Pluralsight vs Treehouse Side By Side Comparison Review

Pluralsight vs Treehouse [2022]: Who has the best coding courses?

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Whether you want a change in career or simply want to improve your skills and take it to the next level, enrolling in an online learning course is a great idea.

Not only would you prove your skills, but you don’t need to have a college degree or specific specialization in that field to land a job in the real world. In fact, all that matters experience and, of course, your set of skills.

Two of the most popular online learning platforms today is Pluralsight and Treehouse. When it comes to pricing and business, there is little to distinguish, and the same goes for types of courses and features.

Both of these sites receive revenue via subscriptions, and they don’t sell individual courses. They offer technical courses in subjects like databases, security, and they also employ instructors and take firm control over their programs.

In the following guide, we’ll take a look and the features and benefits of each of these two sites and which is one is better for you.

Pluralsight vs Treehouse – Pricing

Pluralsight

With Pluralsight, there are two types of subscriptions, personal and business. Personal membership includes three options:

Basic personal plan – This plan is billed monthly at $29 a month or annually $179 for the year. Some of the perks include access to the course library, course learning checks, course discussions, exercise files, off-line viewing, mobile applications, etc.

The premium plan – This plan is billed on an annual basis and includes all the benefits of the personal plan, but includes interactive courses, projects and certification practice exams.

The business option has two possible alternatives:

Professional – this is billed at $579 per year. It provides basic reporting and analytics for teams, and it also offers all the perks of a premium plan with additional analytic tools for trends, channels, usage, and more.

Enterprise – This is billed at $779 a year. If you require more advanced analytics and flexibility for your company, then this is the right subscription for you, and not only does it include all of the features and benefits of the previous plans but other additional perks such as API access, role customization, data export, and single sign-on.

Treehouse

There are three available choices on the Treehouse platform in terms of pricing.

Basic plan – The fee for the basic plan is $25 per month, and you will audit more than 500 hours of lectures. Therefore it is suitable for beginners.

Pro plan – The monthly fee for the Pro plan is $49, and it contains over a thousand hours of video tutorials as well as complete access to the provider’s video library.

Tech – Treehouse does offer a Tech degree program.

There’s the option to enrol in a Tech degree program, and this is basically a project-based program designed to help you get ahead in on the successful tech industry branches.

Not only will you gain access to a variety of interesting and useful materials like code challenges, tutorials, and quizzes, but you will be able to build your own portfolio and use it later when making job applications. When it comes to Tech degrees, there are two subscriptions:

Self-guided – The self-guided option costs $25 per month; however, you won’t be able to access many of the perks of the program.

The full access plan – This will cost $199 a month and allows you to build a portfolio while also providing you with real-time support.

Treehouse Tech degree

Treehouse is well known for its Tech degrees. And if you’d like to know if it is right for you, keep reading. While Treehouse does offer a variety of free content, they have put together a new program and certification.

The tree Tech degree certification is for people who want to have a career in the tech industry after finishing their education. And since you receive a certificate, it contributes to the credibility of your resume, and for those who don’t have the time, money, or resources to invest in on-ground education, it is priceless.

So what exactly is the Tech degree program? You’re probably wondering why you should make an effort to get certified instead of simply banging out more code for your portfolio?

Both education and certification reflect your aptitude and passion for using the latest technologies. It also shows that you’ve taken the initiative to brush up and build your skills and also taking a series of challenges on your journey to becoming a developer.

However, the reality is that not everyone has enough money, time, and essential resources to get the training and certification in their desired field. Some people have hectic schedules or have jobs and kits that take up the majority of their time.

In most cases, tuition fees for programs such as these are higher than most people’s budgets, and it also takes up a great deal of time to complete a full-time degree or program at a university. This is where Tech degree comes in.

It’s basically an alternative to traditional education programs. And what makes it different from traditional coding courses is it is highly dedicated and takes a more thorough approach to each topic.

Students will receive customized extensive support from the instructors, and you can work at your own pace from absolutely anywhere and at any time at your convenience.

The Treehouse Tech degree is an educational program that envelopes subject coursework as well as extensive mentoring and exams.

Once you complete a Tech degree subject, you are basically ready to enter the career field in that area. Instructors also go the extra mile to detail each topic that you are trying to master.

Free content vs. Tech degree

The Tech degree classes are basically the same as the courses that you would like to take with Treehouse with your subscription.

There are, however, differences and additions that make Tech degree programs unique. It’s targeted at aspiring developers, and unlike the free content on Treehouse, each course has a final examination.

Each of these exams is about two hours and is comprehensive for the entire course. So in order to earn the certification, you need to pass the exam.

