The Best Web Development Bootcamps
The demand for web developers continues to rise. The best web development bootcamps can give aspiring devs like you an advantage over the competition. These programs offer more than just the technical knowledge students need to find a job. They also have career services to prepare you for your job hunt.
It’s common for aspiring web developers to apply for their bootcamp of choice with little to no technical skills. The best web development bootcamps are designed to turn novices into professionals in a short amount of time.
What Is a Web Development Bootcamp?
Web development bootcamps are training programs that teach students one or more programming languages along with the soft skills they need to make a career change. These bootcamps train students to write web applications and key software for building websites.
Web development bootcamps provide an alternative to college degrees, usually at a lower cost and in a shorter timeframe. Students can enroll in the bootcamp of their choice, complete the program, and land a tech job all in a matter of months.
The Top 8 Web Development Bootcamps of 2021
The eight best web development bootcamps of 2021 all use career-oriented curricula to teach students one or more aspects of web development. Some focus on different programming languages and frameworks than others, but all will give you the tools you need to succeed in a modern working environment.
Most of these schools usually offer both online and in-person bootcamps, but all of them have moved online until further notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Cost: $17,000 – $25,000 for 16-Week Program, $20,000 – $31,000 for 26-Week Program
- Locations: San Francisco, New York, Online
- Program Types: Full-Time
App Academy offers students the choice between a 16-week and a 26-week immersive course in full stack development.
The 16-week course covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, and SQL. The 24-week course teaches students HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and SQL. In both courses, students learn with a project-based methodology and build a portfolio. Upon graduation, students use their portfolios to show potential employers the fruits of their labor.
App Academy Financing Options
App Academy’s 16-week course costs $17,000 upfront, and the 26-week program costs $20,000.
Students can also choose to enroll under an income share agreement (ISA). ISAs allow students to complete their training without paying until they get a job. Students in the 16-week program pay a $3,000 refundable deposit and commit to paying back a percentage of their income once they get a qualifying job. Students in the 26-week program pay no deposit.
- Cost: $1,950 – $15,995
- Locations: Arlington, Bellevue, Boise, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Oakland, Orange County, Silicon Valley, Tulsa, Online
- Program Types: Full-Time, Part-Time, Self-Paced
Coding Dojo offers students three different ways to take its software development curriculum. Depending on which option students choose, they’ll learn between one and three development stacks. Options include Python, MEAN, MERN, Ruby on Rails, Java, and C# / .NET.
The self-paced option allows students to buy access to Coding Dojo’s 10-week Python program for either two or four months. Online students have the choice of learning one, two, or three stacks in a 16- or 28-week course. Onsite students learn all three full stacks in 14 weeks.
Coding Dojo Financing Options
Coding Dojo offers a few different ways to pay for its bootcamps, including scholarships, ISAs, the GI Bill, and loans.
The Skills Fund loan awards students $13,995 towards their tuition. Students can choose to pay the loan back in either 36 months or 60 months, with the option to defer payment until three months after graduation. Coding Dojo also maintains a pool of funds for students affected by certain economic or social hardships.
- Cost: $14,995 for Full Stack, $3,950 for Front End
- Locations: Nationwide, Europe, Asia, Australia, Online
- Program Types: Full-Time, Part-Time
General Assembly offers a full-time full stack web development course and a part-time front end web development course.
In the full stack course, students start by learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the front end. Next, students learn SQL, MongoDB, and Bootstrap to build data structures on the backend. Students then learn common frameworks like React, Angular, Ember to help them quickly deploy modern sites.
Students in the front end course learn CSS, HTML, and JavaScript without the backend tools.
General Assembly Financing Options
The full-time and part-time programs have different financing options for students to employ.
Part-time students can access loans or installment plans, but they’re also encouraged to ask their current employers to cover the program’s cost. Full-time students can pay with loans or installments as well, but some applicants can also qualify for the GI Bill, tuition discounts, or an ISA.
- Cost: $85,000
- Locations: New Haven, Tulsa, San Juan, Colombia, France, Tunisia, Lebanon, Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru Online
- Program Types: Full-Time
Holberton School offers students a more long-term experience. Students commit 18 months to the program and finish with extensive knowledge in their chosen field.
For the first nine months, bootcamp students start building a foundation by learning C and Python. Students finish their foundational training by building a project using Linux. After the foundations are complete, students can choose to specialize in full stack web development, where they advance their knowledge with tools like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more.
Holberton School Financing Options
Holberton School only offers an ISA option to its students.
The ISA is capped at $85,000, the exact cost of tuition at Holberton. Students at the Tulsa location can add a monthly $1,500 living stipend to their ISA application.
- Cost: $349 for Fundamentals, $1,480 – $1,799 for Front End, $1,880 – $2,292 for Full Stack
- Locations: Nationwide, Online
- Program Types: Part-Time
Nucamp offers inexpensive part-time courses that are just as good as many pricier options.
