Written By

Felipe Bernardes
Last Updated

February 18, 2019

Udemy Review: Is Udemy worth it?

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Any kind of professional or personal development requires a very fundamental skill: Learning.

In this review of Udemy, you’ll have a detailed analysis of one of the most renowned learning platforms.

Is Udemy good? Let's find out together ;)

Table of content

What is Udemy?
Advantages of Online Learning with Udemy
Do Udemy Certificates improve my résumé?
What categories can I find on Udemy?
Udemy's most popular courses
What do people like about Udemy?
What people don't like about Udemy?
Udemy’s Instructors
Becoming an instructor on Udemy: pros and cons
Pricing Model
FAQ

Review of Udemy: What is Udemy?

Eren Bali, CEO and founder of the company, launched Udemy in 2010. After being rejected about 30 times, they were able to raise funds to develop and market the site.

Nowadays, Udemy is one of the world's largest online course platforms. It creates an environment for imparting knowledge to individuals from the comforts of their homes.

This platform is designed in such a way that students can learn and relearn new skills. Furthermore, it builds an avenue for expert instructors to create and share paid and free courses that go a long way in improving the skills of students.

This global course provider is widely known for its innovation in the global marketplace providing opportunities for instructors to make some extra bucks while teaching passionate students.

With Udemy, individuals who have the will to learn can nurture and develop their careers, expand their knowledge, and explore a wide variety of hobbies.

While collecting information for this review of Udemy, it was clear that Udemy provides an excellent opportunity to learn da wide viriety of subjects such as programming languages (Python, and Javascript), Blockchain, AWS, Rotoscoping, Tiktok, Achology Accelerated Learning Techniques, etc.

Courses found on Udemy are either free or paid (with affordable prices and huge discounts that go up to 90% off regular prices).

People who have the passion to advance in their careers take these courses as a pathway to improve their job-related skills.

Review of Udemy: Advantages of Online Learning with Udemy

Advancement in technology has provided an alternative for millions of students all across the world to opt for online learning programs.

The world has definitely changed!

Companies like Apple, Google, and IBM, don’t require job applicants to have college degrees anymore.

Now, companies will hire candidates whose experience and skills best suit them for the job. Luckily, these skills can be acquired or mastered in platforms like Udemy.

In this review of Udemy, we point out the advantages of learning online with their courses. But first, check out this explanatory video about Udemy:

1. A chance to learn whatever you want

With Udemy, you can learn any skill you want, including those offered in traditional universities. All it takes is to visit their platform and enroll in a particular course with the subject you want to learn such as Python, Javascript, or Digital Marketing. In this case, where you live or what you want to study isn’t a barrier. You can find a suitable course that you’ll learn from home.

2. Review of Udemy’s courses made by students

After completing a course, students can leave helpful reviews and ratings. This information ranks very highly among the top factors impacting customer decision. Opinion from past attendees can greatly influence not only newcomers’ decisions but also their preferences and judgment. In today’s digital era, this review of Udemy’s courses is critical for new students to enroll in upcoming classes.

3. Comfort

With Udemy online learning platform, you’ll entirely forget about the stress of attending classes in person. You won’t need to fight traffic, leave work early, or miss important family time. This e-learning platform provides all lectures, materials, and videos. And yes, you’ll be able to access them all from anywhere with an internet connection.

4. Self-paced learning

This implies that you can start and finish your study on your own time. Furthermore, the platform allows you to arrange and schedule learning hours that meet your individual needs.

Review of Udemy: Do Udemy Certificates improve my résumé?

This is a very important point that could not be left out of this review of Udemy.

When you finish a course on Udemy, you receive a certificate of completion. You can share it with your friends, relatives, co-workers and potential employers. However, certificates issued by Udemy cannot be used for formal accreditation, because Udemy is not an accredited institution. This implies that the courses will not count towards continuing education (CEUs) or college credits.

Even so, Udemy certificates can be added to your resume to show employers that you are committed to continuously expanding your knowledge. This will show that you have the capacity and passion for learning new skills, which is a highly esteemed trait in every modern organization.

If you're a recent grad with limited work experience, showcasing certificates might be a smart thing to do. If you didn't cover a certain topic in college or at school, taking additional courses and adding certificates to your resume can signal you've caught up with certain job-specific requirements.

Review of Udemy: What categories can I find on Udemy?

According to their website, it is possible to find 13 main categories:

We have also made available a list of their most relevant courses within each category.

Check the list of Udemy courses below:

Udemy's Most Popular Courses

Development

Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from Zero to Hero in Python 3
The Web Developer Bootcamp
Java Programming Masterclass for Software Developers
Angular - The Complete Guide (2021 Edition)
Python Programming for absolute beginners : Hands-on Python 3

New to development? Take a look at our post about "What is programming?" and get all your questions answered.

