Need help for launching an Open Edx Platform

[Wajahat Abbas]

Dear All,

I'm going to launch a MOOC platform very soon targeting K12 students. We are currently recording the lectures/ editing.

On the platform side, Initially I thought that SaaS platform such as Teachable, Thinkific would be good enough, but considering our requirement like our courses will be enrolled by 2-3 thousands students and we will having around 500 videos of 60 minutes (will be later sliced in topics), I'm quite skeptical about the scalebility of these platform. I'm realizing now that I may have to go for an Open Edx deployment. 

We have an in-house team that has started working on a local Open Edx deployment for testing purpose, later we will move it to the cloud (Azure/ AWS). I need your guidance for the below queries. 

1. How much the cloud platform usually cost for around 2,000 students (AWS/ Azure) on monthly basis?

2. What will be the physical architecture? How many machines ? I need a high available solution?

3. Most of my students will be paying the course fee manually, I hope i can have manual payments + cc methods as well.

4. Need customization on the Templates and other parts of the solution. I hope a Python developer (web) can manage it? 

Would be great if you guys can help me with your expert opinion and guidance.

Thanks in advance

Wajahat