Learning to code can be intimidating, and finding the right instructor is vital to having a positive experience. Treehouse offers a variety of classes for beginner and advanced coders, and its built-in tools make it easy to follow along. The website couldn't be simpler to use: You can easily find courses, see your progress, and access the student forum from your dashboard. The forum is a great resource for when you're struggling with a coding exercise and need a helping hand, especially if you've been staring at the same code snippet for a very long time. For these reasons and more, Treehouse is our Editors' Choice pick for paid online coding classes.
(Credit: Treehouse)Treehouse's Pricing and Interface
Treehouse offers a basic plan for $25 per month that includes access to learning videos and student forums, as well as code challenges to test your skills. There's also a $49-per-month Courses Plus plan that includes a few perks and bonus content. Finally, the $199-per-month Techdegree Plan offers a certification. The Techdegree Plan includes a custom curriculum, real-world projects, an exclusive Slack channel, peer reviews, and a proctored final exam. Each offers a free seven-day trial.
For comparison, Editors' Choice pick Codecademy has free basic courses for beginners, but its full library starts at $17.49 per month. Meanwhile, Code Avengers classes costs $29 per month. You can access SitePoint's ebooks library for $9 per month.
If you know you won't be able to log in and work through the class assignments for a while—because of work requirements or taking a vacation, for example—then you can temporarily pause your subscription. Pausing the subscription means you can take a break from classes, and you won't be charged fees until you return. Considering Treehouse bills users monthly, it's nice to have the option to take a break.
Students with valid ID and other supporting documentation are eligible for a discount, and group pricing for businesses and schools is available on request. You can also save money by inviting friends to Treehouse; once five people sign up for full memberships, your account is free for as long as they remain enrolled.
Once you sign up, Treehouse asks about your experience level and what you'd like to build. It then suggests a learning track for you. Throughout the free trial, you receive occasional emails that suggest what to work on next and remind you when your free trial ends. The interface is simple, with your dashboard displaying your progress in each course. The left menu offers easy access to the class listing, forums, account settings, and help from any page.
Your account also includes Workspaces, the development environment where you write code and build projects. You’ll use Workspace during your lessons, but you can also play around with code outside of your coursework. We like that it's incorporated right into the Treehouse website. Other coding courses, such as SitePoint, require you to download a third-party text editor to work on the exercises and don't offer an automated way to check if your answer is correct. Students can have up to 100 Workspaces at a time, each with a storage limit of 50MB.
(Credit: Treehouse)Class Selection, Features, and Help
When you're ready to start learning, you can choose between individual classes or tracks made up of several classes. The track options include Learn C#, Android, Web Design, Rails Development, and PHP Development. Classes, which are listed in the Library tab, include How to Make a Website, as well as a variety dedicated to Ruby, WordPress, and other topics.
Treehouse caters to both beginners and experienced coders. There’s a short, hour-long STEM class targeted toward kids. There are also non-coding classes, such as one on starting your own business or dealing with issues of gender and sexuality. New courses are added regularly; you can see the latest updates on the Treehouse blog.
To start, we selected the Web Design track, which includes 41 hours of coursework. The intro video (which was short and sweet at just over 4 minutes) goes over the HTML and CSS basics. Using it as a guide, you can create a simple website by the end of the class. Beginners will appreciate the pace, but you can skip ahead if you already have coding experience. The videos also come with transcripts.
(Credit: Treehouse)During the video, pop-ups show helpful keyboard shortcuts, as well as what certain code tokens look like, such as the open tag and close tag symbols. After some videos, you're asked to complete a Code Challenge to test what you've learned so far. You earn points for each completed challenge.
After you complete a code challenge, Treehouse checks your work and offers suggestions if you make a mistake. There are also longer quizzes throughout to test your knowledge, though you can skip them. We found the quizzes helpful—not too easy and not too difficult. You earn a badge for each quiz that you pass. Like a video game achievement system, you can compare badges with other users in the community leaderboards.
You can participate in only one track at a time, but you can switch back and forth and resume where you left off. We switched over to Python, a programming language we knew nothing about. In this track, you’ll learn the basics and put together your first small program.
When you choose to take a one-off class from the Library, you can view a video trailer before you begin. Recommended prerequisites are also listed, if applicable. Treehouse no longer offers dedicated mobile apps, but the website works fine on mobile devices. You must be online to complete the exercises and challenges, but Courses Plus subscribers can learn offline by downloading the videos.
(Credit: Treehouse)If you run into problems, you can visit the forums to ask questions and troubleshoot code with other students and instructors. Many competing services, including Code Avengers, lack this feature, but Codecademy, our Editors' Choice pick for free code-teaching services, also offers student forums. You can also get extra help or report a bug by emailing Treehouse support. If you need inspiration, read success stories from students who previously took a Treehouse course.
A Fun Way to Learn Coding
Treehouse offers numerous fun courses, and it's great for beginners. It makes learning a bit of a game, awarding points as it tracks your progress. Treehouse's forums are another high point, where students can get help from other students and teachers. After all, there's nothing more frustrating than not being able to tell why your code isn't working, and it's also helpful to see that you're not the only one struggling. As a result, Treehouse is a complete code-learning package and our Editors' Choice winner for paid coding education.
For more, check out The Best Online Learning Courses.