We’ve dedicated great effort and study to this review of 7+ best online learning platforms. To make the review accurate and reliable, we manually tested and performed comprehensive research on each eLearning site.
eLearning is the future. With education shifting from lectures to virtual classrooms, the online education market is soaring and forecast to be worth $325 billion by 2025.
Online learning platforms have come a long way since Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) took off in 2012. These platforms come in all shapes and sizes, with different levels of interactivity, instructor engagement, and commitment required.
As we evaluated these best online learning platforms, we looked at various factors:
Ease of Use |
It’s important for an online education-based platform to be easy to use but visually appealing at the same time. |
Content Quality |
The content quality of a site is probably the most important aspect when it comes to maintaining a good reputation and success. |
Features |
A quality eLearning platform should have at least one original feature that sets it out from the pack. |
Price |
Different platforms have different pricing options, but most choose to sell individual courses or offer a subscription-based model. |
Learning Experience |
Here we look at how we response to the courses and the site as a whole. This is the most subjective factor but one couldn’t be ignored. |
These aspects help us perform a detailed analysis and gain trustworthy insights into the best online learning platforms below:
| BEST ONLINE LEARNING PLATFORMS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Codecademy | Udemy | Coursera |
| FutureLearn | edX | Skillshare |
| DataCamp | Khan Academy | MasterClass |
1. Codecademy
Codecademy is an education company founded in 2011 with the mission of helping people learn how to code. The site focuses on 12 different programming languages including some of the most popular ones like Java and Python.
In addition to the Basic learning plan, Codecademy students can also opt for Codecademy Pro.
Ease of Use
Codecademy is definitely my favorite when it comes to user interfaces. The visualizations are off the chart, with colorful infographics included. All of these create a sense of interest to students and increase the expectation of what they will learn through the platform.
The main navigation is pretty simple. From the landing page, you can head straight to the Catalog, which is quite easy to navigate. You can sort the courses by Subjects or Languages.
The information boxes do not include a huge wall of text, but only the essentials, which is such a relief for me. Their course pages are great, too. They provide short, graphic, but informative, course summary and requirements.
Content Quality
Just like the landing pages, each course on the platform is carefully crafted with beautiful typography and infographics. Also, Codecademy constantly updates their courses and aims to bring in new and relevant learning material.
The company stresses that the learning quality of the students is the most important factor. As a result, they have a strict hiring process to ensure all instructors are qualified to teach.
Features
With Codecademy, you’ll be practicing on the go. On the left of your window will be the basic syntax you need to learn and a set of challenges. On the right will be your playground to jump around with the code and complete the challenges.
Price
Most of the courses on Codecademy are free. However, the platform is gradually moving to the Pro option with the prices as follow:
Codecademy Pro contains all of the lessons in select courses plus Pro exclusive features and tools that will help accelerate and develop your learning:
| Members-Only Content Exclusive courses, quizzes, and extra practice content. | |
| A Step-by-Step Roadmap Paths show you where to start and what to learn next to reach your goal. | |
| Real-World Projects Build real, portfolio-ready projects from the ground up. | |
| Community Support Connect with other Pro members to collaborate, share resources, and more. |
You can also opt for Pro Trial. With Pro Trial, you will get free access to all lessons, projects, mobile apps, paths and quizzes for a full week.
Learning Experience
Codecademy’s interfaces are not only appealing but interactive. It will provide helpful hints upon requests of the users.
Another reason why Codecademy is loved by a lot of people is that the platform takes care of all the setup for you.
One of the most annoying things about learning to code is that there are tons of setup to do. This isn’t the case when you’re learning frontend languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But, you have to go through hours of installing Ruby on your computer just to write a simple “Hello World” app in Ruby.
What Codecademy has done so brilliantly is make it possible for you to learn the syntax of a programming language via an interactive experience in your web browser. No setup required.
2. Udemy
Udemy is one of the most popular and well-known online learning platforms in the world. But with such notoriety, people have rather conflicting opinions about the site.
Udemy, at its very core, is an educational platform. It was developed with the intention of providing an opportunity for people to easily learn new things. Founded in 2010, it is now the largest eLearning platform with 30M+ students and 130K+ courses.
