Lynda Review - UPDATED Apr 2018

Lynda is an online learning platform offering solutions for individual users, businesses, government bodies, and educational institutions. Its courses are designed to facilitate the development of skills in various domains, including business, software, and technology, as well as creative skills.

The platform has been around since 1995. In 2015, it was acquired by LinkedIn, which allowed it to quickly expand its member base by serving over 10,000 organizations and more than 360 million individual LinkedIn users. In this Lynda review, we explore the quality and diversity of the courses the platform offers and discover how it can help you attain your personal and professional development goals.

Service Overview

Lynda differs from many other learning platforms in that it allows you to gain access to all the content available on the platform for a rather small monthly fee. Thus, instead of paying per course, you get to explore all the courses you are interested in, give up on a course if it is not as useful as it seemed, and move on to something else, without any money wasted in the process.

Apart from offering thousands of top-quality courses and tutorials created by experts in the field of technology, business, design, and various art-related domains, Lynda strives to provide a smooth and enjoyable user experience by offering a range of useful tools and features we will talk about in the Features section of this Lynda review.

You can watch Lynda videos on virtually any device. The platform offers excellent apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, and Apple TV.

Getting Started With Lynda

Once you choose to subscribe to Lynda, the platform guides you toward the courses that best suit your needs and interests. It aids you in your quest for knowledge by offering recommendations based on whether you are considering a career change, want to get better at what you do or wish to create an app or website.

Since it became a part of the LinkedIn family, Lynda introduced learning paths that allow professionals to develop skills and build knowledge from the ground up. Thus, if you have a particular skill in mind, you can choose a path that can help you become a leader, a music business entrepreneur, a cloud developer, and much more. If you just want to upgrade your existing knowledge on a certain topic with a useful tutorial, you can freely browse the courses and pick and choose from Lynda’s vast selection of videos.

Lynda Courses

At the moment, Lynda offers over 6,300 courses and 255,000 video tutorials. The courses cover more than 200 subjects, from 2D drawing to writing. Most of the subjects can be classified into several major categories, based on the learning paths to which they belong. These include 3D and animation, audio and music, computer-aided design, business, software development, education and e-learning, marketing, photography, video, and web design and development. However, Lynda’s database covers a variety of topics that do not exactly fall into the abovementioned categories, ranging from creating blogs and screenwriting to exciting independent panel series like that from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Finally, the platform provides additional resources such as exercise files and assessments. These resources can help you find out what you have learned, whether you have gained the operational knowledge necessary to complete concrete tasks and assignments, and whether there are some knowledge gaps that you should work on.

Lynda Features

We have already mentioned that Lynda offers a variety of handy features to its users and now it is time to look at the most prominent ones. First of all, the platform allows you to track your learning progress and achievements with your learning history. Every time you complete a course, you get a certificate of completion that you can print out, share, and add to your resume. Further, it allows you to create and share playlists that can help you easily organize and prioritize the courses you are interested in. Employers can use playlists to steer their employees in the right direction and maximize training results.

What is particularly interesting is that Lynda allows you to use transcripts and add notes, so you can highlight the most important information you learned in a course. If you particularly like a video and want to watch it again, you can add it to bookmarks and revisit it at any time.

Lynda Pricing

Individual users can choose between two subscription plans: Basic and Premium. The Basic plan starts at $19.99 per month and provides unlimited access to all courses on all devices, as well as quizzes for progress assessment. The Premium plan starts at $29.99 per month and apart from the benefits included in the Basic plan, it includes exercise files and allows you to view videos offline. Subscriptions can be canceled at any time and first-time users can make use of the 30-day free trial.

For businesses, organizations, and academic institutions, Lynda offers custom solutions based on the number of users and training needs.

User Experience & Satisfaction

Generally speaking, users love Lynda. They claim that it is easy to use, offers excellent courses, and makes them feel like they can learn anything. Furthermore, many users note that the variety of topics covered is impressive and that the authors are truly experts in their respective fields. When it comes to flaws, there are several user reviews that point to the fact that sometimes tutorials contain overlapping information. Another problem may be the fact that Lynda has not yet come up with a good way to assess users’ current skill level and help them choose courses accordingly.