Is there any difference between courses on Udemy vs on the Tech Explorations website?
There are a few important differences between our courses on Udemy and the Tech Explorations website concerning the course content, the support we provide to students, and price.
Content
For most courses, the content is the same. There are some (very few) courses where the course on Udemy has fewer lectures than the same course on Tech Explorations. This is rare. One example is the course on Udemy "ESP32 for Arduino Makers", a lite version of "ESP32 for Busy People".
Another content difference is quizzes, where Tech Explorations courses may have additional quizzes compared to their equivalent on Udemy.
The best way to know if a particular course has slightly different content on Udemy vs Tech Explorations is to review their course curriculum.
Student support
Apart from the content, an important difference between Udemy and Tech Explorations is the amount of student support we provide.
At Udemy, support is typically done by our Teaching Assistants, usually once per week. Peter only checks private messages on Udemy rarely (if he remembers). Altough Peter wants to communicate with his Udemy students, his workload and the sheer volume of students make it impossible. Further, we have been unable to find knowledgeable individuals to help us provide student support across all courses on Udemy.
On the Tech Explorations website, support for our Community students is continuous and fast via our Community and the help desk. Peter does this himself daily (including weekends, although he's not supposed to), with support from the team. Support is daily to students enrolled in the Community Tier (learn about Solo and Community enrollment tiers).
If you want someone to ask and know that you will get an answer to your question, then enrol on the Community tier on the Tech Explorations website.
Pricing
As you know, Udemy regularly discounts courses to $9.99 - $15.99, depending on where you are. You can get any of our courses at the rock-bottom price. If you are looking for the lowest possible price and don't need any support, go to Udemy (see our list of courses with discount coupons).
This is great for Udemy and for students who don't need support.
However, we can not deliver the kind of supported education we want at the typical Udemy price level.
At Tech Explorations, we usually launch our courses at $15 without support (but with the full Tech Explorations content) and a more expensive option (at around $50) that includes full support. We call these the "Solo" and "Community" tiers (learn more here).
The difference in price between the Udemy version and the Tech Exploration version of our courses is reasonable when you consider the additional content and fanatical support we offer.
Udemy or Tech Explorations
Need help deciding where to purchase one of our courses? This might help:
- If you are looking for rock-bottom prices, are willing to forgo a small amount of content, and don't need support (or are OK with sporadic support), you should choose Udemy. This page contains links that give you the lowest price currently available.
- If you want a course with all available content at a very low price and don't need support, choose the Solo tier enrollment option for a Tech Explorations course.
- If you want a course with all the available content and full student support from Peter, you should choose the Community tier enrollment option for a Tech Explorations course.
If you want to discuss pricing or anything about this FAQ, please get in touch with us via the Help Desk.