Beyond Blackboard Learn, Anthology and Blackboard license a set of companion products. The current Blackboard portfolio page groups them as Learning (Blackboard LMS, the AI Virtual Assistant, Video Studio, Adopt, Milestone, Course Catalog), Accessibility (Ally), Analytics (Illuminate) and Evidence (Institutional Effectiveness, Outcomes and Evaluate).[5] The Master Agreement also contains product terms for older lines. This article covers the products for which public vendor documents state licensing terms. Where they do not, it says so.
Which lines remain
The 2026 announcement says the retained Teaching & Learning business comprises Blackboard LMS, Ally, Illuminate, Evaluate and Institutional Effectiveness solutions.[8] The documentation index lists Blackboard LMS, Course Catalog, Illuminate, Milestone, Adopt, Ally for LMS, Ally for Websites, Outcomes, Planning, Accreditation, Program Review, Evaluate, and the legacy Course Evaluations and Portfolio, and sends customers of Anthology Student, Finance & HCM, Reach (CRM), Engage, Advance, Student Verification and Student Success Solutions to other organisations’ documentation.[6] The Blackboard Collaborate, Connect, Smartview, website and Student Support terms in the Master Agreement do not appear on either list, so a customer that holds them should confirm with the account team whether they remain in service. The Master Agreement’s “Blackboard Reach” messaging terms are a different product from the Anthology Reach CRM named on the documentation index.
Blackboard Ally
Section 23 of the Master Agreement grants a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable licence to access and use the Blackboard Ally service for the term specified in the Order Form. It also states that Blackboard does not guarantee that using Ally will make web content accessible or compliant with a specific accessibility standard or law, and that any information or test results from Ally are provided as a courtesy and are not legal advice.[1] The licence metric is not stated in the Master Agreement and no public price list exists; the Order Form determines the metric. Under the general Master Agreement rules, a customer’s use is limited to the quantities in the Order Form and excess use is subject to additional fees.[1]
The Anthology Ally Service Level Commitment, last updated April 21, 2023, covers the Ally integration with the learning management system, the institutional report and the REST API, and includes the hosting service and technical support. It excludes the public Internet and the customer’s network and hardware. The infrastructure is provided by Amazon Web Services.[2] Availability is a minimum of 99.9% per calendar month, with scheduled maintenance not counted as unavailability. Maintenance that requires downtime is communicated one week in advance and other planned interruptions at least two business days in advance. Credits are 1 day of service fees (1/30 of monthly fees) for 1 to 4 aggregate hours below the level, 2 days for 4 to 48 hours and 5 days for 48 to 96 hours, with 5 days for each further 96-hour block. The customer must notify Anthology within seven days of becoming eligible, must be in compliance with the Agreement, and credits are the sole remedy.[2] The commitment is reviewed annually.
The portfolio page describes Ally as working with Blackboard LMS and with other LMS the customer runs, and the documentation index separates Ally for LMS and Ally for Websites.[5][6] The public documents do not say whether the two are licensed together.
Anthology Adopt
Adopt, described in Blackboard Help as “powered by Pendo”, is licensed separately from Blackboard LMS. The instructor help page says that if an institution has purchased a licence it can create in-app messages, digital walkthrough guides and tooltips in Blackboard LMS, that only users with a licence can create and publish guides, and that institutions can acquire a licence under the name Anthology Adopt by contacting their account team.[3] The administrator page adds that a licence includes access to expert support.[4] The pages do not state a unit of measure or a quantity; those are on the Order Form.
