• Written By
    Felipe Bernardes
  • Last Updated
    October 31, 2019

Skillshare Review: Is it worth learning on Skillshare?

This post contains affiliate links

Choosing a career is usually one of the most important decisions in an individual's life.

Until recently, learning a profession required spending a lot of money in college which made access to this kind of degree very undemocratic.

In addition, many of us ends up deciding to change careers even after many years of study and dedication to a particular profession. But few have the opportunity to return to college in order to make their dream come true whether it’s for lack of time or money...

With the evolution of technology, this process has become a little less complex thanks to the amount of knowledge that can be accessed over the internet and the popularization of online learning platforms.

The benefits of e-learning are diverse, ranging from reduced costs, unlimited geographical reach, and flexible learning schedules. What all these advantages have in common is their impact on the democratization of the education process.

Many online course platforms have emerged in the last decade and picking one has become an overwhelming process…

Our Skillshare Review is here to help!

In this article, we will make a thorough review of Skillshare. We'll cover all the important points to help you decide whether it is worth it or not studying on Skillshare.

Stay tuned!

Skillshare Review: What is Skillshare?

Skillshare is an American company focused on online learning for people who want to develop new skills. Skillshare courses are available by subscription - we will walk you through their pricing model as well as the free-trial period a bit ahead - and they offer self-paced video classes.

The company was founded in 2010 in New York City. Initially, Skillshare offered less than 20 class options. But currently, they offer more than 26,000 (being 2,000 free) courses available through their platform.

Anyone can be a course instructor on Skillshare. They have an easy-to-use platform and also give great tips and best practices for those who want to create successful classes.

To set the bar high, they count with notable instructors including Seth Godin (entrepreneurship), Jessica Hische (lettering), Young Guru (audio mixing and recording), Marc Ecko (entrepreneurship and brand creation), Gary Vaynerchuk (social media strategy), Guy Kawasaki (entrepreneurship), Barbara Corcoran (entrepreneurship), among others.

Recently, they launched a new distinction for classes called “Staff Picks” where courses are selected and curated by their team and receive a special badge on their thumbnail.

Also, the platform started producing in-house content in a feature called “Skillshare Originals”. These classes will also receive a particular badge to differentiate from courses that are not produced by them.

See this quick video below for more info on Skillshare:

Skillshare Review: Pricing Model

One of the most important aspects when deciding which platform to choose is their pricing model. Let’s dive into it!

Skillshare offers a free course catalog, with thousands of free classes for your career, passions and everything in between. With a Free Membership, you can watch any of Skillshare’s free classes and create projects and discussions in them.

To explore their whole catalog with unlimited access, it is required to subscribe to Skillshare Premium. The good news is that they offer a 2-month free trial.

After the end of the free trial period, for affordable prices you can opt in to their monthly subscription for $15/month or their annual subscription for $99 billed annually (equivalent to $8.25/month).

As we write this Skillshare review, they are only accepting credit cards to purchase the Premium Membership, and payments are non-refundable. They currently do not accept payments via PayPal and prepaid cards.

Skillshare also offers a plan for teams. This Enterprise plan includes: personalized discovery algorithms, access to an admin panel to manage users, usage & engagement reporting, and off-line access to courses. The cost of this plan is $99 per user per year for teams of 2-19 users.

For teams of 20+ users, price is under request.

The 'Refer a Friend' Promo

There is a way to postpone paying for your Skillshare Premium subscription, you just need to invite your friends to try Skillshare (invitations can be sent via email, Facebook, or Twitter). Your friends will earn 2 free months of Skillshare Premium and for every friend who becomes a full paying Premium member through your invitation, you'll get an extra free month.

It’s a fair deal, isn’t it?

Skillshare Review: What can I learn on Skillshare?

According to Skillshare’s website, they offer more than 26,000 courses, grouped in 16 main categories.

Courses are taught by teachers from all over the world. Skillshare’s tutors are everyday creators, entrepreneurs, and professionals who are experienced and passionate about what they do.

Each course is made of a group of short lessons (usually these lessons can take from two minutes up to 15 minutes), making it easier for students to digest the content.

