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Brazil’s educational technology market reached US$ 6 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit US$ 15.6 billion by 2034, with an estimated annual growth rate of 11.12%. Globally, the sector surpassed US$ 214 billion in 2026 and is on track to reach US$ 588 billion by 2034. These are impressive figures, but they mask a less discussed reality: a significant share of educational software projects fail not because of insufficient investment, but because of a poor choice of development partner.
Over the past two years, the EdTech sector has gone through a maturation process. Investment in Latin American edtechs dropped from US$ 99.5 million in 2022 to US$ 33.8 million in 2023, according to the Distrito EdTech Report 2024. This does not signal a downturn; it signals selectivity. The market has stopped rewarding those who promise innovation and started valuing those who prove impact. For educational institutions and edtechs looking to hire software development, this shift makes the decision more strategic than ever.
This guide presents the essential criteria for evaluating an educational software vendor in 2026, covering the technical, pedagogical, and regulatory dimensions that matter most.
Why Custom Software Makes a Difference in Education
Off-the-shelf platforms solve generic problems. They work well as a starting point, but hit their limits whenever an institution needs to adapt pedagogical workflows, meet specific regulatory requirements, or integrate with internal systems already embedded in its academic operations.
A common example: a university that relies on an academic ERP for enrollment management, billing, and grading needs its learning platform to communicate with that system in real time. When a student drops a course, content access must adjust automatically. When a payment is confirmed, module access cannot depend on manual intervention. This level of integration is rarely available in ready-made solutions.
The same applies to institutions implementing gamification tied to national curriculum standards (such as Brazil’s BNCC), edtechs building assessment platforms with proprietary pedagogical criteria, or school networks that need mobile apps with offline capabilities for low-connectivity regions. Each of these scenarios requires custom software.
A frequently underestimated factor is total cost of ownership (TCO). Annual maintenance of custom software typically runs between 15% and 20% of the initial development cost. That may sound high, but off-the-shelf solutions requiring constant adaptations, integration workarounds, and forced migrations tend to cost more over the medium term, while generating operational friction and lower adoption rates among students and teachers.
In practice, custom software translates into higher usage rates, lower dropout, and greater capacity to evolve as the institution grows. NextAge, for example, develops full-stack projects (web, mobile, and cloud) with agile methodology and guaranteed SLAs, designed to scale alongside the client’s operations.
The 8 Criteria to Evaluate Before Hiring
Choosing the wrong development partner is not just an IT problem. In education, it is a pedagogical, regulatory, and institutional risk. The following criteria cover the dimensions that truly matter for anyone making this decision with confidence.
1. Proven experience in the education sector
The first criterion is the most straightforward: has the vendor delivered projects for the education sector? Familiarity with the industry’s vocabulary (LMS, SCORM, xAPI, LTI, curriculum standards) and an understanding of how educational institutions operate make a tangible difference in delivery quality. A development team that has never worked with education will need a learning curve the project may not afford.
Review the portfolio carefully. Look for case studies involving edtechs, universities, school networks, or corporate education providers. Ask for client references and inquire: “Which educational projects have you delivered in the last three years? What was the biggest technical challenge, and how did you solve it?”
2. Compliance with data protection and child safety regulations
This is arguably the most neglected criterion, yet the one carrying the greatest risk. Educational software handles sensitive data from children and adolescents: academic records, health information, biometric data, performance analytics, and images. Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) requires specific, highlighted consent from legal guardians for processing data of children under 12, and imposes strict obligations regarding storage, sharing, and disposal.
Beyond the LGPD, the sector must now account for the ECA Digital (Law No. 15,211/2025), in effect since March 17, 2026. This law extends the full protection framework of Brazil’s Child and Adolescent Statute to the digital environment, requiring any technology product accessible by minors to implement age verification, parental controls, and immediate removal of harmful content. According to the TIC Kids Online Brazil 2025 survey, 92% of the population aged 9 to 17 in Brazil uses the internet (approximately 24 million young people), making compliance unavoidable for any educational platform.