Blackboard Collaborate
Collaborate, the web conferencing product, has the most detailed metering in the Master Agreement. Usage is limited by Authorized Users, Minutes, FTE and Storage in the Order Form. Authorized Users are counted from the sum of unique authenticated users, either through an LMS integration or by invitation link, plus the peak of unauthenticated guest users in a month, and the annual figure is the average of those Monthly Users. A Minute is each sixty-second interval in which an Authorized User attends a session or plays back a recording, so five people in a 30-minute session count as 150 minutes, and three of them watching the full recording adds 90 for a total of 240.[1] Minutes are sold in increments of 1 million, Storage in 1 TB allotments at the peak reached in the term, and capacity below the limits does not roll over or earn a refund. The terms also require the customer to notify Blackboard when its primary mode of operations changes between in-classroom and virtual instruction.[1]
The 2015 legacy schedule used different units for Collaborate Web Conferencing: a Seat, meaning each End User served by a Stream and so a limit on unique Authorized End Users, and an Event, a live broadcast transmitted over the service. It stated that ASP Services include 50 GB of archive storage and 250 Support Instances, with more subject to purchase.[7]
Blackboard Connect and mass notification
Connect’s Authorized Users are the customer’s employees, and the customer may send messages only to the number and type of Recipients on the Order Form. If the Order Form is silent, a Recipient is defined by customer type: for K-12, parents of enrolled students, administrators, students, faculty, staff and board members; for higher education, enrolled students, faculty and staff; for government, households, businesses and related individuals in the jurisdiction; for corporate customers, employees, consultants, contractors and board members.[1]
Excess usage is metered per FTE. Where the messages sent through Connect or mass notification exceed 20 SMS segments or voice minutes per FTE in a calendar month, for two or more consecutive months, Blackboard may charge additional fees not exceeding its estimated incremental costs and, in any case, not more than $.0065 per segment or minute, after trying to notify the customer. FTE here is full-time students plus half of part-time students unless the Order Form says otherwise.[1] The product terms also include compliance duties that are not metrics but affect use rights: the customer must obtain and keep for at least five years documentary proof of consents, suppress numbers on do-not-call registries, provide opt-out means, and not use the service for commercial messages, marketing or political activities. Blackboard may require a legal compliance plan and audit compliance, and failure to comply with the representations is a material breach.[1]
Reach, Smartview, website products and Student Support
Blackboard Reach, in the Master Agreement, provides two-way messaging between teachers or staff and households, and its Authorized Users are the customer’s employees and their message recipients unless the Order Form says otherwise. Messages may go only to recipients in the 48 contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii and Canada unless the Order Form says otherwise, and commercial messages are barred.[1]
Smartview Authorized Users are the customer’s employees, who may use the product to provide help-desk guidance to current faculty and staff, and to students if the Order Form says so. The customer must integrate its student information system, and if it does not, Blackboard may bill the Premium Solution rate for One Stop services and 25% more per minute or per incident for Help Desk services.[1]
For the Schoolwires, Edline and related website community products, the licence may be limited by Sites, FlexSites, bandwidth, storage or named Authorized User accounts. Site limits count all primary and secondary Sites, and account limits apply to individuals named on a list the customer maintains.[1]
Student Support Services are priced from estimated Inbound Interactions, Average Handle Time and Outbound Interactions on the Order Form. Actual interactions above the estimate during an annual term are charged at the end of the term at a Per Incident Rate plus a premium, and the customer may raise estimated monthly interactions by giving 60 days’ written notice. Live outbound interactions that exceed the quarterly estimate by 15% trigger a meeting about updating the estimate and fees.[1]
Mobile applications
The Master Agreement says that the Mobile Software used to access Blackboard products is governed by the terms referenced in the Apple or Google application store, except that the collection, use and deletion of Personal Information on the customer’s behalf is governed by the Agreement.[1] The 2015 schedule instead required customers that distributed Blackboard-built mobile applications to do so under a licence reasonably satisfactory to Blackboard and to enrol in the relevant developer programme.[7]
Gaps
The public documents reviewed do not state licence metrics or commercial terms for Illuminate, Milestone, Course Catalog, Video Studio, the AI Virtual Assistant, Outcomes, Planning, Accreditation, Program Review or Evaluate. Documentation pages for Illuminate licensing returned an access-denied response to a request with a generic user agent and were not used. Customers should read those Order Forms directly.
Out of scope
This article does not cover the lines sold to Ellucian and Encoura, prices, or the features of any product.