Some of these are better than us. Here is which, and when.
You are going to find the free options whether or not we mention them, so we would rather be the ones who told you. Every row below leads with what that option does better than this platform, in the terms its own makers would use.
Compared on 21 September 2026. Prices and course lengths are quoted as they stood that day.
At a glance
Four columns, chosen because they are the things that differ. Everything else — decent teaching, a certificate, video quality — is broadly comparable across this whole list.
| Option | Typical cost | Social depth | Places you first | Change history | UK rules |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Free | ~5 hours | — | — | — |
| Meta Blueprint | Free courses · paid exams | 100+ courses, Meta only | — | — | — |
| Hootsuite | Exam fees, in USD | ~6 hours | — | — | — |
| LinkedIn Learning | Subscription · often free with a UK library card | Broad, not deep on social | — | — | — |
| Coursera | Free to audit · subscription to certify | ~50–80 hours | — | — | — |
| Udemy | Low one-off, frequently discounted | Varies wildly | — | — | — |
| CPD bundles | Low one-off, CPD-accredited | Hours, not depth | — | — | — |
| CIM / DMI | Four figures, all in | Marketing-wide | — | — | — |
| Classroom day | Hundreds to low thousands per day | One day | — | — | — |
| This platform | £19/month or £149/year | 28 modules, 11 platforms | ● | ● | ● |
What each of them does better than us
HubSpot Academy
FreeBetter than us at: A free, polished, genuinely recognised certificate with no payment details required at any point. If you want a credential on your CV this week for nothing, take it — we would.
Where it stops: The social media certification runs about five and a quarter hours across ten lessons. That is one course, not a curriculum, and it teaches social through an inbound-marketing lens.
Meta Blueprint
Free courses · paid examsBetter than us at: First-party, authoritative and free to learn from, with a certificate that carries real weight with employers. Nobody knows the Meta ad platform better than Meta.
Where it stops: Meta properties only, and advertising-led. No TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit or Threads, and organic craft, community and strategy are thin.
Hootsuite Academy
Exam fees, in USDBetter than us at: The best-known standalone social media credential, and it never expires — so there is no renewal cost hanging over you.
Where it stops: Never expiring is also the difficulty: a badge earned in 2019 certifies nothing about 2026. The flagship course is around six hours, and the catalogue now sits behind a login.
LinkedIn Learning
Subscription · often free with a UK library cardBetter than us at: Twenty-thousand-plus courses, certificates that post straight to the profile recruiters actually read, and for a great many UK adults it costs nothing at all through a local library.
Where it stops: It is a general-skills catalogue. Social media is one neighbourhood in it, nothing guarantees a given course reflects this month's specifications, and the certificates record attendance rather than assessed capability.
Coursera specialisations
Free to audit · subscription to certifyBetter than us at: The depth benchmark. The Meta professional certificate runs to roughly eighty hours with an institutional name behind it, university-backed alternatives exist, and you can audit the material for nothing.
Where it stops: Slow and academic — months at ten hours a week — and the flagship social certificate is still a Meta programme despite the general name.
Udemy courses
Low one-off, frequently discountedBetter than us at: Extraordinary value per hour. The best social media courses on it run past thirty-five hours, are genuinely updated, carry a refund window, and cost less than a takeaway.
Where it stops: No quality floor and no enforced freshness. A course last updated in 2015 is still on sale with tens of thousands of enrolments, and nothing on the page warns you which is which.
UK CPD course bundles
Low one-off, CPD-accreditedBetter than us at: CPD accreditation at a very low price, often with tutor support and a refund window — and CPD accreditation is what a lot of UK employers ask for by name.
Where it stops: Recorded once and never revisited, no placement, no personalisation, and the certificate is frequently an extra charge on top.
CIM and DMI qualifications
Four figures, all inBetter than us at: Genuine professional standing. A CIM or DMI qualification carries weight in UK hiring for senior and strategic roles in a way no online subscription does.
Where it stops: Expensive and slow, and the social component is small — CIM's standalone social course is around six hours, and social is one module inside a broader marketing qualification.
A UK classroom training day
Hundreds to low thousands per dayBetter than us at: Focused, tailored to your business, and you can ask a human being a question and get an answer in the room. For a team that needs alignment fast, it is hard to beat.
Where it stops: One day, one shot. There is no follow-up when the next change lands, and you are back where you started — which is why the same providers sell the same day again next year.
The Social Media Academy
£19/month or £149/yearWhat we do that they don’t: Placement across six skill areas that builds your path and marks what to skip; 28 modules from first principles to Head of Social; every platform specification versioned with a public change history; and the UK regulatory layer nobody else teaches.
The catch: It is a subscription, and you still have to do the learning. Nothing here posts on your behalf.
Asked properly, answered properly
HubSpot's certificate is free. Why would I pay?
For a lot of people, they shouldn't — take the free certificate, it is a good one. What it is not is a curriculum. It is a single course of roughly five hours, on one company's view of social, with no placement, no path, and no mechanism that tells you when something it taught you stopped being true. If five hours is what you need, you have just saved £19. If you are trying to get from where you are to running social properly, five hours is not the unit of work.
My library card gets me LinkedIn Learning for nothing.
Then use it — twenty thousand courses for free is a genuinely good deal, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. What a general catalogue cannot do is tell you where you currently stand across six skill areas, order the material around that, or tell you the week a specification you have built work on changes. It also contains nothing about the ASA, the CMA, the ICO or the Online Safety Act, because it is not a UK product.
I can buy a CPD-accredited course for under £50.
You can, and hundreds of them exist. The thing to check before you do is when it was last touched — because the same marketplaces sell social media courses recorded years ago, still listed, still selling, with no indication on the page. One UK provider's course page currently advertises monthly updates while still listing Google+ among the platforms it covers. Google+ shut down in 2019. That is the risk you are taking for the £50, and it is the specific risk this platform is built to remove.
The assessment is free, and so is a whole module
Five minutes tells you where you actually stand across six skill areas. If the answer is that a free course covers it, you will have found that out for nothing — which is a better outcome than either of us guessing.
