30 Years of Helping People Learn, and What Comes Next for VTC

We launched VTC, the Virtual Training Company, back in 1996, when online video training was still a new idea. Our goal was simple: make technology education accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

Plenty of you remember those early days. A friendly expert walked you through Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, a network certification or a new programming language, one short video at a time. You might have learned from one of our training CDs, through an online subscription, or in English, French or Spanish. Over the years we built a library of more than 1,700 courses and over 120,000 video lessons covering programming, web development, networking, design, cybersecurity, databases and much more. Millions of learners used them.

So first, thank you. To everyone who learned with us, taught for us or worked alongside us over three decades: you made VTC what it is.

What 30 years taught us about how people learn

Making all those courses taught us something we didn't fully expect. The video was never the whole story.

People learned best when they had other people around them. A colleague who'd already worked out the tricky part. A class going through the material together. A forum thread where someone posted the exact error message you were looking at. A team lead who could say "watch lessons 4 to 7, then we'll talk."

Training content matters, and we're proud of ours. But what turns information into skill is a community: people sharing, asking, helping and building on each other's work. Again and again, the groups that got the most out of VTC were the ones that learned together.

Why we're changing direction now

Three things have changed, and together they convinced us it was time.

AI has changed what software is. For most of our history, if you needed a tool, someone had to build it and someone else had to teach you how to use it. Today you can describe what you need in plain English and have a working app in minutes.

Communities want their own home. Clubs, schools, companies and groups of friends have spent years squeezed into platforms built for someone else's goals. More and more of them want a space they control: their members, their rules, their brand.

Learning has become continuous. Nobody learns a tool once anymore. Learning happens every day, inside the places where people already talk and work.

Put those together and the next step for VTC was clear. Instead of only making content for people to watch, we would give them the place where learning, collaboration and building actually happen.

What's new at VTC

Today, VTC.com is a platform for creating your own social network: public or private, for a community, business, school or organization.

It starts social. Every network comes with the essentials built in: members, feeds, chat and Spaces.

Spaces keep things organized. A network is a Space that can host other Spaces. Create Spaces for teams, departments, classes, clubs or topics, and each one gets its own members, feed and apps.

Apps make it whatever you need. Choose from more than 300 apps, such as Events, Marketplace, Projects, Timetable and Kanban. A community might add Events and Marketplace. A company might add Projects and Kanban. A school might add Timetable and Attendance. It's the same platform with different apps. And apps only bill while they run.

Can't find an app? Describe it. Our AI app builder turns a plain description into a working app for your network. No coding and no developers needed.

Help when you need it. The AI Guide helps you set up your network, find the right apps and get things done.

Pricing is simple. Creating a network is free, and after the first 30 days keeping one costs 500 credits every 30 days. New accounts get 100 promo credits for apps, data and bandwidth, so you can try it properly. There are no per-member fees, so your network can grow as big as your community does.

What happens to the courses

Our training library isn't going anywhere. Today, the original VTC courses, more than 1,700 classic titles from three decades of software history, live on at virtualtrainingcompany.com. If you're an existing user, you keep your access there.

And they're coming home. The legacy courses are coming soon to VTC itself as VTC Legacy Courses, an app in the VTC App Store. Once it's live, you'll be able to add it to your personal section or to a Space, bringing the library right into the places where you and your members already learn and work together. That's exactly the kind of learning we've been talking about.

Some of those courses are now a fascinating time capsule (PageMill and Netscape, anyone?). Many still teach fundamentals that hold up well. Either way, they're part of who we are, and they'll stay available as our legacy library.

EduSlide: built for education

Schools were some of our most loyal customers, so we built something just for them. EduSlide is a VTC spin-off offering private social networks for education at lower pricing, with a curated set of education apps. Students, parents, teachers and staff get a private place to connect, chat, share and organize. Administrators decide which apps people can use.

The spirit stays the same

From the outside this looks like a big change, and in many ways it is. But the mission is evolving and the spirit remains the same: helping people learn, collaborate and build online.

In 1996, we wanted to put a great teacher inside everyone's computer. In 2026, we want to put a whole community, and the tools it needs, in everyone's hands.

Create your network

If you have a community, a team, a class or just an idea, we'd love you to build it on VTC. It's free to create a network, it takes minutes, and there's no network fee for your first 30 days.

Create your network at vtc.com →

Thank you for 30 years. We can't wait to see what you build next.

Mark Vernon, Founder, VTC