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Italki is an online English learning platform that provides its users with online one-to-one and group lessons, as well as free practice through its community. Since it has free practices alongside paid classes, Italki is very popular among English learners. As someone who tried Italki, I wanted to inform you about the platform in light of my experience and real user reviews I’ve looked into. I’ve looked into more than 25 thousand reviews on Trustpilot, Reddit, Quora, Play Store, App Store, and Best Language Learning Apps. Through these reviews, I can say there is a great deal of satisfied customers, but the number of disappointed users is very high too. People who liked the platform stated that the platform is affordable and helped them improve their speaking skills.
On the other hand, disappointed users state that the tutors are neglectful and may cancel the classes. When a class is canceled, you cannot get a refund no matter what, and the support system of Italki is not good. In this article, I will share the reviews I’ve gathered from 6 platforms and my experience with the platform.
| My Score | 3/5 |
| Overall Score | 3.1/5 |
| The Best Feature | Affordable Lessons |
| The Worst Feature | They Won’t Refund Your Money No Matter What |
| Materials Used | Not Specified |
| Exclusiveness on Teachers | Not Exclusive |
| Contact With Customer Support | They only support the sales process. They are not available after purchase. |
Through my experience and with the help of the reviews I saw on the internet, I can say Italki’s best feature is it is being affordable. Italki works with more than 10 thousand tutors for English and lets the tutors set prices for their lessons. Therefore, the prices range between 4 Dollars and 80 Dollars. When this is the case, it is very affordable. That is what I thought in the beginning too. However, when something is cheap, it tends to be not very good. That is why when I started to improve my English with Italki, I got one of the cheapest lessons for 8 Dollars, and I was very disappointed. I think because it was cheap, the lessons were not effective. That is why I want to remind you to pay more for something; it sometimes actually means paying less. Be careful with which tutor you choose, and invest in yourself and your journey.
From my experience and the reviews I’ve looked into, I can say the worst feature of Italki is not refunding the money. Even when the teacher does not attend the class, or you have an emergency, you cannot get your money back. When I got my lessons, the teacher did not attend the class, but Italki still did not refund my money. When I talked with customer services, they told me there was nothing they could do. Also, from the reviews I saw, they don’t help you when you have an emergency which I think is very selfish for a platform like Italki to do.
On Trustpilot, Italki users have made more than 12 thousand reviews that resulted in Italki having a rating of 4.7 out of 5. Here, a great amount of the reviews are positive, but I want to stress the negative ones more since I want you to see both sides of the platform. Users who made positive comments praised the platform saying how much progress they’ve made and that it is cost-friendly. However, the users who made negative reviews criticized the platform for its technical issues, customer service not being helpful, and poor quality of tutors. You can see what they said about the platform below:
★★★★★
“Effective, convenient, cost-friendly. Makes private language lessons accessible for anyone since you can select teachers based on rate and can be taken at home online. My son has made so much progress in Spanish since starting 2 weeks ago.” -L J, Trustpilot
★★★★☆
“I am in general satisfied with Italki. However, often when using the Italki classroom, the class gets interrupted. It causes waste of time. Good that there are possibilities to use other communicators.” -Emilia, Trustpilot
★★★★☆
“Great platform for its purpose, but i have some technical issues and suggestions…First of all, the video call classroom never worked properly, the teacher was disconnected all the time and the quality itself can be better. And also it would be great if I could join with more than one device. :)” -Yosef, Trustpilot
★☆☆☆☆
“My problem was never solved , one agent answered me and told he that he will get someone else to help me but I one ever did. I’m not coming back to the platform, I already found a platform that is way better in customer service. Good luck.” -Ksenya Knyazeva, Trustpilot
★☆☆☆☆
“The teacher cancelled the lesson right before our meeting and then sent a link to reschedule in 5 weeks! When I finally reached their support, the company told me I would not be able to get a refund. So I had to file a dispute with my bank and they were able to refund the money.” -Robert Franco, Trustpilot
★★☆☆☆
“I find the website frustrating and unhelpful It does my head in. Just trying to navigate the site is a nightmare.I love my Croatian lessons and my teacher Anđela is very Patient with me and always encouraging.I have no problem with the learning but I do have a big problem with the website, booking lessons and payment.” -Clive Fowle, Trustpilot
★★☆☆☆
“There are many teachers to choose from but they are a bit pricey. First I found a good tutor but they were barely available every week so I needed to find someone else. The second one had their baby on their lap for the whole lesson, and they didn't even let me know in advance. Now, I have paid almost £80 for lessons and I probably need to find a new tutor again. Pfff.. Not so easy to use and definitely I will finish my lessons and I'm not going to use it again.” -DT, Trustpilot
Users ask questions and expect answers on any topic you can imagine on Reddit and Quora. Therefore, a lot of users asked for advice and others’ experiences with Italki to learn more about the reviews. You can see some of them below:
On Reddit, a lot of users wanted to learn about others’ experiences with Italki. I will share some of the questions and their answers:
One user on Reddit asked if Italki is legit.
