There are a handful of names that come up every time someone asks for CCNA course recommendations, and Neil Anderson is consistently one of them. His course on Udemy under the Flackbox brand has been around long enough to accumulate tens of thousands of students and a rating that sits near the top of the platform’s networking category. It also costs actual money, which means the question of whether it’s worth it deserves a real answer rather than a summary of the feature list.
I’ve been reviewing CCNA training programs for a while and I’ve gone through a lot of material that markets itself as comprehensive. Some of it is. Some of it isn’t. Here’s where Neil Anderson’s course actually lands.
Who Neil Anderson Is
Neil Anderson is a network engineer and trainer based in the UK who built Flackbox as his training brand. His background is in enterprise networking — real infrastructure work, not just instruction — and that comes through in how he teaches. He’s been creating CCNA content long enough that his course has gone through multiple revisions as Cisco updated the exam, and the current version covers the 200-301 exam objectives in full.
He sells primarily through Udemy, which means pricing fluctuates. Udemy runs sales constantly and the course that lists at $150 or more is routinely available for $15 to $20 during promotional periods. If you’re considering it, there’s almost never a reason to pay full price. Sign up for a Udemy account, wait a few days, and a discount code will find you.
What the Course Covers
The course is thorough. Neil covers the full range of CCNA 200-301 topics: networking fundamentals, ethernet and switching, VLANs and trunking, spanning tree, routing protocols including OSPF, IP services, security concepts, wireless, and the automation and programmability domain. The total runtime lands somewhere north of 30 hours depending on the current version, which puts it in the same range as other serious CCNA video courses.
He supplements the video content with labs built in Cisco Packet Tracer and additional downloadable resources including configuration guides and cheat sheets. The Udemy platform gives you progress tracking, the ability to mark lessons complete, and a certificate of completion when you finish — none of which you get from a YouTube course, which matters for some learners more than others.
What Neil Anderson Does Well
The production quality is noticeably higher than free alternatives. The audio is clean, the slides are well-designed, and the pacing is consistent. If you’ve ever tried to learn from a YouTube video where the audio cuts out halfway through or the instructor starts explaining something and then trails off into an unrelated tangent, you’ll appreciate how tightly Neil’s videos are structured. He prepares his content carefully and it shows.
His explanations are genuinely good, particularly on routing protocol concepts. OSPF, which trips up a large percentage of CCNA candidates, gets a clear and methodical treatment that covers not just the configuration but the underlying mechanics — neighbor relationships, DR and BDR elections, LSA types, adjacency states. He doesn’t hand-wave the parts that are actually difficult, which is more than you can say for some instructors.
The course also works well as a reference resource after you’ve completed it. The structure makes it easy to go back to a specific topic when you’re doing practice questions and something isn’t clicking. That searchability and organization is a genuine advantage over a YouTube playlist, where finding the exact video you need in a library of 100-plus videos is its own small ordeal.
For candidates who’ve tried to self-study from the Official Cert Guide and found it too dense to use as a primary learning tool, Neil’s course is a much more accessible entry point into the same material. The OCG is invaluable as a reference and for deep reading on specific topics, but it’s not designed to be read cover to cover by someone encountering the concepts for the first time. A video course that explains the material conversationally and then sends you to the OCG for reinforcement is a reasonable combination.
Where It Falls Short
The main criticism that comes up consistently in community discussions about Flackbox is depth. On some topics, particularly the ones that have been on the CCNA for a long time and show up on the exam in complicated scenario-based questions, the treatment feels like it covers what you need to know rather than why it works the way it does. For a lot of candidates that’s fine. For the ones who find that shallow coverage doesn’t stick or doesn’t transfer to unfamiliar question formats, it creates gaps.
This isn’t unique to Neil Anderson’s course. It’s a structural limitation of video-based instruction in general — you have a runtime to manage, you have to make choices about depth versus breadth, and the result is that some topics get more thorough treatment than others. The difference between instructors is in which topics they go deep on and which ones they treat lightly. For Neil, the networking fundamentals and routing content tend to be strong, while some of the security and automation material is thinner than the exam weighting might warrant.
The Packet Tracer labs are functional but not extensive. You’ll get enough hands-on time to follow along with the configurations being demonstrated, but candidates who want to develop real troubleshooting instincts — the kind that the simulation questions on the actual exam test for — will need to put in additional lab time beyond what the course requires. That’s true of most video courses, but worth saying plainly.
