Foothills Academy Achieves 90% Cost Reduction by Switching from KnowBe4 to Tartan App

About Foothills Academy

Foothills Academy is a private nonprofit school in Calgary serving nearly 300 students in grades 3 through 12.

The school specializes in supporting students with diagnosed learning disabilities, including ADHD, and its programs, resources, and overall philosophy are designed around helping those students succeed. Justin Fagan, Information Technology Manager, leads Foothills Academy's technology efforts and helps ensure the school's systems and staff stay secure while supporting that mission-driven work.

Challenge: Existing Training Didn't Match the School Environment

Before working with Tartan, Foothills Academy already had a cybersecurity awareness platform in place, and users had consistently low phish scores.

The challenge was not a lack of protection. The issue was value, alignment, and budget. The team felt the school was no longer getting full value from its current platform, and much of the training content felt better suited for corporate environments than education.

"We felt we weren't getting the full value out of our existing platform. We also felt that the content provided in the form of training videos was more focused on corporate environments rather than education."

"Our existing solution worked and we had consistently low phish scores amongst users and so we felt it was time to switch to a solution that better aligned with our industry, goals and budget."

Solution: Education-Specific Content at a Better Price Point

Tartan gave Foothills Academy a more focused solution built for schools rather than generic corporate training environments. One of the biggest advantages was the ability to tailor phishing simulations around the exact services the school actually uses, making the training more relevant for staff.

"Tartan provides content specifically for education environments, to the point where you can select the exact services you use to provide finely tuned phishing emails relevant to your staff."

Tartan also stood out for its pricing and simplicity. For a nonprofit school, budget matters, and the team found Tartan's condensed, lower-overhead product to be a better operational fit as well.

"Tartan was also able to provide a far more competitive price point which is incredibly significant not only for any school, but also as a non-profit organisation."

"Tartan also provides a more condensed product, meaning it achieves what we want with far less overhead and management."

What It's Been Like Working with Tartan

From the initial sales process through integration, Foothills Academy describes the experience as smooth and straightforward.

"It has been an incredibly smooth process, both in terms of demoing the product during sales meetings as well as integrating the product with our environment."

Results: Lower Cost, Better Fit, Less Overhead

Because Foothills Academy had already maintained consistently low phish scores before switching, it is still too early to point to major behavior-change metrics from Tartan. But the school has already seen clear value in the areas that mattered most during vendor evaluation and transition.

• Approximately 90% Cost Reduction: Foothills Academy reduced costs dramatically by switching from KnowBe4 to Tartan App.
• Better Education Fit: Training and phishing simulations now feel more relevant to a school environment rather than a corporate one.
• Lower Administrative Overhead: The team gets the functionality it wants with a more condensed, easier-to-manage product.

"We were able to achieve approximately 90% cost reduction by switching from KnowBe4 to Tartan App."

Foothills Academy also noted that it is still early in the relationship and too soon to attribute longer-term awareness results to the platform.

Why Tartan Works for Foothills Academy

For Foothills Academy, Tartan stands out because it combines strong service with a product that is easy to integrate and better aligned with education.

• Education-specific phishing content
• Simple integration and low management overhead
• Responsive service throughout the process
• Budget-friendly pricing for schools and nonprofits

"The service and the ease of integration of the product."

Advice for Other Schools

"If you are a school without simulated phishing and cyber-security awareness training, you now no longer have any excuses thanks to the product that Tartan App has made available."

Final Thoughts

"Whilst not a large determiner in the vetting process, it always feels good to be able to move business back to within Canada and support local enterprises."

"We are also looking forward to being able to start introducing our students to phishing emails and cyber-security."