Pluralsight Review: Is It the Best Technology-Focused Learning Platform?

Many students today are pursuing their studies in the STEM strand, while others want to pursue a career in technology. This is because knowledge in technical concepts and anything that involves technology can help us get a better and high-paying job. We can find many ways to help us enhance our knowledge and skills in technology. We can rely on YouTube for tutorials. There are also many different apps and learning platforms available. One of the dependable platforms that you can take into consideration is Pluralsight. It offers learning paths and courses that are all effective in teaching beginners and the experienced.

Keep on reading this Pluralsight review, and you will know more about the platform and its features. If you want to know if it is the right platform for you, you can check out the pros and cons of using it.

What Is Pluralsight?

Founded by Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams in 2004, this Utah, USA-based company’s primary purpose was to offer one-on-one training to companies. However, it eventually turned into a training and learning platform that provides a wide range of online courses to people worldwide. In addition to this, Pluralsight offers an opportunity to everyone who wants to create progress and develop skills in technology. With that, people will be able to gain additional knowledge that they never learned in school. Moreover, it can turn a non-tech savvy into a person who can keep up with the latest and emerging technology.

Pluralsight offers a wide range of courses, assessments, learning paths, and systems developed by the leading training specialists and industry experts. Therefore, you can be sure that the learnings are accurate and relevant. You can also choose the courses or paths that will meet all your preferences.

Pluralsight Subscription Plans

Pluralsight offers a 10-day free trial to help you decide if you will continue with your chosen plan or not. If you are satisfied with its offerings and believe that they are relevant to you, you can choose from its two subscription plans; the individual and the business subscription.

Individual Subscription

This subscription is best suited to individuals who want to nurture their knowledge. It offers three pricing options. These are the monthly, annual, and premium plans:

Monthly Plan

This will cost you $29. This is the ideal plan if your budget is limited and planning to take one to two subjects only for a short time.

Annual Plan

This will cost you $299. If you choose this plan, you will get 14% off the original price. This is the ideal plan if you are a job seeker and want to improve your knowledge and skills to impress the headhunters quickly. However, if you already have a job and want to learn everything to contribute to the company, this plan is also helpful.

Premium Plan

This will cost you $449, billed annually. Just like the annual plan, it is also the ideal plan for jobseekers with added features. With this plan, you can also have hands-on experiences and be able to connect with the experts if you have questions.

Team Subscription

This subscription is best suited to teams, businesses, and even large companies to provide learnings and enhance the employees’ skills and capabilities. This subscription offers two pricing plans. These are the professional and enterprise plans.

Professional Plan

This costs $579 per employee per year. It is the ideal plan for start-up small businesses or enterprises. Aside from the features that you will enjoy from the premium plan, these are the added features when you subscribe to this plan.

• Trend and usage analytics
• Basic skills and roles analytics
• Basic channels analytics

Enterprise Plan

This costs $779 per employee per year. It is the ideal plan for big companies and enterprises. Aside from the features that you will enjoy from premium plans and professional plans, these are the added features when you subscribe to this plan.

• Advanced skills and roles analytics
• Advanced channels analytics
• Single sign-on
• API access
• Data export

Besides the features that you can enjoy from the professional and enterprise plan, plan administrators can also group learners into teams, create team managers, and manage billing and subscriptions.

Accepted Payment Method and Currencies

You can pay for your Pluralsight subscription by using your debit or credit card, such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. You can also pay through PayPal. The currencies accepted are US Dollars, Euro, British Pound, and Indian Rupees. However, only USD is accepted when you use your American Express card.

Pluralsight Features

Pluralsight offers a lot of unique features, and you can enjoy them depending on your chosen subscription. Let us have a rundown of some of these features.

Skill Assessments

Pluralsight’s skill assessments help you analyze your skills and knowledge on a topic. This helps you know areas to improve on so you can become efficient and boost your performance and productivity. There are two kinds of skill assessment, and these are the Skill IQ and the Role IQ. Skill IQ offers a personalized skills analysis to measure your proficiency in your chosen skill. Moreover, it gives you an idea of where you have to start your learning journey.

On the other hand, Role IQ helps you assess yourself and measure your proficiency relevant to a particular role. In other words, this is an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. You can use it to focus on the skill that you want to improve for professional development.

Interactive Courses

These are only available to licensed individuals who are subscribed to Premium, Professional, and Business plans. This feature offers an interactive in-browser learning experience to learners. There are videos, coding challenges, and code editor you can access on your browser. Afterward, you can work on coding challenges and apply what you have learned. After submitting your answers, you will be evaluated based on your progress, accuracy, and skill level. You will be given guided feedback right away to help you improve your strategies. The number of interactive courses provides a lot of learning even for beginners.

Interactive courses are organized into different areas, such as software development, IT operations, data professional, information & cybersecurity, business professional, creative professional, cloud computing, machine learning/AI, architecture & construction, and manufacturing & design.

Curated Learning Paths

Pluralsight offers combined courses and tools into one experience. These are the ideal choice if you want to have it all. That being said, you can have an opportunity to gain new knowledge starting from basic beginner and learn skills accordingly for overall skill development. These learning paths will help you get focused on achieving your goals.

The learning paths are focused on five key areas: development, IT ops, creative technology skills, security, and certification. This feature also gives you access to conferences on demand.

Channels

This feature lets learners and creators organize their own playlists and videos and aligns them with their goals. They can combine courses, paths, and other essential contents, add them to their channels, and enjoy their personalized learning journey.