Also, on Skillshare you can find very specific courses, so you can learn very precise skills quickly, easily and in small doses.

You’ll be able to explore a multitude of precise subjects. In a way that you can pick up several small themes that complement each other and help you build a complete set of skills.

Once you subscribe to Skillshare, you’ll have access to all their catalog of online courses. Since all classes are self-paced, you can watch them as your schedule allows.

Below are the categories and some of the courses you’ll be able to find on Skillshare:

Photography Courses on Skillshare

Teach yourself new techniques, new styles, and new ways of making money with your photos. You’ll find classes taught by Justin Bridges, Dale McManus, Jon Olsson, and Brandon Woelfel.

Check out some top-rated, and easy-to-follow online photography courses:

Graphic Design Courses on Skillshare

These courses cover subjects like Adobe Illustrator, Vector Graphics, Adobe Photoshop, Typography, among others. You’ll find talented instructors like Aaron Draplin, Jennet Liaw, Alex Center, Daniel Scott, and Ellen Lupton.

Check out these featured Graphic Design courses:

Web Development Courses on Skillshare

Skillshare offers all sorts of classes about the most popular programming languages and they are taught by authors like Rachel Andrew, Christian Hellman, Rich Armstrong and Kalob taulien.

Take a look at some of the featured web development courses:

Animation Courses on Skillshare

You’ll be able to find online animation classes taught by well-known animators such as Sarah Beth Morgan, Libby VanderPloeg, Emanuele Colombo, and Jake Bartlett.

Some of the featured Animation courses are:

Creative Writing Courses on Skillshare

You’ll learn basic to advanced writing skills with talented writers such as Daniel José Older, Ashley C. Ford, Jesse Forrest, and Matt Bellassai.

Some of the featured Creative Writing courses are:

Music Classes on Skillshare

Expand your ability in musical instruments (such as guitar, bass and drums), music composition, music production, and more. Some of the tutors are Young Guru, Simon Glenister, and Jason Allen (Ableton Certified Trainer).

Here are a few featured Music classes:

Leadership & Management Courses on Skillshare

Classes in this category will focus mainly on leadership, management, strategy, business, communication, personal branding, sales and more.

Learn from experienced teachers like Simon Sinek, Keith Yamashita, John Maeda, Scott Dobroski (from Glassdoor), and Brett Harned (from Teamgantt).

Here are the featured Leadership & Management courses:

Marketing Classes on Skillshare

You will find classes that will help you develop one of the most important aspects of one’s business. Skillshare has a wide range of courses on Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Branding, SEO, Social Media and more.

Learn from marketers like Seth Godin (from Moz), Cat Coquillette, ReneeTeeley (from Poetoon), Brian Peters (from Buffer), Parker Gard (from Etsy), Rand Fishkin, Keith Yamashita, among others.

See the list of their featured marketing classes:

Business Analytics Courses on Skillshare

These courses were crafted for business owners, startup founders and entrepreneurship enthusiasts. Find courses about Excel, data visualization, data analysis, data science, and business intelligence taught by experienced tutors like Catherine Madden, Alan Jarvis, Daniel Scott and Al Chen.

These are some of the featured Business Analytics courses:

Illustration Courses on Skillshare

Illustration Classes are focused on people who want to develop skills like creativity, drawing, painting, sketching and tools like Adobe Illustrator. Some of the instructors are Laci Jordan, Lisk Feng, Brooke Glaser, Jarom Vogel (from Procreate), Gabriel Picolo, and Tom Froese.

See the featured Illustration courses:

Freelance & Entrepreneurship Classes on Skillshare

Discover classes on freelancing, entrepreneurship, branding, business, e-commerce and more. You will find experienced tutors such as Tracy Wallace, Martina Flor, Josiah (Jazza) Brooks, Justin Gignac, Guy Kawasaki, and Jeff Staple.

See the most popular Freelance & Entrepreneurship classes:

Film & Video Courses on Skillshare

In this section, you’ll discover classes on Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Cinematography, and more. Taught by instructors like Zak Mulligan, Ryan Booth, Julian Klepper, and Dandan Liu.