All of Nucamp’s courses operate with a mixture of self-paced weekday learning and instructor-led workshops on Saturdays. All students start with a fundamentals course, where they learn JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, as well as Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
After completing this course, students choose between a 17-week front end course and a 22-week full stack course. The front end course teaches students Bootstrap, React, npm, React Native, and GitHub. The full stack course teaches students those same tools along with backend tools like Node.js.
Nucamp Financing Options
Nucamp offers students two options for financing: an interest-free fair student agreement (FSA) or a private loan through Climb Credit.
The FSA lets you choose between three payment plans. The most affordable plan costs you $8 per month for the front end program or $10 per month for the full stack program until graduation. The less money you pay during your bootcamp, the more you’ll have to pay later. You’ll pay a maximum of $2,292 over the life of your payment agreement, so you’ll still be paying less no matter which payment plan you choose.
- Cost: $10,350
- Locations: Online
- Program Types: Self-Paced
Springboard offers a self-paced software engineering career track with a job guarantee.
Students pay for access to over 800 hours of video instruction and a one-on-one relationship with a mentor. In this course, students learn the full JavaScript stack, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, and Express. Then students put all of their tools together to build s single-page web app with React.
Springboard Financing Options
Springboard offers a few options for students to finance their career change.
Students can pay monthly installments for however many months they need to complete the program. At $1,150 per month, if students finish the program faster than usual, they could save themselves some money. Otherwise, students can choose to pay $950 per month after landing a job or to take out a loan with Climb Credit.
- Cost: $16,000
- Locations: Nationwide, Online
- Program Types: Full-Time, Flex
Thinkful students learn online with the help of weekly mentoring sessions. Thinkful differs from other options in that it also offers networking events that are more in a student’s neighborhood.
Students in the full-time web development program learn how to build functional pages with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript before moving on to third-party APIs and server-side data structures and algorithms.
Students in the flex course learn the same curriculum over six months instead of five months, while also studying independently instead of in a cohort like in the full-time course.
Thinkful Financing Options
Thinkful students can choose to finance their experience with monthly installments, deferred tuition, a loan with Skills Fund, or an ISA.
Students who choose to defer pay $0 until they’re hired at a qualifying position, then make fixed monthly payments. Thinkful offers ISAs with or without a $1,500 living stipend. Like the deferred tuition option, students pay nothing during the bootcamp, but they commit to paying a percentage of their income once they land a qualifying job.
Udacity
- Cost: $1,116 – $1,596
- Locations: Online
- Program Types: Flex
Udacity is another online bootcamp that offers several short courses called nanodegrees.
The Full Stack Web Developer nanodegree is designed for students with experience in an object-oriented programming language like Python. Udacity recommends inexperienced students take the AI Programming with Python course if they need a place to start.
Students start the full stack course by studying backend development before learning to implement authentication and deploy a product across servers. After graduation, students can continue learning with Udacity’s range of nanodegrees.
Udacity Financing Options
Udacity offers students two payment options. Students have to pay separately for each nanodegree program they take.
Students pay with their choice of a single upfront payment or a monthly payment schedule. The $1,116 upfront payment buys four months of access, and the monthly payments are $399 each. Students can finance the $1,116 flat fee with Affirm. Affirm offers interest-free payments for as low as $93 per month.
Web Development Bootcamp Job Opportunities
A number of different jobs are open to web development bootcamp graduates. The web development job market continues to grow as employers outside of tech hire new workers to maintain their websites.
Below are three of the jobs that students commonly land after graduation.
Front End Web Developer
Many bootcamps offer courses that exclusively teach front end web development.
Plenty of companies are willing to hire developers to work exclusively on the front end of their sites. These developers usually work with the web design team to ensure the UI/UX experience functions as well as it looks.
Full Stack Web Developer
The job market can be fruitful for graduates who add backend skills to their front end knowledge.
Usually, bootcamps teach full stack developers how to build the server-side and client-side functionality of a website. However, new graduates tend to get started in the field by maintaining legacy code. This experience gives new coders a chance to learn the intricacies of a site’s code and its apps before they’re given the freedom to innovate.
Software Engineer
Software engineers build apps for desktop, mobile, and website platforms. Though most of the courses listed above teach students the JavaScript stack, some teach languages like Python and C++, which can be used for apps in any environment.
Software engineers help build everything from video editing software to video games, depending on where they land in the industry. A software engineer with the added expertise of a web developer can help companies with every aspect of a product rollout. Such skills can help you get noticed by future employers.
Why You Should Enroll in a Web Development Bootcamp
Web development bootcamps give students an entry point into one of the fastest-growing fields today. Graduates are entering a field that’s hungry for new talent.
If you’ve been thinking about starting a career building websites like the ones you use every day, you have plenty of bootcamp options to choose from.