How It Compares to the Alternatives
Against Jeremy’s IT Lab, which is free and covers the same exam objectives, Flackbox offers better production quality, platform features like progress tracking, and a more tightly edited presentation. Jeremy’s explanations on many topics are more conceptually thorough, particularly on topics like subnetting and spanning tree. The honest answer is that the free option is competitive with the paid one, and the choice often comes down to learning style — whether you need the structure a platform provides or whether you’re comfortable managing your own pace through YouTube. We took a full look at Jeremy’s course in our Jeremy’s IT Lab review if you want to compare directly.
Against CBT Nuggets, which sits at a significantly higher price point on a subscription model, Neil Anderson’s course delivers comparable or better content depth at a fraction of the cost, especially if you catch a Udemy sale. CBT Nuggets has a polished platform and some useful supplementary features, but the content itself has drawn consistent criticism for moving too quickly through difficult material. Our CBT Nuggets review covers that in detail.
Against the Official Cert Guide, the comparison isn’t really fair because they’re different types of resources. The OCG is reference material first and a learning tool second. Neil’s course is the reverse. Using them together makes more sense than choosing between them.
The Gap That No Video Course Fills
Here’s the thing I say about every video course I review, because it’s true about all of them including this one: learning the material from a video course and being ready to pass the CCNA exam are related but different things.
The 200-301 exam tests application and troubleshooting in scenario-based questions that are specifically designed to be difficult if you’ve only memorized concepts. They present situations where multiple answers seem plausible and require you to reason through the details — knowing that OSPF exists isn’t enough, you need to understand what happens when two routers have a hello timer mismatch or why a specific route isn’t being advertised. That kind of thinking develops through practice with questions that work the same way, not through watching explanations of how things are supposed to work when everything is configured correctly.
No video course — not Neil Anderson’s, not Jeremy’s, not CBT Nuggets — closes this gap on its own. What closes it is serious practice exam work, and the resource that comes up most consistently in the community for that purpose is Boson ExamSim. The questions are deliberately harder than the real exam, the explanations are detailed enough to teach rather than just confirm, and the question style genuinely reflects how Cisco constructs the scenarios on the actual test. At $99 it’s an additional cost on top of whatever you spend on a video course, but it’s the part of the preparation that most directly affects whether you pass on the first attempt. Our Boson ExamSim review goes into the full detail of what that experience looks like.
The study stack that makes sense: a video course like Neil Anderson’s or Jeremy’s IT Lab to learn the material, the Official Cert Guide for deeper reading on difficult topics, and Boson ExamSim to develop the exam-ready thinking the test actually measures. That combination covers everything a candidate needs without spending more than necessary.
Who Flackbox Is Right For
Candidates who want a structured platform experience. If progress tracking, a clear curriculum order, and the ability to mark your way through a course matter to you, Flackbox on Udemy delivers that in a way that YouTube doesn’t. Some people genuinely study better with that structure and there’s no shame in it.
People who learn well from a clean, well-paced presentation style. Neil’s delivery is professional and measured. It’s not as energetic as some instructors and not as conversational as others, but it’s consistently clear and well-organized. If you find yourself rewatching sections of other courses because the pacing is chaotic or the audio is inconsistent, this course will feel like a significant upgrade.
Candidates who catch it on sale. At $15 to $20 during a Udemy promotion, the question of whether it’s worth it becomes trivial. At full price it’s a harder argument given what’s available for free.
People using it as a complement to other resources rather than a standalone solution. As part of a broader study plan that includes lab work and practice exams, Flackbox earns its place. As the only thing someone does before sitting the exam, it leaves meaningful gaps.
Who Might Be Better Served Elsewhere
Candidates who prioritize conceptual depth over production quality. If what you care most about is really understanding why things work the way they do, Jeremy’s IT Lab goes deeper on a number of important topics. The fact that it’s also free makes it harder to justify choosing Flackbox over it on content alone.
People starting completely from scratch with no IT background. Flackbox assumes a baseline level of comfort with IT concepts and doesn’t spend a lot of time on absolute fundamentals. If you’re coming in with no prior exposure to networking, you may find the early sections move faster than is ideal. Something like Professor Messer’s Network+ material as a gentler on-ramp before moving to CCNA content is worth considering in that case.
Final Verdict
Neil Anderson’s Flackbox CCNA course is a solid, well-produced option in a crowded field. The instruction is clear, the content is current, and the platform experience on Udemy is more structured than free alternatives. It’s not the deepest course available on every topic and it won’t develop the exam-style thinking the 200-301 requires on its own, but as part of a complete study plan it holds up.
Buy it on sale and pair it with Boson ExamSim and you have a capable and reasonably priced preparation stack. Pay full price and use it as your only resource and you’re probably leaving something on the table. Like most things in CCNA prep, how much you get out of it depends heavily on what you put around it.
