This article provides a detailed review of the three best schools for unlimited Spanish lessons online: Baselang, SpanishVIP and LingoToGo.
To write it, we dug beneath blogger reviews that provide gushy reviews in exchange for referral fees, cherry-picked testimonials and hyped claims that are not substantiated by facts.
We searched for real feedback by real people on Reddit, TrustPilot, Facebook and Indeed.
Disclaimer: This review is written by the LingoToGo team, so we obviously have a bias. Having said that, we’ve based the details in this article on publicly available and verifiable information.
Baselang
Baselang launched in 2016 and has its operational base in Medellín, Colombia.
As the first company to offer unlimited one-on-one Spanish lessons for a fixed monthly fee, they created a ground-breaking service. It really was a whole new category of Spanish language teaching.
When they launched, they had very high standards for hiring teachers, requiring that teachers had a degree in teaching both Spanish and English. That meant that all of their teachers were bilingual and could understand both languages deeply – a huge advantage when explaining Spanish grammar to their English-speaking students.
And it showed in their student feedback.
They used to publish all their student feedback live and unedited after each lesson. And almost all the feedback was glowing and positive.
Baselang has very slick marketing – a beautiful website, a ton of social media presence and lots of reviews by bloggers.
All that has led to explosive growth.
They now have over 450 Spanish teachers.
But unfortunately, that explosive growth seems to have come at a cost…
They now hire some teachers who only speak Spanish (no English) and have no previous training or experience in teaching languages.
It’s hard to say how this has affected the quality of their service, as no up-to-date information is available.
It seems they no longer publish live and unedited student feedback on their website, as that page has not shown any new student feedback in a long time.
And they do not allow posting feedback on their Facebook page.
It does make you wonder why they stopped publishing student feedback.
Sure, there are plenty of bloggers giving them rave reviews, but it appears that many of these receive affiliate commissions, so they may be more paid advertising rather than unbiased reviews.
As one blogger posted on Reddit:
“I wrote the BlogReview because I would get one month free, and am loving the program. Also if you do use my referral link I get another month free… which kind of sucks for you. So if you do want to sign up message me and we can work out how we both benefit.”
As Baselang has grown so fast, employee satisfaction has suffered too. In 2019, their employee satisfaction rating on Indeed was a solid 4.0. But by 2022, it has dropped to a miserable 2.0.
Some students have posted concerns about exploitative business practices, i.e. low pay on TrustPilot, where over half of Baselang’s reviews are negative.
Apart from what you might think about teacher pay, unhappy teachers cannot give great lessons.
SpanishVIP
SpanishVIP was launched in 2020 and has its operational base in Bogotá, Colombia.
They have a small, very strong team of fewer than 10 teachers.
All their teachers are native Spanish speakers who also speak English. They are professionally-trained language teachers.
All this shows in their student feedback. On TrustPilot, they have a very solid rating of 4.9. (Although some people have complained about their billing practices, customer service and hard-sell tactics.)
On Facebook, they have an even stronger rating of 5.0.
Those are really tough feedback scores to get, and they reflect a group of fantastic teachers.
SpanishVIP offers a package of unlimited group classes, available 24 hours a day during weekdays. This provides incredible flexibility for their students. (But maybe not so great for the teachers’ quality of life.)
The one downside of SpanishVIP, and it’s a big one, is that they do not offer any plans for unlimited one-on-one Spanish lessons. You can sign up for a plan, but there’s a limit on the number of lessons you can take each week.
Their more expensive plans offer “priority scheduling” for weekend classes and in-demand teachers, which suggests that on the cheaper plans, you may have trouble booking lessons on weekends and getting the best teachers.
LingoToGo
LingoToGo launched in October 2021 and has its operational base in Bogotá, Colombia.
LingoToGo exclusively hires professionally-trained language teachers who are fluent in English.
We only hire teachers who are also friendly and fun, because if you’re not enjoying your lessons, you’re not going to learn much. And worse, you’re not going to stick with it.
And all this shows in our student satisfaction.
100% of our students give us a perfect 5-star rating for every single lesson. You won’t find that from any other Spanish school.
And we overhire, so that we always have plenty of teachers available.
That means that you’ll always be able to book the teachers you love at the times you want – seven days a week from 9 AM to 10 PM Eastern Standard Time.
This shows up in our ratings on other sites too:
- LingoToGo has a 5 out of 5 rating on Facebook
- LingoToGo has fantastic ratings on TrustPilot
There’s another aspect to our business that we’re particularly proud of…
We pay our teachers above the market rate, and give them a great working environment.
Why?
Well, the market rate in Colombia is not even close to a living wage. And Colombian culture generally treats employees rather poorly.
We’re just not OK with that.
We’d rather have lower profit margins and treat our teachers right.
As a result, our employee satisfaction on Indeed is 5 Stars.
While we’re proud of the great learning experience that we’re giving our students, it’s even more important to us to give our teachers great jobs and a living wage.
You can try out LingoToGo with one full month of unlimited lessons, completely free. (No credit card required. Offer only available in the Americas and Europe.)
After the free month, you’ll have the option to subscribe to our paid plan for $199 per month for unlimited Spanish lessons. That’s a little more than the competition, but after experiencing learning with our incredible teachers, we’re sure you’ll agree it’s worth it.
So, here’s a summary of how the three leading schools for unlimited Spanish lessons stack up…
Summary
| Baselang | SpanishVIP | LingoToGo | |
| Teacher Quality | Varies | Excellent | Excellent |
| TrustPilot Rating | 3.3 | 4.9 | 5.0 |
| Facebook Rating | Ratings blocked | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Price per month | $149, unlimited private lessons | $129, strictly limited to 5 lessons per week | $129, unlimited private lessons |
| Book the teacher you want, when you want | Has varied widely over time | Pay extra to get preferred booking slots | Always great |
| Indeed Employee Satisfaction | 2.0 | Not rated | 5.0 |
| Summary | Low quality | Not unlimited | Best teachers, best availability, lowest price |
So, come check out LingoToGo…
Learn Spanish fast with unlimited online Spanish lessons.
TRY TEN DAYS FOR FREE
Or, learn more about our unlimited Spanish lessons here.
(10 Day Free only available to students in the Americas and Europe. If you’re outside these regions, check out our offers here.)