Interested in learning more about Achology? Read our article about it!

Design

The Ultimate Drawing Course - Beginner to Advanced
Complete Blender Creator: Learn 3D Modelling for Beginners
Character Art School: Complete Character Drawing Course
Illustrator CC 2021 MasterClass
UX Design for Beginners - UX Principles, Concepts and Models

Marketing

The Complete Digital Marketing Course - 12 Courses in 1
Ultimate Google Ads / AdWords Course - Profit With PPC!
Facebook Ads and Facebook Marketing MASTERY 2019 | Coursenvy ™
Instagram Marketing 2020: A Step-By-Step to 10,000 Followers
Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Lifestyle

How to Train a Puppy
Aquaponic Gardening: Growing Fish and Vegetables Together
Fundamental Beauty and Contouring Technique
Paint Realistic Watercolor and Botanicals - Toadstool
How to Draw From Beginner to Master

Photography

Photography Masterclass: A Complete Guide to Photography
Premiere Pro CC for Beginners: Video Editing in Premiere
Adobe Lightroom Classic CC: Photo Editing Masterclass
The Complete Video Production Bootcamp
Beginner Nikon Digital SLR (DSLR) Photography

We found this amazing History of Photography Timeline e-book, that every photography lover will go crazy about. Check it out!

Health and Fitness

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) Practitioner Certificate
Become a SuperHuman: Naturally and Safely Boost Testosterone
Learn Close Combat Training: Military Hand-To-Hand Combat
Herbalism: Introduction and Medicine Making Course
Elevate Your Tennis Game: Learn from Champion Andre Agassi

Music

Pianoforall - Incredible New Way To Learn Piano and Keyboard
Complete Guitar System - Beginner to Advanced
Music Theory Comprehensive Complete! (Levels 1, 2, and 3)
BECOME A GREAT SINGER: Your Complete Vocal Training System
Music + Audio Production in Logic Pro X - The Complete Guide

Teaching and Academics

Become a Calculus 1 Master
Become an Algebra Master
Online Japanese Beginner Course (All 12 lessons)
Chinese Made Easy L1: Understand 65% of Chinese in 10 hours
Greek Language Part 1

Interested in finding other stimulating courses? Our online course search tool will help you discover fascinating classes.

What do people like about Udemy?

Catalog/Course variety: It doesn’t matter whether you want to learn about data science or personal development. Udemy always has a course on pretty much every topic imaginable.
Lifetime access: Udemy provides you lifetime access to the course once you get enrolled in a class. It doesn't matter whether it's free or paid; it belongs to you as long as you have your account on Udemy.
Existing content update: Udemy frequently updates courses with new content, so your original purchase allows you to continue learning and updating your skills.
Self-paced learning: courses on Udemy are designed to be accomplished at the student's own speed. Each course consists of video classes in lengths ranging from 4 minutes to 12 minutes, on average. When watching the lectures, students can stop and replay all or part as many times as they want.
Pay-per-course: Different from platforms that offer subscription models. Udemy allows you to buy single courses from their catalog. Courses on Udemy range from $9 to $300, and the company frequently hosts sales, mainly on dates like Black Friday in November. Udemy accepts international debit and credit cards, PayPal and bank transfers. The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

What people don't like about Udemy?

No academic credit: Udemy offers people a way to transfer knowledge to other would-be learners. But if you're looking for a platform to get academic credit, Udemy isn't the place.
Certificate is not recognized: As Udemy is not an accredited learning institution, certificates of completion are not verified, for example, by employers. If you’re interested in getting a certificate of completion, there are other online learning platforms providers such as Udacity, Treehouse, EdX, Treehouse, Domestika, Codakid, or Plurasight. Try this search tool and find a course that you want from the world’s top universities and organizations.
No curation of instructors: Anyone can teach on Udemy about anything as the platform doesn't have a curation process. However, many instructors are highly qualified experts, university professors, authors, and thought leaders. There are renowned teachers such as Seth Godin, Colt Steele, Jason Dion. In the next topic, we prepared a short profile about some of them.

Udemy’s Instructors

Here are some expert instructors that you can learn from on Udemy:

Colt Steele - he is a proven instructor, having taught multiple coding boot camps before creating this five-star-rated online course.

Chris Bryant - specialized in Cisco and CompTIA certifications, Bryant has helped thousands of network techs worldwide in earning their certifications.

Jennifer Syme - she is a writer who already works as a massage therapist and creativity coach. She has a focus on well-being, writing, and creativity in general.