Ease of Use
Udemy’s landing page is pretty straightforward. You’d see a promotional banner, a list of courses, and some user reviews at the bottom of the page.
Once you pick a course, you’ll spot a preview video, basic requirements, course descriptions, and user reviews. The checkout process is also intuitive and familiar. In general, Udemy offers a decent experience when it comes to the actual navigation on the site.
I’m learning Bitcoin or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Crypto, and here’s how it looks on the inside:
Content Quality
There are mixed opinions about this biggest online learning platform. The majority of students say that most Udemy courses are either great or acceptable. However, some people believe the quality of many courses is not up to scale.
To fix that, starting 2018, Udemy has initiated a new Quality Review Process. It clearly states that every new course will be evaluated by Udemy’s Quality Review Team before being published.
According to the Udemy Support Page, a complete course must have:
- at least 30 minutes of valuable educational video content
- at least 5 separate lectures
- and audio quality that is not distracting to students
Features
- A huge variety of categories and topics
- Lifetime access
- 30-day money-back guarantee policy
- Certificate of completion
- Udemy for Business
Price
According to their Student FAQs, Udemy is not the one who prices their courses. The instructors are. The general pricing on the site is around $199. But, there are always some sorts of sale going on where most courses are discounted to $11.99.
The rest of Udemy courses are free. It’s worth noting that a free course is not necessarily bad. Sometimes, a course is set to free because it’s on a promotion or the instructor wants to build his reputation and is simply looking to increase the student number and awareness.
Learning Experience
This is a tough aspect to cover since each person’s learning experience varies based on different factors – the actual course that they’ve chosen, Internet connection, general attitude, and time management.
We have taken several courses at Udemy and the experience, in general, is quite satisfying. The biggest problem we’ve had is usually the instructor’s accent and the difficulty level of the classes. You can read our detailed reviews for each Udemy course we’ve enrolled in here.
After a while, we realize that it’s best to pick the classes that are popular among prior students. That way, you’ll know whether the course is worth it and what to expect later on.
3. Coursera
Founded back in 2012 by two Standford University computer science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera is an online education and learning-based platform. It allows students to enroll in courses, specializations, and online degrees to better prepare for their career paths.
The platform aims to provide a place where anyone, anywhere can learn and earn credentials from the world’s top universities and education providers.
Ease of Use
Coursera’s landing page is super-simple but aesthetically-pleasing in terms of design. You will be greeted with a basic definitive slogan:
100% online learning from world’s best universities and companies
You can then either pick what you want to learn from a drop-down menu or enter the keywords into the search bar. Some reviews point out that depending on the users, the course/specialization pages are unique in style and appearance.
In general, Coursera feels professional. It’s intuitive and really easy to navigate.
Content Quality
To judge Coursera content quality, we must first know about its content providers. Coursera works with multiple different universities worldwide, whose professors provide the majority of content to the platform.
Since it’s produced by certified professionals of the topic, who have spent their entire lives studying and researching the field, it’s hard to argue about the quality of the content.
Features
If you want to start learning at Coursera, you have four different choices.
- Audit. When you audit a course, you’re able to view the materials and study them for free, but cannot apply for a certificate, submit homework, or participate in closed and course-specific activities.
- Certified Course. This is the basic option at Coursera. You enroll in a course, pay a fee, and start learning. Depending on your schedule, you can choose when to submit assignments and take the tests. Once you finish, you’ll receive a certificate of completion.
- Specialization. A specialization is basically a selected number of courses from a specific topic. Let’s say you want to learn about Creative Writing. You can take one certified course. Or, you can specialize in the topic by taking five courses that all revolve around creative writing but cover different subject matters.
- Degree. If you choose the degree option, you basically sign up to learn at a university. The only difference is you’ll be doing it online.
Price
Coursera has two main ways of pricing their courses:
- Single payment. Single payments for courses are around $50 depending on the topic, length, and complexity of the course. Specializations cost around a couple of hundred of dollars. A degree could cost around a thousand, as with real-world universities.
- Subscription. A subscription costs roughly $40-$90 per month.
Coursera also offers a Financial Aid option. If you want to take a course but are short in budgets, you can apply for financial aid. Once accepted, you will be compensated for the fee.
Learning Experience
Prices at Coursera are certainly not cheap. However, as stated by the company, they offer and provide an expert-level learning service.
