### Is a flat fee better than commission?

It depends on where you are. Commission costs nothing while you have no revenue, which is the right trade while you are still finding out whether anyone will buy. A flat fee is better once you have. Work out your own crossover: multiply your monthly revenue by the rate you are actually charged and compare it to the subscription.

### Do I need breakout rooms?

Only if students need to talk to each other. Language practice, interview prep and group workshops depend on them. One-to-one tutoring and question-led group classes do not, and choosing a platform on a feature you will never open is a common and expensive mistake.

### Who owns my class recordings?

Read the terms rather than the marketing. Some marketplaces claim rights over content hosted with them. On a platform where you bring your own domain and gateway, the recordings are normally yours — but if you plan to sell them later, confirm it in writing before you record a hundred hours.

### Can I use my own domain?

On software built for independent teachers, yes — your students land on your address rather than a platform's. Marketplaces generally do not offer this, because the audience is the product they are selling. If you intend to build a name, this is worth more than most of the features you are comparing.

### How hard is it to move platforms later?

Student lists usually export cleanly. What does not is everything attached to them — course content, recordings, and your students' habits, because every one of them has to be told to log in somewhere new. Check the export before you need it, not after.