About Us
Why We Built Ed Tech Ranking
Choosing an online learning platform used to mean scrolling through a wall of five-star reviews that were either fake, outdated, or written by someone who never finished the course they're rating. We started Ed Tech Ranking because the online education market grew faster than anyone's ability to honestly evaluate it — dozens of platforms now compete for the same learners, and marketing copy alone can't tell you whether a course catalog is genuinely deep or whether a "certificate" actually means anything to an employer. Every platform on this site is tested the same way, scored on the same scale, and written up by someone who actually used it.
How We Test Online Learning Platforms
Our process starts before a platform ever gets a published score. We create real accounts, enroll in courses across multiple subject areas, and work through enough material to form an honest opinion about pacing, instructional quality, and how the platform actually feels to use day to day — not just how its marketing page describes it. We track course catalog breadth and instructor credentials, note how often content is refreshed, and pay close attention to whether a platform's certificates carry real weight with employers or are simply a participation badge. The full weighting behind our numeric scores is public on our Methodology page, and we apply it identically to every platform regardless of size or reputation.
Our Editorial Standards
Nothing on this site is pay-to-play. A platform cannot buy a higher score, a better ranking position, or a more favorable review, and our Disclosure page spells out exactly how our affiliate relationships work and why they never touch our scoring. When we recommend a platform, it's because our testing supports that recommendation, not because of a commercial relationship. If a platform declines to work with us in any capacity, that has zero bearing on whether or how we cover it.
Which Platforms We Cover — and Which We Don't
We focus on platforms with a large enough course catalog and long enough track record to be worth a learner's time and money: names like Coursera, Udemy, Skillshare, LinkedIn Learning, edX, and similar established players. We generally skip platforms that are too new to have a meaningful history, that focus on a single narrow niche with only a handful of courses, or that show clear signs of manufactured reviews and inflated enrollment numbers elsewhere online. If a platform grows into the space we cover, we add it; if an existing platform declines sharply in quality, we re-test and adjust its score accordingly rather than leaving an outdated rating in place.
Meet the Team
Our reviews are written by people who have spent real time inside the platforms they cover — not freelancers assigned a template to fill in. Each review carries a named byline linking to an author page with that person's background and areas of focus, because we think accountability matters: if a review turns out to be wrong or stale, you should be able to see exactly who wrote it. Visit our Authors page to see the full team and what each person specializes in testing.
What "Best" Actually Means Here
We're deliberately specific about what our rankings measure. "Best" on this site always means best against our published criteria — course catalog depth, teaching quality, platform experience, and price relative to certificate value — not a vague popularity contest. A platform can score lower overall on our rating page and still be the right choice for a specific goal, which is exactly why we also publish topic-specific Best Online Courses lists rather than relying on one single ranking to answer every learner's question.
Our Commitment Going Forward
Online learning platforms change constantly — new courses launch, pricing shifts, and certificate programs get restructured, sometimes without much public notice. We treat our scores as living numbers, not one-time verdicts, and we re-test continuously rather than on a fixed annual schedule. If you ever spot something on this site that looks outdated or simply wrong, our Contact page is the fastest way to get it corrected, and correction requests are typically the quickest category of feedback for us to verify and act on.