The advantage is that you can use the certification on your resume to show your employees your education. Standard Treehouse courses, however, do not offer certificates.

The Tech degree courses have projects that must be completed during the coursework. These projects are basically designed to assimilate challenges that you will encounter in the real world as a developer and coder.

Therefore, it is a great bonus to your professional portfolio. Employees are always on the look of experience in having people with experience, and this makes a big difference to whether you land the job or not.

In addition to the certification, there are other aspects that separate the Tech degree program from other Treehouse courses. With the Tech degree plan, you get one on one mentoring available. So you will be given a total of 12 projects to complete and help build your portfolio.

Also, you will receive feedback interviewers from instructors. The exclusive Slack channel for Tech degree students means you will receive additional support from community forums during the coursework.

Technically does provide a tangible certification for those who cost and teaches you to hold with real-world tools.

If you’ve completed the treehouse course already, and it’s a part of the Tech degree program, you don’t have to repeat it. You can skip ahead to the material you need and probably advance through the program even faster if you already a Treehouse learner.

Pluralsight

Both the individual and business professionals need to stay on top of changes and evolution in their respective industries.

When it comes to software solutions and business systems, these are the tools of your trade, and you’ll need to be able to both learn and adapt to bring specific and significant innovation to your target market.

Science skills allow you to improve your current expertise, learn new skills, and also stay relevant and effective in your field.

This web-based learning platform delivers a series of courses primarily focusing on different aspects of information technology development and software design, as well as data solutions and security systems.

Personal learning

If you are a professional individual, then you will find Pluralsight quite useful when it comes to helping you hone your skills and learning new ones at the same time.

Freelance IT specialists, software developers, web designers, online security specialists, data solutions providers, and so on will find the site valuable too. This is because Pluralsight allows you to steer your career path by learning new skills that will help you stay relevant in your respective field.

This learning solution allows you to keep up with the ever-changing pace of technology while getting the right skills at the right time. Ultimately, all of these benefits are likely to be valuable as they assist you in becoming an in-demand professional in IT fields like cloud, mobile, data systems, and security.

Initially, though, you must ascertain your knowledge regarding your particular field. Pluralsight assists in this way by providing a short IQ test that helps find out which areas you are already proficient in and which ones you need to learn more about.

Ultimately, this functions as a skills assessment helping you to identify your knowledge gaps, weaknesses, and strengths as well.

Once you identify the areas you are lacking, you will be able to access a multitude of courses offered by some of the experts in the industry.

What you need to do is choose the topics that you want to catch up on and get in-depth content that goes beyond the basics to help you learn practical skills and also propel your career forward.

There is also one-on-one mentoring, which provides direct access to specific field experts that you can interact with via video chats and screen sharing amongst other channels. Ultimately, this helps overcome specific roadblocks in your learning journey and accelerates the entire learning process.

Business learning

If you are looking for the ideal avenue to help your business move forward, then Pluralsight is the answer. They have the most current technology and the right skillsets for entire workforces.

Irrespective of your business model or industry, it is important that you keep up with the times. This is especially when it comes to technology.

Like customer learning, businesses also have the ability to properly gauge the knowledge and expertise of their workforce using these platform testing features.

You are able to measure the technical abilities and working knowledge of employees through Pluralsights IQ tests. It’ll help you figure out which areas they may be lacking in and where they might require more training. This e-learning site offers different channels that give you the ability to create custom learning plans that adjust to the needs of your workers.

Advanced channels analytics help you to keep track of the progress and performance of employees as they learn to adopt new skills. So ultimately, you’ll be able to make sure that each individual in your team is consuming the right content that is crucial to your objective as a company.

Pluralsight does also provides advanced skills analytics, which enables businesses to effectively quantify the skill level of their workforce. This feature provides unprecedented visibility into your company’s weaknesses and strengths based on the knowledge of the workforce and technical skills.

So you’ll be able to gain critical insight into discovering opportunities for company growth. You’ll also be able to discover hidden talents and therefore aline the right people to the right projects to increase efficiency and overall productivity.

WGU

WGU has partnered with Pluralsight to bring you WGU alumni, which means free access to the most-relevant learning content.

Pluralsight is developed to help keep you up-to-date with technology and increase productivity, so you’ll find excellent online courses on software development, ops, data science, IT, and much more.

Treehouse Pros and Cons

Pros:

The course formats are flexible enough so that instructors are able to demonstrate their own style as long as exercises are offered at consistent intervals, and students’ progress is measurable. The instructors are able to communicate in a clear and very approachable manner.

The materials are well constructed, and you can get started with the technology as fast as possible. It’s quite hard to find tutorials that are made quite as well and are so easy to understand.

