But for pretty much anything else, the costs are going to add up in the long run, and very probably end up costing more than a well-rounded, more comprehensive system would. For a really basic, single screen system, going the free route might work out. There are many things to think about while shopping for digital signage. And almost no free solutionsĪllow for powerful interactive digital signage options, like menu boards and As Dave Haynes of Sixteen:Nine wrote back in 2015, “no network is free”.
You want to rely on an open source edition of software that uses a community toĭevelop and maintain features and bug fixes?Īnd digital infrastructure. Will they have device management or just be “dumb” equipment? And really, do Hardware, of course – screens, media players and so on. Systems pull data from your business systems and calendars? Remote screens or are you stuck on local networks? Can the simple software
Need to upgrade that first (which will probably cost a bit)? Can you power Can the software run on your operating system, or will you Systems almost always use cloud storage and are browser-based, so that’s somethingĮlse to think about. Scale for support, with a more responsive support team costing more money). Features thatĪdd more capabilities will cost, as will support (or there might be a sliding That this version of the software will do everything they want. Maybe the most basic version costs nothing, but almost no one will find And it’s certainly possible to find lots and lots of free digital signage webpages out there.
They might think about open source digital signage or device management systems to control media players and digital signs. They might look for something that sits on a computer, a web-based system that uses a web browser, a cloud-based system that keeps the content management software and the content on a server somewhere else. So, it’s natural that a business would also start looking for something like free digital signage software. Today, the internet offers lots and lots of information of all kinds for free. This probably came from a short video made in the 70s by the artists Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman about television but has been used by many people since. There’s a saying that basically says that if something is free, then you’re the product.