Learning with Lynda


Update: Lynda has since been acquired & merged with LinkedIn Learning. Therefore details on this page are no longer accurate. Instead, check out our new LinkedIn Learning platform review.


Quick Description

Lynda.com has trained 4 million people so far with the thousands of courses available in a wide variety of topics. With such a large course library available, Lynda.com is a good resource to use if you’re exploring various options for a career change, building new skills, or are just looking for a productive way to spend your free time.

Topics Taught on Lynda

  • 3D + Animation
  • Audio + Music
  • Business
  • CAD
  • Design
  • Developer
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Photography
  • Video
  • Web

Lynda’s Pricing Options

There are two pricing options:

  1. $19.99/month basic plan: unlimited access to all content.
  2. $29.99/month premium plan: unlimited access to all videos; includes project files to download, and offline viewing lets you download courses on mobile devices.

Pros and Cons of Lynda.com

Pros:

  • Lynda.com has an amazing library of more than 3,000 online learning courses.
  • There’s deep training for advanced software, particularly Adobe products.
  • Video and audio quality is excellent.
  • Instructors are well-vetted.

Cons:

  • No per-video or per-course access (membership is all-or-nothing).
  • There are equally helpful training videos sometimes available – for free – in other places online.

What past students think

Todd S

TODD SQUITIERI

GitHubTwitter

Likes:

  1. There is a variety of courses to choose from
  2. The videos are high quality and easy to follow, especially with the script scrolling as you follow along with the video.
  3. Lynda is connected to Linkedin and will therefore automatically stream your accomplishments on your profile for prospective clients to possibly hire you for some work (this has never happened to me yet, but just the possibility keeps me going as added incentive).

Dislikes:

  1. It’s a little too comprehensive, almost to the point of daunting
  2. Finding the right course can feel like a sort of “hit or miss” game and you may have to go through multiple iterations before you find the right one
  3. It’s expensive compared to other alternatives that might be better. Worth exploring before you commit to Lynda.

Recommended for:

For people who are newbies AND who have a friend/mentor/significant other who has been through Lynda, managed the trenches, and can help make some valuable recommendations to help the newbie save time. Going into Lynda blindly might not be the best approach. 

Patricia Snyder

PATRICIA SNYDER

I’ve been a user for many years and have found the site to be well worth the price. I’ve taken a number of their courses relating to Office 365, Photography, and most recently JavaScript and HTML.  I am currently using Lynda to provide supplemental information while going through Free Code Camp’s full stack JavaScript Web Development track.

Likes:

Lynda’s content is top notch and they have high production standards. They provide detailed information on a variety of programming subjects. While they do cover Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python, C++, Swift, and many other languages, I think their front end web development courses offer the most content.

At this time they have:

  • 31 courses listing JavaScript as part of their course description
  • 52 courses listing HTML
  • 50 courses listing CSS
  • 31 courses listing jQuery

Many courses involve all four of these technologies. They have 138 courses listed under the broad heading of Web Development where, besides the technologies listed above, you can learn about PHP, MySQL, Node.js, web security, UX, MVC Frameworks and many other topics.

A number of the newer courses offer a practice environment allowing the student to follow along with the lectures.

Two of my favorite instructors are Simon Allardice, and James Williamson. Simon is the instructor for JavaScript Essential Training, a course I highly recommend. He is also the instructor for many of the Swift and C based language courses. James covers many of the HTML and CSS courses.

Dislikes:

None

Recommended for:

Lynda is best for self-directed learners who already know the path they need to take and people who have something they want to build and need to quickly learn the technologies to get their project built. I’d also recommend Lynda for people who are going through programs such as Free Code Camp and The Odin Project. These programs can provide them with the path they need and Lynda can provide them with additional information.

richard-b

RICHARD BABIARZ

I’ve used Lynda to either learn or brush up on a number of topics, including UX and Web process, HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, and AfterEffects. I plan to go back to it to learn Premiere and more web technology.

Likes:

Lynda’s UX offerings rival top resources like Smashing magazine and newer ones out there.

It’s definitely the “Mall of the Americas” of online training due to the huge variety of topics and supplemental support and instructors. While I haven’t used a large variety of online training, Lynda is also the easiest to use in my experience. You can easily download videos and project files. Like other sources, each course can depend on the instructor but most are top-notch.

Lynda’s main advantage is the one stop shop. They may struggle as more nimble sites perfect fewer offerings to further advance the build-real-world-projects-while-learning business model.

Dislikes:

Lynda has (or used to anyway…been awhile for me) tier pricing based on access to project files. I think there could be just one price personally.

I think newer sites like Treehouse and One Month are competing by offering fewer topics that are more real-time in nature and, perhaps, a tad higher in their tone of relevancy.

Also, I don’t think Lynda updates quite as often as maybe some of the more specialized sites like Treehouse. Again, this may have improved in the last 6 months since I’ve used them.

Recommended for:

I’d say Lynda offers the most incentives for students and anyone new to media production or new to one particular technology. This category includes students and anyone mid-career change.

While advanced offerings exist on Lynda, I think by that point, subscribers are attracted to other options out there. Again, I’ve only tried Coursera, Lynda, and now Treehouse, so my experience is limited. Above all, right now you can’t beat the volume of topics on Lynda. That is where they stand out.

Tl;dr on Lynda.com

Self-directed visual learners will enjoy discovering new videos on a wide variety of topics on Lynda.com. But those who prefer hands-on activities (or get distracted easily) won’t be as successful.