For organizations operating in other countries, equivalent regulations apply: COPPA in the United States, GDPR (with specific provisions for minors) in Europe, and the Children’s Code in the United Kingdom. The underlying principle is universal: software that handles data from minors must be designed with privacy and safety as foundational requirements, not afterthoughts.
Ask the vendor: “How do you ensure compliance with data protection regulations for minors in the software architecture? Is there a DPO (Data Protection Officer) involved in the project?”
3. Accessibility as part of design, not a patch
Digital accessibility is no longer an optional feature. In 2026, it is a baseline requirement for any serious education project. This means adhering, at minimum, to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) at level AA: screen reader compatibility, full keyboard navigation, adequate contrast ratios, captions on videos, and semantic content structure.
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework goes further: it proposes that experiences be flexible from the outset, accommodating different learner profiles without requiring post-hoc adaptations. A truly accessible educational software product does not “add” accessibility after it is built; it embeds this principle into every interface decision from day one.
The decisive question here is: “Is accessibility part of the design process from the first sprint, or is it added as a fix before launch?”
4. Integration capability with the existing ecosystem
No educational software operates in isolation. It needs to communicate with student information systems (SIS), academic ERPs, payment platforms, communication tools, and, in many cases, with Learning Management Systems already in use, such as Moodle.
Educational interoperability standards (SCORM, xAPI, LTI) exist precisely to enable these connections. A vendor that does not master these protocols will deliver a system that works well on its own but creates rework every time it needs to exchange data with another platform.
As highlighted by Madri Lab’s analysis of LMS integrations, the critical point in educational integrations is defining who “owns” the data (which system is the official source), to avoid update conflicts between enrollment, content access, and financial status.
Ask: “Which educational interoperability standards do you work with? How do you handle synchronization between the software and our current ERP or LMS?”
5. Strategic use of artificial intelligence
AI is already part of the daily educational experience in Brazil. Research published in late 2025 indicates that 84% of students and 79% of teachers in Brazil already use AI tools. The debate is no longer about whether to adopt the technology, but about how to integrate it responsibly and with pedagogical intentionality.
The OECD’s Digital Education Outlook 2026 report found that generative AI tools only effectively support learning when they are designed for educational purposes or used under structured pedagogical guidance. This means the vendor needs to distinguish AI as a marketing buzzword from AI as a pedagogical instrument.
The most mature applications include personalized learning pathways (adapting content to each student’s pace), virtual tutors with real-time feedback, predictive analytics to identify dropout risk, and automation of repetitive administrative tasks such as report generation and objective assessment grading.
NextAge already develops custom AI agents with governance, integrated into operations handling millions of users. In a project for a telecommunications operator with 67 million customers, the company built agents that execute personalized campaigns and journeys based on each user’s individual profile. The same principle (personalization at scale with human oversight) applies directly to educational journeys.
Ask the vendor: “What is your AI approach: assistive, adaptive, or generative? How do you ensure human oversight and pedagogical alignment?”
6. Development methodology and governance
In education, the validation cycle is more complex than in other sectors. It is not enough for the software to work technically; it needs to be validated by pedagogical coordinators, tested by teachers, and approved by administrators. Therefore, the development methodology must include incremental deliveries with regular demonstrations that allow all stakeholders to track the project’s progress and suggest adjustments.
Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) are the industry standard, but the differentiator lies in execution: consistent code reviews, automated testing, continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), and increasingly, the use of AI to accelerate the process without compromising quality.
Ask: “What is the delivery cadence? Will I have access to sprint demonstrations? How does quality assurance work, and how do you involve our pedagogical stakeholders in validation?”
7. Scalability and performance under pressure
Educational systems face predictable but intense usage spikes: enrollment periods, exam weeks, grade releases, semester launches. Software that performs well with 500 concurrent users but crashes at 5,000 is an unacceptable operational risk.
The architecture must be cloud-native, with the ability to scale elastically according to demand. This means server auto-scaling, load distribution, intelligent caching, and real-time monitoring. The vendor should be able to demonstrate how the infrastructure handles traffic spikes without perceptible degradation in user experience.
