Udemy has one of the largest collections of online courses available on the internet, but quantity doesn’t always mean quality, even if it’s user-generated.
Pluralsight focuses on technical skills like Javascript, cyber security, and IT skills: how do the two sites compare?
We’re taking this approach to Udemy vs Pluralsight and focusing specifically on skills that both online learning platforms offer.
With its dedicated team, Pluralsight is a serious education platform, but can anybody really outdo Udemy even when they narrow their niche?
Let’s find out.
Udemy and Pluralsight Compared
Udemy is an online education giant, while Pluralsight is an underdog.
They got here by being innovative, but how well do they stack up against one another?
That’s what we’re here to figure out.
It’s time to compare packages, prices, UI, user experience, and which platform is best for niche course types.
By the end of this guide, you should have a working knowledge of both services so that you can make an informed decision on which site is best to learn your next skill.
What is Udemy?
Udemy (see also ‘Which Is Better Udemy Or Coursera?‘) is a popular online learning platform designed to teach you marketable skills for your career path, hobbyist skills, and technical skills to improve your working knowledge in one particular field.
This user-generated platform allows anyone to make an online course, market it, gather a following, and earn an income through course selling.
Because of this, there’s no short supply of stellar, competitive course options, all designed to enhance your skills and help you achieve your goals.
What is Pluralsight?
Pluralsight is an online education platform with a heavy emphasis on learning through live courses.
Pluralsight courses specifically target individuals that seek out skilled fields in AI, IT, coding, cyber security, and more.
As an intuitive platform, they host in-depth professional courses that grant you a deeper understanding of one specific skill, and how that branches out into other related skills, and train you to be a better programmer from the ground up.
- UpSkill your Team & Organization
- Must-Have For Tech Companies
- Software developers, IT Administrators & Tech Teams
What Courses Do They Offer?
Udemy offers a ton of different courses. One of the benefits of user-generated content is the ability to diversify. However, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend the rest of its life thinking that it is stupid.
Udemy offers a ton of different courses. One of the benefits of user-generated content is the ability to diversify. However, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend the rest of its life thinking that it is stupid.
Who Teaches the Courses?
On Udemy, users submit courses that students can then take.
It requires approval to make sure it complies with the ToS, but beyond that, experts don’t review your course to see if it’s up to snuff, so course creators have a lot of control and freedom.
Those are both good and bad. Instructors get to teach what they want without restriction, but that means they could have some errors in their courses. However, they know that they need to maybe quality courses with accurate
Pricing
Now it’s time to get to the nitty gritty, the question that’s on your mind: how much is it going to cost to use these services, and are they worth it? Well, let’s take a peek.
Udemy
Udemy’s pricing structure is a bit odd, but it works. You buy courses one at a time, get lifetime access to most of them, and then you can just revisit it tomorrow, or ten years from now. No annual charge or subscription.
You could get a full boot camp course with 50+ hours of course videos, walkthroughs, articles, exercises, and so much more, all for just $16.99. Maybe that’s the only course you’re going to need, but to be honest, it’s doubtful.
Courses on Udemy are at the mercy of the creators.
They can price them up to $199 per course, however, they’re discouraged from doing so because Udemy wants to constantly push timed promotions and “Get this price in the next seven hours” ads.
They work, but it feels cheap.
You could buy a dozen courses, have shelled out less than one annual subscription cost to Pluralsight, and have 400+ hours of video content to sift through and endless downloadable content.
If you’re careful, you can hand-pick classes and do this, but it takes a lot of effort and limits your view compared to the 7,500+ courses offered by Pluralsight.
Pluralsight
Pluralsight actually offers two types of plans: Skills, and Flow. Flow helps you design better workflows for yourself and for your team, but Skills is, well, about learning different skills.
The good news is that when you sign up for any plan, you get access to skill IQ assessments, guides, offline viewing, mobile viewing, and the list of features goes on and on.
The basic package is billed monthly at $29 per month, making it $348 per year. That gives you access to 7,500+ courses for you to use at your own pace.
Compare that to Udemy’s piece-by-piece structure and you’ll see that, if you’re serious about programming and coding, you’re basically getting the option to hyper-learn years of information in twelve months for less than the price of one community college class for one semester. The deal is pretty outrageously awesome for bettering your programming skills.
But it gets better.
You can choose to take that plan and make it annual for $299 per year, saving you $49, or you can opt for the premium plan at $449 per year, which gives you unlimited access to more benefits.
Projects, interactive courses, and certification practice exams to help you get accreditation off-site in specific coding languages.
Features
Now it’s time to break into the main features that drive each site and drive the user experience.
If you’re having a bad time interacting with one learning platform, chances are you’re not going to retain too much of that information.
Let’s see what they each have to offer you.
Udemy
With Udemy, the features are dependent upon the specific courses.
You won’t enjoy the same features on every single course.
That being said, you have access to the following features:
- Video lectures
- Audio lectures
- Quizzes
- Text-based lectures (articles)
- Coding exercises
- Post reviews
- Direct message with instructor
- Downloadable certificates of completion
There are fewer features directly available from Udemy over Pluralsight, but you learn in similar ways. Individual courses will have downloadable content, articles, resources, and whatever else was provided by the course instructor.
Pluralsight
With a Pluralsight subscription, you have access to the following features.
- Entire course library of 7,500+ courses
- Learning paths
- Badges
- Guides
- Channels
- Course discussions
- Exercise files
- Conferences
- Offline viewing
- Mobile/TV apps
- Skill IQ tests
- Role IQ tests
- Course learning checks
This is all information taken directly from their payment arrangement page.
If you go with a higher-priced plan, you’ll also get access to:
- Certification practice exams
- Intuitive projects
- Interactive courses
Everyone has a different learning style, and while video content alone may be enough for some people, the hands-on work actually makes a huge difference in how you comprehend the subjects.