Essential Educational Resources for Online Business Owners

Often educational resources for online business owners is overlooked when planning for success. Although there is a wealth of resources for online business owners, they’re not a priority. Courses are generally costly, and it’s hard to track the return profit. For this reason, many online business owners often decide not to invest in improving their own and employees skills.

However, one of the most common reasons an established company suddenly spirals downwards is failing to keep up with the industry progress. If your competitors implement new technologies and keep up with industry trends – while you don’t – the outcome is obvious. Constant learning is the key to your growth and your business success.

This guide will explain why you need educational resources and what to look for in a perfect business education platform. We’ll share some of the best educational resources on the market, describe their offerings, pricing, and, finally, their pros and cons. Read on to find the best education platform that meets the needs of your online business.

Why Do I Need an Educational Resource?

Educating yourself and your employees is beneficial for your online business for the following reasons:

• Acquiring in-depth knowledge of management and operational processes helps you run your business efficiently. It can benefit both time management and cost-efficiency.
• Upskilling your knowledge can mean you can do a wider range of tasks within your business.
• Training ensures all your employees have the necessary knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find out about every relevant skill during a job interview. Consequently, some of your employees may lack essential skills for achieving their full potential at work
• When your employees see that you care about them and work alongside them to learn something new, your team becomes stronger
• Hiring and letting employees go because they lack specific skills is costly. It’s better to invest in improving the skills of existing employees than handle turnover costs when employees leave because they don’t know something
• If your team consists of knowledgeable professionals and is run by a good manager, your business is bound to be profitable because of improved performance

What to Consider?

Now that you know why you need an educational resource for your online business, it’s time to search for the most suitable option. However, the feature sets of some platforms may be overwhelming. Here are the main points to consider when making your decision.

Business Dashboard

A business dashboard provides your team members with a handy location to access all resources. Some platforms let you track the learning path of specific employees, create custom training, and more. Explore the features each platform’s business plan includes.

Relevant Courses

Some platforms focus solely on computing technologies, while others offer a wide range of courses for any industry. Ideally, a resource can provide general business management and niche courses related to your industry.

Tutors

Do you want to learn from university professors, celebrities, industry professionals, business coaches? Or perhaps you only need an interface to host your existing employee training, and an e-book library will suffice.

Learning Outcome

Some platforms allow you to get a university degree, while others don’t even issue course completion certificates. Consider whether a qualification is necessary for your situation as it may be costly and time-consuming.

Community Forum

A community forum may be a great bonus. It helps you to connect with other professionals within your field to discuss various topics and share experiences.

Best Educational Resources for Online Business Owners

Below, you’ll find the best offerings on the market to help your team learn and evolve.

Udemy is a platform linking educators and learners from all over the world. Established in 2007, Udemy now boasts over 130,000 courses and 40 million learners. The courses are available in over 60 languages. It offers a wide range of topics to fit any preference, from business analytics to dog grooming. Thus, anyone can find something that interests them, even if there was no plan to learn something specific initially.

So, what are courses like on Udemy? The site features a convenient map, and all courses are divided into categories. Every offer includes a detailed description of the skills you will acquire upon completion, the required knowledge level, and the anticipated learning time.

Once you’ve purchased the desired course, you receive lifetime access to it. In other words, you can re-watch or re-read it any time; there’s no expiration date.

The reason we like Udemy is that it helps instructors as much as it helps learners. Udemy provides teachers with plenty of valuable resources, including information on trending topics.

Of course, some quality checking is essential to sign up as an educator. The best thing is, you can engage with the instructors if you wish to really dive into the subject. Courses are led by industry professionals, most of whom hold relevant degrees and certifications.

At Udemy, learners pay for specific courses before they start attending them. The pricing ranges significantly and may be as low as $15 or exceed a few hundred dollars. However, you should keep an eye on special offers, which aren’t that unusual on the platform.

Sometimes, Udemy offers up to 80% discounts on all courses, with no exceptions. Unlike other educational resources, Udemy does not offer a personal subscription option, which would be helpful for individuals who are constantly learning and would like to try something new every week.

There’s a business subscription available that provides access to over 5,500 courses and actionable learning insights. Additionally, businesses get a branded dashboard and custom URL, and a handy mobile app. It’s a perfect option for online business owners who wish to improve the knowledge and skills of their employees.

Udemy Business is trusted by such enterprise-level companies as Booking.com, Apple, and Adidas. You can choose from two pricing plans depending on the size of your team, either 5-20 users or 21 or more. To get exact pricing, you should request a quote.

Overall, Udemy is one of the best resources for online business owners. It focuses on professional development and is suitable both for individual learning and employee training. At Udemy, you can connect with people within your industry and share your opinions and knowledge.

