Pluralsight Review: is Pluralsight Worth It?

Wondering if Pluralsight is the top spot for learning programming and software development in 2024? Let’s dive into this review to find out.

Considering boosting your learning this year and joining an online platform like Pluralsight? It could be a great idea to enhance your skills. Curious if Pluralsight is worth your time?

This Pluralsight Review will explore what Pluralsight offers, its advantages and disadvantages, the range of topics covered, pricing details, key features, content quality, usage tips, and feedback from past students.

What Is Pluralsight?

On the Pluralsight learning platform, you’ll discover a vast array of resources, including thousands of video courses, guides, interactive courses with coding challenges (exclusively for Premium users), curated learning paths, hands-on projects (Premium only), assessments, webinars, and more.

Pluralsight’s content spans a wide range of tech topics, encompassing software development, data, cybersecurity, and beyond. These courses are developed by over 1,500 industry experts and partners such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and Oracle.

Before enrolling in a course, you can assess your readiness with a 20-question test, indicating whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced in a particular skill. This feature helps you determine if a Pluralsight course aligns with your current skill level.

With a Premium membership, Pluralsight assists you in preparing for industry certifications, including CompTIA, ITIL®, PMP®, and more.

This includes curated certification paths, Kaplan certification practice exams, and certificates of completion that may be used as continuing education credits. This aspect is particularly noteworthy when evaluating the value of Pluralsight.

In 2018, the company became publicly traded on NASDAQ (stock ticker PS).

Opting to acquire tech skills through Pluralsight puts you in an esteemed company, as 70% of Fortune 500 companies utilize Pluralsight to train their teams, including prominent names like The Home Depot, HelloFresh, VMware, and others.

Pros & Cons of Pluralsight

Pros

• 6,000+ Courses: Explore a vast library with over 6,000 courses, with an average of 80+ new courses added monthly.
• Mobile and Desktop Apps: Access learning materials anytime, anywhere with mobile and desktop apps that support offline viewing.
• Short, Self-Paced Quizzes: Test your knowledge retention with brief, self-paced quizzes integrated into the learning experience.
• Unique Premium Features: Premium users and above enjoy exclusive benefits like preparation materials for professional certifications and in-browser coding challenges with guided feedback.
• Expert Instructors: Learn from industry experts who bring their wealth of knowledge and experience to the courses.
• Organized Learning Experience: Utilize various methods to organize your learning journey for maximum efficiency.
• Community Support: Engage with a supportive community as you navigate through your learning goals.

Cons

• No Lifetime Access: Access to Pluralsight is contingent on maintaining an active subscription; discontinuing payment results in loss of access.
• Subscription Model Only: Due to its subscription pricing model, purchasing individual courses isn’t an option.
• No Refunds: Pluralsight does not offer refunds for subscription fees.
• Targeted Audience: While Pluralsight does offer some beginner courses, its primary focus is on intermediate and advanced users. This can be viewed as either a positive or a negative, depending on your skill level and learning goals.

Topics Covered on Pluralsight

Pluralsight covers a wide range of tech subjects. Some of the topics include:

• Software development
• IT operations
• Data analysis and science
• Information and cybersecurity
• Software architecture
• Machine learning and AI, cloud computing
• Manufacturing
• Creative topics like 3D animation, game development, and visual effects (VFX)
• Business skills such as podcasting, management, and communication

Explore their course library to discover the various skills and programming languages available for learning on Pluralsight.

Pluralsight Pricing Plans

Please keep in mind that the pricing mentioned below is subject to change in the future.

Pluralsight operates on a subscription basis. For personal plans, you have the option of monthly or annual billing:

• Monthly: $29 per month
• Annually: $299.00 per year, billed annually (equivalent to $24.91 per month)
• Premium: $449.00 per year, billed annually (equivalent to $37.41 per month)

Additionally, there are Professional and Enterprise plans available for businesses that sponsor their teams’ course access.

Consider discussing with your employer the possibility of obtaining a team subscription or having them cover your subscription to enhance your tech skills.

(Pro tip: Highlight the benefits for the company to help make your case!)

