An honest review about Udemy, to help you decide if its worth learning at Udemy.
Introduction to Udemy
Udemy is one of the top e-learning platforms where you get the opportunity to learn about almost anything.
Udemy offers 100,000+ courses; some focus on learning hobbies and some focus on professional skills (you can even learn how to make YouTube videos).
Many organizations are enrolling their employees to Udemy’s most popular courses to enhance their professional skills. Some of these organizations include Eventbrite, Pinterest, Adidas and many more.
This e-learning platform allows anyone to publish a course; for this reason you will even find courses on topics like interior designing and hairstyling.
No doubt, Udemy is one of the most well-known and popular e-learning website in the world; but there is no guarantee that Udemy is suitable for your learning too. Hence, in this review I’ll give an honest review about Udemy to help you decide if this is the most suitable e-learning platform for you.
| Pros • Large variety of courses • No technical problems • Easy to use interface • Allows anyone to publish a course • Good pacing • 30 days money back guarantee |
| Cons • Anyone can teach, which causes low-quality courses • Some courses are not very up to date • Misleading review system |
Background of Udemy
Eren Bali founded Udemy in 2009. His primary aim was to help people by providing them with the opportunities of online learning. Today, Udemy has become one of the most leading e-learning platforms that connects millions of users for learning and teaching the skills you can also learn at your own convenience.
Today, according to Udemy it has 57K instructors that teach 130K courses to 35M learners ( including 7,000+ enterprise customers) present all across the world. It offers courses in 65+ different languages of the world. Approximately 80% of Fortune 100 companies trust Udemy’s e-learning platform for their workforce upskilling.
I’m sure you must be thrilled by the inspiring numbers of learners, instructors and courses offered at the Udemy. But, there are many other important factors you must consider before deciding to study at Udemy.
Courses at Udemy
You can navigate through categories or browse the desired course by typing a key word in the search bar. All main categories (like video making, health and fitness, photography and design etc.) have numerous sub-categories for you to select from.
Each page of category contains many popular and trending courses to pick from.
Due to the large variety of online courses, it is not possible to provide name for each course Udemy offers. But, some of the courses which are the highest in demand include:
- NLP Practitioner Qualification
- Photography Masterclass
- Complete 2020 Web Development Bootcamp
- The Professional Guitar Masterclass
- Practical Leadership Skills
Each course is taught by the industry’s professionals and those with the ability to offer certification and accreditation to the course. Once enrolled, you get a lifetime access (so you may pause your learning and take a break or log in whenever you want and continue your learning), you also get some downloadable learning materials (depending upon your subject area) as well as a certificate of completion.
So, now you know that Udemy offers a large variety of courses on varying subject areas. Now you must be willing to know about the pricing of Udemy’s courses.
Udemy Course Pricing
The full price of most of the courses ranged between $29 and $249. But, you can also enroll at a discounted rate, and even free if you have a coupon.
It is clearly stated on Udemy’s “Student FAQ” page, Udemy is not the one to decide price for any course- It is the job of instructor. Means each price mentioned with the course is decided solely by the course creators. However, both Udemy and instructors can offer promotions and give access to any course with a discounted price.
The price for each Udemy course is different; however most of these cost nearly $200. Udemy has deals and offer coupons to help users and keep the price low. You can simply find such deals on Udemy’s twitter feed, Facebook page and website too. Several instructors offer discount codes for their courses, so if you are looking to enroll yourself for a course it’s worth checking out the website of that instructor to see if they have provided a course code for their course. After using these codes you can get a discount as much as $100 or even more. Hence, you must check for discount coupons prior to enrolling in a course so that you can get a good deal!!
Features
If you take a look at Udemy’s landing page, it’s quite straightforward and don’t confuse or make you feel lost. You would find a list of courses, a promotional banner and at the bottom of the page there are some user reviews.
On the course page, you can either type specific keywords into the search bar or select the desired category and sub-category using the drop-down menu.
You will find the designated page for each course very simple. Each course page has a preview video, course description and requirements, and user reviews etc.
I find a simple page more appealing and inviting because I don’t get misguided and get a feeling of familiarity. It is also easy and intuitive to checkout from the website. All you need to do is, add a course into your cart, get yourself registered if you already don’t have an account, select a method of payment and start to learn!
All in all, Udemy offers a standard user experience and if you’re one of those still wondering if Udemy is legit or not, it’s extraordinary rating is a proof that Udemy is a legit online learning platform.
Content Quality
The content quality is a significant aspect that matters alot in case of online course marketplace.
There are mixed opinions about Udemy’s content quality. Although, most of the users have found Udemy’s courses truly worth it, but some users (in fact, a very small number of users) claim that Udemy does not offer the best quality of content.
It could be true, because Udemy’s courses are (mostly) marketed by their own instructors and everyone claims his lessons to be the best in the world and no one talks bad about his own lessons.
I think Udemy needs to have a system to assess the quality of each course offered at their e-learning platform.
I’m sure my review about Udemy’s content quality has given you an idea about the reliability and usefulness of Udemy’s e-learning platform. Now, I’ll tell you about my experience of learning at the Udemy.
Learning Experience
I’m sure you would find my personal experience of using Udemy very helpful.
I found the procedure of buying Udemy’s courses to be very simple. After creating a Udemy account, I simply clicked on the purchase button that took me to the checkout form.
There are options of paying by PayPal or any major credit card, and there is no hidden fees for the course.
The course was divided in to lectures which were further divided into smaller video clips.
I found the software easy to use, and the video player had a number of significant features that enabled me to:
1. Switch on closed captioning
2. Adjust playback speed
3. Rewind or skip forward five seconds
4. View a transcript (present in the right panel)
5. A useful feature was the “Q&A” section below the video player; which allowed me to ask questions if I didn’t understand something, and other students and course instructor could respond to my queries. Each course has a separate Q&A section.
In my experience of learning at the Udemy, I didn’t find this option to be always useful. Instructors for the course that I enrolled for, were not active. And only persons struggling to understand something could access those sections; other learners were not able answer my queries too.
After completing my course, there are a few things that I liked about the quality of the Udemy course:
1. Good sound quality and video
The video was easy to access. It was easy to understand and hear the instructor. I could clearly see the videos and course material on the screen.
2. Good pacing
I enrolled in a course for the beginners and I feel the content served the purpose very well. The course covered each part of the learning for sufficient amount of time, until I fully understood the learning.
3. Not upto date
I found the course not quite up to date. Also, it did not include the most current researches on the subject area.
I feel I could find comparable videos without any payment on YouTube, but these do not have nice structured content that could be very helpful.
I hope that my personal experience of using Udemy will help you to decide if you should pursue your learning through Udemy’s e-learning platform or you must find another online learning website for your skills development.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I wouldn’t sugarcoat my review about the platform. I will only suggest you to buy a Udemy course if you are getting an opportunity to enroll yourself at a discounted price. By enrolling yourself into a Udemy’s course, you may improve your professional skills which can lead to your promotion or a raise. However, I would never recommend you to buy a Udemy course at full price. Also, I wouldn’t recommend you to mention it on your resume.