A bachelors plan for my son

[rachel83az]

From what I recall Study.com is $200/month, auto-renews and allows one to "Pause".  If he starts mid-month, does that become his renewal date?

Yes. More accurately, I think it's a 30-day subscription. So, it'd be theoretically possible to pay twice in some calendar months and not at all in others.

  I just looked at Sophia.  A lot fewer class options.  Is it structured like Study.com?  I really liked Study's linear format totally dummy-proof.  Completing all the quizzes made it impossible to fail.

Sophia is its own thing. I suggest creating a free trial account to see what it's all about and how the courses are structured. That said, it's almost impossible to fail a Sophia course. There are 3 main ways to fail:

1. Not taking advantage of the open book nature when doing the milestones. Unless you have a very, very good memory, you will probably fail if you treat Sophia Milestones as closed-book exams.
   
2. You have exceptional difficulty with the subject in question. Some people just can't wrap their heads around things like Algebra or Calculus, which is fine. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. But, if you can't pass a Sophia course, you probably won't be able to pass a traditional college course in the same subject either.
   
3. Weird grading. For the Touchstones, the graders can be a bit... problematic at times. Luckily, you can revise, resubmit, and just plain dispute the grade(s) given. The more Touchstones a course has, the more of an impact weird grading will have on pass/fail. English Comp II (which your son doesn't need) is probably the worst for this.
   

To confirm: For UMPI, it looks like he can transfer in up to 90 credits and has to take 30 there.

Yes. They should be specific credits, as already stated, but he can transfer in up to 90 credits. 30 credits takes most people 2-3 sessions.

Last question, let's say he can't get his writing up to the next level, what would be the "Backup plan"?  I think I'm hearing TESU (it's more complex from a credits perspective+costs more).  Also, that final paper was not the easiest so writing skills can't be neglected.  Thank you

TESU would probably be a good backup plan. Excelsior would be cheaper than TESU, but they require 30 UL credits and that can require a lot of writing (even with alternate credit sources). TESU only requires 15 UL credits + the UL capstone, so there is significantly less writing, even for the BA History degree.