Key Features of Pluralsight

Check out the essential features offered by Pluralsight, an online learning platform renowned for its diverse course selection and expert instruction

• Access Anywhere: Courses are available on any desktop and mobile device, even in offline mode.
• Engage with Community: Course discussions allow interaction with other students, asking and answering questions, and finding a community.
• Exam Prep: Practice exams help you prepare for professional certifications (Premium, Professional, Enterprise).
• Hands-On Learning: Hands-on coding challenges, projects, and guided feedback are available for Premium, Professional, and Enterprise users only.
• Certification Achievement: Certificates of completion can be generated if you achieve 100% completion for a video course. These certificates can be submitted as CEUs (continuing education units) or CPE (continuing professional education) credits to CompTIA, PMI, ISACA, and (ISC)2.
• Skill Validation: Short quizzes and tests help you practice, determine readiness for certain courses, and validate your skills.
• VS Code Extension: Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension provides code-specific content recommendations (video clips, paths, courses, and guides) to assist with coding problems.
• Qwiklabs Access: Free access to Qwiklabs (when you take Google Cloud-authored courses) provides temporary credentials to Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services for real cloud learning experiences.
• Role IQ: This feature helps you assess your proficiency in a selected role, recommends learning opportunities to fill any skills gaps, and identifies strengths and weaknesses.
• Free Trial: Enjoy a free 10-day personal trial to explore the platform and determine its suitability for your needs.

Pluralsight’s User-Friendly Interface

The platform’s interface is designed to be user-friendly, offering easy navigation features. From the home page, you can explore courses by hovering over the Courses tab in the menu.

Here, you can browse by topic such as software development, IT ops, and data professional, and access Pluralsight learning paths, courses, and assessments.

Using the search bar, you can find courses matching your interests by entering specific keywords. You can also filter your search by courses, blogs, resources, authors, skill level, and roles. However, courses cannot be filtered or sorted based on ratings.

Clicking on a course reveals basic course information, a description, author details, and course content.

Watching course videos resembles the interface of YouTube, with the video displayed on the left and a playlist of lessons on the right.

Pluralsight provides channels to help you organize your learning journey, allowing you to create custom playlists of videos and courses.

The Skills profile enables you to track your progress, connect social media profiles, and set an avatar.

In summary, although the array of options may seem overwhelming initially, the platform’s clean, professional, and intuitive design makes navigation easy. It offers numerous ways to personalize and organize your learning experience.

Quality of Content on Pluralsight

Pluralsight maintains rigorous standards for content quality, approving only three out of every 1,000 content proposals they receive. This ensures that only top-notch material is published on their platform.

Their courses are produced in-house, guaranteeing high-quality videos with clear audio. All instructors are subject-matter experts, ensuring that you receive excellent learning material from knowledgeable individuals.

Recommended Pluralsight Courses

1. JavaScript Core Language: Delve into JavaScript fundamentals, covering arrays, collections, and functions. Explore advanced concepts like promises and asynchronous programming. Ideal for beginners with a prerequisite understanding of HTML/CSS.
2. Git Fundamentals: Learn to establish a local repository, execute file commits, push updates to remote repositories, and troubleshoot commit errors. A valuable skill for aspiring software developers seeking real-world proficiency.
3. Understanding Machine Learning: Designed for beginners, this course introduces the R programming language and guides you through the process of training and evaluating machine learning models. An excellent primer for individuals interested in pursuing a lucrative career in machine learning (with an average salary exceeding $143,000 for machine learning engineers!).

Who Should Consider Using Pluralsight

Pluralsight comes highly recommended for individuals keen on acquiring tech skills, regardless of their proficiency level. The platform offers abundant content tailored for beginners, intermediate learners, and those with advanced expertise.

However, it’s worth mentioning that some subscribers note the content leans toward professionals with prior tech experience.

Opting for a Premium membership proves advantageous for those aiming to attain professional certifications such as CompTIA, ITIL®, or PMP®. Premium membership provides access to guided preparation materials and practice exams, facilitating certification readiness.

Moreover, if you already possess certifications from CompTIA, PMI, or ISACA, Pluralsight serves as an authorized continuing education provider. This enables you to enroll in courses and earn continuing education credits to maintain your certification status.

Pluralsight Alternatives

Udemy: Offers a wider range of courses beyond just tech topics, yet the learning experience may vary, and content quality isn’t consistently high. Unlike Pluralsight, Udemy operates on a per-course purchase model.

Team Treehouse: Similar to Pluralsight, Team Treehouse delivers all courses created by experts in-house, ensuring top-notch content quality. While priced similarly, it offers fewer course options compared to Pluralsight.

LinkedIn Learning: Comparable to Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning features high-quality courses taught by industry experts. With a catalog of 16,000 courses, it surpasses Pluralsight’s offerings. Pricing is approximately the same as Pluralsight.

Coursera: Courses on Coursera are crafted by professors from prestigious universities like Yale and Stanford, along with partners like Google and IBM. It’s slightly pricier than Pluralsight, ranging from $39 to $49 per month.

Final Thoughts on Pluralsight Review

Pluralsight stands out for its immersive learning environment. It offers quizzes, skill assessment tests, personalized learning options, coding projects, curated learning paths, webinars, and various other resources.

While there are platforms better suited for beginners in tech, Pluralsight excels for learners ready to tackle intermediate content. It serves as an excellent choice for advancing your skills to the next level.

Frequently Asked Questions