Preply Review
Preply is a create-a-profile English teaching company based in the USA with English learners primarily from Russia and Ukraine. They specialize in English but they also teach other subjects and have teachers who teach 23 other languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese and Russian. Teachers have to create a profile with a picture, biography, schedule, resume and the subjects you are willing to teach. For example most teachers offer business English, conversational English and TOEIC test preparation classes.
Teachers are chosen by the students themselves, who make their decision based on the teacher’s profile. After the lesson has been confirmed and complete the teacher can give a summary and homework to the student. The student will then be sent a request to confirm and evaluate the lesson, after this the teacher will be paid. For more details click here.
Perhaps the best thing about Preply is that you get to set your own price. So if you only want to work a few hours per week, you can set your price higher, why not ask for $30 or $40 USD per hour. They also have a feature where teachers can find students who are looking for a specific class. Students pay by using Paypal or credit card. Students also leave reviews of the teachers they have had.
Preply gets 1.5 million visitors per month, so you know that there are a lot of students using the website.
Do you teach with Preply? Have you hired a teacher from Preply? Please leave a comment below.
11 Comments
Ela
Preply is extremely bad, it relies on teacher’s desperation to find a job to steal from them 100% of their wages under pretext developing their platform. Very unique business model based on rip off.
Preply Veteran
I’ve taught English for over five years through Preply. Almost from the start I was disgusted with their lack of respect for the teachers and students who use their service. Then the glitches with their site started happening, and never getting fixed, just more and worse.
A couple years ago a student told me she bought 20 hours of lesson credits; her credit card was charged, but she never got those lesson credits. She was dealing with Preply customer support for two weeks before the problem was finally resolved. Then a few months later a similar thing happened with another student.
Now, today, another student is going through the same problem. He has contacted support, apparently they told him he used all those hours. I have contacted support also, forwarding them the email I got from Preply telling me the student bought 25 hours of lessons. But the student doesn’t have credit for this purchase, and only used 6 hours since that purchase, which is clear on my lesson history page at Preply for that student. But instead of resolving the problem they say they’re sorry for the inconvenience and to tell the student to contact them.
I agree with the people who call Preply theives. I could go on forever with a list of reasons to avoid Preply.
But when I looked at the other platforms it seems like most of the other platforms are also pretty bad.
I’ve been getting new students from Superprof for more than a year now, with my profile hidden on Preply. Superprof is great, it’s like the opposite of Preply with their approach to everything. Except Superprof tricks students with their $39 charge, which is a monthy fee, but students seem to think it’s only a one time charge.
Noah
Ever since I applied, I got nothing but a series of ad emails from them. They just place you on a mail list. Wow!
Carl
An absolute rip-off, liars, and run by nothing but kids! I could go on and on about this group of worthless effort, and I could sit here whining like most people will do, OR – we can ban together and contact the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to get some real change inacted. The FTC has shutdown other unscrupulous online schools, let’s see what they can do about this one.
I worked at this joke of a school until June 2020. ANYONE saying anything good about this place could not have! The support team does not answer any question about anything you ask. Instead, they give you some little kid answer and act like YOU are the problem. I’m still waiting (over a month now) for an answer to a simple question about an email ID I had attached to a pay method. Way too difficult and mature to ask the elementary school dropouts they have collecting a paycheck on their so-called tech support staff. The next biggest joke is that they have something called “Tutor Success” that thinks it’s a mediator. You have to be kidding!
My suggestion to the CEO and other thieves at this place: Get a job where you can practice what you know best: watching the grass grow! It’s simple: contact the FTC and let’s get places like this OUT of the US instead of throwing resources at them and acting like they are our friends. Get on social media and tell ALL your contacts (especially the teaching community) about lying, theiving operations like this!
French Teacher
These are thieves. They use all kind of fraudulent activities to fill their pocket while impoverishing both students and teachers.
– Not only they take a huge 33% of each class you teach, worst
– they force students to take 1h trial class hence they force you to give 1 hour trial class, why?
– they steal from you the entire payment of the first class of every new students.
– students are not long term students which means you will end up doing mostly trial classes, getting each time new but not long term students, then putting all your hard work’s earnings in the pockets of these Preply thieves. That’s not it.
– I lowered my trial classes fee to $2, they did hide my account and tried to force me to manipulate the my price for them to profit, and they are shameless because in their rules they said to teachers you are not allowed to manipulate the price while themselves they are doing it extensively.
They know they are thieves so they spend their time lying when you ask questions about their illegal activities. I never seen this level of corruption, these are the worst and they don’t care about what teachers say.
ESL Teacher
Maria, they’ve done it to me and to many other teachers. You can find many teachers flagging this on FB and online. These are deceptive crooks.
Lori
Worked here for 2 weeks, got paid NOTHING. You must give the first lesson for free even though Preply is paid. After a certain amount of work hours they take less than the 33% they start with. It would take over a year to get 50%. Don’t do it…they never even paid me for any of my classes.
Teacher A
horrible and greedy-greedy-greedy!
Kathy
They take all money for your first lesson with every student which is 60minutes and some of the students just come to have their homeworks checked so basically you work for free and they charge a student even more. I set my rate 10$, got nothing and a student paid 13.50$ for our first lesson. So with every student you have one free lesson. They charge 32%, quite a lot, italki takes 15% and they offer you much more options plus you can decide on a price of your first lesson. If a student doesn’t book your second lesson they accuse you that you agreed behind their backs to have lessons with him and ask for explainations.
Maria
Hello. Have you heard about any fraud on Preply concerning Tutor´s payment? Any idea why I cannot withdrawl my money and the suport team doesn´t answer me? Thank you.
Alice
Apart from LearnTalk, I also work at Preply.
Preply is amazing and I get a lot of students from all over the world.
They are not currently accepting teachers though.
It will take some time for anyone to notice you, but If you have experience in teaching, if you can prepare your own materials and if you have a degree in Education, there is a high chance that students will book you. The video is also important because that’s how the students pick you.
They take from 32 to 18% of the payment (if you have had more than 400 lessons there, like me, you will have the lowest commission, which is 18%).
The downside is that the first lesson is free.