Freemium, Premium or DIY? It All Depends on Your Digital Project
In the Digital Scholarship Lab, it’s all about recommending the right tool to the right patron with the right project. When considering which platform we might suggest someone work with there are a number of factors in consideration including time (Is this due for class next week?), skill (Do you know R, or PHP or whatever else might be necessary for a more customized product?) and last, ahem, money. Most students — and faculty — don’t have a lot of resources to throw at a software, and if they don’t also have the skills or time to execute something more custom we may recommend a “freemium” platform.
Freemium is a bit of a buzzword referring to an online platform that offers both a free version and premium version, often saving the best bells and whistles for their paying customers. [There’s some interesting articles out there about the freemium model for internet start-ups if this kind of thing interests you.]
What we might suggest you use really depends on all of these factors.
Here are a couple case studies:
Case #1: You come to the DS Lab wanting to make an infographic. What will we recommend?
- If you have time to learn a new software, we’ll recommend you build your infographic in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and consider using an open icon library like Noun Project or Font Awesome. We can help students get started with a consultation and give guidance along the way, and Adobe CC is located on all the computers in the DS Lab.
- If that infographic is due to the prof at the end of the week, we’ll probably suggest PiktoChart. A ‘freemium’ infographic builder that has an integrated library of icons and clip art, some really nice templates and an easy-to-learn interface. Downsides? You can’t download high resolution versions, access all the embed features or get rid of the PiktoChart branding unless you pay to upgrade.
Case #2: Now you’re looking to make an online portfolio before you graduate. With what should you make this website?
- Little time, no money? How about making a free wordpress.com site. Your storage capacity will be limited, as will the templates you can choose from, and you won’t get a custom domain name (you’ll be limited to yourname.wordpress.com) but you can always upgrade in the future. Other options out there include Wix and SquareSpace.
- Looking to throw a small amount of cash ($25 a year) towards the site and maybe learn some HTML and CSS? How about buying a domain name through Reclaim hosting [and see our blog post on Reclaim here!]. You’ll have access to a slew of open source content management systems like Drupal, Scalar, Wordpress.org, and SOHOlaunch. You’ll be able to fully customize your design and should have more control over migration of your site should you need to move it one day.
Some of the freemium tools we’ve recommended and supported over the years include PiktoChart, Weebly and Adobe Spark. All three are proprietary and limited in how much you can customize outside of the design options offered to you and all three have scaled back over the years which features it offers in its free version, sometimes leaving students in a lurch when they can no longer download the high res version without paying or access multimedia features without an upgrade. Ideally, the Digital Scholarship Lab loves to help students build out original, custom projects built off of open source packages, but that’s not always realistic. Despite all the reservations, we’ll continue to help students learn these platforms as they’re often the easiest avenue to creating something quick, smart and beautiful, on the cheap.
