MoFaCTS Implementation Cost Analysis

Documentation home View source on GitHub

Last Updated: 2026-10-09 | For: Administrators & Decision Makers | Level: Overview

Introduction

This document provides an illustrative one-year cost estimate for operating MoFaCTS at different class scales (3, 10, and 100 classes). It focuses on infrastructure and support effort, using historical assumptions that should be revalidated for your deployment environment.

Assumptions

Server Costs: Uses a historical AWS t2.medium baseline and reserved-pricing assumption. Treat these numbers as examples, not current AWS quotes.
Tech Support Costs: Estimated at $50 per hour. We assume a base cost of 3 hours, with an additional hour for every 10 classes.
Backup Support Costs: 30 minutes of tech support time is required for backup configuration per server. This is a one-time fixed cost for all class sizes.

Cost Breakdown

Server Costs with Reserved Instance

All Class Sizes: $282.07/year

Tech Support Costs

3 Classes: Base 3 hours = $150/year
10 Classes: Base 3 hours + 1 additional hour = $200/year
100 Classes: Base 3 hours + 10 additional hours = $650/year

Backup Support Costs

All Class Sizes: $25/year

Total Costs

3 Classes: $457.07/year
10 Classes: $507.07/year
100 Classes: $957.07/year

Cost Per Pupil

3 Classes (60 pupils): $7.62/pupil/year
10 Classes (200 pupils): $2.54/pupil/year
100 Classes (2000 pupils): $0.48/pupil/year

Summary

Under these historical assumptions, the arithmetic cost per pupil decreases as class count increases. This does not establish current hosting prices, operating effort, or capacity. The model omits AI-provider usage, off-server backup storage, data transfer, and incident/support variability; price these for an actual deployment.

Rejoinder

The original estimate reported testing at 10 classes of approximately 20 students on a t2.medium server. This audit did not recover that test evidence. Treat the reported result as historical and the 100-class projection as unverified.