Moon SuiteSignage, plainly
How digital signage usually works, and what it costs
Ask for a quote for a menu screen and you’ll hear about players, licences and a monthly fee per screen. Here is what those words mean, in plain terms, before you buy anything.
The three parts
Almost every screen in a shop, clinic or lobby you’ve walked past is built from the same three parts.
- The screen. A TV, or a “commercial display” built to run all day. More on the difference in why TV makers sell a separate signage line.
- The player. A small computer behind the screen, plugged into its HDMI port: a stick, a box, or a tiny board. It downloads what to show and plays it.
- The software. A website where you build the screens, schedule them and send them out. It’s usually sold as a subscription, per screen, per month.
Some displays have the player built in. Some services sell all three together, and some only the software.
What the monthly fee pays for
The per-screen fee covers the design tool, the hosting of your pictures and videos, the scheduling, and the service that keeps each player up to date. Price lists we read in November 2026 started at about $8 a screen a month for the simplest plans and went past $40 a screen for plans with more features, often with a discount for paying a year at once.
A fee per screen means the bill grows with the screens. Two menu boards and a window screen is three fees.
What the player costs
Players we saw sold on their own ran from about $80 for a simple stick or small board, and more for boxes made for video walls or 4K. Some services include one with a yearly plan. Each TV needs its own, plus a power socket behind the TV, and someone to restart it when it hangs.
Adding it up
For a cafe with two menu TVs and one window screen, over two years, at the low end of the prices above:
| Part | Cost over two years |
|---|---|
| Three players, about $80 each | about $240 |
| Software, about $8 a screen a month | about $576 |
| Total, before the TVs | about $816 |
At the higher plans the software alone passes $2,000 for the same three screens. That’s not wrong: big chains get a lot for it, like hundreds of screens managed from one place, support contracts and video walls. A single shop rarely uses those.
Where Moon Suite differs
Moon Suite was made for the single shop, clinic or office, so it drops the parts a small place doesn’t need.
- No player where the TV can do it. Most LG and Samsung TVs from 2018 on have a web browser, and a moon runs in it. A streaming stick or an old computer covers the rest; see do you need a media player?
- Live widgets, not just pictures. Clocks, weather, a menu from a Google Sheet, a job board changed from a phone. See show a Google Sheet on a TV.
- Changed from a phone. No design software to learn first.
About the story. The people and businesses in these guides are made up. They show how we expect a moon to be used, not the experience of real customers.
