Treehouse Review - Is it the right choice for you?

There are lots of great places out there to learn how to code, and Treehouse has been recognized as one of these platforms for a long time. But is it still worth it? Or are there better providers out there?

Find out in this full Treehouse review!

What is Treehouse?

Treehouse is an online learning platform focused on helping you learn how to code. It was founded by Ryan and Gillian Carson in 2011, and has since grown to become a well-known platform with 750,000 monthly visitors and thousands of students.

Let's take a look at what they have to offer:

Courses & Techdegrees

Treehouse's main offering are their courses and Techdegrees. Courses are videos produced by subject-matter experts and available on demand. You typically go through these courses on your own and ask questions in Treehouse's support community if you're ever stuck.

Techdegrees on the other hand are meant to feel more like actual degrees. They usually take between 2-9 months to finish (according to Treehouse) and offer you additional services like technical reviews, weekly office hours & more.

Practice

Treehouse Practice are practice exercises you can use to refine your skills. They typically take only a couple of minutes to complete and help you to understands concepts better by applying them yourself.

Workshops

Workshops help you understand a spefic topic in a short amount of time. They also help you to explore the ecosystem of the language you're learning about. For example, you could take a workshop that teaches you how to automate your work using Zapier, a popular automation tool.

Treehouse controversies

Before going further into this review, I want to talk about an important topic you might want to hear about before buying a course on Treehouse. In the fall of 2021, insider reports became public that Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson had just laid off 90% of Treehouse's workforce without any notice. This came as a surprise to many of the employees, as the company did extremely well in 2020 and now their chief executive officer laid them off because he stated they were running of cash.

Now what does that have do with you? Treehouse employees are the people that build out the curriculum for all courses, answer support questions & form an essential part of the learning experience on Treehouse. In earlier layoffs at Treehouse, there where even reports of students stating their teachers had just been fired, leaving them without their guidance.

All in all, this isn't great news for Treehouse and even though their courses still have a really high quality, I would think twice if this is the type of company I potentially want to give hundreds of dollars to.

Again, this doesn't mean that you Treehouse courses aren't good. I just want to take this with a grain of salt and then see for yourself!

Update May 2022: Treehouse has recently been acquired, which might indicate that things are changing. We'll keep you updated!

Pro & Cons

Treehouse pricing

Treehouse offers 3 different product tiers: Courses, Courses Plus & Techdegrees.

Let's go through each of these options:

Courses

Courses are on-demand video courses taught by subject-matter experts. They include interactive practice sessions as well as access to an online community for students. The price of Treehouses Courses is $25/month.

Courses Plus

Courses Plus is an extended version of Courses that includes everything in courses plus access to additional content and the option to download videos for offline learning. The price of Courses Plus is $49/month.

Techdegrees

Techdegrees are for people that are serious about starting their new career in tech. They include guided learning paths, quizzes & code challenges, an exclusive chat community, weekly office hours and technical review of your projects.

Techdegrees cost $199 USD/month and take between 2-9 months to finish.

Treehouse refund policy

Treehouse doesn't offer a refund period on purchases on the platform. Instead, you can test out their products through a 7-day free trial.

Treehouse for businesses

Treehouse also has a plan dedicated to businesses. This plan gives you access to additional team management tools that help you manage your employee's learning progress. These features include the compass pre-assessment tool, which tests your employees to see at which level they're at, in order to let more knowledgeable employees skip course sections that they already know.

You also get access to reporting & activity monitoring tools that help you figure what your employees are learning and what their level of progress is.

Lastly, you can create customize learning tracks for your team to help them learn the skills that are most important for their everyday work.

Here's an overview of everything you get:

• Track-level assignments

• Advanced admin reporting

• Team management

• Full library content access

• Unlimited custom tracks

• Custom implementation

• Dedicated support specialist

• Compass assessments

The price for Treehouse for Teams is $299/user/year.

Treehouse for students

Treehouse doesn't currently offer a discounted plan for students. If that's what you're looking for, take a look at learning platforms like Codecademy or DataCamp.

Learning & Customer support

Treehouse offers a lot of different support channels. They have a knowledge base for standard questions about your account, as well as an email address you can contact to get additional support with your account.

For technical questions, there's the Treehouse community, where you can ask questions and get help with your technical problems.

If you're part of a Techdegree program, you will also get access to members-only chat as well as technical reviews for your projects.

Certification

On Treehouse, you will receive certificates for completing courses and Techdegrees. You can use these certificates to showcase your newly acquired skills on LinkedIn and other relevant platforms. This is how they look like:

Treehouse courses and Nanodegrees are not accredited, so they will not be recognized by institutions like universities. Still, they can help you prove that you have gone through the program and that you've learned about this topic.

Create a Treehouse account

To create a Treehouse account, click on the "Free trial" button in the top right corner.

Next, select which program you want to get access to. Your free trial will be started for the product you choose here.

Now you just have to scroll down a bit, where you can enter in your personal and payment information. You will be charged after your free trial, if you don't cancel your free subscription beforehand.

Popular courses on Treehouse

Courses

PHP Basics

Get to know one of the most-widely used languages for web development. Learn with Alena Holligan, an experienced software developer with 15 years of professional experience.

Check out the course

Java Basics

Learn the basics of Java with Craig Dennis, an experienced Java developer and mentor.

Check out the course

Creating User Experiences

Learn why good user experience is so important in modern technology and how you can improve user experiences in your projects.

Check out the course

Skill tracks

Front End Web Development

Create beautiful interactive website & web applications with HTML, CSS & JavaScript, Git & Bootstrap.

Check out the skill track

Beginning Python

Learn about Python, one of the most popular programming languages as of today, used for building web applications, servers & in data science

Check out the skill track

Full Stack JavaScript

Learn all the skills you need to build full-stack web applications using JavaScript, like NodeJS, SQL, the fetch API, AJAX, Express & NPM.

Check out the skill track

Treehouse instructors

Instructors on Treehouse are usually subject-matter experts that have worked in the industry and now transitioned into teaching what they know.

One example is Abrahm Overcast, a Treehouse guest teacher focusing on PHP. He has worked in the software engineering space for years and teaches courses like Laravel Basics and Build a REST API with Laravel.

Another example is Chris Ramacciotti, who taught computer science in high schools and worked as a Java web developer in finance before teaching on Treehouse. He teaches courses like HTTP Basics and workshops like Building with Maven.

Summary: Is Treehouse worth it?

Treehouse has been a well-known platform for learning about technology in the last years. They have been trusted by thousands of students worldwide and have provided great results.

Though, the events surrounding the Treehouse CEO last fall have really dragged down the companies reputation. Since Treehouse was acquired a couple of months, ago, I would recommend waiting a couple of months to see if things actually change for the better. In the meantime, there are a lot of great alternatives, which you can check out below.