Another user answered the question saying it is legit but you cannot get a refund and lose your credits if you don’t log in to the platform for a while. This user also stated that their policies are not user-friendly. I believe so, too, since they don’t refund the students no matter what. To me, this shows they don’t care about their students much.
Someone else asked if they should use Italki. The person explained their background and asked experienced users to give them advice. This question got 3 answers. All three answers have one common point: You need to try out a few tutors to find the best. This is because there are a lot of tutors on Italki and it is hard to find a good one among them.
On Quora, there are many questions on Italki, but very few of them are about the platform teaching English. I will share one of these with you. A user asked, “What's your review on Italki?” and the question got two answers. One of them said it is the best site to learn a language and how they benefited from it. Another user warned the user to be aware of Italki not doing a refund.
On Play Store, Italki app has more than 10 thousand reviews and a rating of 3.9 out of 5. Here, users praise the platform for it being helpful and the classes being fun and criticize it for not giving a refund, not caring for its students, and the customer service not being helpful.
★★★★★
“I have been learning on italki for about 6 months now and the investment in time and $ has been worth it. The professors make language learning more fun and relax, so one is more open to speaking, mistakes and all, thus improving one's communication skills and seeing real progress.” -Andrea, Play Store
★★★★☆
“I wish i could give it 5 stars because i really like the app. However, there is something really weird with messages. i send like 10 messages. none of them seem to be sent. i open the app again and i see 5 of them got sent may be. i try to send another message and it doesn't get send. This is really confusing and frustrating when you are having a conversation with someone. i wish u could fix this as soon as possible.” -Google User, Play Store
★★★☆☆
“ITALKI classroom disappointed me. I was very excited to use the recording feature. I had about a 20% success rate. Customer support didn't offer a solution. It would seem like my class was being recorded. When the class concluded, the pop up screen to save didn't appear or it would just spin. I switched to Skype - no problems at all.” -Not Avaliable, Play Store
★★☆☆☆
“The teachers are great. Navigating the website sucks and the FAQs are not very helpful.” -Don Morgan, Play Store
★☆☆☆☆
“Not professional. I send a request for a lesson, the teacher declined the request, they took the money plus an extra amount and they gave me a balance on my italki account to use for another lesson. I don't want a coupon for another lesson. I just want my money back in my bank account. On top of that I was charged more than it was written on the App. I contacted the support and they told me that a third party has charged the extra amount and not them. Anyway, I want a REFUND. Not a coupon.” -Theodora, Play Store
★☆☆☆☆
“Unfortunately italki does not predict someone can have emergency and wont be able to attend the class. I have been literally told that even if somelne dies they would be still charged for the lesson. Very disturbing” -Weronika Formela, Play Store
On App Store, almost 3 thousand people made comments on Italki app, causing it to have a rating of 4.7 out of 5. Here, users complimented the app, saying how it helped them improve their English speaking, and criticized it, saying the app does not work very well and the tutors' attitude towards the lessons and the students. You can see two of the comments below:
★★★★☆
“Pros: I love italki. I didn’t think I would because I’m super anxious and I was worried I couldn’t find a teacher that I would vibe with, but I did! I’m learning Slovenian with this amazing teacher I found (who’s actually from my small hometown there!) and it’s just been amazing. My confidence in speaking has skyrocketed! I’ve even taken Korean lessons on there for a few months and although my interest in Korean has dwindled, it was still really enjoyable. Highly recommend if you can find a teacher you like.
