Is Pluralsight Worth It? Money Investment Vs Certificate Value [2023]

You might be wondering “Is Pluralsight worth it and should you spend money on its courses”. You may also be be thinking if its certificates are useful and offer good value.

An online learning platform can be called worthy and valuable only if it can help you in your career i.e. get you a good job or give you a promotion.

I think Pluralsight is worth it and provides excellent value for your money. It is a very good online learning platform for the technology students and enthusiasts. It has excellent features that you can use to learn latest technologies at a very low cost. It offers many benefits/advantages for the job seekers and career oriented people. You can use its certificates to polish your resume and showcase your credentials to the employers.

Read on to understand why I think Pluralsight’s subscription is a good investment and why premium plan is than the regular plan. You should also read my other article on review of Pluralsight to understand its pros and cons in detail.

Note: Before going further you should take Pluralsight’s free trial to test run its features and learn from its courses. This way you will be able to better understand the points written in this article.

Is Pluralsight Worth It?

Overview of Pluralsight

Pluralsight is an elearning platform that mainly offers technology course. It is useful for web developers, programmers, designers, testers, and other IT professionals.

You can enroll into any of its courses by taking one of its subscription plans viz. monthly or annual. The annual plan is offered in two variants –  regular and premium. The premium plan is more expensive but comes with additional goodies. You can look at my article on Pluralsight subscription to understand it pricing and features.

By taking Pluralsight’s subscription, you can enroll into any course and practically learn anything. You can try your hand at different technologies.

Pluralsight offers a facility of learning paths using which you can learn an entire subject. A learning path is a sequence of related courses on a given subject. These courses are graded for beginner, intermediate, and expert students. This way you don’t have to run around searching for different courses to learn a subject completely. You can just complete all the courses in your chosen learning path.

A Pluralsight subscription can potentially save you a lot of time and money. Let’s take a detailed look at Pluralsight’s benefits to understand how it can help you in achieving your career goals.

1. Use Pluralsight Skill IQ to Gauge your Proficiency Level

Pluralsight has a unique feature through which you can gauge your proficiency level. It is free assessment test called Skill IQ.

This assessment test is available for about 160 technologies. You need to do about 20 questions, which can be completed in less than 10 minutes. Your test score can range between 0-300. Pluralsight has developed a proprietary algorithm to statistically analyze your test score and compare it with all the other candidates who took this test.

Based on your score,  Pluralsight gives you two things:

1. Your skill level which could be any one of Novice, Proficient, or Expert.
2. Your percentile score

Skill IQ gives you an excellent platform to gauge your skills against thousands of others. It tells you the current proficiency level and gives you an opportunity to improve it by taking various courses in a learning path.

2. Pursue A Learning Path

Learning paths are guided paths for acquiring a technical skill. A path contains sequence of courses on one topic. These courses are designed for a Novice, Proficient and Expert levels. If you know nothing about a subject, you can start from the beginning and do all the courses. However, if you know little bit about a subject, you can take the Skill IQ assessment to determine your proficiency level. Based on your proficiency level, you can skip some of the courses in a learning path.

A learning path is a great feature. It gives you an opportunity to learn a subject completely.

3. Learn From Career Oriented Courses

Pluralsight offers courses on almost all the technologies that are used in the Industry. These include technologies related to Machine Learning, Information & Cyber Security, Manufacturing & Design etc. At the time of writing this article, Pluralsight was offering 6500+ courses under 10 different categories. All these courses are career oriented and can be used to develop a good foundation in a subject.

You can also look at my other article for finding the best courses on Pluralsight.

4. Gain Cross-Functional Knowledge

In today’s competitive world, knowledge of a single technology is not enough. Sometimes you need to have expertise in more than one technology to complete a task.

For example, if you are in application software development you will require expertise in programing language like Java, mobile technology like iOS, database like MySQL, scripting, and maybe a few more things. Generally, learning new technologies is a costly affair but not on Pluralsight. You can learn multiple courses on Pluralsight under a single subscription. You can read my article on Pluralsight cost to determine how much will you need to shell out.

The more knowledge you have, the better opportunities are likely to come your way and Pluralsight is the right platform to give you a wide range of knowledge at a very low cost.

5. Pluralsight Partnerships

Pluralsight is partnered with many big organizations. Some of them include – Google, Microsoft, Unity Game Developers, etc.

Pluralsight, along with their Partners, has developed very high-quality content. The content focuses on partnered company’s technologies. Many of these technologies are in great demand today.

6. Enjoy Premium Support

Whenever you get stuck on any problem, you can always get help from mentors. Mentors are industry experts who can help you with your problems. This is a great help for a newbie.

Note – You will be charged $1 for 1 min of help. But the quality of service provided is worth the money.

7. Learn From Industry Oriented Projects

Theoretical knowledge is one thing but to succeed in technology world you need practical insights. You can gain practical knowledge by doing industry oriented projects. This feature is available only on Premium plan. I would strongly suggest you to take a look at the premium plan as projects can increase your knwoledge many fold.

8. Validate Learning Through Course Quizzes

Pluralsight offers exercises and learning checks to validate your knowledge. There are small quizzes after every topic in a course. They help you identifying your wean and strong areas. If you score good enough in that quiz, you may go ahead. But if somehow your score is not good enough, you need to revise that topic. You can go back in the course to learn the things that you have missed.

9. Get Course Completion Certificates

Knowledge is definitely required when you are searching for a job or seeking promotion but it not the only thing required for career enhancement. Nowadays, employers want to ascertain that you have the requisite credentials. They want to see the course completion certificates to validate your knowledge.

Pluralsight provides course completion certificates for all their courses. The certificates can be downloaded from the Pluralsight’s website immediately after completing a course. Some of the courses provide specialized certificates that can be used for applying to PMI and CompTIA certifications.

You can display your certificates on LinkedIn and seek new job opportunities.

Final Thoughts – Pluralsight Certificates are Valuable

Nowadays employers look for both credentials and knowledge. Pluralsight provides both by giving you course completion certificate and well designed courses.

You should utilize and exploit Pluralsight to its maximum level. You should go through individual courses and learning paths to get an in-depth understanding of subjects. This will help you in your career advancement.

Pluralsight can help you in upgrading your knowledge and skills but you have to take the first step. You can start with a free trial to check its worthiness. You can upgrade to a paid plan only after you are sure about its value proposition. I would suggest you to look at its premium plan as it is worth the extra money.

Over to You

What are your thoughts about Pluralsight. Do you think it is worth your money? What is the top most benefit of Pluralsight? What are some of its disadvantages?

I would love to hear your comments below.