Review - Datacamp vs. Coursera vs. Educative?

Online education gives people the ability to learn new skills from home using only their laptop and an internet connection which was impossible just 20 years ago. Many people don't take advantage of this and try to advance their career or even start a new job from zero instead of wasting tens of thousands of dollars in college and years while achieving better in less time and spending less money. Many online education platforms are competing to have a big slice of the market, and choosing the right platform depends on the learning path you will choose, so in this article, I will suggest three of the most popular online education platform and their advantages to letting you decide the right platform.

DataCamp vs Coursera vs Educative

Now, let's checkout what are these online learning platforms and what they offer to you a learner and their advantages and shortcomings:

1. DataCamp

If you are a university student show wants to learn more about data science, machine learning, python, or a professional who wants to deep dive into these topics. You probably should take a look at the DataCamp platform. This online education platform was founded in 2013 is explicitly dedicated to data science, programming, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics.

The cool thing I like about this platform is that professional people create their courses, offering many different plans for students. One of them is entirely free, and you can see some of the course's content and other features but with some limitations. 

You can also upgrade your account starting at $12.49 a month and unlock all their courses and features. Organization owners can also benefit from this platform by creating an account for all employees at a lower price than individuals.

Since professional people and many big-name organizations created this platform is using it to train their employees, I will recommend this platform for anyone who wants to learn data science, AI & ML, data analysis, python, and I would say that the certificate is worth paying for the service.

2. Coursera

If you want to get certification from big-name companies such as Google, IBM, Facebook, and Amazon AWS, you probably need to look at the Coursera platform. This online educational platform allows big companies and universities to create and share their courses for free. Still, if you would like to get the certification, you have to purchase the course.

Coursera has what's known as a specialization which is a set of short courses that follow each other to deep dive into an industry such as web development, business, marketing, and anything you can think of. 

You have to pay for each course and complete all of them to get the specialization certificate. This also applies to the professional certification, the same as the specialization but better in quality and will give you real-world experience.

Many organizations train their employees in Coursera since they have a plan for the organization, not only for individuals. From my perspective, it is worth trying their course since they are free. If you succeed and want to get certified, then you pay for the course.

3. Educative

Suppose you want to learn a programming language such as python or web development technologies such as JavaScript or mobile application development using java & swift. In that case, you will have to take a look at a platform called Educative. This educational platform was founded back in 2015 to level up your coding skills and learn new languages.

The different thing that makes Educative difference between the two platforms is that Educative offers text courses meaning you will read articles instead of videos. They have two plans. They start from $8.33 a month billed annually or $29 a month for only one month with unlimited access to their hundred courses. They offer another plan for the team starting at $99 a year for everyone with a minimum of 3 people to start the plan.

For me, Educative is another good competitor for the previous two platforms and suitable for people who love reading articles and books over videos. They have more than 700.000 learners, which means people love their content, especially since you can start programming from their platform instead of installing anything on your desktop.

Conclusion

Choosing the right education platform can be hard sometimes, but they depend on your learning paths like data science, ML & AI. You will have to select DataCamp for that purpose over any other online platform and learn to program using Codecademy. Still, Educative will be a good choice for people who want to learn real-world skills in programming and love reading articles.