This platform is not suitable for acquiring university credits, as Udemy courses aren’t accredited by traditional institutions. However, if you’re looking for a platform to develop your skills in a very narrow subject, Udemy is worth giving it a shot. But if your goal is to learn something completely new from the very beginning, you may want to check out other options in our guide.

---

Tutorialspoint is a platform founded in 2014 in India. Unlike Udemy, Tutorialspoint does not offer such a wide selection of course categories. Instead, it focuses on providing online education on computer science, information technology, programming languages, design, management, and engineering. The platform has already been used by over 13 million students and provides 35 million educational pages every month. Tutorialspoint also supports instructors, offering them work either as a freelancer or as a permanent employee.

All courses are hosted by skilled industry professionals and are quality-checked by the platform’s team. In addition, many of the instructors hold relevant degrees or certifications. After registering, users get access to a database of the top instructors to learn. There’s also an option to choose courses by category or specific technology. For instance, you can filter IT courses by Java 8 or Scala instead of browsing all the offers in this broad category.

Apart from online courses, Tutorialspoint provides users access to a library of selected e-books and articles. Some of these resources are meant to help users in resumé writing and other business skills not related to main course topics. There’s also training available specifically for users who need to pass GATE exams. The courses come in different formats, including text and video.

Tutorialspoint offers a pricing plan to fit any need. The pricing of individual courses differs, starting at as little as $5, up to several hundred dollars. Users who want to learn constantly will appreciate the subscription option.

The starter package includes over 1,200 text tutorials and allows you to download and bookmark pages. With the standard package, users also get access to over 300 video tutorials and can receive course completion certificates. The premium plan adds 50 e-books of your choice to the package, in addition to everything included in cheaper packages.

All plans are billed annually and range between $99 and $249. Significant discounts are often available, so you may want to watch for them to get the best deal possible. Business subscriptions are possible, though you must directly contact the Tutorialspoint team to request a quote. A 30-day refund policy is applied to every purchase.

Tutorialspoint is an excellent platform for online business owners to improve their management skills and professionals related to IT, design, or engineering. Different pricing options make the site suitable both for individual learning and team training.

Regardless of whether you wish to study a specific narrow topic or prefer to keep learning non-stop, you’ll likely appreciate Tutorialspoint. A selection of e-books with lifetime access is a great bonus.

Last but not least, although you can’t post purchased tutorials and books online, you can share them within your company. Thus, you may not need to get a business plan if you conduct employee training yourself based on resources from Tutorialspoint.

---

Coursera is an online learning platform that became popular due to its connections with prestigious institutions, including Stanford University, John Hopkins University, University of Michigan, and over 200 others. It was founded by two Stanford professors back in 2012.

The main difference between Coursera and most other online education platforms is that Coursera can provide users with university degrees and accredited certifications. In addition, short courses lasting less than a month are available.

Coursera offers courses on over 5,000 topics and with different outcomes. Some courses are free. Professional certificate courses are meant for users who need to improve a specific skill for business purposes.

Such certificates are a great addition to any resume and serve as proof of acquired knowledge. It’s a great way to educate your online business employees. There are also specialization courses available for professionals already working within an industry but not looking for a certificate.

Guided projects are an even faster way to acquire new skills. With the help of interactive lessons from a subject matter expert, you can start using the new skill in a few hours. Finally, degree courses allow users to get an actual university degree online.

Apart from individual learning, Coursera is also suitable for business training. Companies use the platform to build a data-driven, digitally fluent workspace, deliver on strategic business goals by developing critical skills, and realize the full value of technology investments. Coursera is trusted by such businesses as Loreal, Signify, and Danone.

Last but not least, Coursera provides business owners with essential skills playbooks. It includes a list of top skills required within a certain professional industry. Courses are available in various languages, which is great for online businesses located in non-English speaking countries.

Coursera offers a range of free or inexpensive short courses, as well as certifications and degrees whose cost can exceed $25,000. Unfortunately, the platform doesn’t provide personal subscriptions. Individual users pay for specific courses, but subscriptions are available for businesses. The pricing is relatively straightforward, coming at $399 annually per user.

The Business plan provides access to over 4,000 courses with guided projects, assessments, and quizzes for your employee training. Verified certificates are issued upon course completion. Apart from the lessons, a Business plan gives you access to a user-friendly mobile app and allows tracking the progress of specific users. In addition, enterprise-level companies can request a custom pricing plan.

To sum it up, Coursera is a top-notch educational platform supported by universities worldwide. It’s great for students, professionals, and online business owners. The latter can both develop personal skills in management or analytics and conduct employee training. This helps to significantly improve the overall company performance.