With Treehouse, nothing is skipped or assumed without reference to courses within that which was recommended earlier. So if you ever forget the basics, this site becomes an efficient review resource.

It’s a pretty frustrating process to figure out what language or tool to learn. Treehouse groups their courses into learning tracks, so you have more guidance based on what type of development you want to do.

Students can share courses that are successfully completed when applying for the job. Therefore after completing the courses, you should have a solid understanding of the given technology.

When it comes to Treehouse, students are able to get a discount quite easily by using their email support.

Treehouse is compatible with both iOS and Android devices, making it easy and convenient to use. The cost and the intentions of Treehouse are immediately transparent. If you are stuck with any task at hand, you can easily get assistance on the student forum.

Lots of topics are visited by hundreds of students each and every day, and replies are turned in within minutes or seconds. So in case, a question cannot be answered by a community member, then it is pushed to the recommended members or staff experts for prompt responses.

Treehouse constantly adds new material. They release multiple new courses each and every month on a variety of different topics. They also do a great job of keeping pace with the changing industry.

With Treehouse, you can build projects as you learn. They offer you the ability to build interesting real-world videos that make a fun and innovative way to learn how to apply what you’ve already learned.

The community is quite supportive, and the company is convincingly more interested in your positive referrals than in your subscription. The timely progress of students is always actively encouraged, aside from recognition and gamification. They even have employer monitored sections with suggestions of how to meet goals with related skills.

There are various videos showing you how to build an app step by step in real-time. The videos are short and digestible yet fully illustrative making it relevant.

The presentation of the material is also quite good, and their animations and screen shares supplement the instruction. Overall it gives it a good all-around learning experience.

The bonus with Treehouse is that you don’t have to install anything on your PC, and you are free to learn from anywhere by logging in to their workspaces.

This tool is highly effective. Instructors preface courses with installation guides to set up popular environments and the workspaces allow you to jump right in, work on your project, and experiment with tangent thoughts.

You may even complete parallel courses simultaneously. The execution is fast, and the space is ample.

Cons:

You need to participate regularly. So you can’t just jump ahead and work backwards from a specific need. It’s risky to skip sections you have mastered already because when it comes to condensed material, you still need to rely on past examples.

The treehouse forum also lacks conversation and engagement. However, it does provide a platform for students to have discussions, but almost all posts are of students looking for answers to the quizzes and challenges. So any general discussions about business, learning programming, job seeking are unanswered, and they often go without replies.

Treehouse is not really an in-depth source. The courses are mainly geared towards beginners, and this makes it compulsory to use other resources to gain a deeper understanding of the language you want to learn.

Another disadvantage of Treehouse is that they charge your credit card before the trial expires. Although they do offer a free trial, and this is always a great option, you must fill in details of a payment method to be able to use it.

To make matters worse, if you cancel the paid subscription before the trial ends, then you lose all access to the free trial. So ultimately what happens is that you need to pay a subscription fee for you to access the free trial that you should’ve received from the start.

Ultimately, this policy is not a good business practice and may make potential students think twice about signing up and taking the courses.

Unfortunately, the amount of bugs has slowly increased so much so that the site is more frustrating to use rather than benefiting some users. Although engineers are doing their best to resolve these issues, the bugs seem to occur much quicker than they can get rid of them. Some bugs require you to refresh the page several times before getting the content displayed.

Treehouse is also way too expensive when compared to other alternative options. Most of the advanced materials are locked away and labeled pro/bonus.

The quality is not consistent amongst courses. Multiple teachers provide varied content, so there is no lack of variety, but there is nothing consistent about the teaching styles.

Some courses have content that is elaborated on properly and goes at a fair pace, while others are quite hard to follow. The challenge is also inconsistent as some are easy to follow, and others don’t reinforce much of the material learned.

You must fill in your credit card details, even if you are only signing up for the free trial.

Pluralsight Pros and Cons

Pros:

You can share your interests and learning progress from the public profile statistics page and attach it to a links section in your resume.

Pluralsight also offers assessments and certificates of achievement. The site also offers both pre and post-course assessments. Passing either assessment allows you to view and print off such achievements. So the assessments and certificates of achievement section are quite useful.

Thanks to the fact that they are constantly adding new courses, it reflects that they are up to date with the evolving industry, and currently, they have more than 4000 courses. So new material is added frequently, and this is a huge advantage.

If you are one of those students that struggle to repeat what you learned in the past, adding notes to each course is very helpful. And this is one of the options of Pluralsight.

With over 4000 courses, including design, software development, 3-D modeling, and so much more, this a huge spectrum of content providing more than enough options to suit your specific requirements.

For each tested language, you get a rating. So this rating is then compared to other students on the site, and you can check your skill in the learned language. One of the bonuses of using Pluralsight is the consistent quality.

