The True Cost of Free Apps

Are you looking for an app to help run your driving school? There are a few in the marketplace; perhaps you’ve trialled some of them already. If you’re reading this article, I expect you have at least heard of MyDriveTime, the first business management software for ADIs to hit the market back in 2014. If not, welcome to our blog!

But maybe you’ve come across a free app and thought "This looks good! Why would I pay a monthly fee to use an app when I can get one for free?"

It’s a good question and you are right to ask it; everyone is feeling the pinch and we’re all looking for ways to save money. So let's get under the bonnet and see if we can answer that question for you!

Here at MyDriveTime we are well aware of what it costs to run a modern software service - after all, we've been doing it for over 10 years. The most important costs that we have to consider are:

• Our staff, who build the apps and provide customer support when you need it
• Web hosting, to ensure that your data is stored safely and available whenever you need it

Any software company that cares about the quality of its product will never scrimp on these. All software has to be paid for somehow, and services like MyDriveTime do that by charging their users a monthly fee.

But what about free apps? How do they pay for their staff and web hosting, and all their other costs too? There are multiple answers to this.

By selling you something else

Providing free access to a business management app is often the gateway to other goods and services. One common tactic is to sell access to a supply of students. This is often, but not always, in the form of intensive courses. If you are keen to source more students, you may find this useful. However at the time of writing, the market is still considerably in the instructor's favour, with lots of students seeking tuition. Most instructors that we speak to are not having any trouble filling their diaries, so why share the profits?

By using your data

There is a popular phrase in the software world, "If you’re not paying, you are the product". This is most often used to refer to social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They are free to use because you've agreed that they can analyse your personal data and sell it to advertisers in some form or other. Their real customers are not regular individual users, but the companies who advertise with them.

If it's not clear how a company is making money from its app, you should always check their terms and conditions to see whether they are making use of your data. This could be your own data, or that of your students. Would your students be happy to have their data shared in this way?

So what's the problem?

The main problem with using a free app is that you are relying on something that is not the company's core concern. The app is being used to get you into their ecosystem, so that they can make money from you in other ways. If those other ways of making money fail, then the software that you are relying on to run your business is at risk.

And this is not just a paranoid concern, we've already seen it happen. In 2020, one of the leading free apps miDrive folded after it was unable to make its student supply financially viable. At the time, the company advised those who were using its free app to move to other services such as MyDriveTime.

If you pay directly for an app such as MyDriveTime, you know exactly what you’re paying for and, most importantly, that all our time is dedicated to making it the best it can be. By contrast, an app that only exists to encourage you to pay for other services, or to harvest your data, only needs to be just good enough to entice you in, and the company's attention is going to be divided between it and their actual money-making concerns. We are 100% focussed on the quality of our app, because that is how we make our money. It's literally the only thing we have to worry about!

In conclusion

As consumers, most of us focus on the cost of the goods and services we buy.  But as business owners, a different mindset is required; focusing on the value provided. Value is determined by weighing cost and benefit to determine if the output delivers more than the investment.

The software that you use to run your business is just as serious an investment as the car that you teach in. The value in MyDriveTime is not just in the reliability of our service and the features it provides, but in the reassurance of our intent. Thousands of instructors already trust us, and we hope that you will too!