Often yes, but North Carolina is the one state on this site where we won't give you a blanket answer, because North Carolina doesn't have one.
Online defensive driving courses for North Carolina are widely available and widely used, with providers holding approvals at the county level. But whether an online certificate satisfies your obligation depends on who's asking for it. A court that agreed to dismiss or reduce your ticket sets its own terms, including format. The DMV's point-reduction path and its clinic have their own requirements. There is no statewide statement that every online course counts everywhere, so the confirmation step isn't caution theater, it's the actual system.
The good news: it's one question, asked once. Whoever required the course, court clerk or DMV, tell them which course you intend to take and ask whether it qualifies, and get the course length requirement in the same breath: 4 hours if your case sits in Wake or Guilford county, 8 hours anywhere else. The wrong format or the wrong length is the same wasted receipt.
And before any of that, make sure a course is even your best move; for most first NC tickets the courtroom PJC does more than any course can, covered on our points page.
Courses we track are compared on the North Carolina page, with pricing on our cost page.