We live in a truly remarkable technological age where anything is possible. Our advancements in technology have made it possible for us to easily overcome large physical barriers. This has granted us the ability to communicate and interact with people all over the world. One of the benefits of living in such a technological age is the idea of online learning.
Gone are the days when you had to physically enroll in an academy or learning center to learn a few basic skills. Nowadays, you can do all that from the comfort of your home at your own pace and on your own schedule. This has enabled many people to start their careers out of learning and perfecting key skills without in-person education.
Sites like Udemy and Pluralsight offer their services by allowing people to learn at their own pace without the need of teachers, large catalogues of books or expensive tuition fees. But if you had to pick between the two, which one would it be? I arrived at the very same question and this is where my research started. Down below, you’ll find out how I managed to choose between Udemy vs Pluralsight and which one I found to be better.
At a Glance
While seemingly similar, Udemy and Pluralsight are made from fairly different business models. They also incorporate different features and cater to different kinds of people. There are other learning sites out there as well, but from my experience, these two seemed to be the most popular ones. Here are the basic offerings of both platforms to make a decision regarding Pluralsight vs Udemy.
Udemy
Udemy is one of the oldest and largest learning sites out there and is filled with loads of online courses. It has a vast catalogue of different topics, ranging from basic skills to creative arts and even professional topics. This is reflected in the sheer number of courses offered by the site, which exceeds 45,000.
All of this is possible because Udemy’s business model is like a marketplace where individual people can put up their courses for sale. Topics range from mainstream to very niche subjects. It’s definitely a case of quantity over quality, though. I did see a lot of courses that didn’t seem to offer much or were simply subpar in terms of quality.
Courses can be graded using user ratings. Higher ranking courses will show up more in search results.
Udemy prices its courses individually, but there are multiple payment plans and subscriptions as well for individuals and enterprises.
- A broad range of courses including 45,000 courses covering 20+ topics
- Courses available in 80+ languages
- Individual course pricing as well as a subscription model
- Quality of courses varies drastically
- Monthly subscription cost is expensive, but if you buy an individual course, you do get lifetime access.
- Individual courses can be very expensive
- Course model makes it hard to take more than one course at a time
- Each instructor has a different level of experience, some small, some big.
- Many different type of courses, from basic to advanced courses.
- Certificate of completion upon finishing a course (the trustworthyness of Udemy’s certificate is often brought into question when it comes to recruiters though – so if you are interested in improving your career prospects, this does not mean a lot).
Pluralsight
Pluralsight is relatively new in the sphere of online learning sites. Hence, it doesn’t have the sheer number that Udemy does when it comes to courses or topics. But what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality.
Pluralsight has around 5000+ online courses available on its site at the moment. What makes it different is the fact that these courses are carefully curated and are offered by qualified individuals. There are also some extra goodies here like multiple learning paths, skill measurement, and much more. These courses are all self paced which makes learning easy no matter what your available time to learn is.
While the catalogue is small, it offers much more than many of the courses on Udemy. Every course I came across was carefully put together, and there was no padding on the site with any mediocre courses. Pluralsight has its own dedicated team to make the sure the courses and course makers are up to standards. The courses are cross platform and available on both desktop and mobile devices.
Just like Udemy, there are multiple pricing and subscription options for enterprises and individuals. However, Pluralsight’s courses aren’t priced individually and its monthly subscription price is much cheaper as well.
Pros
- Professional-grade courses
- Consistent level of content quality
- Much more reasonable subscription fees
- Multiple learning paths for ordered learning
- Easy to keep track of course progress and statistics
- Intuitive learning path system which allows users to easily find what courses are beneficial to help them achieve their goals
- Big discounts on the annual subscription.
- Unlimited access to an entire course library for one monthly fee.
- A big focus on software development, IT Ops, Big Data – basically anything techy or business related – the quality of the content is very high.
- Interactive courses available on their premium plan which makes learning to code so much easier with instnat feedback.
Cons
- Course selection is limited to technology and business fields. If you are not looking to improve your technical skills but would rather learn to knit – Udemy might be the better option.
- Can’t buy courses individually
What Can I Learn Using Pluralsight?
Pluralsight offers a wide variety of courses on their syllabus in the technical and business areas, including Web Development, Python, Javascript, Jquery, Ruby on rails, SQL, networking, Frontend, Backend and Full Stack programming, object orientated programming, web application development, Machine learning, HTML and CSS Using these skills, you can start a new career and become a certified ethical hacker, a web developer, a networking specialist, a game developer, a mobile developer and a wide variety of other well paying IT professions. In some areas, there are even hundreds of courses in specific disciplines like game development.
Picking Between Pluralsight vs Udemy
Now that we have taken a cursory glance at each site, it is time to compare the two in depth. This didn’t seem easy at first because of just how much we have to take into consideration. However, once I started to use both sites, the picture started to become clearer.
I picked some topics and searched for courses on both sites. As expected, the course offerings were different for Udemy vs Pluralsight.
I then set about comparing the course selection and quality of courses. At the same time, I compared the features offered by the two, the different pricing models for the sites, and the overall quality of the service I received.
You can find my comparison down below with special attention to the key factors. This helped me narrow down my preference in the ‘Pluralsight vs Udemy’ fight.