Since Coursera classes are taught by actual professors, students can enjoy a university-standard lecture right at home. However, a few students do critique that some professors can be a little camera-shy, which is somewhat distracting when you’re trying to learn a difficult subject.
4. FutureLearn
FutureLearn is a MOCC learning platform that provides a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions across the globe. Founded by The Open University and The SEEK Group in 2013, FutureLearn has since then been joined by millions of people.
Ease of Use
With light pink as the main color, FutureLearn looks a bit “girly” for me.
*I’m a girl so, no offense!*
Other than that, the main landing page is easy enough to use. However, the course pages are a bit too informative with a huge wall of texts. One thing that startles me is the start date. Each class has a different start date. If you miss the date, you’ll need to wait for the next batch.
Content Quality
FutureLearn offers a powerful new way to learn online. Every course has been designed according to principles of effective learning to celebrate progress.
It doesn’t use traditional teaching methods with a guy talking for 2 hours straight. Instead, the site teaches in the form of what they call storytelling. They make use of videos and articles to teach key points. They make it very clear where you are in the course, what you have already learned, and what you are going to learn.
Features
FutureLearn offers a total of 13 categories from History and Law to more modern topics like Tech & Coding and Business & Management.
There are three major types of courses you can choose at FutureLearn.
| SHORT COURSES | IN-DEPTH PROGRAMS | ONLINE DEGREES | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2-6 weeks | 9-54 weeks | 6 months – 4 years | |
| 2-6 hours per week | varied | varied | |
| 12 categories | 6 categories | 26 programs |
Price
It’s free to join and study the majority of FutureLearn courses. However, you can choose to upgrade your course to get more benefits. Here’s how each option is different:
| FREE $0 ✓ 1 course ✓ Limited access | UPGRADE varied ✓ 1 course ✓ Unlimited access ✓ Certificate | UNLIMITED $239/year ✓ All courses ✓ Unlimited access ✓ Certificate |
Learning Experience
Learning at FutureLearn has been a joyful experience for me. Rather than long classroom lectures, ideas are introduced via high-quality videos and articles.
During the course, you and your peers can also comment on different lessons, follow their discussions, and stay connected just like you would on social media platforms. We learn best when we share and debate ideas. With that approach, FutureLearn has helped students absorb more in the learning process.
5. edX
edX is a trusted platform for education and learning founded by Harvard and MIT. With the support of top-ranked universities in the world and industry-leading companies, edX is home to more than 20 million learners.
As a global nonprofit, the company aims to provide the highest-quality, stackable learning experiences for people to learn “anytime, anywhere.”
Ease of Use
Unfortunately, my first impression when I landed on edX’s main page wasn’t all that good. I remember thinking the platform looked like that of a university website.
On the bright side, there is no annoying popup and no additional trivial information. Everything you need to see – the courses, the search bar, the partner list – is right there in front of you.
About the courses, there’s a huge list of categories to choose from, from Arts and Philosophy all the way to Economics and Finance. These categories are alphabetically ordered so it’s easy to navigate around.
Content Quality
As edX is a nonprofit online learning platform, many quality courses are available for free without a certificate. The video lectures of most courses are accessible via YouTube and are available to download for offline learning.
However, the course availability can be confusing for learners. Many edX courses will eventually be “archived”. This means that the course is still accessible, but is no longer actively supervised by the respective university.
Features
Other than individual courses you can take at your own leisure, edX offers five different types of programs:
- MicroMasters Program best suits students with graduate-level, who are aiming for advancement in their career.
- Professional Certificates. These are courses taught by employers or universities to train people to meet the demands of the current job market.
- Online Master’s Degrees. As the name suggests, this program helps you attain degrees from top-ranked universities at the comfort of your own home.
- XSeries is a series of courses created by world-renowned experts to develop deep knowledge in interesting and popular subjects.
- Global Freshmen Academy offers online learners the opportunity to take the same courses, from the same faculty as on-campus ASU students. Through this program, you can earn transferable ASU credit and pay tuition only if you earn the grade you need.
Price
There are two types of courses students can take: Verified and Unverified.
- Unverified courses are completely free.
- Verified courses range from $50 to $300.
Like Coursera, you can also audit the course, which means you’ll learn the course material for free, but skip the certificate of completion.
