2024 Altcademy Review: Simple, Affordable And Self-Guided

Altcademy offers four totally self-paced coding bootcamps. The longest, most comprehensive program, which takes up to 49 weeks to complete, covers full-stack development, data science and applied AI. The other three programs feature specific aspects of that curriculum, such as front-end or back-end development.

In my research for this review, I spoke with co-founder Harry Chen, who formerly worked as an instructor for General Assembly. During his tenure, he discovered that most online bootcamps were too cost-prohibitive for potential learners. He launched Altcademy in 2016 with the goal of creating an accessible way to learn programming.

Altcademy offers some of the most affordable bootcamps I’ve seen, especially considering their content and duration. At most, you’ll pay $2,260 for the longest program. To keep costs low, Altcademy runs a tight operation, with three full-time and seven part-time instructors.

On the other hand, Altcademy’s programs lack some of the bells and whistles you’ll find in the more expensive bootcamps. Altcademy positions itself as a platform to maximize self-learning. The coursework is primarily text-based and self-paced, and students mainly rely on a Q&A forum for help during the course.

If they want it, though, learners can pay a bit extra for office hours and career services. I’ll get into the pros and cons of these features later on.

Who’s the Ideal Altcademy Student?

As of April 2024, 1,957 students are enrolled in Altcademy courses, with 1,553 in the full-stack development program, Chen told me in an email. More than 90% of learners are 22 to 40 years old, but Altcademy accepts learners of all ages. The company does not have a screening program; anyone who wants to learn to code can enroll. Total beginners can sign up for Altcademy’s free five-day intro course.

The beginner-friendly program educates learners from a wide variety of backgrounds: Uber drivers, Amazon packers and law enforcement workers, Chen told me. Some students already work in tech and want to enhance their roles. Most reside in the U.S. and Europe, with some in Asia; Altcademy’s live support covers all time zones. Learning materials are offered in English.

Altcademy operates on a cohort model, but students aren’t required to meet any deadlines. The company is currently enrolling for its 89th cohort, which starts in May 2024. Learners get access to a Slack channel where they can meet other students and get quick answers from Altcademy mentors.

Q&A Platform

If you don’t pay for the one-on-one office hours, you can find help on Slack and the in-house Q&A platform. You can use the search function to look through common issues and solutions. Mentors hop in to help when they have time.

The Q&A forum is best suited for brief, technical clarifications rather than in-depth discussions.

Office Hours

If you’re really stuck, though, it might help to talk it through out loud with a mentor. This option is only available to students who pay for the personalized career path add-on. This costs $100 to $270 more, depending on the course, and allows you to schedule 180 to 540 total minutes with a mentor. This equates to about 15 to 20 minutes per week.

Limiting mentor interactions is one way Altcademy keeps its costs down. If you need extra technical help or accountability, you might opt for a provider with more robust programs.

Altcademy allowed me to try out the full-stack development with data science and applied AI bootcamp with the career path add-on. I also explored the program’s free five-day intro to coding course, but below, I’ll focus on my experience with the paid bootcamp.

Overall, I found Altcademy’s platform fairly straightforward and easy to navigate. Upon logging in, I could quickly see my progress, any questions I’ve posted and my activity.

My current courses appeared at the bottom of the page (a bit confusing, but not a deal-breaker).

The activity page showed my progress each day. This feature could be motivating if you want to keep your streak alive. The program seems to particularly suit self-starters who can chip away at learning new skills.

After clicking into my open course, I could view my progress, upcoming assignments, Q&A platform and office hour scheduling. The interface is simple but has everything you need to complete the module.

The program does offer a recommended schedule with links for each topic, but I didn’t find this feature to be particularly useful. Since this is a self-paced course, it would be more helpful to see the estimated completion time for each module, or enter in the number of hours you’d like to allocate each week.

And if you take a break or fall behind, you can’t adjust the deadlines on your own, but Altcademy can reset them on the back end. I could see that causing stress for learners who can’t dedicate as much time.

As for the content itself, I appreciated the friendly approach, and Altcademy truly starts at the beginning. In the first module, I got an overview of the entire course and explanation on how to use Slack, set up Zoom calls, schedule office hours and ask questions properly.

As I progressed through the course, I could see my submitted and upcoming assignments.

