Does Udemy Work? Udemy is a popular learning platform to learn just about any topics online and people still consider this as a good place to learn.
Is this the best online tool for massive open online courses (MOOS)?
During the past few years, the trend of online education and learning has gained significant popularity, like Udemy, which is still constantly growing with time, but many questions, does Udemy work?
Are such online tools really effective? Let’s explore the answer.
After reading my review you will learn more about this online platform and you will also learn about the best place to learn how to make money online.
Udemy Review
Summary
Name: Udemy
Website:https://www.udemy.com/
Pros: A lot of resources for any subject
Cons: No community support to guide you with the training
Star Rating:/ 4/5
Bottom Line: Sometimes you get stuck on the training and nobody will guide you through. I suggest that you try my #1 recommendation as it has a community of over 800,000 online entrepreneurs willing to guide you through the training.
Online courses are a highly convenient option in today’s hectic life especially if you have a very busy schedule or have lots of familial responsibilities on your shoulders.
The main issue, however, is to find the right platform from where you can get your desired education.
The second most important and yet very difficult task is to find the courses that completely fit all of your requirements and cover everything that you want to learn.
If you are also one of those people who is thinking along the lines of taking online courses, then you must have heard about Udemy.
But, the actual question is, does Udemy really work or is it just a waste of time and money? – Let’s find out together.
What is Udemy?
Udemy is an online educational tool that provides different kinds of courses to people from all walks of life.
The tool offers a huge number of courses on different kinds of topics offered by both expert and non-expert instructors.
These courses are delivered to the customers via video.
Udemy – An Introduction
Udemy was developed by a software designer Eren Bali and was introduced to the public in the year 2010.
As mentioned above, Udemy is an online marketplace for educational programs that offer a variety of more than 30,000 courses to choose from.
Although the number of available courses is extremely high, it makes it a complex task for you to tell which one is really worth taking.
A lot of similar courses show a good number of students and ratings, but their prices vary significantly from one another, which make you doubtful about their authenticity.
The various topics on which the courses are offered include arts & crafts, business, technology, languages, software, lifestyle, games, science, music, sports and more.
Pricing
The prices vary from course to course, depending on the contents of the course and the instructor’s skills and expertise.
The majority of the courses cost from $29 to $299.
However, the higher paying courses can go up to around $900 as well or even more.
Although, Udemy sometimes offers some special discounts on some of their courses, the pricing of Udemy, in comparison to other similar software and learning websites is still pretty high.
The prices of other websites generally don’t go beyond $100 for regular courses, for which Udemy would charge $200+.
Udemy generally charges a one-time fee for each course.
This seems like a good thing, but, most of the times you end up getting only the sample lessons for that price and are required to either learn the remaining part on your own or pay more for other courses for learning the rest of the areas.
However, not all of the courses require you to pay a one-time fee.
Some of them give you the option to choose whether or not you’ll like to pay all at once for the course you want to learn, but the number of such courses is very limited.
Is Udemy Better than Other Similar Tools?
Let’s take a quick look at several aspects of Udemy that will help us determine if it’s better than other similar tools or not.
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Cost
First of all, as we mentioned above as well, Udemy is quite pricey in comparison to other similar websites and platforms.
You can easily take two to three different courses from other websites for the price of one course from Udemy.
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Academic Accreditation
The second most crucial thing to consider is that those other such tools offer the courses that are meant for universities and educational institutions, with the same curriculum and topics.
Udemy, on the other hand, offers you courses that don’t have academic accreditation and are more like YouTube tutorial videos that you can easily watch on YouTube as well without having to pay anything.
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Criteria for Instructor
Another alarming thing is that there is no certain criterion set by Udemy to be an instructor on their website.
Anyone can join Udemy to create their courses and charge as much as they seem fit, whereas, on other websites, the instructors have to meet certain benchmarks pertaining to their education and experience for teaching a specific course.
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Availability of Instructor’s Biodata
One more off-putting thing about instructors at Udemy is that there is no descriptive bio data about them that can tell you in detail what actually makes them qualified for teaching you a certain course.
All you can see there are just a photograph and a brief introduction, which doesn’t suffice when you have to pay a good amount.
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Quantity vs. Quality
It is also noticed by many people that the instructors at Udemy seem more concerned about the promotion of their courses but are least concerned about the quality of the course.
Their major aim is to make as much money as they want because they are the ones who set their prices and they always show their ratings on a higher side, which clearly shows where their focus lies.
Considering all above points, it is pretty evident that Udemy is nowhere to be termed better than other similar tools and needs to be more customer oriented to compete with others.