Learning Experience
Reviews for learning at edX are at two opposite edges: either people feel extremely happy with the platform or they’re completely disappointed. There is almost no in-between.
Most of the bad reviews critiqued the pricey tag on popular topics like Computer Science and Business. In other cases, users have pointed out that receiving certificates can take much longer than expected.
6. Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in Design, Business, and Technology. They’ve got over 4+ million students with $5+ million paid to teachers.
Their purpose is to make the new economy an open meritocracy, where the skills and expertise needed to succeed are available for anyone willing to learn them.
Ease of Use
The front page of the site is occupied by a video-based banner with the slogan:
Tomorrow is for the Taking
The idea of having an introductory video for the banner is not completely new but definitely a fresh one to look at. Skillshare doesn’t apply many colors on their website, just a simple touch of blueish green. Yet, this design brings out a simplistic yet aesthetic look and feel to the platform.
Once you click on a course, a Course Introduction video will be played instantly. Underneath are the course description, projects, resources, and reviews. In short, Skillshare interface is quite nice and inviting.
Content Quality
Skillshare is one of the best online learning platforms for people who want to learn new skills. Their primary goal is to deliver quality classes to students, make sure they complete practical assignments and apply new skills to real situations.
Skillshare divided their classes into 7 categories: Design, Illustration, Business, Technology, Photo & Film, Entrepreneurship, and Writing. Most of the courses are 0.5-1 hour in length. These courses are broken into even smaller parts so they’re pretty much digestible. The projects, on the other hand, can take much longer depending on your schedule and understanding.
Features
The first feature that allows Skillshare to stand out is their projects. According to Skillshare’s promises, each course on the site requires students to work on a specific project as they learn the subject material. This way, not only will you get the theoretical information but you’ll also get a chance to create your very first project to showcase.
Skillshare is also very famous for its team-based courses. These courses are designed for businesses to help with team-building exercises and efficiency management. Along with access to an extensive catalog of classes, companies have the opportunity to bring Skillshare’s influential teachers on-site for workshops and events.
Price
Skillshare prices their works rather differently than on other e-learning platforms. Whereas Udemy allows users to buy individual courses for the prices set by the instructors, Skillshare offers a subscription-based model of pricing as their only method.
According to the company, opting for the annual Premium account will bring you more than just online classes. You’ll receive perks, mainly exclusive discounts, from their favorite creative services like Shutterstock, Adobe, and Squarespace.
Learning Experience
The thing I like most about Skillshare is the fact that they actually remove bad courses. It may sound harsh for teachers but it’s one of Skillshare’s best strategies. Of course, you will still come across some every once in a while. That’s why it’s always a good idea to read through students’ reviews before enrolling in any course.
Unfortunately, Skillshare doesn’t provide a certificate of completion. Also, if you forget to cancel the free trial, you’ll be automatically charged for a monthly or yearly fee.
7. DataCamp
DataCamp was established in 2014. It’s an online learning platform that offers interactive courses on R, Python, Sheets, SQL, and Shell. These courses are available in video-lesson formats, fun coding challenges, and DataCamp projects.
DataCamp promises to help companies and individual learners answer their most challenging questions by making better use of data.
Ease of Use
DataCamp’s interfaces are quite easy to grasp. At the front page, you’ll have some basic introductions about the site, student’s testimonials, and the option to create a free account.
The course pages are even simpler. You’ll get a course description, a list of chapters, students’ reviews, and the course author. That’s it. No annoying pop-ups, no ads, no “Recommended Courses” or “You Might Also Like”, nothing. Just what you need to know about the course.
Every course has videos to walk you through each step of the lesson.
Once you feel comfortable with the knowledge, you can click on “Got it!” to move to DataCamp’s inbuilt console, where you try to code and finish the exercises.
Content Quality
The first thing to notice is that all of DataCamp instructors are one of the best Data Science instructors out there. You’ll have the opportunity to learn with experienced teachers and interactive exercises. DataCamp also provides a platform where you can chat and share your knowledge with more than 10,000 peers and experts in your field.
However, a lot of students think that the content on DataCamp is not practical. They also claim that, while there are usually great examples, the instructors tend to do all the work for you.
