Table of Contents
About Skillshare
Skillshare is an online educational platform with over 35,000 classes taught by real-world experts. With 12 million students and 8,000 teachers, its plans are used in offices like Vice, Converse, and The New York Times and it boasts a social community of over 3.2 million. In other words, it’s a much-loved service that has a ton to offer.
If you’re looking to expand your skills, the simple act of browsing through its classes on writing, film, design, and business is enough to stir up excitement. Love flexibility? That’s exactly what you’ll find with Skillshare. Its one-hour lesson-packed classes let you learn what you want at your own pace.
To get the full scoop on the service and everything it has to offer, check out my Skillshare review. Ahead, I’ll tell you all about the brand and its programs, along with feedback, discounts, and more.
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Overview of Skillshare
Founded by Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcolm Ong in 2010, Skillshare was created from a need for accessible, affordable, and enthralling education. The founders were both well-versed in all things digital, so creating their platform was an easy choice.
Flash forward 12 years and the service has over 12 million users and 35,000 courses. Their hope was and still is to help expand personal growth, inspire change, and encourage discovery.
With a creative focus, the majority of the NYC-based service’s classes focus on the arts, but you’ll find a healthy repertoire of business and wellness courses as well.
Now that you know a little more about what the company is all about, let’s move on to its highlights.
Highlights
- 35,000+ classes
- 8,000 real-world expert instructors
- Classes for creating, building, and thriving
- Programs for teams and individuals
- Learning Paths for in-depth learning
- Available around the world
- Free trial
- 14-day refund policy
You’ve read about the brand and seen the highlights reel, so what’s next for my Skillshare review? Coming up, I’ll dive into all of the service’s available plans and prices.
Skillshare Learning Paths Review
The majority of Skillshare classes are one hour long. Teachers pack a ton of information into those 60 minutes, but still, you may want to continually expand your knowledge on the subject. If so, choose Learning Paths.
These feature a selection of hand-picked sequential classes that focus on one particular subject but branch out to include different lessons. Learning Paths provide an in-depth educational experience. Some classes to choose from include:
- Complete Guitar: 5 Classes to Take You From Beginner to Intermediate
- Level Up Your Drawing with Dynamic Sketching
- Learn to Sew: All The Skills You Need to Make Your Own Clothing
- Next Level Adobe After Effects: Build Confidence and Efficiency
- Master Workplace Communication
- Self-Care Essentials: Embrace & Nurture the Real You
Skillshare Plans Review
Skillshare Premium Review
Skillshare Premium is the brand’s subscription for individuals. Giving you unlimited access to more than 35,000 courses, the membership is free for the first 30 days in the US or 7 in Canada.
When you sign up, you’ll discover all that the service has to offer, including courses that span graphic design, creative writing, film, marketing, and more. Take any of them to uplevel your existing skills or learn new ones.
When your trial expires, you will automatically be enrolled in your annual subscription where you can continue to take classes that interest you and learn at your own pace. If you prefer not to continue your subscription, you can cancel before the trial ends.
Skillshare Teams Plans Review
Team Plans are a great way to help your staff expand their skills, increasing their portfolio which helps them and you. You’ll pick from three options:
- Starter: teams of 5-49 users
- Enterprise: teams of 20+
- Revive: teams of 50+
Your employees will have access to 35,000+ classes on the platform to discover on their own or as part of a group learning activity for an entire department. Each user will have detailed reports and analytics to review their process and the chance to build skills that they can use on the job and in their personal lives.
Skillshare Scholarships Review
Skillshare understands that while $168 per year may be trivial to some, others may not be able to afford it. Yet everyone should have equal access to education. That’s why they offer scholarships. To apply for one, all you have to do is meet the eligibility requirements that vary from offer to offer.