Summary Overview
Udemy Review
Summary
Name: Udemy
Website:https://www.udemy.com/
Pros: A lot of resources for any subject
Cons: No community support to guide you with the training
Star Rating:/ 4/5
Bottom Line: Sometimes you get stuck on the training and nobody will guide you through. I suggest that you try my #1 recommendation as it has a community of over 800,000 online entrepreneurs willing to guide you through the training.
Is it Simple to Use?
Udemy is neither very simple to use nor its very complex.
Coming towards its interface, their course search toolbar is the only thing that we have found to be great so far. You can look up the courses, reviews, and even the students of specific courses that can help you in selecting your course.
Conversely, due to the availability of too many options, you may end up really muddled and may not be able to decide the course you want to take.
Moreover, the unrealistic reviews and ratings also add up to your confusion because it’s extremely rare to see any courses at Udemy that have less than 4-5 star ratings. Weird, isn’t it?
Apart from the search toolbar, the other options and menu can be hard to use. There are a lot of buttons and back buttons, and they are in a very disorderly position, so it can take a while for you to become accustomed to it.
Pros of Udemy
- There is a wide range of courses available.
- You can access Udemy anywhere you like on various kinds of devices.
- Courses remain available for an indefinite time period.
- You can learn as per your convenience and speed.
- You can view a few selected lectures before purchasing them.
Cons of Udemy
- The majority of the courses at Udemy are not accredited from any colleges or institutes unlike MOOC courses from other sources. Lack of certificate makes the whole course a total waste of time when it comes to job hunt because your course won’t be recognized by any potential employers.
- The course videos are very slow and take a lot of time to buffer, which they keep on doing after every 10-15 seconds.
- The way an instructor teaches may or may not work for you, which depends on many factors that include the pace of the instructor vs. the pace of your learning, the accent of the instructor and how deep the instructor goes into the topic while elaborating it.
- If the interaction isn’t good enough then the videos can get pretty boring to watch, which may leave you distracted.
- The majority of the courses are targeted for the beginners, so, the people looking for advanced level courses generally don’t end up happy.
- Since Udemy allows anyone and everyone to be an instructor on their website, it makes you question their skills and expertise when it doesn’t go that well.
- Due to the plethora of courses on Udemy, you will find hundreds of courses on the same topic with varying prices that can go from least to most. Therefore, it can be really troublesome to find the one that contains the specific content that you need.
What are Users Saying About Udemy?
We came across a number of Udemy users, the majority of which seemed disgruntled and highly disappointed with the tool.
As per many users, it is extremely difficult to find good quality courses in the first place.
And in many instances, the courses the customers pay for are removed before they could even take them.
A lot of users also mentioned receiving false discount emails from Udemy in which they claim to offer discounts on some specific courses, and upon purchasing, the price turns out to be 3-4 times more than what’s stated in the email.
Moreover, there are many users whose accounts get closed for no apparent reason and their inquiries don’t solve the problem either.
Apart from these issues, users find Udemy’s toolbar quite difficult to navigate.
The courses don’t always cover everything mentioned in the curriculum, and many of the instructors don’t seem fit for their job.
And since the ratings for almost all the courses are pretty high – it is really hard to figure out which ratings are real and which aren’t.
Lastly, there is a total lack of instructor support at Udemy. The instructors are very nonresponsive to emails and even complaint tickets, which is enough to drive the users crazy.
Is it Popular?
Considering the reviews and ratings on Udemy’s own website and the courses, the tool seems extremely popular.
However, the ratings only range between 4 and five stars, which also make it pretty evident that those are not genuine.
For checking whether Udemy’s popularity is true or not, the independent reviews and customer reviews outside Udemy’s website are a good place to start.
As discussed above, the customers are highly dissatisfied with Udemy due to its major flaws.
And, as far as the rating is concerned, the users don’t rate it more than 2.5-3 stars, which shows the clients’ utter disapproval for Udemy.
Conclusion
VERY GOOD!
With everything switching to online, the people don’t need to physically go anywhere to study and can use their smartphones and other devices for the same purpose.
However, it is only possible when you have a good online learning tool that provides you with the authentic and certified education.
Udemy is a legitimate platform to learn a lot of topics but it certainly needs some improvements and I consider it good although it is not my recommendation.
Udemy may have its benefits, but for the most part, it’s is better to find an alternative platform.
There are plenty of things that need to be changed by Udemy for making it an ideal online education tool, and until that happens, we’d suggest you find some other ways of learning what you want.
If you need proper online training, I have a recommendation for you. Wealthy Affiliate offers top level online training with a community of over 800,000 online entrepreneurs with varying degrees of expertise.
