Pluralsight learning platform review

Pluralsight is headquartered in Draper, Utah, and has offices in Boston, Dublin, and Sydner, with the mission of "creating progress through technology." Unlike some online learning platforms, Pluralsight is laser-focused on upskilling existing workforces to keep up with our accelerated pace of digital transformation.

The company has collaborated with a number of organisations, including Nasdaq, Adobe, and ADT. Pluralsight has over 17K business accounts and employs over 1,700 people.

Features

While Pluralsight focuses on the enterprise market, individuals can also take advantage of the courses because there are individual plans available. While many courses are available, the content is entirely focused on computers and technology, to the exclusion of everything else. It is also more professional grade and at a higher and deeper level than some other video streaming platforms, so those looking for a weekend Raspberry Pi project to do with a child will most likely be disappointed.

Now that that's out of the way, not everyone needs to be a Chief Technology Officer to benefit from the offerings. To get a better sense of the offerings, we decided to create a free account. Not only did you have to provide your phone number, but you also had to agree to receive SMS messages for updates and marketing purposes, which was inconvenient (there is a box to consent to this, but without it checked, we were told to refresh the browser, which we did, but neither time did the account creation go through).

From there, things only got worse. We were then sent an email with a link and a 6-digit alphanumeric code to confirm the account. When we did this, we were informed that the link had expired, despite the fact that the original email made no mention of an expiration date. We were then given the option of obtaining another link, which we did several times. However, despite checking the email account, including the spam folder, we did not receive a reset code and were unable to continue with our free trial. We abandoned further efforts at this point, despite the fact that the next step would have been to contact support.

Plans and pricing

We couldn't find any pricing information for the Enterprise plans, but this is fairly typical because they are priced by volume, with available features bundled into a custom plan. They usually necessitate contact with the company.

We looked into the Individual plans available to get a sense of the costs. There is a free trial available, but it is only valid for 10 days. The Standard Plan is the first of two tiers of plans. This plan costs $29 per month or $299 per year when paid annually. This lower plan includes the "Core course library, paths, and skill assessments," as well as course discussions, exercise files, offline viewing, guides, and badges. The core library contains more than 2500 of the most popular courses.

The Premium Plan, which costs $45 per month but is discounted to $449 when paid annually, is the next tier up. The upgrade gives you access to the "entire library of core and expanded courses, exams, projects, and hands-on learning," which includes everything from the lower plan plus projects, interactive courses, and certification practise exams. The library has been expanded to include over 7000 topics, including advanced and niche topics.

Support

The support for Pluralsight is undeniably direct communication, demonstrating how it meets the needs of businesses. This includes a toll-free number with hours of operation from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. There is also a direct email address where users can easily submit an issue for a response, and it is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If either of those options is insufficient, there is also the option for a contact portal, though we believe that a direct email option is sufficient. There is also a FAQ section with a tonne of pre-written content to answer the more common questions.

There are no educational videos, eBooks, or whitepapers to round out the discussion. The chat does not appear in the Help Center, but it does appear elsewhere on the site.

User feedback

To get a better sense of the service, we looked at the Pluralsight iOS app reviews, which received an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. It is also a good sign that it receives frequent updates, with the most recent version of 3.17 being released on August 25, 2021. Despite the generally positive feedback, some issues have arisen, such as incorrect search results, downloaded videos that are randomly deleted, and insufficient Chromecast support. There have been developer responses to the issues, which is at least encouraging that the company is aware of the issues, though users point out that some of these concerns have been ongoing for some time.

Pluralsight also has a mobile app for Android users. It also receives high marks, with a 4.6 out of 5 rating. Similar issues, such as playback on a Samsung TV and the deletion of downloaded videos, are also present in this version of the app.

The final word

Pluralsight, an online educational platform, enticed us with its advanced computer-focused course offerings. We appreciate its extensive course offerings, highly rated apps, and direct support options. The short free trial period, the limited hours of phone support, and the fact that the upper tier is required for the practise certification exams are the drawbacks. We are hesitant to recommend this platform due to our poor experience in attempting to create a free account, as well as the numerous difficulties encountered, when more user friendly options are available.