As online learning continues to grow in popularity, one platform stands out as a leader – Pluralsight. Offering thousands of high-quality, on-demand courses in programming, data, security, cloud and more, Pluralsight aims to help both individuals and businesses skill up.
But with subscription fees starting at $29/month for individuals, is Pluralsight really worth the investment? In this in-depth review, I analyze Pluralsight‘s offerings for individuals and businesses, crunch the numbers on pricing, and investigate real customer experiences to determine if a subscription is worthwhile.
What Exactly Does Pluralsight Offer?
Pluralsight has two main subscription offerings:
Skills for Individuals and Teams
The Skills subscriptions provide unlimited access to Pluralsight‘s extensive course library. With over 7,000 courses across a variety of tech topics, it‘s a treasure trove for continuous learning.
As an individual subscriber, you can access curated learning paths to master programming languages like Python and JavaScript, prep for certifications like CompTIA and AWS, and stay up-to-date on trends like machine learning and cybersecurity.
For teams, Skills offers additional features like interactive courses, analytics dashboards, projects, and sandboxes to accelerate skill development. There are also custom enterprise options for large organizations.
Flow for Software Development Teams
For engineering and IT teams, Pluralsight Flow provides data and visibility into the software development process. Using metrics on pull requests, code reviews and commits, Flow creates reports to optimize workflows, improve team collaboration, and ship better code faster.
Pluralsight Pricing and Plans
Pluralsight offers quite flexible pricing options. Here‘s a breakdown:
For Individuals
- Standard plan: $299/year ($29/month)
- Premium plan: $449/year ($45/month)
The Premium plan unlocks access to projects, assessments, cert prep and other advanced features.
For Teams
- Starter Team plan: $399 per user/year
- Professional Team Plan: $579 per user/year
- Enterprise Team plan: Custom pricing
The Starter plan includes core courses while higher tiers add sandboxes, analytics and other extras.
For Engineering Teams
- Flow Standard: Starts at $468 per year
- Flow Plus: Starts at $1,788 per year
- Flow Enterprise: Custom pricing
Higher Flow tiers enable advanced data integrations and custom reporting.
Compared to competitors like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning and Coursera, Pluralsight is fairly priced, especially if you take advantage of their ubiquitous 40% off promos.
Pluralsight Review: The Good and Bad
Based on examining customer feedback and hands-on experience using the platform, here is an unbiased assessment of Pluralsight‘s pros and cons:
The Good
- Expert-led courses covering latest tech skills
- Great quality content with hands-on projects
- Paths make it easy to progress from beginner to advanced
- Robust analytics/reporting for engineering teams (Flow)
- SSO and LMS integrations for enterprise
- Regular discounts and promo codes
The Not-so-Good
- Search isn‘t the best, course discovery can be tricky
- Some courses better than others in terms of quality
- Analytics/metrics focus heavily on code vs other metrics
- A few features like badges and notifications need polish
However, Pluralsight invests heavily into content and platform improvements. Overall, the pros outweigh the cons for most subscribers.
Who is Pluralsight Best For?
Based on the platform‘s focus areas, Pluralsight works best for:
- Developers looking to expand technical skills and master new languages/frameworks
- IT pros needing to upskill on cloud, infrastructure, security and more
- Creative pros interested in design, animation and creative coding skills
- Data professionals wanting to learn the latest in analytics and visualization tools
- Engineering and product teams invested in improving workflows, collaboration and shipping velocity
- Technology leaders focused on scaling skills across large organizations
For other fields like marketing, business or health, platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy have better content depth. But for tech skills, Pluralsight is unmatched.
Tips to Get the Most from Pluralsight
Here are some tips to maximize the value from your Pluralsight subscription:
- Take assessments to find knowledge gaps and create a learning plan
- Combine video courses with hands-on projects for better retention
- Use paths to make structured progression from fundamentals to advanced topics
- Download courses for offline viewing
- Accelerate learning with 2x video speed for lengthy courses
- Utilize the Pluralsight community to connect with other learners
- For Flow subscribers, focus reporting on key bottlenecks first
The Verdict: Is Pluralsight Worth It?
For intermediate to advanced tech practitioners looking to systematically build expertise, Pluralsight‘s platform quality, content depth and overall user experience make it a worthwhile investment.
While the baseline $29/month individual plan is fairly priced, to realize full value you need a premium subscription paired with serious commitment to Consume and apply learnings. Casual dabblers may be better off with lower cost alternatives.
For engineering teams, Flow offers data and visibility sorely lacking in most organizations. The productivity benefits and workflow optimization easily justify the price tag for suitable dev teams.
In summary – Pluralsight is a premium offering catering to tech professionals invested in reaching higher levels of impact through skills development. For that audience, it delivers significant lasting value.