Features
DataCamp has a total of 862 courses divided into 9 major topics:
| Programming | Importing Data | Data Manipulation |
| Data Visualization | Probability and Statistics | Machine Learning |
| Applied Finance | Reporting | Case Studies |
If you’re a beginner like me, these probably have freaked you out. DataCamp has anticipated that and broke their catalog into two chewable bites: Skill Track and Career Track.
- Career tracks are hand-picked courses by industry experts. You will learn all you need to start a new career in the data science field.
- Skill tracks are shorter and let you specialize in a specific area, like Data Visualization or Statistics.
One thing I particularly like about DataCamp is their XP system, or experience points. XP can be earned by completing courses and performing certain tasks. These points can be used to reveal a hint or a solution to a problem within a course.
Price
Like Skillshare, DataCamp sets Subscription as their only method of paying.
Learning Experience
I really liked some of the data viz stuff they’ve got (Seaborn and Bokeh are awesome), and I think their first couple of intro to Python courses are helpful. I’ve heard great things about their R courses, as well. And Datacamp has got a great platform for what they’re doing.
u/slabby on Reddit
Even though DataCamp is a great online learning platform, I do think that the site has pre-done a lot of stuff for me. For example, most of the exercises are in the fill-in-the-blank format. I never really learned why I needed to perform whatever operation I was doing.
Also, a lot of assignments are very text-reliant, which means that you’ll be greeted by a huge block of texts. For a beginner like me, nothing can feel more discouraging than working with a bunch of codes and letters.
Best Free Online Learning Platform: Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a non-profit MOOC provider. The platform was founded back in 2008 by Salman Khan with “the mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.”
The organization produces short lessons in YouTube video format. Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators. Initially a tool for students, Khan Academy added the Coach feature in 2012, promoting the connection of teachers with students through videos and monitor tools.
Ease of Use
As you reach Khan Academy’s main landing page, you will be greeted by their slogan and three options – for Learners, for Teachers, and for Parents – you can choose from.
Whatever you choose, you’ll be directed to a Signup page where you can sign up using your Facebook or Google account. The page then offers a unique course topic layout that allows you to get an idea of what you can find on the platform.
The course page is a bit confusing. The basic information like Course Summary, Overview, About Section are scattered all over the place.
Content Quality
Although Khan Academy offers a wide selection of topics, the main emphasis lies in Maths and science-related subjects.
Surprising, most reviews for Khan Academy are rather positive. It seems like everyone loves the site and the classes it offers. The only complaint ever recorded is about the lack of courses on popular topics other than Maths.
Features
Once you join Khan Academy, you will have access to personalized dashboards, instructional videos, and various exercises. Features that differentiate Khan Academy from other sites include:
- Integrated level system. You’ll gain XP (experience points) for learning and taking courses. Along with your XP, your level will increase over time. When you reach certain checkpoints, you’ll receive badges. This visual motivator adds some interactiveness to the overall learning process.
- For Teachers. If you’re a teacher, creating an account gains you access to a huge data pool of information, practice exercises, and video tutorials.
- Progress-checking tool. This handy tool can help teachers and parents easily track students’ learning journey.
Price
As mentioned above, courses on Khan Academy are completely free. Then, where does the company get all of the money to fund itself?
Simple. Donations.
Khan Academy is funded by two major sources:
- Individuals. Individuals have two options to help the website out – either through donating or volunteering.
- Organizations. Many companies and corporations, like Bank of America, fund Khan Academy and all of its ventures for a lifetime. Back in 2010, Google donated $2 million USD to help further develop content and encourage course translations
Learning Experience
A look at Khan Academy’s YouTube channel can tell you what you can expect of your learning experience. Since the main format of the platform are YouTube videos, students can easily feel comfortable with the site.
Which Platforms Should You Choose?
There are thousands of eLearning platforms out there. And with the growth of the Internet, there are gonna be a thousand more. As a result, it can be hard to pick the best online learning platforms.
- Codecademy and DataCamp are particularly great for learning how to code while Udemy and Skillshare cover a variety of topics.
- If you want to experience a college or university standard of courses prefer to sit in your own couch, then Coursera, FutureLearn, and edX are the places to go.
- Let’s not also forget about Khan Academy, where you can find hundreds of courses completely for free.
Whichever you choose, happy learning!