An Open Letter to Our Garbanzo Community
Dear Garbanzo Educators,
From the very beginning, Garbanzo has been by educators, for educators: a platform built with the needs of language teachers and students in mind. When we launched in 2018, we set out to create a resource that not only made language acquisition through reading engaging and accessible, but also upheld the highest standards for quality, security, and teacher support.
We are proud to have kept our commitment to you and to our original vision. Garbanzo has remained secure, reliable, and effective in building language proficiency through reading. Now, in order to sustain and improve the experience we provide, we need to realign our pricing, and it matters to us that you understand why.
A thank you to current subscribers
First of all, don’t panic! If you are a current subscriber on auto-renew, nothing will change. As long as your Garbanzo account remains active, you can continue to subscribe at your current rate. Garbanzo would not be what it is today without you, and we want you to stay with us as we continue to grow.
Why we’re changing prices
Since we launched Garbanzo, we’ve listened closely to what matters most to you. The technological, security, and compliance expenses required to maintain and improve Garbanzo so that it can be what you need it to be have increased significantly over the past five years. Our investments in these areas have ensured that teachers and students in all 50 states can continue using our application, even as schools are disallowing other tools that teachers have come to rely on.
Here’s how we do it:
- We ensure student privacy and security at the highest level, including SOC 2 compliance, legal reviews, and extensive work with states and individual districts with privacy documentation.
- All students are capable of acquiring language, and we work hard to maintain an accessible site. This requires consultation, development, and ongoing monitoring.
- We invest in fast, reliable infrastructure to provide the smoothest experience possible.
- While some companies are turning to AI-generated content, we prioritize human expertise to ensure accuracy, authenticity, cultural sensitivity, and bias-free materials. Many of our 35 team members are teachers who are supplementing their income by creating and curating content. We want to continue working with and fairly compensating teachers, since no one can do this job better than you.
- We reinvest subscription dollars into making Garbanzo better through faster processing, stronger security, teacher-requested content, improved features, and top-tier customer support.
With appropriately aligned pricing, we are committed to bringing you more value, more support, and more confidence in the tools you rely on.
Our commitment to affordability
We recognize that many teachers pay out of pocket, and we don’t believe that should be the norm. Keeping Garbanzo accessible for individual teachers remains front of mind for us. To support this:
- Any single teacher who is unable to receive district funding can request an Educator Assistance discount, which will be applied to their subscription in perpetuity, as long as it remains necessary for them to pay out of pocket.
- We are developing resources to help teachers secure grants and district funding, so Garbanzo remains accessible without being a personal expense.
And remember, any current subscriber whose account is on auto-renew will be grandfathered in at their existing subscription price. As long as your subscription remains active at the same subscription level, you will not be affected by the price increase.
What’s in store
One of the ways we’re showing our commitment to supporting you is by launching one of our most-requested features:
Teachers can now print a paper version of every text in Garbanzo—along with a word cloud.
This update makes Garbanzo more versatile than ever. Whether you need printed copies for students with accommodations, prefer a mix of digital and paper-based learning, or want to save time prepping materials, this feature is designed to make your life easier. Purchasing print versions of these texts would cost you thousands of dollars, but we’re rolling it into our Premium Subscription as an included benefit.
Garbanzo is not just a product—it’s a labor of love, built for educators like you who believe in the power of stories and reading to help all students experience success communicating in new languages. We are grateful for your support and your trust, and we remain committed to making Garbanzo the best it can be.
Thank you for being part of our journey.
With appreciation,
The Garbanzo Team