The following seem to be the main contenders providing video training material. The team/pro/enterprise licenses often include varying degrees of support on what to learn and statistics on how an organization is learning. I've also added some honorable mentions that I know of. The reason they are not main contenders is that they have a more narrow target audience. While they might be perfect for one group of users, they provide nothing for another.
The table data is based on my own limited views more than any measured data. Variables graded by number is 1 - 5 where higher is better. Cost is obvious. Amount means amount of available material. Quality means average quality of material provided. Depth values availability of advanced material in favor of up and running tutorials. New Tech is an estimate of how quickly you can find info on new/trending topics. Books Yes/No means if they also provide eBooks. The Developer, Designer, IT Ops, Business, and WebDev variables tries to estimate how relevant the provider is for a certain group of users.
# O'Reilly Safari
Safari or LinkedIn Learning probably contains the largest collection of books and videos available. They provide Live online training, Learning paths, Interactive tutorials, O'Reilly conference recordings, Books and videos training from 200+ respected publishers, Early access to content as it's being created and Personalized recommendations. A large amount of the video training seems to be from Packt that is also common on Udemy. Access to latest tech mainly via ongoing books. They offer a 10 days free trial. The only game in town for info on Delphi.
| Variable | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $399 | Per user and year. 2 - 25 members |
| Amount | 5 | Mainly books |
| Quality | 4 | |
| Depth | 5 | Thanks to books |
| New Tech | 5 | Access to unpublished books helps |
| Books | Yes | |
| Developer | 5 | |
| Designer | 3 | |
| IT Ops | 4 | |
| Business | 4 | |
| WebDev | 4 |
# Lynda.com
Lynda.com has been around for a long time and still feels like a good compromise. Businesss, Photography, Graphics, Design, Web and Developer topics has good coverage. IT Ops maybe a bit less. Most of the authors are very professional. Merging with LinkedIn will give some integration to your LinkedIn profile. One month trial is free.
| Variable | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ? | |
| Amount | 4 | |
| Quality | 5 | |
| Depth | 4 | |
| New Tech | 4 | |
| Books | No | |
| Developer | 5 | 600+ courses |
| Designer | 5 | 700+ courses |
| IT Ops | 3 | |
| Business | 4 | 1 200+ courses |
| WebDev | 5 |
# Pluralsight
Pluralsight have a very large library of quality video courses on a wide range of topics like Office 365, Windows Server, Citrix, Security Certifications etc. Feels Developer & IT Ops oriented before Graphics and Design. For .net/windows and devs/devops this is probably the one to go for. Not very quick to get out material on new topics though.
| Variable | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $499 | Per user and year. Pro version |
| Amount | 3 | |
| Quality | 5 | |
| Depth | 4 | |
| New Tech | 3 | |
| Books | No | |
| Developer | 5 | |
| Designer | 3 | |
| IT Ops | 5 | |
| Business | 2 | |
| WebDev | 4 |
# Udemy
Udemy or Udemy for Business probably have the biggest network of content authors and therefore most material on most subjects. The company license only allows access to a selected library of around 3 000 courses. That fact does not show in the numbers but should be taken into consideration when choosing. The quality of education varies from poor to excellent. They have courses on any imaginable topic. I've personally bought a lot of courses on Udemy. Partly because they're inexpensive when on sale and partly because they constantly have new and interesting stuff published.
| Variable | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $240 | Per user and year. 5 - 20 members |
| Amount | 5 | |
| Quality | 3 | Varies greatly... |
| Depth | 4 | |
| New Tech | 5 | |
| Books | No | |
| Developer | 5 | |
| Designer | 4 | |
| IT Ops | 4 | |
| Business | 3 | |
| WebDev | 5 |
# Topic Search Hits
The comparison is not fair as they all seem to do search differently. Although O'Reilly does not have a huge library of videos they get a lot of hits. Probably because books and their blog etc. Lynda got a huge number for Vue.js. Probably because Vue is also some kind of design tool. Pluralsight's and Udemy's search seems more "honest". Also, only O'Reilly have anything on Delphi.
| Term | OReilly | Udemy | Lynda | Pluralsight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GraphQL | 118 | 37 | 165 | 2 |
| Node.js | 4 298 | 413 | 1 189 | 109 |
| Delphi | 1 565 | 47 | 0 | 0 |
| Polymer | 1 999 | 10 | 68 | 4 |
| Golang | 289 | 51 | 55 | 19 |
| Vue.js | 188 | 61 | 7 686 | 5 |
# Honorable Mentions
# Packtlib
Packtlib contains over 7 000 practical eBooks and Videos for professional developers. This is foremost for developers but very attractive as you get access to it all for $99/year. I did not find a team lic option. They publish lots every month on trending topics. A large part of O'Reilly books and videos are from Packt. This package is a steal at that price!
# Egghead
Egghead.io have high quality videos on topics you might not find elsewhere. Unique but narrow content mainly for devs. Team lic is $300 per user and year. Recommendation could be to buy 1 usermonth if/when needed.
# Frontend Masters
As the name suggests Frontend Masters mainly have material on front-end web development. Some known names among trainers. High quality stuff. A team lic for 10 users is $1 950/year.
# Summary
Pointvise Lynda and O'Reilly are at the top. I think Lynda is better if you're looking for quality video training and O'Reilly is better if you don't care if the info is in books or in video form. If you mostly work as a developer or IT ops person in a Windows-based environment Pluralsight is hard to beat. Although I mostly used courses from Udemy myself lately I'm a bit nervous about the restriction they have. For sure 3 000 courses are a lot and it's also possible to ask them to add the one you'd need to the lot. Still it feels like a bit of an unknown. Would actually need to do a trial to get over that feeling. There's probably no arguing though that if you need to cover a very broad area of topics Udemy is your best bet.