If you’re looking for a comprehensive Udemy review, you’re in the right place. Here, we’ll be discussing pros, cons, and alternatives to help you decide if Udemy is a good fit for you.
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The Udemy Review
Name: Udemy
Website: www.udemy.com
Price: Prices vary by course but generally range between $0-$200
Owners: The Owners are Unknown, however, the Founders are Eren Ball, Oldaay Caglar, and Cagan Blyan
Ceo: Kevin Johnson
Overall Rank: 95 out of 100
If you’re here, you’re probably considering taking courses with Udemy, but you’re concerned about whether you will be duped. You may see a lot of interesting selections there, but you’re concerned about whether you can really get good value for the price, or whether you should consider an alternative. I understand. This is the Udemy Review you’ve been looking for if you want an objective look at Udemy: the good, the bad, and otherwise in an effort that you can make a well-informed decision about whether Udemy is right for you.
Udemy Product Overview
Udemy is an open marketplace that allows people from all over the world to create professional development courses and allows consumers to choose courses without a regimented course track. Udemy allows instructors to create courses as they choose in their chosen video format. Some courses have many content upgrades such as credit hours towards technical training certifications, PDF downloads, and other access to additional resources. Many of the courses can present an extreme value in comparison to other similar courses found elsewhere.
A Little Background on Udemy
After several failed attempts at pitching investors for funding, Udemy began in 2010 as a bootstrapped business lead by Eren Ball, Olday Caglar, and Cagan Blyan. Within one year, the company had taken off: 1,000 instructors created 2,000 courses, and 10,000 students were registered. Between 2011 and 2016, they were able to raise 171 million in venture capital funding, and the growth of the business has taken pace dramatically.
The Good & the Bad
The Good:
- PRO #1: As of this writing, there are over 65,000 courses to choose from
- PRO #2: Students can choose a skill they want to acquire and easily enroll in a course to hone the skill
- PRO #3: You can easily see goals, reviews, price, and course length at a glance
- PRO #4: Courses are reasonably priced and their lots of great sales and specials
- PRO #5: Many of the classrooms are active where you are expected to engage with your instructor, ask questions if you have them, and get answers
- PRO#6: When you buy a course, you by a single license for the lifetime of the course and its updates. This is a HUGE PLUS!
- PRO #7: You can receive Certificates of Completion that are recognized by some employers and professional institutions (some technical institutions like Project Management Institute but not by most Universities though)
The Bad:
- CON #1: Course Quality Varies
- CON #2: Some instructors don’t update their courses often
- CON#3: Some courses may have compatibility issues with your computer due to software Instructors use
- CON#4: Unless the course says it is recognized by a board or gets you credits towards a specified professional goal, the courses are not accredited
- CON#5: Due to Piracy Concerns and Intellectual Property Theft, courses cannot be downloaded for viewing outside of Udemy
Who is Udemy For?
Udemy is for aspiring professionals. Whether you work in a big business, small business, or as an entrepreneur, Udemy has courses to help improve your professional skills, increase your value in the marketplace, and increase your productivity in workplace tasks.
Udemy Tools & Training
Udemy is entirely a training platform, however, if you have trouble using the platform, they have training for that too. On Udemy.com, there are FAQS, questions answered, and there is the support option where you can ask your instructor questions.
Udemy Support
Udemy has more than one method of support. The instructors provide course-specific support and Customer Service provides technical, billing, and other customer care support. As of this writing, the support function is performed live and by email. Udemy does not enforce that instructors must respond to students, however, they do encourage instructors to respond.
What Are Common Negative Udemy Reviews?
Consumer Affairs had 27 Udemy reviews and an overall rating of 2.5 stars. Customer and Instructor Udemy reviews included complaints like:
- They only offer live chat because they offshore their customer support (could be a false accusation)
- They didn’t give one customer a refund because she requested more than 30 days after purchase: even though the customer reported they had not used the course
- One person reported being overcharged, refunded, then billed again
- One customer reported purchasing 10 courses, then suddenly had their account terminated, and Udemy told them they violated terms of service
- Strong instructor accents
- Some Instructors are not responsive and Uemy does not enforce it. They encourage responsiveness, but they do not take courses down or flag courses in any way simply because instructors are not responsive. It’s an open marketplace.
- An Instructor had a bad experience with a student using bad language and did not get the support they wanted from Udemy Customer Support Staff
- An Instructor did not like being asked to verify his identity
- Slow Support (1-4 days)
- Slow Course Load Times
- Some Courses were deleted by Instructors
Aside from Consumer Affairs, other individuals reviewed Udemy and reported mixed reviews (3-4 stars on average), however, it appears the majority of individual reviewers wrote good reviews.
