Developer Edition and Pluralsight subscription for free, courtesy of Microsoft

No, this isn’t an April fools joke. Microsoft announced today at the Build conference that they’ve made SQL Server 2014 (and 2016 when it ships) Developer Edition completely free to download for anyone who’s a member of the free Visual Studio Dev Essentials community. The idea is to make it easier for developers to work with SQL Server for their application.

Now that in itself is cool, as it saves $59.95 per Developer Edition license (today’s price on the Microsoft Store), but they’re also throwing in a six-month, completely unlimited subscription to Pluralsight (where we have 140 hours of SQL Server training). That’s worth 6 x $29 = $174 at today’s prices. When they run out of six-month subscriptions, they’ll be giving out three-month subscriptions.

With more than 4,500 courses online to learn from, how can you beat free?

Check out the Visual Studio page to sign up – first come, first served on the six-month subscriptions!

13 thoughts on “Developer Edition and Pluralsight subscription for free, courtesy of Microsoft

  1. I’m guessing they’re getting overwhelmed with responses… my browser just hangs at the activation page after I enter my name, email, etc… and choose the “I agree, activate benefit”. First I thought it might be a browser issue (using Edge, so I launched IE. Haven’t tried Chrome or Firefox yet…

    1. Jokes on me huh? You say it’s not an April fools joke but no browser works with the activation page. :(

        1. Could be a firewall thing. I’m seeing some 404 errors in the console. I’ll try it when I get home and see what happens.

  2. Thanks Paul, this is a great offer!

    Everything worked for me, maybe those first couple of days were just too busy, there are still 6 month pluralsight subscriptions available so to anyone who was having trouble last week, give it a try again now.

  3. I was able to get this to work this past Tuesday afternoon. No issues, just worked :). Yeah to free training! Thanks for the heads up Paul!

  4. recently subscription duration is reduced to 3 months :(..
    still its not bad to have three months free access to industry’s best online training website :).

    1. Don’t know – you’ll need to check the licensing or ask your Microsoft contact – I’m not a licensing expert. My guess would be yes as it’s not production.

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