Standalone Product Packaging and Pricing Changes
Each time we enter a new year, we at OffSec take a moment to reflect on what we did in the past, and what changes we can make in the next year to best optimize the student experience going forward. We want to ensure we are continually growing and adapting to our students' needs, and making data-driven decisions. To that end:
- We are removing standalone courses at the 30-day and 60-day levels for all courses. As of March 31st, these package options will no longer be available for purchase. Existing standalone 90-day courses will still be available for purchase.
- We are removing the sale of lab extensions at the 60-day and 90-day levels, for all courses. As of March 31st, these will no longer be available for purchase. 30-day lab extensions will still be available for purchase.
- PEN-200 (PWK) standalone courses will have an immediate price increase to bring them in line with the pricing of PEN-300 and EXP-301. The new pricing as of today for PEN-200 standalone courses will be:
- PEN-200 course + 30-days lab access + OSCP exam $1,149
- PEN-200 course + 60-days lab access + OSCP exam $1,299
- PEN-200 course + 90-days lab access + OSCP exam $1,499
Reason for These Changes
While Offensive Security is very well known for our certifications, we started as, and remain, a training company first and foremost. In fact, our certification business is managed as a community service, not as a profit generator. We see certification as a way to measure your progress and provide validation that you have in fact not only learned the material but that you can put it into practice successfully. The ultimate goal is the knowledge gained from the course – certifications are just a measurement of that knowledge.
Our goal is to ensure we are imparting training in the best and most efficient way possible, so we have been looking into student success rates. Data has shown us that the supermajority of students use more than 60-days of lab time to complete their purchased course. That means the vast majority of students that purchase 30 or 60-day offerings end up needing to buy lab extensions. This is not student-friendly, as it hides the commitment in both the time and money students will be spending in order to complete the course. This current situation is one where students who purchase 30 or 60-day courses as their initial purchase are most likely to spend at least $360 more than if they purchased the 90-day offering from the outset.
In an effort to prevent hidden costs of both time and money we have decided to stop selling standalone courses with 30 and 60-day lab offerings. Going forward, standalone courses will only be sold with 90-day lab offerings. This will allow for more clarity in what will be sold and the effort required to complete the course, as well as help simplify the purchasing decision process by removing options that are not effective. Clarification and simplification of our offers will continue to gain importance as OffSec grows and brings new courses and features to our students.
Additionally, to further simplify the options going forward, the only lab extensions that will be available are 30-day extensions. As a student makes their purchasing decision, it's helpful to consider the cost and benefits of the 90-day course package with a lab extension against a Learn One subscription. Keep in mind that our data has shown that the Learn One subscription is the best value and most successful path to course completion for the majority of students. A Learn One subscription includes an entire year of course access, two exam attempts, additional practice with Proving Grounds, and access to the OffSec Fundamentals program for beginners.
Review the costs and benefits:
| Options: | Standalone$1499Course and lab access for 90-days |
Learn One$2499Course and lab access for 365-days |
|---|---|---|
| Courses: |
PEN-200 PEN-300 EXP-301 |
PEN-200 PEN-300 WEB-200 WEB-300 EXP-301 EXP-312 SOC-200 Updates and new content added regularly |
| Lab Access: | 90-days of lab access 30-days of additional time can |
One full year of lab access |
| Exam Attempts: | One attempt |
Two attempts |
| Proving Grounds Practice: | No |
Year-long subscription |
| Fundamental Content: | No |
PEN-100: prerequisites for PEN-200 SOC-100: prerequisites for SOC-200 WEB-100: prerequisites for WEB-200 |
| Kali Linux Certified Professional: | No |
Included with a learn subscription |
| OffSec Wireless Attacks (PEN-210): |
No |
Included with a learn subscription |
Finally, we are leveling off pricing of the PEN-200 course by bringing it in line with PEN-300 and EXP-301. We have a series of upcoming announcements this year (starting as soon as next week!) about additions coming to PEN-200 to optimize the student experience. We are excited to introduce the features we have been working on and prototyping for some time to all PEN-200 students.
We have made a large number of changes over the last year, and this will continue going forward. Over the last year, we have updated the PEN-200 content to be more representative of modern assessments, updated the OSCP exam to reflect those changes, released new offensive content such as the MacOS Control Bypasses course, modernized the OSCE certification to the new OSCE3, launched content covering defensive topics for the first time ever, released new subscription products, to enable continuous learning, altered all products to better reflect the modern student learning experience, and we have taken steps to help lead students into a space where they are more likely to find success, to name a few.
This rate of change can sometimes be confusing, so we have taken steps to increase communications such as our weekly office hours on our Discord community platform, enabling you to interactively ask questions directly to our management and content developers, as well as our ongoing podcast series and webinars. We will be continuing to optimize, release new material, and listen to your feedback as we go forward into 2022.