Goodbye Low-Quality Udemy Courses. Hello, Subscription Courses!
Don’t stick to a bad course you purchased anymore, but jump around between courses to find the best course for you (or supplement your learning).
There are thousands of online courses on the internet about almost any topic you can imagine. The problem is that it’s hard to choose the course that has the best instructors, materials, and content.
You can’t judge a course by its cover. You can’t predict how good or bad a course is based on a few free lectures available. You can’t completely rely on a course review because we all have different tastes and needs.
The best way to find out whether a course is good for you is to try it yourself! However, you can’t just purchase every single course out there.
I thought I had to stick with the courses I purchased no matter how bad they were … until I discovered the Udemy Personal Plan. That’s a plan subscription that gives access to thousands of highly rated courses in IT, web development, soft skills, business, marketing, and design.
Let’s see who this plan is perfect for and how to join it.
Note: This review is based on my own experience, so feel free to join any subscription plan or none of them. The Udemy Personal Plan isn't available to all students. I can’t say whether the plan is available for you or if it’s gonna be available forever. Also, there are some good-quality courses that aren’t on the plan, so check out the catalog.
Who can make the most out of subscription courses?
Udemy’s Personal Plan costs around $30/month (Udemy says it changes depending on the location of your account though).
Here’s an overview of subscription plans among MOOCs.
The Udemy Personal Plan seems a good deal not only because of the price but the wide variety of topics you can find in it. Datacamp and Masterclass have their own niches and that explains the few courses they offer in their catalog.
In the past, I’ve said that most plan subscriptions aren’t worth it. That’s not only related to the price, but also to the fact that each online academy has its own subscription, so you end up paying more for little content.
The good thing about the Personal Plan is that it includes courses from the most popular online academies out there, so you don’t have to subscribe to each of them, but only pay one subscription to access their best content.
I think the plan is perfect if you’re in one of the following situations.
You have plenty of free time to study one or multiple subjects
If we consider the typical discount on Udemy, a course costs $12 on average. This means the $30 subscription would be worth it if you can at least take 2 and a half courses, so you should have plenty of time to study.
Now you might be thinking, “If I’m only learning one subject, I’d rather purchase a single course” That’s not a bad idea, but unless you’re completely sure that course will be a good fit for you, it’d be better to explore multiple courses on the same subject.
A Udemy subscription allows you to explore the best-seller courses on its catalog without having to buy them all. For example, if you’re learning data science, you could explore the courses created by 365 Careers, Ligency Team and Jose Portilla and see which one fits you better or jump around and move through them in order to supplement and enrich your learning (we’ll see more about this in the next point).
On the other hand, obviously, if you’re interested in learning multiple subjects within IT, web development, soft skills, business, marketing, and design, the subscription would be more valuable.
You want the best of both worlds: Get the best stuff from different online academies
Why bother finding the best course out there when you can get the best of each course out there with a single subscription?
Nowadays many online academies offer their own subscription to get access to their catalog. But guess what? Most of their courses are also on Udemy, so instead of subscribing to some of them separately, you could simply join Udemy’s Personal Plan and get the most out of them.
Remember that there isn’t a perfect course, but all of them have their strong and weak points. You can enhance your learning if you grab the best thing from multiple courses.
You have experience in the subject you want to learn and know what you’re looking for
I think the plan is a good deal especially for those who already have experience in a subject and are looking for something in particular.
Say you want to learn a specific topic, tool, or solve one project that is available in one section of a course. You don’t want to watch all the lectures, but learn that specific thing and move on.
Here’s how a subscription with thousands of courses available can help you. You can take any course you want and jump to the parts you’re interested in. You can repeat the same process with as many courses as you want in the catalog.
This is something I’m doing lately. I have plenty of experience as a programmer and want to have access to specific things that I can’t get for free on YouTube, so the Udemy’s Personal Plan is a lifesaver.
How to Join The Personal Plan
To join the personal plan, you only have to search a topic on Udemy and select a course. Then you’ll see the option “Subscribe” below the “Buy now button.”
Last time I check they were offering a 7-day free trial, so you have a risk-free chance to see yourself whether this plan is worth it.
If you don’t see that option either the course you selected isn’t on the plan’s catalog or the plan isn’t available to you right now.
Most best-seller courses are on the plan’s catalog, so if you click on one and still can’t see the subscribe option, probably the plan isn’t available for you.
According to Udemy support, currently, Personal Plan is not available to all students at this time. That said, they’re working to make the subscription available to more students.
I have 2 Udemy accounts created in the same country. The account that I used to buy one or two courses in the past had the subscribe option available, while my other account where I never bought a single course doesn’t have the subscribe option.
Maybe the plan is only available for students who have made at least one purchase in the past. However, I can’t say this is true.
That’s it! Once you get the subscription, you won’t see the price of courses anymore, but the button “Save” next time you search for new courses on Udemy.
Now you can build your own catalog of courses and enrich your learning.
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