What Are Common Positive Udemy Reviews?
Also on Consumer Affairs site is good feedback from customers including:
- Instant customer support response
- Great instructors
- Quick refund
- Huge course selection (even for coding courses of varying difficulty
- Very qualified instructors
- Successfully learned skills as promised
What’s The BBB Saying About Udemy?
The BBB has given Udemy a B- Rating. They have 3 customer complaints and 1 positive review. The complaints include:
- One customer who was informed about his course being deleted. He was offered 10 days to choose an alternative course or get a refund. He did not respond and was given a refund. He is complaining about not being able to get back his time and effort towards the course.
- Another customer who was attracted thru the discount Facebook methods, says her cards were repeatedly not accepted and Udemy support was unable to help her resolve this issue.
- One customer was granted a refund on 3 courses outside of deadline stated in their normal refund policy. He reported the complaint after receiving his money back for two courses because he was skeptical about whether he would receive his money back from the third course.
The Positive review said:
- The courses were good and helped build a good resume
Udemy Review Playlist
Here’s a Youtube Playlist I’ve made with Udemy Reviews for you to review. Hopefully, this helps you make a good decision about whether Udemy is a good fit for you:
Udemy Price
Udemy has many promotions. so the course prices can range drastically. They also do retargeting ads where cookies are placed in your browser. If you appear interested in a particular course, Udemy ads will often follow you across the internet offering you discount pricing on the course you appeared to be interested in or something similar.
My Final Opinion of Udemy
Hopefully, this is the Udemy review that answers all of your questions and helps you decide whether or not Udemy is worth your time and money. You have to take negative reviews and positive reviews very carefully when making decisions like this.
It’s not uncommon that if people have a complaint, they will take extra effort to exploit something they think is wrong. Unfortunately, people don’t normally put as much effort in reporting positive experiences; therefore, I wasn’t surprised to see more negative third-party complaints. I was surprised to see how many positive third-party reviews Udemy had received.
I’ve had amazing experiences buying courses on Udemy: some free, some $10, and some $20. All of the courses I’ve bought have competitive pricing that is in the hundreds or even thousands (for some). I’ve always felt that even with the cons, Udemy is a great value for self-directed professional development coursework. I haven’t personally had any problems with customer support, so I can’t speak on that, however, there are clearly some people who have.
Added to my course experience, I’ve been able to use the certificates of completion from Udemy to add credibility to my freelance portfolio, which made hiring managers more excited to hire me. I’ve also seen people who say they’ve used Udemy courses to add skills to their resumes.
Even if the courses don’t have University-recognized accreditation, many employers appreciate finding employees who continually improve their skills, add additional value to the workplace, and recognize Udemy as a place with proven results as such. The market operates the same. You can find trends where high job demand is (whether as an employee or a business owner), find courses on Udemy to acquire the skill and watch your ability to charge higher rates go up because you can prove the acquisition of a high demand skill.
Overall, I highly recommend Udemy. It’s one of the 1st places I go for professional development skills: aside from my #1 recommendation, Wealthy Affiliate.
Alternatives
Wealthy Affiliate | Top Rated – #1 Recommendation
If you’re looking for a place to learn professional skills specifically for starting and growing an online business, Wealthy Affiliate is my #1 recommendation. They offer free websites, 10 free training lessons towards an Internet Marketing certification, website hosting, an online social media-style networking community with 1.4 million+ entrepreneurs, and more. You can give it a try by setting up a lifetime free account to Wealthy Affiliate here and no billing information is required.
Wealthy Affiliate vs. Udemy
Here’s a breakdown of a few differences between Wealthy Affiliate and Udemy:
Udemy at a Glance…
Name: Udemy
Website: www.udemy.com
Price: Prices vary by course but generally range between $0-$200
Owners: The Owners are Unknown, however, the Founders are Eren Ball, Oldaay Caglar, and Cagan Blyan
Ceo: Kevin Johnson
Overall Rank: 80 out of 100
VERDICT: Recommend
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Udemy
Pros
- Over 65,000 courses, Many of them are very good
- Many credible instructors
- Great refund policies and they stick to them
- High ratings of customer satisfaction
- Very affordable
Cons
- It's an open marketplace so the quality of the courses can vary from course to course
- You have to check reviews on individual courses and instructors to make sure you're getting a good buy
- You can't download courses
- Some instructors don't update their courses
- Their are some courses that say they help you towards a certification, but some don't count in credit hours towards it--Watch to see that courses have proper accreditation if you're trying to apply it towards a specific credential
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