DataCamp

Material is decent and is good for beginners though may be too rudimentary and not applicable for real life projects. However my biggest issue is with their payment renewal system. I had signed up specifically for only a month subscription and was under the impression that after the month was done my subscription would be over. However based on their policy they automatically auto-renew you for whatever period you signed up for (monthly/yearly). Their websites hides this fact and briefly mentions they set it to auto-renewal by default no matter what and they no refund will be given. They say they send an email to all subscribers regarding this policy but none was received. Furthermore, when you realize (like I did) they secretly charged you for 3 extra months without you knowing and try to cancel on their website, you are only canceling for the current month and auto-renewal is still in place. That means you need to read the cancelation careful to cancel the current month subscription and then cancel auto-renewal. This company has decent material but very shady practices. The fact that I cannot even remove my billing information from their platform is another cause for concern. With how shady they are, what is stopping them from secretly billing me again? I would be very careful. 

I got a data camp subscription because I wanted to get better at coding and learn stuff like R and Pandas. Unfortunately it was kind of a waste of time and money. The courses are redundant and don't actually help you build skill-- they hand you all the answers and there is no room to challenge yourself. edX and Rosalind are both free sites that are worth your time. I wouldn't recommend a data camp subscription because it is very hard to cancel: they don't have a customer service phone line, and it was nearly impossible for me to cancel my subscription-- even once I did they over-billed me. 

Pros:
1. It has videos to explain a concept
2. Many concepts are included and explained that not all MOOCs provide
3. It offers certificates to make me motivated to complete the course
4. It offers courses in Phyton and R
5. It has a lot courses that can be choosen from
6. Cheaper than many other MOOCs
7. It offers projects that you can work on after completing several courses
Cons:
1. I don't feel like I was challenged enough
2. Many exercises are too easy and only fill in the blanks
3. Easy forget the concept after finish the course
4. I feel I don't grasp or learn much after the end of the concept
5. Minimal repetition to embed any learning
6. Repetition between the videos and the notes in the exercise
7. The code is half done
8. Not really learning by doing
9. Can just copy paste from the slide lectures
10. Material and testing really is so basic
11. The level of difficulty at Datacamp seems to be below other beginners courses and some of the quizzes/tests could be done simply by copying and pasting from the question (i.e. without having any real comprehension of the material).

Overall, It doesn't meet my expectations on a Data Science Course because I don't feel I learn, know, and understand after completing the course because the exercises were just fill in the blanks from the given instructions. Should have give the customer many challenging exercises where they coded from the beginning to the end without feel being spoon-fed. Customer will remember, understand, and learn more if they are asked to think and code for the solution themselves.

I highly recommend DataCamp for anyone considering R and/or Python for intense data analysis. Whether your interest is related to data you already have and desire to apply statistical analysis properly or your interest is in ultimately becoming a Data Scientist, DataCamp is the way to go. As a Data Manager I've always had the desire to deep dive into analysis but also limited in time to do so. Now that I'm retired I've started that deep dive in both R and Python with the help of DataCamp's instructors. The beginning courses are somewhat easy for experienced programmers, my prior languages were Assembler, FORTRAN, VB, C, C++, and C#. But after the beginning courses the instruction becomes more challenging so I've started the practice of having RStudio or Python open on one screen and DataCamp open on another, this way I can move between screens and use what I'm learning immediately on the data I want to clean and analyze. It slows my progress somewhat in my course work but greatly reinforces the learning experience.

I've tried many different online training options.  Datacamp has the best format for learning, in my opinion.  What I like is, you are introduced visually to some material to learn, then you have to take that and complete some learning exercises before continuing. You always have the option to skip to the solution if you are completely stumped, but if you are serious about learning, you will use all resources you can muster to complete the material on your own.  The points you earn give you an idea of how you are doing.

I don´t know exactly how i got to DataCamp, but seriously, it is one of the best experience i ever made! 

I did some other courses before on pages like Coursera and Udemy, but they are not comparable to DataCamp for 2 reasons:

- DataCamp has the absolut best Price/Value ratio ever. You only pay about 29$ bucks and you can do so much courses as you want for a whole month.

- The courses are build like this: Every course is seperated into 5 moduls - which are seperated into 3 chunks. Each chunk looks like this: You listen to a 2-3 minute video of an instructor who explains some concepts. Then, you have to do 3-4 Code-Challanges were you can put the concepts into praxis - immediately! This is in my opionen way more efficent than just looking hour-long videos on other sides.

By the way: When you are a really activ user, you will get invited to privat groups by DataCamp (together with other Highflyer) to Beta-Test new Courses. But for this, you should get at least 40.000 XP in ~ 30 days.