This is my in-depth Udemy review and whether the site is actually worth it. In this review, you’ll look at Udemy as an insider and discover its features. I’ll also share my experience and feelings (both positive and negative) toward the site, some tips to help you make use of Udemy, and three other competitive online learning platforms. Let’s get started.
What Is Udemy?
Udemy is an E-learning platform and teaching market place with over 130.000 courses and 24 million students. Founded by Eren Bali, the platform aims to help people learn just about anything. Up till now, it has gained a massive number of more than 130.000 courses.
As a self-taught programmer, I’m forever in search of a cost-effective way to upgrade my skills.
- Though college is the most viable option, I cannot afford a full-time education at the moment.
- Youtube is the second-best choice as it’s free and offers a lot of content. The best part is that I’m already spending half my day on Youtube anyway. Why not make it a study habit? Unfortunately, after a while, I realized that these Youtube tutorials fail to pinpoint the more advanced knowledge.
- I came to know of Udemy through a Youtube ad and was wondering whether it was worth it. Giving the benefits of the doubt, I tried it out.
Why is Udemy Popular?
Online learning is the next new thing. People are not just learning to earn college credits anymore. They want something more. They want to better themselves.
That’s where Udemy shines.
Not only individuals, employers are also taking advantage of the platform. Thanks to Udemy for Business, corporations can easily gain access to Udemy’s most popular courses to encourage their staff to learn. Even huge companies like SurveyMonkey and Adidas are using the site to improve their employers’ educational path.
This means that Udemy learners are not just limited to college students or people who want to learn more about their hobbies.
It could be anyone.
To reach out to that wide range of audiences, Udemy needs to offer a similarly wide range of subjects. And, they are doing one heck of a job at maintaining and growing their list of course categories.
After 10 years of running, Udemy has expanded their course categories into an amazing number of 13. Under each main category are several sub-categories. The most popular categories include Web Development, Design, and Photography.
How do They Do That?
To cover a wide array of subjects like that, Udemy needs to gather up a large number of instructors. Their strategy is to let anyone publish a course. And, I mean, anyone. Let’s say I know a bit about Finance and want to publish a course on how to earn bitcoin, I literally could.
Allowing anyone to publish a course is both a good and bad thing to do. I’ll discuss it further later in the post. Now, let’s get you inside one of the biggest E-learning platforms in the world.
An Inside into a Udemy Course
The course I decided to show you is Bitcoin or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Crypto by Charles Hoskinson and Brian Göss. I took this course last year as part of a training process at my company, Kraken.
I’ll show you what there is inside this Udemy course and my overall review for it. Since this Bitcoin course is free, you can check it out for yourself as well.
Two things I like most about Udemy courses in general are (1) the course sections and (2) the Q&A feature.
1 Most Udemy courses are divided into smaller sections (or lectures). Each section is then split into short videos of less than 10 minutes. These digestible chunks are convenient in case you only get a few minutes here and there to study.
2 The Q&A section is what’s missing in most other online learning platforms. The great thing about Udemy’s Q&A feature is that you’re able to raise questions when you don’t understand something.
Unfortunately, this Q&A is not always helpful. Of all the courses I’ve taken, only Colt Steele is engaging in his The Web Developer Bootcamp course. Other instructors are not that active in the forum. Another problem with the Q&A is that only struggling students go there looking for help. Without the presence of the instructors and capable students, the questions usually go unanswered.
How Much Are Courses on Udemy?
Ah, the question of money.
Pricing is one of the first things I’m concerned about when choosing an online learning platform. As a matter of fact, I was turned off when I first came to Udemy through that Youtube ad.
I remember leaving the site right after seeing the price.
$199 for a course!
You’ve got to be kidding me!
What I don’t remember is how I came back to it. But, when I did, Udemy was on a sale where most courses were down to $9.99. Not knowing about its random sales until much later, I was so happy that I purchased Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from Zero to Hero in Python 3 in an instant.
After being with Udemy for almost three years, I can safely tell you that:
Never, ever buy a Udemy course at its full price of $199.
Why?
Because Udemy has made a point of running constant sales throughout the year. First, it was just around big holidays like New Year or Christmas. However, from what I’ve noticed, the sales are just several days apart. In these sale-off days, you can get a course much cheaper than its original price.
Most video courses on Udemy should be between $8 and $20 when on sale.
