How We Review SQL Courses and SQL Practice Sites

We compare and review SQL courses and SQL practice sites. On each review, we give our verdict and the facts behind it. Here, we explain the method that is the same on every review.

A person who did not write the review reads each fact on the page of the company, and records the source and the date. When we write a number, a price or a product name in a review, we check it against these facts each time we build the page. If the number is not in a fact, we cannot publish the page.

For each site, we say how we know it, in one of four sentences:

• We took it. We did the course or the practice ourselves.
• We audited it free. We used the free part with no payment. Our main check needed no account.
• We used a free account and paid for nothing. We made a free account and used the free part of the site with it. We did not upgrade, start a trial or give a card.
• We judged it from the public syllabus and free preview. We read the public pages and the free part of the site.

We do not buy a paid course to review it.

Where we could not try a feature, we use what the company says. A fact that is only the company's words gets the label "Product's own words". In a fact that mixes the company's words with what we found, the sentence names the company as the speaker, for example "DataCamp says".

We list a strong point for a site where we found something on it that the other site lacks. Where both sites have it, or both lack it, we say that the two sites are the same.

We give a verdict for a type of reader, not a score. We base each part of the verdict on facts that we name, and you can read each fact, with its source and date, at the end of the review. We use what the company says about its own plans and courses, and what we found on its public pages. We do not use the opinions of other reviewers in the verdict.

On a ranked list, we give each course points on a small number of tests, and we print each test on the page. We add the points. Two courses with the same total share a rank. We do not move a course up or down by hand.

On a list of alternatives, we start from the reasons why people leave the site. For each reason, we print a test, and we name the sites that pass it. We list a site only when we found a fact that shows a check on your query. We name each site that we left out, with the first test that it failed or its place after the cap.

We built SQLMaxx Learn. When we compare two sites, or review one site, we do not rank SQLMaxx Learn against them: we show it in a separate box, with one strength and one limit. On a ranked list, we give it the same tests as every other course.

We check each fact again at least every 90 days. On a review of one site, we check the prices again in the 7 days before the page goes live. When a fact changes, we change the page.