They offer the training you cannot find in Udemy.
Feel free to ask questions, post comments or subscribe to my email list so that you will be the first to get the updates and offers.
You may also visit me so I can answer your questions directly at Wealthy Affiliate.com as it is where I hang out with my buddies most of the time ( link to my profile page ).
At a Glance
Udemy Review
Summary
Name: Udemy
Website:https://www.udemy.com/
Pros: A lot of resources for any subject
Cons: No community support to guide you with the training
Star Rating:/ 4/5
Bottom Line: Sometimes you get stuck on the training and nobody will guide you through. I suggest that you try my #1 recommendation as it has a community of over 800,000 online entrepreneurs willing to guide you through the training.
Taquee Hicks says
I keep hearing about Udemy a lot lately. This finally provides some information that I can actually use. Online education and learning are quickly becoming one of the latest trends to the Internet world. I thank you for shedding some light on this whole thing. I guess as you mentioned the whole thing depends on the type of platform that works best for your educational needs. Thank you again for sharing this.
Den says
Hi,
Udemy is a good platform to learn and many users are happy with it. They just have to improve their services and they will be considered as one of the top learning platforms online.is
Thanks for the comments,
Den
Jubileu says
I am a student of Udemy myself and am taking a course there. The content is good as you describe it perfectly in your post. I would add that they still have to improve in their streaming service because the latency is high and the constant interruptions are distracting. I’ve found that I’m not the only one affected by this problem.
Den says
Hi, Thank you for sharing your experiences with Udemy. Yes I agree, it is a good learning platform although there just some points that needs to be addressed and one of those is what you described in your comments.
Thanks for the comments,
Den
Arta says
Hi Den
I was looking for more information on Udemy and I am really glad I found your article. You have described everything I wanted to know about them so I know it is better to stay away or at least be very very careful.
Just wanted to say that it was really easy to read your article – I didn’t even notice when everything was read and I was looking for more 🙂
Den says
Hi Arta,
Udemy is a good platform but for us as the consumer we should find out the best platform with the best value for money which in my opinion can not be found on Udemy.
Thanks for the comments,
Den
Andy says
Great detailed review, Den.
You know, I have seen a little buzz about Udemy around the net, but I mainly saw reviews of Udemy as a means to make money by creating courses. They were generally positive, but apparently a lot of actual users of Udemy are not happy.
I agree that Udemy needs to do a better job of providing better more accurate ratings for courses, as well as filtering out sub-par courses. Plus, with a lot of universities offering courses online, if you are going to pay a high price for a course, you might as well get some college credit for it.
Den says
Hi Andy,
I agree with you that Udemy has to improve their services in order to please the majority of their users. They should also make their courses more cost competitive as there are platforms online that has better offers at less we cost.
Thanks for the comments,
Den
Lilibeth says
Udemy seems like they have a good online money making training. It is popular these days. I am just wondering in what ways do the platform that you recommend is much better than Udemy? Can you please elaborate? I needed more details of this platform especially about coaching if it is available. Thank you.
Den says
Hi Lilibeth,
Udemy is not a bad platform, but these days we have to get the most value out of our money. In Udemy you have to pay money for every course. In Wealthy Affiliate, the monthly subscription of $49 will get you everything Wealthy Affiliate has to offer at present or in the future. No upsells. There have been upgrades to the program like free SSL Certificates to our website, Site Speed upgrade and the subscription is still $49.
Wealthy Affiliate has a community of over 800,000 online entrepreneurs and any member can offer you one on one coaching for free. You cannot find a platform like this anywhere.
Thanks for the comments.
Den
Jimmy says
Udemy work for real. My knowledge on affiliate marketing without a website was gotten from Udemy. It had a clear visual feel and the teacher was articulate enough for me to understand.
I got it for $10 I think and it had about 8 videos explaining affiliate marketing (teespring review). Udemy Is good of you need to learn a new skill on a budget .
Thanks for this Den
Den says
Hi Jimmy,
Thank you for sharing your experience with Udemy. I agree it is a cheap $10 training for 8 videos for doing affiliate marketing without a website. Udemy is also a good platform but we should look for more value for our money.
In my opinion, Wealthy Affiliate is still cheaper as it offered totally free training with 7 days one on one coaching from the community of over 800,000 online entrepreneurs and this includes the two owners, Kyle and Carson.
The one on one coaching can be extended up to 21 days as I have detailed it in my other post Learn Affiliate Marketing Basics for Free. When you upgrade it would cost $19 for the first month. Now you have at least 51 days training with two free websites for $19 dollars. I think this is a better deal.
Thanks for the comments,
Den