TL;DR — The school should get to decide. With Lazarus you can pass the $25 platform fee to the families who apply, absorb it yourself, or — if you don't charge an application fee — pay nothing at all. The fee only exists when you're already charging one, and it never lands on a family who isn't applying.
Most private, charter, and faith-based schools charge an application fee. It's normal, expected, and families are used to seeing it. Here's the question almost nobody stops to ask: on top of that, should your school also have to pay a software company just for the ability to collect those applications?
Why does enrollment software usually cost the school money?
For a lot of school platforms, the answer is yes. You pay to build the forms, take the payments, and manage submissions — a software cost the school carries before a single family has applied. And a school's budget isn't infinite, so that cost has to come from somewhere. Usually it comes from the same place everything else does: tuition. Which means the cost of the software quietly reaches families anyway, folded into a bill where no one can see it.
For a large institution, that's a rounding error. For a small, mission-driven school — or a homeschool co-op run by volunteers — it's real money that could have gone to a teacher, a classroom, or financial aid.
How does Lazarus's free enrollment actually work?
When we built Lazarus, we wanted the entry point to work differently. So our enrollment tools are free to use, and the way our platform fee works puts the decision back in the school's hands.
Here's the actual mechanic. If your school charges an application fee — and most do — our $25 platform fee can ride along on it, passed through to the applicant at checkout. The family sees one clear line item, at the one moment they already expect to pay, and your school pays nothing to run its applications. If you'd rather absorb that fee yourself instead of passing it on, you can. It's your call.
And if your school doesn't charge an application fee at all? Then we don't charge our platform fee either. The enrollment tools are simply free.
That last part matters, so it's worth saying plainly: our fee only exists when you're already charging one. It never lands on a family who isn't applying, and you're never paying a software bill just to keep the lights on. You pay — if you pay at all — only at the exact point where money is already changing hands, and only if you've decided to charge for applications in the first place.
None of this means software should always be free. When you're ready to run tuition billing, events, or full family management, those are paid plans, and we're upfront about them. But collecting applications — the front door of your school — shouldn't require a budget line before you've enrolled anyone. That's the part we think should be free, and it is.
So who should actually pay?
When someone asks who should pay for enrollment software, our honest answer is: that's the school's decision, not the vendor's. Pass it to the families already paying an application fee, absorb it yourself, or charge nothing and pay nothing. The point isn't who pays. It's that you get to choose — and that the cost shows up in the open, where everyone can see it, instead of hidden inside a tuition bill.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Lazarus charge schools to collect enrollment applications?
No. The enrollment tools are free. A $25 platform fee only applies when your school charges an application fee — and even then, you choose whether to pass it to applicants or absorb it yourself.
Who pays the $25 platform fee?
The school decides. It can be passed through to the applicant at checkout, on top of the application fee you already charge, or covered by the school instead.
What if our school doesn't charge an application fee?
Then Lazarus doesn't charge a platform fee either. You can run your entire enrollment application process for free.
Does a family pay anything extra to apply?
Only if your school chooses to pass the platform fee through. In that case the $25 is added to your existing application fee and shown as one clear line item at checkout. Many schools choose to absorb it instead.
Is tuition billing free too?
No. The free tier covers collecting enrollment applications. Tuition billing and event registrations are paid plans, and we're upfront about their pricing. Full family management is free along with enrollment applications.