Udemy

I cannot speak for other fields but for Information Technology fields, the only services that had items like Udemy went for $79/month a minimum and that was if you were individual, new users, and on sale. You also had very few options so not much competition and many big tech companies before recently, liked to keep their training controlled. Udemy greatly leveled that playing field to point of no going back. YouTube had been option before but it was not monetized enough for long courses and if you got into anything that covered security, that could be considered under hacking category, and they would completely demonetize your video. Udemy has leveled things out and now some others have had to bring their price points down to decent level to compete and also bring up the quality of their content. It may not be best fit for everyone since it is self paced. I know some people that saw a bunch of courses their first time on sale, bought 10 for $200, and then never touched them. If you can be realistic with yourself though, and know you need to dedicate 30-40 hours to self-paced training for certain topic, Udemy is awesome value. If you are new a field and have no background in it, are someone that requires a more structured environment, or access to the teacher, Udemy is not for you.

Overall, a great value, if the format fits you.

No longer cares about their instructors. Neither responds to e-mails nor promote our courses like they used to.

[Edited by dmitch, April 18]

I've tried Udemy before and while it's definitely not a bad option..IF you can make it work for you..It's not ideal for MOST PEOPLE.

The downsides are:

• at any time can change their revenue share policies, you need to share your revenue
• You don’t own student data (emails)
• You must follow pricing guidelines set by marketplace
• No unique branding – all the courses look the same, it’s marketplace’s brand not yours, your competitors will be listed besides you
• less profit comparing if you used hosted course platform or your own WordPress solution You can read more on online course platform pros and cons here.

That's why I narrowed the choice down to Thinkific or Teachable..here are some benefits to use your own controlled environment:

• the ease of use, you can easily learn and build course platform yourself without hiring any designer or programmer
• you don’t need to worry about hosting of course videos and files
• you get page builder + membership site + shopping cart + learning/teaching tools = lots of solutions in one place
• speed – you can set it all up very quickly

Read more on comparing Thinkific and Teachable here..