Udemy Coupon Code
Aside from the frequent sale, there are a lot of Udemy coupon codes out there to grab. Two main kinds of coupon code include:
1 Instructor’s coupon code
Udemy instructors can create coupon codes for their courses if they wish to. Instructors will then forward coupons they’ve created to their students in promotional announcements from their courses. These can be found in their own social media channels and ad campaigns.
2 Affiliate’s coupon code
Every once in a while, Udemy will give out coupons for their TRUSTED affiliate partners. These coupons are to be promoted on these affiliate websites or email campaigns. However, there are more and more scam sites on the Internet right now making it harder to find a legit affiliate. One tip is that verified partners will not ask you for more than your name and email.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
If that’s not tempting enough, there’s always the 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee policy. This is one of the biggest perks of signing up for a course on Udemy.
What it means is you have a 30-day trial for each Udemy course. In those 30 days, you can access the course and learn. During that time, if you feel like the course is not for you, you can opt for a refund. Past that curfew, you won’t be able to require for any refund.
That being said, you can’t just ask for a refund for every course you’ve taken. There are a few rules in place to make sure the feature is not abused. Two things to keep in mind:
- If you’ve downloaded all the course content, a refund is not eligible.
- You’ll be suspended if you ask for too many refunds.
For more information on this and how to request a refund, check out Udemy’s official page for Purchase/Refunds.
Free Courses
Aside from the paid courses, Udemy also offers a lot of free ones.
The best thing about free courses is that once you enroll in one, you can forever access it. Even if somehow it turns into a paid one.
Against what some people think, a free course doesn’t equal a bad one. In fact, a lot of free Udemy courses are of high quality. They are free either because they’re on promotion or the instructors want to build up a good reputation and gain followers for himself.
In the past, free Udemy courses were easy to find. All you needed to do was to filter out FREE and PAID in the search option. Unfortunately, for some unknown reasons, Udemy has disabled that feature.
Now, to find free courses, you have to go to either of the indirect ways below.
1 You can follow the instructors on their social media channels. Most of them give out new courses for free to test the water. However, the number of enrollments is usually limited.
2 Last year, I composed a list of free Udemy courses and called it The Ultimate List of Best Free Udemy Courses. It’s no way near perfect. But, it contains almost all of the free courses available on Udemy. Don’t want to brad but it’s pretty awesome.
What I Like About Udemy
I’ve been with Udemy for almost three years and have taken/reviewed no less than 10 courses. There’s no denying that I like the platform. But, to what extent?
Well, three things I’m particularly fond of are:
1. Its Variety of Topics.
Every online learning platform needs something unique to differentiate it from the others.
- MasterClass, for example, makes a name for itself by forming an exclusive team of celebrity instructors.
- KhanAcademy stands out as it’s completely free right from the start.
For Udemy, its wide range of course topics is the main thing that sets the site apart from the competitors.
There’s no limit to what can be taught on Udemy. You can easily find courses from Website Development to Music and Art. No other E-learning platform, or at least not one that I know of, comes close to offering as many courses on as many subjects as Udemy.
I’m sure that you’ll never find topics like Caring for Plants like this on any other platform.
2. Sales Are Everywhere.
Another thing that really makes Udemy click for me is its pricing system.
Udemy claims that they are not the ones to price their courses. The instructors are in charge of that. However, there’s still a standard to follow. Everyone who has been with Udemy for a long time knows that most of their courses are around $199. No more.
But, as mentioned above, that’s not a fixed price. Sales are constant. Courses are usually discounted to $9.99, $10.99, $11.99… That’s pretty cheap compared to the general price of the marketplace.
3. The Development Courses Are Quite Decent.
Even though Udemy is well-known for its range of topics, it’s the Development category that brings the most students.
Last year, I composed a list of Most Popular Udemy Instructors and I was amazed to realize that all 15 of them were teaching Development and relative categories.
Even though you can easily find a free tutorial that teaches you how to code on Youtube, it’s not as structured. With Udemy, you can access a large number of downloadable resources and coding exercises.
What I Don’t Like About Udemy
I made it clear right from the start that I like Udemy. Maybe a little too much to be objective about the site. Yet, over the year, I’ve learned to keep a clear head when writing reviews. Bravo me!
And, I’ve been conscious enough to spot a few issues of the site.
1. Too Many Topics
I know, I know. I have listed this as one of my favorite things about Udemy.