Exam Prep and Certificates of Completion

It is always important to have proof of something that you have accomplished. A certificate of completion is one of those essential proofs that you can have. Pluralsight will help you prepare for a certification exam. Its certification prep courses provide a more profound knowledge of your chosen courses and give you everything you need to get the certification you wish. The exam preparation courses will not guarantee that you will pass the exam. The only assurance is that you will learn a lot if you pay enough attention, and you will get the certificate you desire.

You can use your Certificate of Completion if you want to get credits for the courses that you took. Some education providers, including CompTIA, PMI, and ISACA, acknowledge Pluralsight certificates.

Popular Pluralsight Courses

Algorithms and Data Structures

Robert Horvick authored this course. It will only take about 2.5 hours of your time. With this course, you will learn about the building blocks of all applications today, the core data structures and algorithms. After that, you will know when to use and apply them to your next project.

JavaScript: Getting Started

Join Mark Zamoyta in this four-hour course and learn the basics for coding in JavaScript, the popular programming language used in web pages and web applications. After finishing the course, you will then be able to create and modify a working web page.

Practical Python for Beginners

Create Python applications and solve various problems with Sarah Holderness. You will learn the fundamentals of Python in this two-hour course. Apply your skills and knowledge and build Python command-line applications.

Big Data: The Big Picture

Do you want to learn more about Big Data concepts, core technologies, and the governing vendors in the Big Data arena? If your answer is yes, Andrew Brust will provide the knowledge that you will need. Join him in this two-hour course and learn strategic approaches to Big Data implementation.

React: Getting Started

If you are interested to know the basic concepts of building rich interactive UIs and want to build games and simple web applications, then this course is the right one for you. Join Samer Buna in this four-hour course so you can understand React projects and build efficient web and mobile interfaces.

Git Fundamentals

In this course, you just have to spend approximately two hours learning the power of Git. James Kovacs will help you gain knowledge about this popular distributed control system’s unique features.

Understanding Machine Learning

Have a clear understanding of machine learning with this 43-minute course. David Chappell will guide you as you explore R, an open-source programming language, and learn about training and testing as well as using a model.

Angular: Getting Started

Create great web pages and programs while being up to date on the latest app development technologies as you learn Angular, a six-hour course with Deborah Kurata. Familiarity with the basics of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS is needed before taking this course.

Popular Pluralsight Learning Paths

IT Support Fundamentals

Its nine courses will take only 20 hours to be completed. It is the ideal path for learners who want to gain knowledge in standard IT professional theories and skills. It covers installing, maintaining, customizing, and operating personal computers so that you won’t have any computer hardware and network troubleshooting problems.

AutoCAD: Core Skills

With its nine courses that will take only 19 hours, drafters and CAD operators will gain extensive AutoCAD knowledge. You can also learn to use various AutoCAD tools, including 2D Drafting, 2D Documentation, and 3D Modeling. Furthermore, you will understand working with parameters and geometric constraints as well as applying and creating materials.

DevOps on Oracle Cloud: The Big Picture

This ten-course path will take only 13 hours to be finished. You will get a better understanding of the abilities that you need if you want to work in a DevOps fashion. In addition, you will receive ideas of the tools and technologies that the Oracle Cloud Platform offers to support DevOps approaches.

Security Fundamentals

Knowing the threats, attacks, and vulnerabilities is as important as knowing how to create systems. This path consisting of six courses will only need 18 hours of your time. You will learn many things about system security. Among them are explaining the importance of secure staging deployment concepts and risk management processes and concepts and summarizing business impact analysis concepts.

Pluralsight Pros and Cons

How Does Pluralsight Stack Up Against Other Online Learning Platforms?

Pluralsight vs. Udemy

Pluralsight and Udemy are both popular online learning platforms. However, they have differences in their offerings. Pluralsight offers a wide range of courses on subjects that mainly focus on technology. Also, its offerings are for people who want to master a set of subjects. You will not go wrong if you are into tech-related skills.

On the other hand, Udemy offers different courses not limited to technology, and it provides lessons that have specific and easy-to-understand content. While you can create and publish a course on Udemy’s platform, Pluralsight is so strict with this matter as only experts on the field authors every subject and path. When it comes to pricing, Udemy is charging per course, while Pluralsight is subscription-based.

Pluralsight vs. Coursera

Pluralsight and Coursera are the same in terms of goals. Both these platforms are targeting people who are into technology. While Pluralsight offers certificates upon completion, albeit with no accreditation, Coursera does provide online bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. Pluralsight offers a wider variety of courses, but Coursera offers quality content and learning materials.

Pluralsight vs. Treehouse

Both these online learning platforms aim to provide tech-related skills and knowledge to everyone. However, Treehouse focuses more on programming, compared with Pluralsight which is into all aspects of technology. The courses they offer have a team of professional teachers. While Pluralsight provides a profound way of learning, Treehouse offers a gamified learning experience, which is ideal for students to take since today’s students are looking for more fun ways of learning. Besides, Treehouse frequently publishes new materials, while some of Pluralsight’s courses are outdated.

Is This Platform One of the Best Online?

If you are looking for a reliable and well-known tool to help you improve your skills and knowledge of technology, then Pluralsight is the best learning platform for you. It is ideal not only for individuals but also for professionals who want to expand their skills and make themselves well-equipped for the call of innovation. Pluralsight offers courses and paths authored by experts, which offers a deeper understanding of a chosen course. Thus, Pluralsight makes sure that it will help you take your knowledge and skills to the next level.