Mike Holt feature comparison (review 4)

What Mike Holt Is, And What It Isn't

Mike Holt Enterprises sells training. Books, videos, apprenticeship programs, exam prep, continuing education. The content is solid. Mike himself has been teaching the Code for decades and the illustrations in his textbooks are some of the clearest explanations of grounding and bonding you will find anywhere.

But training material and a field reference are two different tools. When you are on a ladder at 2pm trying to figure out if a 20A small appliance branch circuit can feed a dishwasher under NEC 210.52(B)(2), you do not want a 400 page textbook. You want the answer.

This post compares Mike Holt's offerings to Ask BONBON from the perspective of a working electrician, not a student or instructor.

Content Depth vs. Lookup Speed

Mike Holt's strength is depth. His grounding and bonding textbook walks through NEC 250 article by article with color diagrams. His Understanding the NEC Volume 1 and 2 cover practically every article with worked examples. If you are studying for a Master's exam or teaching an apprentice class, nothing else comes close.

The tradeoff is access time. Finding a specific answer in a printed textbook or a video library takes minutes. Searching Mike Holt's website for a specific rule often lands you on a product page, not an answer. Ask BONBON is built for the opposite use case... you type the question, you get the citation and the plain English answer in seconds.

Field tip: keep Holt's grounding book in the truck for the deep dives on service entrance bonding. Keep Ask BONBON on your phone for the quick checks like box fill, conductor ampacity, and receptacle spacing.

Pricing And What You Actually Get

Mike Holt's pricing is course-based. Individual books run 60 to 120 dollars. The Understanding the NEC library with videos runs several hundred. Exam prep packages go into four figures. For a journeyman building a career library, it is money well spent over time.

Ask BONBON is a subscription app. No textbooks, no DVDs, no binders. You pay monthly and you get unlimited Code lookups, plain English answers, and citations tied directly to the NEC article so you can verify everything against your own codebook.

• Mike Holt: best value if you are studying for an exam or running a training program.
• Ask BONBON: best value if you need fast answers on the job five times a day.
• Both together: the combination most working electricians actually benefit from.

Code Edition Handling

The NEC updates every three years. 2020, 2023, 2026. Some states adopt on schedule, others lag by a cycle or two. California is on 2022 CEC based on 2020 NEC. Massachusetts amendments differ from the base Code. Your AHJ has the final word.

Mike Holt releases new editions of his textbooks with each cycle. If you bought the 2020 Understanding the NEC, you buy the 2023 edition separately when you are ready. This is normal for print material but it means your library can get out of sync with the adopted Code in your jurisdiction.

Ask BONBON handles multiple editions in the app. You tell it which edition your AHJ enforces and it answers against that Code. When a new edition rolls out, the app updates. No new book to buy, no old material to throw out.

Where Mike Holt Wins

Honest comparison means calling out what the other guy does better. Mike Holt wins on several fronts and it is not close.

• Visual explanations of grounding, bonding, and ground fault paths. The diagrams are genuinely better than anything an app can render in a chat window.
• Exam preparation. If you are sitting for a journeyman or Master's exam, the Holt exam prep materials are the industry standard for a reason.
• Continuing education credits. Many states accept Mike Holt courses for CEUs. An app does not give you CEU hours.
• Instructor resources. If you teach apprentices or run an in-house training program, the Holt curriculum is built for that job.

None of this is what you need at 2pm on the ladder. All of it is what you need over the course of a career.

Where Ask BONBON Wins

The app is built for one job, answering Code questions fast while you are working. That narrow focus is the point.

Ask a question in your own words. "Can I land two neutrals on the same lug in a panel?" You get the answer, the citation to NEC 408.41, and the exception if one applies. No scrubbing through a two hour video, no page flipping, no search bar that returns 40 product results.

Field tip: when the inspector cites you, pull up the app, read the article aloud, and you either correct it on the spot or you have a professional conversation about the exception. Either way you leave with the answer in writing.

The citations are the key part. The app is not asking you to trust it. It tells you exactly which article to verify against your own NEC copy, which is what every good electrician does anyway.

Bottom Line

Mike Holt is the best training and study resource in the industry. Ask BONBON is the fastest field reference for daily Code questions. They solve different problems.

If you are prepping for an exam, buy Mike Holt. If you are running service calls and need answers in seconds, use Ask BONBON. Most working electricians end up using both, and there is no shame in that. Use the right tool for the job.