But, it’s a double-edged sword. As I said above, to be able to main a growing list of course subjects, Udemy chooses to allow anyone to publish a course on its platform.
This is undeniably a good thing. Take me for example, I read a lot. And with each book, I have different opinions and feelings. But there’s no way I can share that expertise of mine in a university lecture hall. But with Udemy, I know I can spread my knowledge to the right audience.
For that reason, Udemy has become a house for people who are experts in their fields but haven’t yet got a certification to back them up.
So, what are the bad things?
As Udemy is so open, it’s hard to verify the instructors’ expertise. This means that even if you’re the worst chess player in the world, you still can publish a course showing off your chess “skills.” In fact, countless people publish bad courses on hot topics to try and get some quick money from students.
This is probably why there aren’t many university professors on Udemy. I guess they’d rather work with more reputable platforms like Coursera, which houses professors from universities worldwide.
2. Standard of Courses
Content quality is what has put many students off from entering Udemy.
Not that the courses there aren’t good. In fact, tons of courses are off the chart. However, the standard of courses is not consistent across the platform, even from the same instructor.
Some courses are way too good for just $10 while others are just not worth it.
Of course, a site like Udemy tries to not let that become too big of a problem. Since 2018, Udemy has implied a new Quality Review Process. For a course to pass this process, it needs to have:
- at least 30 minutes of valuable educational video content
- at least 5 separate lectures
- and audio quality that is not distracting to students
With that in use, there are still hundreds of courses published on Udemy on a daily basis, making it hard for students to find an actual course that meets their requirements.
3. Misleading Rating System
My biggest pet peeves with Udemy is their review system. This thing is misleading as f*ck. Oops.
You may see a Udemy course with 4.5-star review like one below and think Oh, it must be a good course. Look at all the stars!
Well, congratulations. You’re not the only one who has been bamboozled.
Those stars mean very little. A course could be either excellent or worthless no matter how many stars it gets. But, don’t get all worked up just yet. It’s not part of Udemy’s plan.
Or is it?
To be honest, there are thousands of fake reviews on Udemy. These fake reviews may be bought by the instructors themselves to increase interaction. They can also be Udemy’s strategy to make it seem like a wholesome platform. Who knows?
Luckily, you can easily spot these fake Udemy reviews through three easy steps.
How to Spot Fake Reviews on Udemy
1. Is total number of reviews too high? If the number of reviews / number of students ratio is too high, that’s a red flag right there. From my own experience, anything above 5% is a bit suspicious.
2. Are the reviews from the same period? If most of the reviews are posted at the same time, say 5 months ago, that’s something to be aware of.
3. Are they overly complicated? People don’t have time to write long reviews. Instead, they’ll keep it short and basic. As a result, the detailed ones are probably “business partners and friends.
I personally think this misleading review goes back to the huge discounts on Udemy. As mentioned earlier, course instructors usually put their courses on sale, where courses are under $13.
Now think about this. A review you write for a $200 product and one for a $10 product. Of course, they’re going to be insanely different. You’re going to have different expectations depending on how much money you need to spend. That’s why many courses received a lot of positive reviews though being quite bad.
I wouldn’t mind about how many 5-star reviews the course gets. I do mind about the one and two-star reviews. The lower the percentage of those stars is, the better. Once I’ve come to terms with that, I’ll look into the negative reviews to see if I can put up with the given points. If yes, I’ll go ahead and buy the course.
Do Udemy Certificates Improve Your CV?
When researching for this Udemy review, I found out that people really cared about whether Udemy is accredited.
Once you complete a Udemy course, you’ll receive a certificate of completion, which can be saved as a PDF or JPG file.
Many students choose Udemy because they offer this certificate of completion. After all, the certificate looks all professional and elegant, right?
So, will it help you with your CV?
I hate to say this, but no, Udemy certificates will not make your CV more noticeable. At least not directly.
Although Udemy is popular in its own right, not all companies recognize and accredit the site. As a result, I would never put these certificates in my resume. I wouldn’t even bother earning them in the first place.
However, the skills you learn from each course will make you more in demand, and as a result, will contribute to your future promotion. So, while there’s not much prestige or immediate results from completing a Udemy course, it still can affect your career advancement.
Be a Smart Consumer
Now that you’ve known the inside and out of Udemy, let’s see how you can make the most use out of the platform.