The types of scholarships vary. Here’s what’s available now:
- University students: 50% off a one-year membership with a valid student address
- General: One free year of membership granted to 10 people monthly, available to all for whom membership fees are not a financial possibility
Popular Skillshare Classes
Skillshare Animation Review
Whether you are just learning to draw or are interested in creating lifelike movements, Skillshare’s Animation classes are full of fun and creativity. You’ll explore courses like Animation for Illustration: Adding Movement with Procreate & Photoshop led by Libby VanderPloeg and Animating in Procreate: Simple Steps to Create Awesome Animations taught by Danni Fisher-Shin.
In the latter, you’ll be guided through an hour of 16 different lessons that break down the animating process to make it simple and doable for all.
Skillshare Writing Review
Can you take too many writing classes? I think not. If you’re interested in improving your skills for storytelling, creative writing, memoirs, essays, and more, Skillshare has a wide range of interesting and expert-led classes.
Creative Writing: Crafting Personal Essays with Impact taught by Roxane Gay is one of them, and in this one-hour class, you’ll learn 11 different lessons that encourage you to draw inspiration from your own life and look for your “why”.
Skillshare Film & Video Review
From digital to iPhone photography, Skillshare Film & Video courses are some of the most popular on the platform. Why? Because capturing pictures is a big part of our everyday lives and there is always room to improve artistically.
A sample course is iPhone Photography: How to Take Pro Photos On Your iPhone taught by Dale McManus and professional photographer and award-winning YouTuber. In this course, McManus will teach you everything you need to know to become a professional digital photographer with just your iPhone.
With 22 separate lessons spread out over 55 minutes, this compact course has been taken by 160,731 students so far. Other examples include Video on a Budget: Prepare for Your Shoot Without Breaking the Bank taught by Chrystopher Rhodes and Photo Storytelling: Using Color, Contrast, and Scale led by Cyn Lagos.
How Does Skillshare Work?
Skillshare is an incredibly easy-to-use online learning platform. After you sign up, you’ll pick whichever classes tickle your fancy, take them, and dive back in for more. Most classes are one-hour videos that you can tackle at your own pace. Led by real-world creators that are experts in their industry, Skillshare provides invaluable lessons for learning or honing your craft.
After signing up, you can download or stream your favorite classes right from the app. This can be done from anywhere so you can learn at your own pace, in whatever setting fits your needs.
Who Is Skillshare For?
Skillshare’s classes are geared towards creatives. Their classes are divided into Create, Build, and Thrive categories, and there is a great variety of learning ranging from beginner to advanced.
If you’re an artist, writer, photographer, or graphic designer looking to expand your skills, you’ll likely find a course that piques your interest. With that said, entrepreneurs and small business owners interested in learning more about developing their trade can benefit from their classes as well.
Udemy vs Skillshare
There are a number of online educational services out there, so why choose this one? To help you answer that question, I’ll compare it with competitor Udemy in this section of my Skillshare review.
So far, you’ve learned that Skillshare has an abundance of classes delivered in single and sequential online videos. Udemy offers the same, with 204,000 online video courses to choose from with more added every month.
The biggest difference between these two services is in the type of classes they offer. Skillshare has a creative and well-being focus with a nice selection of business classes as well.
Udemy concentrates on web development and programming, offering a wide range of courses in Excel, JavaScript, and AWS Certification. Python is their most popular course, though they also offer drawing classes as well.
Taught by real-world experts, just like Skillshare, you will learn at a pace that suits you. But unlike our featured service, it offers one-time purchases of individual courses which range from $12-$200. If you’d prefer to sign up for a personal or professional subscription plan, they range from $20-$30 per month.
Who wins the battle of Udemy vs Skillshare? It’s all about preferences really, both are excellent services that offer something unique.
Skillshare Cost
If you live in the US, you can enroll in Skillshares courses for free for 30 days as part of a trial. If you’d like to continue your use of the service, you will be charged $168 as an annual fee. Prefer to pay monthly? You’re looking at about $30 per month instead.
Skillshare cost for the Team membership is $159 per user. The annual option is the only one available.
