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Cpethink vs. CPEDepot |
| The Last Self-Study CPE Website You Will Ever Need (Click for Subscriptions) |
Are you searching for a reputable CPE sponsor to meet your CPE requirements? If yes, you’ve probably come across two popular names: CPE Depot and CPEThink.com.
Both CPE Depot and CPEThink.com are NASBA-approved, IRS-approved, and QAS-registered sponsors, and both have been offering continuing education for almost two decades. So, when it comes to choosing between them, there’s no such thing as the absence of proper approvals or lack of experience.
But, there are several other important factors that you must consider before joining a CPE sponsor. This is especially true as long as the status of your CPA license and your competence are highly reliant on the capacity of your chosen CPE provider.
With that in mind, we’ve created this ultimate comparison between CPE Depot and CPEThink.com. In this post, we’ll compare each of them based on seven vital parameters to help you make an informed decision.
Let’s get started!
We all know that the number of courses and the diverse type of courses play vital roles in choosing a CPE sponsor. Here’s what CPE Depot and CPEThink.com have to offer in terms of courses.
You don’t need to use your CPEThink.com or CPE Depot login credentials to see their offerings. Just visit their sites to check out the courses.
· Number of courses
CPE Depot offers a total of more than 1,000 courses, while the catalog of CPEThink.com offers hundreds of courses. Note that CPE Depot presently offers 172 nano-learning courses.
While these short video courses may be ideal for some accountants, many state accountancy boards don’t accept nano learning as a method to meet CPE requirements. So, if your state accountancy board also does the same thing, they may not be of much help to you.
· Different types of courses
CPE Depot offers self-study courses, webinars, and nano-learning programs, while CPEThink.com offers self-study courses and webinars. So, apart from nano learning programs, both these sponsors are good to go with.
· Membership packages
This is where CPEThink.com stays much ahead of CPE Depot. Let’s see their membership offerings in detail.
CPE Depot offers five types of membership packages: self-study ($149.00), webinar ($149.00), ethics ($49.00 excluding Virginia CPA ethics), nano ($99.00), and all-access ($249.00). If you buy the all-access membership, you’ll get access to all programs for one year.
CPEThink.com offers six types of membership packages according to their duration and the maximum number of credits that can be earned. These include 2-year unlimited subscription ($299.95), 1-year unlimited subscription ($199.95), 1-year subscription (maximum 45 credits for $145.95), 1-year subscription (maximum 40 credits for $129.95), 1-year subscription (maximum 30 credits for $99.95), and 1-year subscription (maximum 20 credits for $69.95).
First, let’s compare the 1-year unlimited and all-access membership of both sponsors. With CPE Depot, you need to pay $49.05 extra to get the same benefits as CPEThink.com.
Second, with CPEThink.com, even if you buy any subscription other than the unlimited ones, you can access all types of courses. From self-study courses (including ethics) to free webinars, you can choose whatever suits your learning style the best.
However, with CPE Depot, if you purchase any membership other than its all-access one, you can access programs available in just one learning format. So, if you want to switch learning formats during any of these 1-year membership packages, then you’ll either have to buy another membership package from it or join another sponsor. Any of these will shoot up your CPE cost to a good extent.
Clearly, CPEThink.com gives much more flexibility than CPE Depot in terms of CPE membership packages. Another benefit of choosing this sponsor is that if you need more credits than what is offered with credit-based packages, you can purchase them at just $7.20 each (with a whopping 20% discount). However, with CPE Depot, no such thing is available.
Both CPE Depot and CPEThink.com offer different coupons using which you can get good discounts on their items. Several third-party websites regularly list both CPEThink.com and CPE Depot coupons.
First, you need to visit those sites to get CPEThink.com or CPE Depot coupon codes. Then, you need to go to your chosen sponsor’s site to avail of the discount. For instance, if you want to use the CPE Depot coupon, first, you need to get the coupon code from one of those third-party sites.
Then, you need to visit CPE Depot and sign in to your account using your CPE Depot login credentials. Finally, you need to choose the courses you want to purchase, and the CPE Depot coupon will be applied during the checkout process.
One benefit of using CPEThink.com or CPE Depot coupons is that they sometimes offer site-wide coupons. This means you can use those coupons to purchase any of the products available on their course catalogs.
Another notable feature of CPEThink.com is its bundled CPE courses. Under this, you can buy bundles of multiple courses at discounted rates right from the CPEThink.com website itself. There’s no need to visit any third-party site to get coupons or discounts.
Here’s what the platforms offer in terms of letting you earn free CPE credits.
· CPE Depot
This is another vital factor that works in favor of CPEThink.com. Although CPE Depot has two sample courses, none of them lets you earn free CPE credits. You either need to have the all-access or self-study membership or buy them for $10.00 each to earn credit.
· CPEThink.com
On the other hand, CPEThink.com has nine sample courses, each of which allows you to earn one CPE credit. You don’t need to have any kind of membership or pay anything to take them. Just register with the platform, and you can access them.
Moreover, the sample courses of CPEThink.com cover different topics, from business management & organization and personal development to specialized knowledge. But with CPE Depot, you can only learn about recent cases and case studies related to accounting fraud.