Although the Business plan is quite costly, Coursers provides you a guaranteed high-quality education that can benefit your business.

---

EdX is similar to Coursera because it provides a wide range of qualifications, including university degrees. The platform partners with over 150 institutions worldwide, including Harvard University, Australian National University, and The University of Queensland. The organization was established by MIT and Harvard professors in 2012 and today counts over 2,800 courses and 34 million learners.

EdX offers a wide selection of course categories, from engineering and IT to theology. Most of the courses are accredited and curated by established university professors, though some are guided by individuals working within an industry. You can connect with instructors and other students to participate in discussions. This community support is a great way to get the maximum out of education, sharing knowledge with other industry professionals.

Getting an education while working full time may be challenging, but edX makes it possible. Many of the courses can be learned at your own pace, so you can improve your knowledge without sacrificing all your free time. The course description includes the estimated learning time, pricing, awards, and a list of the skills students should have acquired by the end.

Naturally, some courses have specific requirements that need to be met before enrollment. Most courses are taught in English, though some are available in Chinese, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish. Subtitles may be of great help for video lessons. If you enroll for the verified course track, you can access the materials at any time. However, if you chose the audit track, you will only have access to information for the time stated on the enrollment page.

EdX doesn’t offer a personal subscription, though special pricing plans are available for businesses. To receive information on the pricing and detailed features, you can request a quote. The business plan provides administration and learner dashboards, thousands of courses, and expert instructions for your employees. Individual courses are all priced differently depending on the instructor and outcome. Some courses are free.

Furthermore, even from paid courses, a lot of information can be accessed by anyone, and you only pay if you need a verified certificate. In other words, if you already work within an industry and wish to improve a certain skill, you can do this with directions from top universities entirely free. The platform offers master’s, micro master’s, and micro bachelor’s degrees, professional certificates, and Xseries programs. The latter is a series of niche lessons curated by top universities.

The verdict? EdX is one of the top online education resources both for personal and business use. You can improve the skills required for running your business or provide training to employees. The thing we love the most about edX is that almost all information can be accessed for free. There’s no need to get a certificate if you’re the business owner, and edX allows you to improve skills without spending a dime.

---

Udacity is an online educational platform developed to fit the needs of various users, from individuals to enterprises and governmental organizations. The courses mostly focus on programming, business, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data science, and cybersecurity. In other words, Udacity offers programs in specific niches, as opposed to platforms like Udemy, where you can find just about any course.

The platform was initially created to provide free computer science courses by Stanford University professors in 2011. Overall, Udacity is not a resource for quick basic skill acquisition. Instead, it’s a place for individuals and businesses looking for in-depth knowledge on a specific subject. Udacity keeps the quality bar high, thoroughly checking all programs and instructors.

Udacity offers a range of university degrees and qualifications, though users can skip that if it’s irrelevant to their goals. In addition, the platform is proud of its nano degree programs and free courses that also offer an accredited certification. That’s right – Udacity allows anyone to get certification even with free courses, as opposed to most competitor platforms that require you to pay for any documentation.

Of course, degree programs have specific enrollment requirements. Every course page includes a detailed description of the content and outcomes, estimated learning time, and pricing. In addition, you can connect with professors and professionals within your industry to share knowledge and get answers to the most complicated questions.

The program content can be accessed at any time for 12 months. Afterward, the web page version may become unsupportable. However, you can download the provided information and share it within your company freely.

For businesses, Udacity offers a custom enterprise plan to meet your company’s specific needs. In addition, you can request a consultation to find out which skills are the most relevant to your industry and which programs are best suited for your employees. Naturally, as a business owner, you can also develop your own management and analytics skills.

Udacity enterprise is trusted by such companies as Mazda, BMW, Airbus, Accenture, and many more. Furthermore, you can search for employees on the Udacity job board. The “Graduated Employer” is given upon Udacity course completion and can increase your chances of hiring the best professionals within your industry.

The cost of using Udacity depends on the program you choose and whether you’re using it for business or personal needs. You can get three-month access to courses, projects to work on, project reviews, one-to-one technical mentor consultation, career coaching, and a learning community for under $400.

However, some courses may be much cheaper when purchased alone. We recommend first deciding which program you’re interested in. Then, you can find out which pricing option is better.

To sum it up, Udacity is a niche educational resource for individuals and companies working within the IT and data science industries. It isn’t suitable for a wide range of professionals like other platforms in our listing. However, Udacity can provide the best possible knowledge if you find the programs relevant. The community forum and job board are a valuable addition to the educational functionality.