Cons: the italki classroom isn’t the best when it comes to internet connectivity. Sometimes if I enter the classroom before a lesson is slated to begin, it boots me out for whatever reason even though I use an Ethernet cable and my teacher’s connection is good. Sometimes my teacher has connected, but the classroom system says they haven’t, so I have to refresh the page which makes them think I’m late and.. bleh. It’s just unnecessarily stressful. Definitely something that could be looked into more by italki and improved upon.” -meli.jpg, Play Store
★★☆☆☆
“Too many last minute cancellations from teachers with 100% attendance. The concept of italki is fantastic and there are some great tutors out there. I have been using it very happily until…There are a few teachers who are unreliable and don’t show up. Unfortunately italki does not resolve these well. Here’s why: if a teacher cancels within 12 hours, you cannot schedule another class during that timeframe. You have to just wait until it’s over. The teacher does not get penalized in any way, in fact, their attendance rate still shows as 100%. So you cannot filter out the reliable teachers/tutors from the unreliable ones. There should be a “late cancel” option. Furthermore I have a teacher who did not show up, then wrote to me and said “oops I didn’t notice I had a class” yet he didn’t want to mark the class as no show. The class has gone into dispute and I can’t block this teacher who keeps sending me nasty messages because I didn’t accept his request. Italki is good, but this is a very bad way of handling No Shows and Last Minute Cancellations. I have a busy schedule and I want to take a class every day yet due to this unfortunate feature, I cannot. Currently looking into italki alternatives.” -Ssfzz, App Store
On Best Language Learning Apps, Italki is in 7th place among the seven online English learning platforms. Here Italki got 8 reviews and a rating of 6.3 out of 10. among these 8 reviews, only 2 are positive, while 6 are negative. In positive reviews, users talk about how much they liked to practice English with a native tutor and how much it helped them to improve their speaking skills. In Negative reviews, users complain about italki working with too many tutors, wasting time trying to find a good tutor, and the customer support department being persuasive till the sale is closed and not helping after.
★★★★☆
“I had the opportunity to work with a native English speaker. It was an incredible experience for me. I think it improved my English speaking. It's a nice app to speak and practice English, I highly recommend it.” -Serap, bestlanguagelearningapps.com
★★★☆☆
“Finding a teacher is easy but choosing is difficult because there are so many options and one cannot decide which one to choose. As a first time user it was a bit complicated to get around once my class started. It took me a while to find the link to the Zoom search. I wasn't aware that I had to approve it later, so I just confirmed it later.” -Melih, bestlanguagelearningapps.com
★★★☆☆
“It was a very bad experience for me in general, there are many teachers, but too much time is wasted in finding the suitable one, and there is a price difference for the teachers, which adds to the financial burden. In addition, I could not have a conversation with the teacher in English on the subject I wanted, the teacher directs the lesson in his own way.” -Barış, bestlanguagelearningapps.com
★☆☆☆☆
“Before starting the lessons, the support team was very interested in selling the lessons, they were in touch immediately. As my plans changed, I had to cancel some of my classes, and as a result, I had difficulty communicating with the support team. Even though I refunded my lessons, I couldn't get my money back, which is very bad.” -Ömer, bestlanguagelearningapps.com
In my opinion, you don’t need to try Italki because there are better alternatives to it. Even though the platform offers free features and affordable prices, their customer service not being helpful, their tutors canceling the classes without warning, and Italki not refunding even if the class did not take place are enough reasons not to use the platform. To me, a site like Italki should respect and care for its users and show them they do. Since Italki does not, I don’t suggest Italki to anyone. To look into its alternatives, you can visit our website and compare it to other platforms and decide for yourself.