Quantity of Courses
Udemy won this one with over 45,000 courses available in its catalogue. With the service being as old and popular as it is, it’s no surprise that it managed to achieve this feat. However, as previously mentioned, not all of these courses are high quality. A lot of them lacked in quality and only seemed to pad up Udemy’s numbers. If you’re buying a course on Udemy, it’s very much worth waiting for a special offer becuase they often have offers where you can get an expensive course for 70% off or more. You can check if there is a current offer on by clicking here.
Quality of Content
Pluralsight was the winner here with its excellent courses. Each course seemed to follow a standard of quality throughout. The production quality of Pluralsight’s courses simply blew Udemy out of the water. Images and screengrabs were high resolution, and voices and audio files were clear and understandable. Compare that to Udemy, and you end up with a lot of courses that simply aren’t up to par or lack a high-quality presentation.
If you are looking to learn how to program then there is one feature of Pluralsight premium that is simply a million times better in my experience compared to Udemy, and that is their interactive courses. Instead of just watching videos and not having any idea whether you’ve written or understood the code properly, you can use Pluralsight’s interactive code features to write code in your browser and get IMMEDIATE feedback on your code and help if you are struggling. I’ve used interactive courses like this for learning programming and it’s so much easier to progress faster. You can check to see if they have interactice courses for your desired language or framework by having a look at their interactive catalog here.
Curation of Course Material
Going off my previous point, I found that these sites curated their content differently. Pluralsight has its own team working tirelessly to ensure the quality of the courses remains at an acceptable level. On the other hand, Udemy relies on user ratings for its course curation, which isn’t always reliable and can be manipulated. This is why Udemy’s courses lack that standard of quality.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t find high quality courses on Udemy, but it does mean that you have to be vigilant and that can be difficult when you don’t know the course material very well to begin with. If you are a complete beginner, I’d say Pluralsight is a safer bet so you don’t spend your valuable time and money on courses that are outdated or frustrating to follow.
An annoying problem I’ve personally had with Udemy is courses can sometimes be outdated and the code does not run with current libraries or frameworks, so you’ll end up stuck not being able to continue along a course despite already spending hours on it. This can happen with Pluralsight too, but you’re able to get in contact with the Pluralsight team and you’re guaranteed to have a fix fairly quick, with Udemy you’re dependent on the creator, who are often amateurs with other jobs and the courses can be abandoned. Again, this isn’t always the case, but with Pluralsight you’ve got more of a gaurantee you’ll get the help you need, when you need it.
Topic Variety
Udemy offers a much wider variety of topics. It offers not only learning material for technology and business fields but also additional content on developing artistic skills or hobbies. You can’t really compare Udemy with Pluralsight in this area, if you want a course that is not available on Pluralsight – Udemy is the only option. However, if you are looking to learn something in the business or tech area, Pluralsight offers courses focused on a these select few topics, and these courses are extensive and cover the topics in much more depth with a specific focus and useful tools that can make your learning journey a lot easier. If you’re not sure if Pluralsight offers courses on your particular topic of interest, you can check in their course catalogue.
Pricing
Pricing is an important factor to consider, whether you’re an individual or a large corporation. Both Udemy and Pluralsight have different pricing plans on a monthly or yearly basis.
The big difference here is that Udemy provides the option to buy courses individually where as Pluralsight is purely subscription based. Obviously there’s a benefit to just paying one time and having access to a course, but with a subscription there are benefits that you might not think of. High quality courses take time, money and effort to make.
This is why I say if you are not on a very tight budget, I’d once again side with Pluralsight here. Even though it doesn’t offer individual course purchases, it charges a reasonable fee, you know the quality of the courses is high and you can rest assured that what you get will be updated frequently and work for as long as you are subscribed.
Service Quality
At the last stage of my comparison, I compiled my overall experience with the two sites and their content, customer support, and quality. This allowed me to rate the service on a whole based on my time using it. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to me that Udemy was clearly lacking. While the site used to be one of the best for online learning, lately, it has just fallen below expectations.
These days, the site simply doesn’t offer a decent quality of content. This is why a lot of people have moved away to superior alternatives like Pluralsight. The learning process of using Pluralsight, especially the content quality, wide range of topics in the tech industry, which are often taught by certified industry experts is miles ahead of Udemy.
My Personal Pick for Pluralsight vs Udemy: Pluralsight
It’s no secret here that Pluralsight offers much more for much less. This made it easy for me to pick Pluralsight as my winner. Don’t get me wrong, Udemy isn’t a bad online learning platform.
However, lately, the service has fallen short of the quality it once had. Combined with the lack of extra features and the expensive pricing model, I simply can’t recommend Udemy anymore as a decent online learning service. No matter what your learning goals are – I can really only see one option as the best – Pluralsight. The only time I would go with Udemy is if you are learning something which Pluralsight doesn’t offer – which is unlikely – just check out their massive course library.
Pluralsight offers fewer courses, but they’re all high quality, leaving me with little complaints. I don’t have to spend my time sifting through large course lists, looking for decent courses. I can just log on and pick a random course, safe with the knowledge that everything will be up to standards. For someone like me with limited money and time, that’s more than I could ever ask for.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Pluralsight’s free trial so that you can test and experience the platform for yourself.
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