Ask: “How does the architecture handle ten times the normal traffic during peak periods? What performance metrics do you monitor, and what is the availability SLA?”
8. Ongoing support, evolution, and intellectual property
Launching the software is only the beginning. Bugs emerge in production, regulations change, new features are requested. The vendor must offer post-launch support with a defined SLA, planned evolutionary maintenance, and comprehensive system documentation.
One point deserving special attention: source code ownership. The contract must guarantee that the client owns the code. If the relationship with the vendor ends, the institution needs the autonomy to maintain, evolve, or migrate the system with another partner, without depending on retroactive authorizations or licenses.
NextAge offers managed support contracts with a dedicated multidisciplinary team (developers, analysts, QAs, DevOps), proactive focus on improvement identification, and packages starting at 80 hours per month.
Ask: “Do we own the source code? What happens if we terminate the contract? What is the support SLA, and how does evolutionary maintenance work?”
Trends Shaping Educational Software Development in 2026
The 2026 landscape brings three trends that any educational software project must account for.
Generative AI with pedagogical intentionality. The Lemann Foundation notes that the use of artificial intelligence in education is consolidating as a structural agenda in 2026, with deeper discussions around curricular alignment, data governance, and equitable access. The Brazilian state of Piauí became the first territory in the Americas to include AI as a mandatory subject in primary and secondary education, earning recognition from UNESCO. Educational software incorporating generative AI must do so with clear purpose, model transparency, and constant human supervision.
Accelerated growth in vocational and technical education. Enrollment in vocational and technical education programs in Brazil grew 68.4% over five years, jumping from 1.89 million in 2021 to 3.18 million in 2025, according to the 2025 School Census (MEC). This trend creates growing demand for practical training platforms featuring simulators, virtual labs, and learning pathways tied to labor market competencies.
Hybrid education with personalization at scale. The challenge of hybrid learning in 2026 is no longer having a digital platform, but using it to personalize the experience at scale. Digital tutors that adapt content to each student’s history, real-time feedback, and management dashboards have shifted from differentiators to baseline expectations.
Keeping pace with these trends requires a technology partner that does not just write code, but understands the sector’s dynamics and anticipates emerging needs. NextAge combines 19 years of experience, a presence in over 10 countries, and methodologies that integrate AI at every stage of the development lifecycle.
Checklist: 8 Questions to Ask Your Vendor Before Signing
- Which educational projects have you delivered in the last three years?
- How do you ensure compliance with data protection regulations for minors (LGPD, GDPR, COPPA)?
- Is accessibility (WCAG 2.1) part of the design process from the start?
- Which educational interoperability standards do you support (SCORM, xAPI, LTI)?
- What is your AI approach: assistive, adaptive, or generative? How do you ensure human oversight?
- What is the delivery cadence, and how does validation work with pedagogical stakeholders?
- How does the architecture handle traffic spikes (enrollment, exams, grade releases)?
- Does the client own the source code? What is the support SLA and evolutionary maintenance plan?
If the vendor responds with clarity and evidence to each of these questions, you have a strong candidate. If the answers are vague or generic, consider that a warning sign.
Conclusion
Hiring a software development partner for education in 2026 is a decision that spans technology, pedagogy, regulation, and long-term strategy. The landscape is favorable (the market is growing, AI is maturing, demand for personalization is rising), but the margin for error has narrowed. With data protection regulations, child safety laws, and the growing expectation from students and teachers for high-quality digital experiences, choosing the right partner is no longer a matter of preference; it is a matter of risk management.
The eight criteria presented in this guide cover the dimensions that truly matter: sector experience, regulatory compliance, accessibility, integration, responsible AI, methodology, scalability, and support. Use them as a framework for more productive conversations with vendors and for making a well-informed decision.
At NextAge, we develop software projects for organizations that need custom technology with security, integrated artificial intelligence, and experience in regulated sectors. With 19 years in the market, over 600 companies served, and a presence in more than 10 countries, we bring the depth that educational projects demand. If you are evaluating the development of an educational platform, talk to our specialists and discover how to turn your vision into a digital product that delivers results.
