CreativeLive is an online learning platform offering courses in creative skills, writing, photography, design, and related topics. This page collects verified shopper ratings and reviews to help you decide if the course selection and subscription model are right for your learning goals.
CreativeLive Reviews
What Shoppers Say About CreativeLive
CreativeLive has a divided customer base. Loyal long-term subscribers praise the instructor quality, professional production standards, and broad course selection across many subjects. However, a substantial portion of recent reviewers report serious problems: outdated course content (particularly software training from 2015 or earlier), technical website issues with slow loading times, aggressive automatic trial enrollment practices, and poor customer service interactions. Many shoppers feel the shift to a subscription model devalued their previous purchases, and complain that new courses are rarely added and older courses go unrefreshed.
The platform's rating reflects this polarization, with nearly half of reviewers giving it one star while about a third give five stars. Common frustrations center on the mismatch between subscription costs and content freshness, technical performance problems, and unclear trial terms. Shoppers seeking current software training or frequently updated material report disappointment, while those who enrolled years ago and value the course library remain satisfied.
Customer Reviews (13)
Sorted by: Most recentI would give them zero stars if I could. Their customer service is absolutely terrible. The person I was emailing with was incredibly rude and unprofessional. If leadership wants to see what I'm talking about, I'm happy to share the entire email conversation. They were referred to me by a travel industry source, but they've lost my business with how they treat customers.
Absolutely terrible experience from start to finish. I signed up for their trial after purchasing Microsoft Office, and the whole thing was a complete disaster. They automatically enrolled me in a trial that expired almost immediately without me even getting a real chance to explore what they offer. I managed to get support to reset it once, but after spending about an hour on the platform, I decided it wasn't worth my time or money. When the trial period ended, customer service refused to extend it any further. The site is overpriced, the trial period was basically useless, and their support team seems completely out of touch with what customers actually need. If you can't even get a meaningful trial experience, there's no way I'm paying for their service. I cannot recommend this to anyone.
Complete waste of my money. The website constantly has technical issues and everything loads painfully slow. The actual course content doesn't live up to expectations either. I wouldn't suggest this site to anyone looking for quality learning resources.
I've purchased lots of courses over the years and currently have a subscription, but things have gone downhill. The subscription model seemed promising at first, but it pretty much meant all my previous purchases were a waste. The real problem is that they barely release anything new anymore and they don't refresh their older courses. Whatever they do put out is pretty generic and nowhere near the quality and depth of their older offerings. I'm canceling my subscription because I can't honestly recommend them anymore. The company seems to be losing steam. They really could have capitalized during the pandemic to grow their online offerings, but instead they moved in the opposite direction.
This company has serious problems. For one, most of their video content is ancient. Their Photoshop classes, for example, cost about 10 to 11 euros monthly but they're teaching versions from 2015. Plus, there are classes where you literally cannot skip ahead to the next lesson. I switched to Karl Taylor for similar topics and the difference is night and day. His content is current and he releases new classes and workshops regularly.
I've been taking courses here since 2015 and have always appreciated the instructor quality, solid course material, and professional production standards. They offer classes on tons of different subjects, which has been fantastic. I used their courses heavily in late 2021 to help with my writing projects and found them invaluable. The ability to revisit and study specific parts of the videos was crucial for my creative work. Overall, I'm grateful for the learning opportunities they've provided and the wonderful instructors I've had the chance to learn from. The platform has been important to my growth as a creative professional.
I've picked up courses from them over several years, mainly when they're running sales. Lately though, it seems like they're not keeping up with the market. Their new course releases have slowed down significantly, especially in photography where there's barely anything about newer mirrorless cameras or drone work. A lot of their existing courses are pretty outdated at this point. They seem to always be having some kind of sale, which makes me wonder if they're struggling. With all the free content on YouTube now, I wouldn't be shocked if someone ends up buying them out or if they get absorbed into a bigger company.
I've been a customer since the early days and have taken quite a few courses with them. The key is timing your purchases right. When they run promotions, the courses are an absolute steal and the quality is fantastic. I really love that you get access to one free video lesson daily from their catalog through their app. The value is definitely there if you're patient and catch the sales.
This company is frustrating to deal with. They have automatic renewal turned on and they don't even bother sending you reminder emails so you can cancel if you want to. To make matters worse, they charged me twice because of this auto-renewal setup. Now I'm stuck waiting a full week just for customer service to get back to me. Be careful with this one.
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