The content is almost entirely text, with some videos, photos and GIFs. As Chen told me, this format intentionally matches the way developers learn and research on the job. While I think that’s accurate, and it’s helpful to copy and paste code rather than translate video to text, as not all learners will be suited for text-heavy courses.

Each lesson includes a small exercise. Some are automatically graded, while others receive instructor feedback. Altcademy uses quizzes, guided coding challenges and tutorial labs, and the platform features a proprietary engine where students can write and run their code through automated tests.

Each larger section requires a project, like cloning the Apple website. The assignment page allows me to read through detailed directions, watch an explainer video, download the starter files and walk through the process.

At the end of each lesson, I had the opportunity to rate the content. Chen said that as of April 2024, Altcademy had received 18,685 ratings with an average of 4.75 out of 5. Altcademy uses student ratings to rework its curriculum to address common concerns and critiques.

Altcademy offers four bootcamps, all of which deliver different versions of the same information. As I mentioned earlier, each bootcamp has an optional add-on that allows students to book one-on-one calls with a mentor and access career services.

Front-End Web Development

• Total Upfront Cost: $1,190 regular, $1,290 personalized career path
• Time Commitment: 5-20 hours/week; 12-16 weeks
• Key Competencies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, NodeJS, Bootstrap, object oriented programming, NPM, Git, Loop
• Prerequisites: None
• Locations: Online

The front-end web development bootcamp features three courses: HTML and CSS development, JavaScript programming and dynamic website development. By the end of the program, students will create a front-end website that uses a public API.

Back-End Web Development

• Total Upfront Cost: $1,190 regular, $1,290 personalized career path
• Time Commitment: 5-20 hours/week; 10-13 weeks
• Key Competencies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Git, SQL, Loop, relational databases, frameworks
• Prerequisites: None
• Locations: Online

The back-end web development bootcamp includes 200 hours of material over two courses: Ruby programming and Ruby on Rails. Topics include object-oriented programming, databases, automated testing and model-view-controller architecture. As a final project, learners create a back-end API for a Twitter clone.

Full-Stack Web Development

• Total Upfront Cost: $1,490 regular, $1,760 personalized career path
• Time Commitment: 5-20 hours/week; 28-37 weeks
• Key Competencies: HTML, CSS, Javascript, React, Ruby, Git, NPM, NodeJS, jQuery, command line interface
• Prerequisites: None
• Locations: Online

The full-stack web development bootcamp combines the above two programs, plus an additional course on full-stack deployment. Students also complete a capstone project that incorporates their new skills. Learners come up with their own idea and go through the planning, wireframing and user testing process. Finally, they build and deploy a portfolio-worthy application.

Full-Stack Development with Data Science and Applied AI

• Total Upfront Cost: $1,990 regular, $2,260 personalized career path
• Time Commitment: 5-20 hours/week; 37-49 weeks
• Key Competencies: HTML, CSS, NPM, SQL, Python, Ruby on Rails, command line interface, APIs, object oriented programming, NodeJS
• Prerequisites: None
• Locations: Online

The full-stack development program with data science and applied AI builds on the full-stack bootcamp with three additional courses: Python and automation, data science and applied AI. The curriculum explores data structure, cleaning and manipulating data, data visualization, large language models (LLMs) and prompt engineering. In addition to the full-stack portfolio project, learners use LLMs to create an interactive web application, like a chatbot.

When compared to similar bootcamps around nine months long, Altcademy is relatively affordable. The pricing encourages applicants to go for the comprehensive course, which only costs about $800 more than the cheapest program but includes 740 hours of material.

If you’re wondering how to pay for your coding bootcamp, Altcademy only offers two financing options: an upfront payment and a 12-month installment plan. The checkout page states that most students choose to pay in full, and the payment plan costs significantly more over time. An installment plan for the most expensive course, including the career plan add-on, costs about $970 more than an upfront payment.

The company offers a refund within five days of the cohort start date, but terms apply. Altcademy does not offer a job guarantee, scholarships or deferred tuition.

Upfront Payment	Installment Plan
Costs less Requires one lump sum, which may be unaffordable for some students Accepts major credit cards	Pay over 12 months Costs significantly more Must pay in full even if you cancel or complete the course early

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Altcademy does not track student outcomes data for its bootcamp grads, but the company provided some figures upon request. In all, Altcademy has 1,957 paid learners, and roughly half of them have received certificates for completing their first course.