---

MasterClass is a relatively new educational resource founded in 2015. However, by the time MasterClass came along, such platforms were already quite common, so what makes MasterClass special?

The tutors. This platform has nearly no competition in terms of instructor quality. You learn not only from university professors but also from famous professionals within the industry.

Have you ever dreamt of cooking with Gordon Ramsay or acting with Helen Mirren? MasterClass can connect you with those industry leaders and others, the best of the best to help bring your skill level to theirs.

Another thing that makes MasterClass different is the form of learning. Most of the courses consist solely of video tutorials, but the quality of production is astonishing. You can binge-watch MasterClass just as you would your favorite series. Audio lessons and reading resources allow you to learn on the go. It isn’t just an educational resource but also useful entertainment.

Unlike resources like Udacity that focus on the sciences, MasterClass is more about lifestyle, art, and hobbies. There are courses on writing, sports, gaming, wellness, music, food, etc. However, you’re likely interested in what the platform has to offer for online business owners.

The creativity and leadership course is guided by Vogue magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger teaches business strategy and leadership. TV journalist Robin Roberts is an expert in effective communication; design executives Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein instruct in advertising and creativity.

Investigative journalism is taught by Bob Woodward and sales and persuasion by business author Daniel Pink. If your business is related to fashion design or beauty, you can learn from fashion legends Marc Jacobs, Bobbi Brown, and Diane von Furstenberg. There are plenty of other courses guided by experts famous in their fields.

The pricing model is straightforward. There’s only one individual pricing plan available, coming at $15 and billed monthly. With it, you can get access to all existing and new content on the platform, PDF workbooks, and class downloads.

For businesses, MasterClass offers two pricing plans suitable for small (5-20 users) and larger (20 or more users) teams. To get the exact pricing, you need to request a quote, though the estimated savings are 10-30% compared to individual plans. Business packages are created with the most necessary industry skills in mind.

MasterClass is a resource that’s both useful and fun, suitable for everyone. Business education may be tricky – theoretical information doesn’t always work in real life. But with MasterClass, you can learn from people who have actually built successful businesses.

Furthermore, watching video tutorials is a much more enjoyable way of learning than reading plain text. It’s highly beneficial for team building. Apart from business skills, you and your employees can acquire side skills in your free time. Your team will likely appreciate the chance to learn something new from famous experts.

---

BitDegree is an online educational platform focusing on computer and data sciences, though some design and management courses are also available. It’s used by such enterprise-level companies as Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and Markets Insider.

BitDegree developers claim it’s the first educational platform in the world utilizing blockchain technology. It’s used to keep contents secure, privately issues certificates, and supports cryptocurrency exchange.

The courses are designed to provide users with both theoretical and practical knowledge on desired subjects. Although you can get a degree or qualification, the main objective of this platform is to provide relevant skills. Of course, knowledge that can be used in real life is more important for running a business than a digital piece of paper.

The lessons are very interactive. You can connect with tutors and other students to discuss topics and share knowledge. After the course completion, you can hire professionals for your online business. The platform uses the most up-to-date learning techniques and constantly implements new technologies.

The platform isn’t designed solely for tech enthusiasts. BitDegree offers a range of business solutions to ensure your employees have the necessary skills. For example, you can host all your onboarding materials for new employees in one place. In addition, educational resources and group training help provide everyone on your team acquire relevant knowledge.

Furthermore, BitDegree for business can also be used for client education to familiarize them with your offerings. The content library can be of great help in creating your company’s educational course. However, BitDegree is not a production house for content creation.

Simply put, you can use provided content in addition to your existing information or build a course on your own solely using the content library. But BitDegree can’t build a custom course for you. The platform only provides you with the necessary resources.

BitDegree has a unique payment system. First, many of the courses are entirely free. Others are available for a nominal fee (mostly under $50), though some courses can cost up to $500. The interesting part is the platform allows cryptocurrency exchange between users.

Students may receive BitDegree tokens for educational achievements and use them to pay for additional courses. Advertising and recruitment services can also be paid for using cryptocurrency. Finally, you can opt for up to a 20% discount when paying with BitDegree tokens.

As for the business solutions, BitDegree is quite affordable. Teams with up to 20 admin users can sign up for $49 a month. This pricing plan provides access to unlimited students and student analytics, course builder, assessment management, learning paths, content library, and a designated company page.

For bigger teams requiring over 20 admin licenses, a custom pricing plan is available. In addition, the platform offers a 14-day free trial.

---

Useful for Any Business

To conclude, each of the above-mentioned educational resources for online business owners is great in its own way. The final choice should be based on your online company’s needs and industry. Regardless of which platform you find works best, investing in education is always a good idea. It pays off in the long term and helps to keep your team connected.