Keep in mind that this is an auto-renewing subscription, and next year, on the same date you will be charged the same amount (unless Skillshare modifies this price). If you find that you do not want to continue your membership, you can cancel during your free trial.
Skillshare Reviews: What Do Customers Think?
To get to know exactly what Skillshare is like to use, I highly recommend starting the free trial. You’ll get to see what their instructors are like and if you like the flow of their classes. If you’d like a comprehensive view of how others like the service before you start, check out this section of my Skillshare review.
One of the cool things about the Skillshare platform is that each instructor and class is rated and you can view comments from students that have taken the class.
Let’s check out the Find Your Style: Five Exercises to Unlock Your Creative Identity course by Andy J. Pizza, which, aside from being taught by a guy with probably the most awesome name on the planet, sounds like a fun, interesting course.
The Find Your Style course has been taken by 55,512 students. Here’s how they said it lived up to their expectations:
- Exceeded!: 76%
- Yes: 21%
- Somewhat: 3%
- Not really: 1%
A 97% satisfaction rating isn’t too shabby and many said that the teacher was engaging and that the course included helpful examples. One shared in their Skillshare review: “I’ve genuinely never seen a video that has motivated me more than this one! Felt heaven-sent. Thank you!”
Others said similar things and it seems like they genuinely enjoyed the course. This is just one of the thousands offered by Skillshare. Let’s hop off of the brand’s website and onto SiteJabber.
There, Skillshare was rated 3.71/5 stars by 553 users. Most are satisfied with their experience, but there seems to be room for improvement. Skillshare is said to rank 13th among other education sites.
One user wrote: “I really enjoyed having very helpful feedback on all of the projects provided in the designing courses. I recommend anyone willing to upgrade their skill set or determined to switch careers to try out the designing programs. The community is very supportive and the projects are challenging.”
Another said that choosing the service was “one of the best investments in myself and a continual learner,” and I’d have to agree. If you like to learn and don’t mind the online format, then Skillshare is a fantastic option because of the variety of classes it offers.
So now that we know what users think of the courses and the instructors, it’s time to learn what the service is like as a whole. For that, I turned to Trustpilot where 1,354 users weighed in. Here’s how they rated their experience:
- Excellent: 52%
- Great: 13%
- Average: 3%
- Poor: 2%
- Bad: 30%
One Skillshare review read: “Shout out to Skillshare! There was an error on my account today. I sent an email and had an immediate reply. Was given the option of talking to live chat. Problem sorted in five minutes. One very happy customer who will continue my membership as a result!”
Many of the other positive comments talked about the ease of canceling their membership and helpful customer service that processed their request without question.
Please know that even if you do not cancel your free trial before it ends, you can still ask for a refund of your money within the next 14 days. Features like this are what sets Skillshare apart from other subscriptions out there.
Overall, it looks like thousands of people love Skillshare’s courses and teachers and find the service very useful. There was some negative feedback online as well, but I’ll get into that in the next section of my Skillshare review.
Is Skillshare Legit?
The feedback I tracked down during this Skillshare review is kind of a mixed bag. It seems like people really like the courses (if they’re creatives) and find the service super valuable for personal and professional development.
So depending on what kind of courses you’re interested in, you’ll either love what they offer or wish they had more that are tailored to tech and business. But, you’ll know what they offer before you sign up, so in my opinion, there shouldn’t be any surprises.
Somehow, users are surprised to find a lack of what they’re personally interested in and that makes up a decent chunk of negative feedback on the web. The other chunk has to do with customer service.
I’ll start by saying there are plenty of folks who have experienced exceptional service from Skillshare staff, but there are a number of them who say they have not. I checked in with the Better Business Bureau to see what was up, and sadly found an F score and a total of 147 complaints filed against the business in the last three years.
After reading through a few Skillshare reviews, what I will say is this: if you subscribed to Skillshare through Google Play or the App Store, you need to cancel your account through that same service. It appears that people face surprise renewals after “canceling” their accounts.