Some of the featured Film & Video courses are:

UI/UX Design Courses on Skillshare

Learn UI/UX Design, Creative, HTML, and more. Explore classes taught by Janelle Estes (from UserTesting), Marieke McCloskey (from UserTesting), Daniel Scott, Joe Natoli, and Gil Huybrecht.

Here are some featured UI/UX Design courses:

Fine Art Classes on Skillshare

These classes are aimed to boost creativity and improve art skills. They are taught by top artists from around the world such as Samantha Dion Baker, Cat Coquillette, and Sara Boccaccini Meadows.

These are some of the featured classes on Fine Art:

Lifestyle Classes on Skillshare

Courses in this category cover topics such as cooking, languages, culinary, health & fitness, gaming, and crafts. They are taught by tutors such as Elana Karp (from Plated), Mike Boyd, Lauren Cox (from Havenly), and Michael Phillips (from Blue Bottle Coffee).

Here is a list of some featured Lifestyle classes:

Productivity Courses on Skillshare

These classes will teach you about project management, productivity, time management, personal development, performance, business skills and more. Courses are taught by Kevin Siskar (from Todoist), Michael Karnjaprokorn, Lindsay C. Holmes (from Evernote), Mark Vardy (from Todoist), Thomas Frank, among others.

Here are some of the featured Productivity courses:

If you’re interested in exploring more subjects on Skillshare (or in any other e-learning platform) use this free online course search engine.

Skillshare Review: Does Skillshare provide certificates?

Long story short, Skillshare doesn't offer certificates of completion.

But, Skillshare provides the tools you need to help with your personal and professional development goals.

According to Business News Daily, “willingness to learn new skills is one of the most important qualities employers look for when hiring new employees.”

Therefore, enrolling in online courses such as the ones offered by Skillshare is a great way to demonstrate that you are eager and willing to learn new skills.

Even if you are an entrepreneur and run your own company, continuous learning is crucial to give you (and your business) an edge in an ever-changing market.

Skillshare Review: Is Skillshare good?

Skillshare is a useful learning platform for individuals who have specific goals for learning new skills.

The platform is also an online learning community, and the goal of their community is knowledge expansion. They get there by guiding users to flex their creative and analytical muscles, engage in genuine interactions with the community and have a safe space to share their work.

Skillshare aims to be a sound destination for learners and doers. For this reason, they take good care of the quality of their courses. Even though anyone can publish a class on Skillshare, classes published to the platform are thoroughly moderated for length, teachability, subject matter, minimum education quality, and applicability.

The platform allows students to collaborate and share ideas and perspectives with each other, thus creating an engaging learning community.

Skillshare enables students to learn new skills with the help of networking and support. They can post reviews of their classes, as well as receive suggestions and advice from other students and instructors.

The platform offers an affordable subscription cost (and a generous free trial period) for what’s on offer when compared to peers.

The amount of knowledge you can learn from near 26,000 different courses is impressive.

On Skillshare you can find courses from well-known companies and experienced professionals from multiple industries.

Skillshare Review (Extra): Becoming a Skillshare Instructor

After making this Skillshare review focused on students, we'll write a brief guide for those who intend to become a teacher.

The platform is open for anyone who wants to teach a class. As long as your class respects Skillshare's Class Guidelines, it can be published. Publish a class is free, and have no hidden costs.

You'll earn money through monthly royalties based on the amount of minutes watched in your classes plus a referral bonus for every student you refer to Skillshare Premium Membership.

According to Skillshare, top teachers on their platform are making over $100,000 a year.

You don’t need to be an experienced marketer to promote your class. They provide lots of tips to help you maximize your course exposure and sales. In addition, they count with a large affiliate network that also contributes to the promotion and sales of courses.

Skillshare also gives you a guideline to build your own course.

If you feel like you have the required experience in topics like Illustration, Design, Marketing, Photography, Web Design, Entrepreneurship, Web Development (and others), and want to share it through online courses, Skillshare’s market place might be a good instrument to transform your knowledge into extra income.

Will you give it a try?

Let us know your thoughts about this Skillshare review. If you have already taken one (or more) of their classes, feel free to share your experience with us.

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

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.