The quality of the courses is extremely high because they have full-time editing staff that meticulously review each and every video that is produced.

The site has applications available for both iPhone and Android devices.

When trying to figure out which courses to take and in exactly what order, the learning paths option is quite helpful.

A multitude of advanced content is offered, such as programming courses for intermediate and advanced students. Ultimately this provides a more in-depth option than many of its competitors.

Cons:

One of the disadvantages of using Pluralsight is that their courses are fairly old and outdated

If you want to test out your learned skills, there’s no scope for this either.

This is a paid site, and there is no free content or courses.

Customer support

Pluralsight appears to have quite a responsive customer support department. You can reach out to their support team via email and the community forum.

This is in the event that your questions are not answered in the FAQ section. If you have a technical issue or one that requires in-depth and technical assistance, the site does also have a dedicated technical support department. With regards to how soon they respond to questions and query, that much is unclear at the moment.

When it comes to customer support from Treehouse, it’s safe to say that you can depend on very good customer service. They also have a dedicated FAQ section that will likely answer most of your questions. However, in the event that it doesn’t, you can always reach out to their customer care department via email.

It clearly states that the customer service department works Monday through Friday between 4 PM to 12 AM UTC. So if your questions fall outside of these dates, days, and times, then you should expect a slight delay.

Ease of Use

Pluralsight is used across whole companies to train employees in various areas., This includes web development, QA, and software development.

When using little Pluralsights resources, employees will become more confident with technologies, both old and new. This will, in turn, also enhance the companies offering empowering workers to start learning new skills.

So overall, the site provides up-to-date content, offers learning paths, and has both individual and business accounts.

Perhaps one of the only downsides to the usability of the site is that there is no way to download content and learn it while you are off-line. So this is one area that there is definitely room for improvement.

Aside from that, users agree that Pluralsight is a great offering and is best suited for designers, game programmers, and developers. The site is also very user friendly, and this is a huge bonus for beginners and hobbyists.

The style and layout of Treehouse’s website are not something that is going to appeal to everyone. However, there are downsides to the site as well. The first being, that when you visit the home page there is no way to access the course library and have a look at what they’re offering.

Instead, the home page is more geared towards encouraging or enticing potential students to sign up for the free trial or enrol in the Tech degree. Also, the thumbnails are more or less the same within the library, so there’s no unique pictures, logos, or even graphics separating one thumbnail from the other.

So in order to see what each thumbnail is offering, you need to click on each and every one. When you do, however, get to the thumbnails, you’ll see that it contains a few tags indicating the difficulty, the topic as well as a partial description of the course.

When you search the “tracks” section, you’ll find created collections of courses that will come together to teach one topic in detail. But browsing courses can also only be done via topic.

Overall speaking, we wouldn’t say that the site is extremely difficult; neither is it extremely simple to use. It’s a fairly standard and okay layout that will take a little bit of getting used to but eventually, you’ll be able to quickly navigate the site.

Course delivery

Pluralsight’s courses are immediately displayed on the homepage, and users have access to view these courses by simply clicking on them straight from the homepage. All courses are online and self-paced which is nice to know as everyone learns at a different pace.

The same applies to Treehouse as courses can be seen from the homepage. When you choose the Tech degree course, you’ll have access to download videos and watch them offline.

Types of courses

Since Pluralsight offers thousands of courses, it is hard to name them all. However, among the most popular are:

Web development
Javascript courses
Graphic Designing
Online web design
WordPress

Some of the courses offered by Treehouse are as follows:

Design
Business
Android Development Tools
Machine Learning
Swift
Ruby
PHP
JavaScript
Digital Literacy
WordPress
iOS
Databases
Computer science
Python
Java
C#
Go
Quality Assurance
HTML/CSS
Data Analysis
APIs
Security

Site Design and Customization

The design of Pluralsight’s site is probably not the best, and at first glance it doesn’t appear to be user-friendly.

However, on closer inspection, the site is quite tidy, and you can find what you are looking for rather quickly. This should be credited to the fact that everything is neatly organized. So you will still be able to get good use out of this site when in a hurry.

Treehouse, on the other hand, has a simpler design and is more of a user-friendly experience. From the first time you log on, the site has a warm and inviting appearance.

Certification and Value

Pluralsight offers certification for all courses since all of them are paid.

With Treehouse, you only receive a certification when you complete the Tech degree courses and not the free content.

Treehouse alternatives

Codecademy

Codecademy believes that if you can read, you can code. So it’s quite a powerful statement, and like Treehouse, they are dedicated to assisting people with little or no coding experience to learn new skills and take their careers to the next level. Some of the courses include programming, web development, data science, computer science, and more.