Brainscape's Mission to Educate the World for Free

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Our mission
2. Subscription Model Overview
3. What are the advantages to upgrading?
4. Testing out Pro

------------------------------------------------------

Our mission

Brainscape's mission is to help people realize their personal and professional ambitions through strong habits and hyper-efficient studying.

To achieve this mission for as many learners as possible, we've strived to make as much of our product free as we can afford to do.  Most importantly, any user can create their own flashcards and share with other people completely for free, and can study unlimited flashcards using Brainscape's unique Confidence Based Repetition algorithm, which is proven to dramatically increase your learning speed.

Other ways we’ve created a platform that can be enjoyed for free:

• Updated our editor and other areas of our UI to add more and more features for free (and continue to enhance on a regular basis);
• Curated an extensive library of Academy articles focused solely around how to study and build life-long habits to set you up for success;
• Built an impressive set of social media assets geared toward all types of learners
• Created a YouTube channel to provide practical tips and answers to FAQs about mastering specific exams and an arsenal of other study guidance
• Secured new content creators to build out a Brainscape certified library with courses to help prepare students for high stakes exams and standardized tests (sampling these is free for all)
• Provided a best-in-class mobile app that is aligned with our web platform free-of-charge
• Designed a way to allow most of our public customer created coursework to be cataloged in our Knowledge Genome framework and available in our Brainscape Marketplace.
• Supplied a tool to allow large amounts of content in spreadsheets that you’d like to easily import to Brainscape;

As the team builds and designs new features in response to our platform goals, combined with the features we know our Brainscape community would like to see added, we are always thinking of ways we can make these tools part of our standard free platform.

Subscription Model Overview

Of course, with all learning platforms, there is an upgrade option if a user does want access to a subset of features that require a paid subscription.  We have to make money in order to pay our expensive software engineers and designers, and to keep making the product more awesome.  In Brainscape’s case, this is called being a Brainscape Pro subscriber.  

You need a Brainscape Pro account to remove any study limits on flashcards you find, including both (i) flashcards created by other users (where you didn't receive a personal invitation link), and (ii) flashcards created by other publishers.

Currently, adding images and audio and importing CSV files is a Pro (paid) feature, and this is mainly because of the security and safety of our users.  Without this payment requirement, it would be possible for nefarious bots/hackers to upload inappropriate content.  Of course, if we find a way to safeguard this step and make it free, you’ll be the first to know.

Additionally, making your class private is a Pro feature as well.  There are many enterprise customers that our team works with, as well as consumers that require their content to not be discoverable by anyone other than themselves and those who they share it with.  For this reason, anyone who studies a private course must also be a Pro user.  Our license model offers this group access with benefits for an affordable price.

What are the advantages to upgrading?

If you don’t require our Pro features to create, study and share your flashcards then you should continue to use our platform for free, however there are certain use cases when an upgrade may make sense.

1. The addition of images/audio will enhance the learning experience;
2. The content you are creating is best kept private;
3. You’d like to reset your study stats;
4. You have other employees, students or customers who need to access your private content? Our model allows you to share your content securely and to endow all your users with Brainscape Pro features. 
5. You are studying for a certification or standardized test and Brainscape has a class already created.

Testing out Pro

If at any time you want to try out a Certified Class, you can sample the decks for free, without a commitment.  

If you are interested in a license for your school, company, or customers, our Sales Team can help you explore the free version as well.  You may email [e-mail] and ask to be put in touch with a team member who can help you.

And for any consumer wanting a shorter commitment to Pro, you can always just upgrade for one month to see how it feels before extending your subscription.

Regardless of how you want to try Brainscape, the good news is that the free version and upgraded version behave mostly the same, so there's really little need to upgrade to test us out.  All you need is to create an account in Brainscape, and start playing around!

Still have questions and can't find the answer?  Be sure to email our Tech Support Team ([e-mail]). 

If you'd love to vote for a new Brainscape feature, see what others are requesting, or get a sneak peek at features in our pipeline, please check out Brainscape User Feature Requests Forum!  Please choose to Sign in with Brainscape (if you are commenting/requesting a new feature) so any feedback is tied to your account.  Or you can even access the tool from our web/mobile menus which won't require you to login separately. 

(Hint:  to save time, search first to see if your desired feature is already in the list so you can just vote/comment.)

And for more FREE study advice don't forget to check out the Brainscape Academy.