Honestly, that’s the most common point of negative feedback with this brand, but it’s a story I’ve read a hundred times with most subscription services. I’m not absolving Skillshare completely, but I have read enough to say that they are helpful and lenient with their users in many cases.
Being aware of what the service’s subscription terms are will ensure you don’t run into surprises like this in the future. Their subscription auto-renews and you may not get a notification of that.
Is Skillshare Worth It?
As a creative, I love the selection of classes on Skillshare. If you’re not interested in creative classes, you will have fewer courses to choose from on the platform. While that may be so, the service still makes sure to include classes for business and wellbeing, so there is a nice mix if you ever feel like shaking things up.
As for the price, considering that one adult learning class at a university costs about $500 a pop, the fact that you have unlimited access to thousands of classes with Skillshare for $160 is outstanding.
I think Skillshare is an extremely generous and cool service, is super easy to use, and I love that you can go at your own pace.
Skillshare Promotions & Discounts
Learning is an invaluable thing, so I mean, the fact that you get unlimited access to literally all Skillshare courses for under $160 per year is pretty awesome. But hold up, there’s more.
Skillshare has a free trial that you can use for 7 or 30 days (depending on where you live) to decide if you’d like to sign up for the membership.
Also, once you are a member, if you refer a friend, you and they will get a month of membership for free by using the Skillshare discount code you provide them.
Where to Buy Skillshare
Skillshare gives you access to thousands of classes through its online platform. Head over to skillshare.com to sign up. If you’d prefer, you can also download the app on Google Play (for Android) or the Apple Store (for iOS).
FAQ
Who owns Skillshare?
Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcolm Ong are behind Skillshare. They founded the brand in 2010, and still own it today.
How to open a Skillshare account?
Opening a Skillshare account is pretty simple:
- Go to skillshare.com
- Click on “Get started for free”
- Enter your email address or use your Google or Facebook account
You will automatically be enrolled in the 7 or 30-day free trial, and when that trial ends, your annual subscription will begin and the fee charged to your account.
What are Skillshare Classes like?
Skillshare classes are similar to other online learning courses, consisting of videos, course outlines, and extra features built in to assist in the learning process. Classes vary in length, some are a one-time thing while others are part of Learning Paths, a series of classes to deepen your understanding of a particular topic and its many parts.
Most classes are short and to the point and easy to understand, and they are divided into three categories: Create, Build, and Thrive.
What is Skillshare’s Privacy Policy?
To use Skillshare, they will need to collect certain types of data about you. This includes user data such as your name, postal code, email address, and phone number.
To use the service, they will also need to know your payment information such as your credit card number and billing address. Without this information, you cannot use the service, but that’s understandable.
While you use Skillshare, they will also collect user data like your IP address and browser type, cookie data, and navigation data. This is required so that they can identify you and your browsing behaviors to provide you with more personalized service.
In some cases, third-party providers will be privy to your personal data to provide you with their service (ie. payment processing). Skillshare must collect this kind of data to personalize your content, provide you with features, facilitate participation, and protect themselves against fraud and security breaches.
What is Skillshare’s Refund Policy?
Skillshare offers a 14-day refund policy for its annual membership plans. Since the service offers a 7 or 30-day free trial, those 14 days will start after the payment has been taken on the 8th day. You can cancel any time within those 14 days to stop future charges from taking place.
Since Skillshare takes payments annually, your next payment wouldn’t come out of your account until the following year, and when you ask for a refund, your entire annual membership fee will be credited back to your account. There are some rules around the policy though:
- Only ONE refund per customer
- There will be absolutely no refunds for annual memberships after 14 days
- There are no refunds for monthly memberships
If you purchased your subscription through your Apple account or the Google Play store, keep in mind that you will need to cancel directly with those methods. Canceling with Skillshare only will not mean your subscription is truly canceled. Knowing this will save you from being surprised in the future.
How to Contact Skillshare
Just finished my Skillshare review and still have questions? You can get them answered by contacting the brand directly via email at [emailprotected], live chat online, or by submitting a ticket.
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