As I’ve said, Udemy has quite a strict quality review system. All courses must be approved before they are available for users to purchase. Still, it doesn’t mean that every course can meet the standards. Here are some things you can do to be a wiser consumer:
- Take advantage of free courses. Never underestimate the power of free courses. If you know which ones to choose, free courses can even be better than paid ones.
- Wait for sales. Always wait for sales. Never, ever, ever buy a course at full price.
- Look for lists of courses. Even when you have a target in mind, it’ll be hard for you to single out the course you need. The best way is to look for lists of courses, where people list out the best courses on a given topic.
- Look at the course description. The way a course description is written can pretty much tell what you’re going to get during a course. Some descriptions are just plain cr*p.
- Watch the preview. Preview is there for a reason. Don’t just skip over it. Watch it to see if the instructor has a clear accent, or if he just reads from slides.
- Read reviews. Read reviews from old Udemy students and from trusting blog posts. These will give you great insights into the course you want.
- Don’t purchase from the Udemy app. Let me keep this short. Udemy app SUCKS. First of all, you might not get any sales if you purchase from the app. In addition, the return and refund process takes much longer than when you purchase from the web page.
- Purchase a course only when you’re ready to start. This goes back to the 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee policy. The clock starts ticking once you pay. So, unless you want to study right away, don’t purchase the course.
- Don’t download the entire course content at once. Udemy may reject your refund request if you have downloaded all the course content.
- Avoid continuous returns. These can get you in trouble and lead to your account being suspended by Udemy.
Alternatives to Udemy
If you’ve read all the way to this point and still feel that Udemy is not the best fit for you, don’t worry. There is plenty of fish in the sea.
Below are the three most notable “fishes.” I’ve specifically picked out these sites as they offer what Udemy doesn’t. To find out about other E-learning sites, check out my review of the eight best online learning platforms (Udemy included).
1. If You Want to Learn from University Professors: Coursera
While Udemy’s certificate of completion is not widely accredited, Coursera’s certificate can replace a college credit. You can even choose to earn an online degree through the platform.
Coursera partners with over 150 distinguished universities and colleges from around the world. Their courses are extremely well-designed. Aside from that, what I like best about Coursera is how they let you audit a course. When you choose to audit a course, Coursera will let you view the materials and study them for free. Though you won’t be able to apply for a certificate, submit homework, or join in closed activities.
Similar MOOCs providers include FutureLearn and EdX.
2. If You Want to Improve Your Freelancing Gigs: Learn from Fiverr
When you’re applying for freelancing gigs, the employers may not care about how many college degrees you have. All they care about is whether you can complete the job.
That’s what Learn from Fiverr is trying to do.
Learn from Fiverr operates based on the necessary skills seen on gigs. It’s uniquely tailored and crafted by Fiverr, featuring some of the most accomplished instructors from Apple, Nike, and Google. What special about Learn from Fiverr is that students will need to complete a final test, which gives out a special course badge.
This badge will give you more exposure on the Fiverr marketplace, which improves your ranking and your chances of getting a gig.
3. If You Want to Learn How to Code: Codecademy
Udemy is renowned for its development courses. However, a lot of students, myself included, feel that there could be more on-the-go practice. That’s where Codecademy comes in handy.
With the mission to help people learn Programming, Codecademy focuses on 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, Swift, and Sass, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS.
I love how interactive Codecademy is. With each lesson, there are basic syntaxes you need to learn and a set of challenges. These will be on the left side of your window. On the right side is where you play around with the code and complete the challenges. You’ll be practicing as you learn.
My advice is to combine the video tutorials from Udemy with the coding exercises from Codecademy. With this combination in action, you’ll soon become a serious developer.
Is Udemy Worth It?
This is a quite difficult question to answer.
But, after all, that’s why you’re here reading this Udemy review, right? Okay, let’s see.
Udemy itself is a worthy site with plenty of popular categories and cool features. However, not all courses qualify for that worthiness. I would say that Udemy is more than decent to learn about topics concerning Hobbies and Web Development. For more academic subjects, I’d suggest looking at other platforms like edX and Coursera.
Remember. Never buy a Udemy course at full price. Don’t purchase a Udemy course unless it’s less than $15.
Anyway, since you have the 30-day money-back guarantee policy on your back, why not try on a course? You can always return a course if it doesn’t meet your expectations.
Let me know how you feel about Udemy after this review.