Therefore, it’s needless to say that CPEThink.com offers huge flexibility in terms of not placing any compulsions on the ability to take its sample courses and earn free credits.
Customer reviews are another vital aspect that helps us get a clear comprehension of the quality of a CPE sponsor. Let’s see where CPE Depot and CPEThink.com stand in terms of this parameter.
· CPE Depot
First of all, no CPE Depot review is available on its own website. Although it has a “Customer Reviews” page, it ultimately redirects you to its Trustpilot page to see the reviews. At the time of writing this article, there were 962 reviews in total, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5.0.
Most importantly, the last review it received was in May 2020. This can mean two things: either it was not able to sell much of its products during this more than two-year time span, or there was not even a single customer who bothered to write a review.
· CPEThink.com
CPEThink.com has a dedicated “Customer Reviews” page where it has got nearly 1,350 reviews with an exceptional rating of 4.9 out of 5.0. And unlike the CPE Depot reviews page, customers regularly write reviews for the CPEThink.com reviews page, with the last review posted less than ten days ago.
This clearly signifies that customers prefer to purchase courses from CPEThink.com and that the platform sells a good number of courses regularly.
Whether you want to take a sample course or purchase something from either CPE Depot or CPEThink.com, it’s a must to register with the providers and create an account. In the context of this parameter, we’ve evaluated the user-friendliness of the platforms.
· CPE Depot
To create an account on any platform, first, you need to clearly understand how to use the website. CPE Depot has five sub-pages under its “Using the Site” section. However, all of those sub-pages have screenshots of the steps you need to complete to complete a particular action, such as buying a membership, taking a course, etc.
While screenshots are useful to learn how to use the site, they’re not as effective as seeing videos. And that’s exactly where CPEThink.com stays ahead of CPE Depot.
· CPEThink.com
CPEThink.com has a dedicated “How to Use” page where eleven videos are currently posted. Each of them thoroughly guides through every step of a process. From seeing a site overview, searching for courses, and buying CPE online to taking CPE courses and exams, taking CPE webinars, and more, it has a video on every important thing.
Naturally, due to the lack of user-friendliness of the platform, the CPE Depot login process seems to be a bit more complex than that of CPEThink.com.
Since pursuing CPE is an expensive affair, it’s very important to ensure that you don’t end up wasting your hard-earned money in the event of any unforeseen situations. Here’s how the refund policies of CPE Depot and CPEThink.com cover their customers.
· CPE Depot
First and foremost, CPE Depot doesn’t have any money-back guarantee. This means there’s no assurance that you’ll get your money returned if you want to cancel your membership or return a course.
The “Cancellation Policy” says that if you individually purchase a course, seminar, or webinar and it gets canceled by CPE Depot, you’ll get a refund. However, it doesn’t mention if it’ll be a partial or full refund.
As per the “Refund Policy,” you’ll get a refund if you initiate the refund request within 30 days of making a purchase. It also mentions that CPE Depot can deny or limit the refund based on individual circumstances.
· CPEThink.com
CPEThink.com offers the best money-back guarantee in the industry. You only need to raise the refund request within 100 days of making a purchase to get a 100% refund. There’s no lack of clarity in terms of how much you’ll get returned or whether or not the refund will depend on the discretion of the company.
When you’re taking offline programs, the importance of customer support becomes quite negligible. However, when you’re taking online programs and that too the expensive ones, the customer support of your chosen sponsor plays a very crucial role.
In fact, the competence of the customer support team sometimes decides whether or not you can get the maximum out of a CPE program or the platform. Here’re brief details of the customer support services of CPE Depot and CPEThink.com.
· CPE Depot
On the “Help” page of CPE Depot, you can raise a support ticket or send an email to the team to get answers to your queries. Although you can also use phone, fax, or mail to contact the team, the support ticket system handles all customer support issues.
· CPEThink.com
With CPEThink.com, you get more channels to contact its customer support team and have your issue resolved. You can use chat, phone (toll-free), fax, and email to contact its support team.
It also has a dedicated “Support” section that neatly lists several activities. From visiting its help desk, seeing how to videos, and logging into your account to password change, password reset, and more, you can quickly perform several activities using it.
That was our ultimate comparison between CPE Depot and CPEThink.com. As you can see, although both sponsors have been in the industry for many years, CPEThink.com stays much ahead of CPE Depot in every parameter.
Nano learning is the only aspect where CPE Depot outperforms CPEThink.com. But as noted earlier, not all state accountancy boards accept this learning method, and hence, we shouldn’t consider it a necessary parameter for comparison. Additionally, a very limited number of CPAs actually choose this method due to its extremely fast-track nature.
In terms of coupons, both sponsors offer somewhat similar benefits. So, you can choose any of them.
In all other aspects of our comparison, it’s evident that choosing CPEThink.com over CPE Depot will be a more cost-effective and more convenient approach to pursuing your CPE.
If you haven’t explored CPEThink.com yet, it’s time to do so. Visit the site today, and see how it helps to speed up your professional growth with complete peace of mind.
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