Jason Dion - former college professor and the lead instructor about everything related to cybersecurity and blockchain.

Seth Godin - Know as ''the ultimate entrepreneur for the information age”, Godin is a best-selling author and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs about marketing in the world.

Rob Percival - he is an expert at top programming languages, considered one of the most excellent experts in web development.

Rob Parnell - he is a creative involved in books, film, and music. His specialization in teaching how to write short stories that sell.

If you want to research more profiles, here is a complete list of instructors.

Becoming an instructor on Udemy: pros and cons

For those interested in being a Udemy instructor, we have listed the pros and cons:

Pros:

No pricing control - however, Udemy recommends, course creators to set the market price for the courses they offer from $10 to $30 per hour of content;
Up to 100% earnings - Instructors can receive revenues from 2 sources: sales to new Udemy customers made by the instructor, in which they earn 100% of the tuition fee. And sales to the existing Udemy customer base, in which they earn 50% of the tuition fee;
Global reach - To be listed in Udemy, it means offering your courses on an education platform that has over 50 million learners.

Cons:

No subscription plan: Udemy does not allow you to offer your students monthly subscriptions;
Personal Marketing Efforts: course creators must be prepared to undertake marketing and promotional roles for their courses.

Review of Udemy: Pricing Model

Prior to setting the current pricing policy, in 2016, Udemy set a maximum price of $50 for their courses. At the time, this was a decision that frustrated thousands of instructors selling their online courses at Udemy (who could charge up to $300 previously).

Although Udemy has made further changes to their pricing model since then, the prices currently used officially range from $19.99 to $199.99. Here are the prices charged in other countries.

Udemy instructors may also offer free courses as long as they are not paid for on any other platform (e.g. YouTube, their own site, other sites).

But the curious thing is that even with this price range, courses are sold at aggressive discounts and often cost less than $50.

Many instructors who used to charge more for their courses are not very happy with these aggressive discounts. But such discounts cater well to customers who can spend less to gain knowledge.

Udemy Refund Policy

Courses purchased on the Udemy website or the Android app can be refunded within 30 days (iOS payments are processed through Apple and not Udemy, so they are unable to offer cash refunds, instead they offer credit refunds for eligible purchases).

If you purchase a course on Udemy, and if you request your money back within 30 days of purchase, Udemy will fully refund your money.

How to Request a Refund on Udemy

You can quickly request a refund by contacting their support team.

You can also make a refund request by clicking on the ‘three dots’ at the top right-hand corner of the course player, and then by selecting Request a refund.

When you submit a refund request, be sure to include the course URL.

See the step by step below:

Access the course area (course player)
Copy the course URL
Click Options (three dots) at the right-hand side of the page
Select Request refund
Send a ticket through the Contact Support form with the course URL

Keep in mind that if you download course content and request a refund, with rare exceptions, your request will be denied.

Interested in learning more about other platforms? Check out these reviews:

FAQ Udemy

Is Udemy any good?

Yes, you can find many excellent course options. To choose from their wide range of alternatives, consult available student reviews or use a course comparison site to make the right decision.

Is Udemy accredited?

No. Although Udemy offers certificates of completion, its online training programs are not accredited. Udemy certificates can be used as proof of your achievement, but they cannot be used for formal accreditation.

Why is Udemy so cheap?

Udemy follows a customized price list for each country. What is common to these countries is that Udemy constantly offers aggressive discounts, making prices even more affordable. So if you want to take a course on Udemy, add it to your wish list and wait for the right moment to make the purchase.

Should I put Udemy courses on my résumé in 2020?

Employers want to hire people who can help take their business to the next level. If the course you took is relevant to the position you are applying for, it is worth adding it to your résumé. A training section on your résumé can be a suitable place for the mention.

How do I get a refund from Udemy?

Udemy offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can quickly request a refund by contacting their support team or by following their simple self-service method of refund. Udemy’s money-back process is painless and usually very fast.

Are payments on Udemy secure?

Yes, the payment process is secure and Udemy is a solid company. They accept international credit cards, debit cards, and PayPal.

Does Udemy have a monthly fee?

No. On Udemy, you pay a one-time fee for any course and have lifetime access to it.

Where can you search for other platforms?

If you want to find courses from the top US Universities, you can access this list of free courses. Or, if you want to find alternatives to Udemy, you can use Classpert online course search engine.

Let us know your thoughts about this review of Udemy. If you have already taken one (or more) of their courses, feel free to share your experience in the comments below.

Felipe Bernardes

I am an economist responsible for Marketing and SEO strategies at Classpert. I usually write about entrepreneurship, e-learning platforms, marketing, SEO, stock trading, and related subjects.