Altcademy does not have a student selection system—anyone who pays the tuition can access the course materials for life—and doesn’t necessarily gather information about applicants’ goals or current employment. Instead, the company hears from graduates or tracks them on LinkedIn to determine their job status.

Chen told me about 85% of Altcademy grads are employed full time. Some grads use their skills to enhance their current roles, too.

Where Graduates Work

Altcademy’s website features 60 alums, though it isn’t clear if they worked in tech prior to enrolling in Altcademy. Companies that employ these graduates include:

• Morningstar
• YouTube
• Zyda
• BetterUp
• Nudge Labs
• US Daily News
• Binance
• Square
• Ledger

Common Job Titles for Graduates

Alums hold a variety of job titles in tech, such as:

• Product manager
• Product lead
• Application manager
• Front-end developer
• DevOps engineer
• IT technician
• QA analyst
• Fullstack developer
• Ruby on Rails developer
• Back-end developer
• Development lead
• Software engineer
• Javascript developer

CIRR Reporting Status

Altademy is not a reporting member of the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR), which provides an extra layer of accountability in an otherwise unregulated bootcamp market. CIRR members follow a set of standards that dictate their advertising claims, data collection and reporting procedures. They also undergo a third-party auditing process.

Altcademy offers career services to students who upgrade to the career path, though all learners can use their projects to build portfolios. Like the rest of Altcademy’s programming, the career services component is mostly self-driven, as students work through a career module at the end of their bootcamp. The course covers two aspects of the job hunt.

• Market research and profile cleanup: Students look at their local job market, craft professional social media accounts and submit their LinkedIn profile for review.
• Interview preparation: Learners practice technical interview topics, get tips on behavioral interview questions and complete a mock interview.

In my preview of the career module, I appreciated that Altcademy was honest about the potentially “grueling process.” Mentors offer some feedback and guidance, but students are responsible for networking, attending meetups, finding potential employers and researching their interview process. Altcademy offers a job strategy framework, and grads do the legwork.

Altcademy markets itself as an enhanced self-learning platform, and I’d agree with that. Chen taught himself to code and later created Altcademy to simplify that process for self-driven learners. With its relatively low price point, Altcademy could be a good starting point for someone who wants to try out coding or needs a really flexible schedule.

If you prefer more accountability or want hands-on support while finding your first job in tech, Altcademy may not be a good fit for you. Asynchronous learning is not for everyone, and students’ success directly depends on their ability to manage their schedule, stay organized and dedicate time to learning independently.

As an Altcademy student, you’re essentially paying for the course content—an investment that isn’t worth it if you don’t stick to it.

Overall Experience

I didn’t notice any major issues during my Altcademy trial. I found the platform straightforward and the tone of the content simple, friendly and encouraging. Each topic is broken down into a manageable size, and sections end with quizzes or small assignments to cement what you learn.

If you struggle to focus while reading pages of text, though, you may not enjoy the experience.

Ease of Use

I had no difficulty accessing Altcademy’s virtual classroom or working through the material. The first module covers the basics of Slack access, the Q&A platform and necessary tools, making the program accessible to beginners.

However, as a self-paced program, the schedule feature could be improved by allowing learners to choose their own pace, see their allocated time at a glance or add assignments to their calendar.

Service and Support

While I didn’t interact with Altcademy’s support team during my trial, I did explore the Q&A log and Slack group.

Altcademy’s instructors are very responsive, but some learners need proactive instruction and mentorship. If that’s you, you might benefit from a more personalized, intensive program. However, those bootcamps typically cost much more.

What Sets Altcademy Apart

Altcademy’s main selling point is its price. True to Chen’s mission, Altcademy’s courses are more accessible for people who can’t afford to spend $10,000 on an immersive bootcamp.

The platform offers a bit of structure and support to learners who might have given up on learning how to code on their own. That low cost means Altcademy’s bootcamps lack certain features included in more expensive bootcamps, but the company is honest about being a self-learning platform.

As a small operation, Altcademy heavily relies on a few individuals’ involvement and expertise. I only had the opportunity to speak with Chen, but I immediately understood his passion for this project. Although he taught himself to code, he’s since earned an M.S. in computer science from Georgia Tech. His co-founder, David Yang, has worked as a full-time web developer since 2015.