Free AI courses for people who build and market websites
What does HDC Academy teach, and what is free?
HDC Academy teaches AI-assisted web development, search and AI search, paid advertising, automations and agency operations. The intro course in every subject is free: you create an account, and it costs nothing and needs no payment details. The standard and advanced levels of each subject unlock individually.
Free, and genuinely free. 6 intro courses. No payment details, no trial that turns into a charge, no card on file.
Paid, and we say so. Standard and advanced levels unlock per course. Nothing auto-renews.
AI-assisted web development
From a first deployed page to a full-stack build you could hand to a client, using AI tools the way a working agency actually uses them.
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Intro Free
Ship your first AI-built web page
You can set up the tooling, build a genuinely good single page with AI assistance, and deploy it to a real URL.
6 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Standard Paid
AI-assisted front-end development
You can build a fast, accessible, multi-page site with AI assistance and explain every decision in it to a client.
14 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Advanced Paid
Back end, integration and deployment
You can join a front end to a working back end, handle auth, payments, environments and CI, and put it live without breaking it.
16 lessons · Planned
See the outline
Search and AI search
Technical SEO and generative engine optimisation, from auditing a real site to getting cited by AI answer engines.
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Intro Free
Audit your own site for search and AI search
You can run a full technical and content audit of a site and turn it into a prioritised, sellable fix list.
8 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Standard Paid
Technical SEO and GEO
You can plan and execute a technical SEO programme, and build the entity and citation layer AI engines read.
15 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Advanced Paid
Content and authority at scale
You can plan a multi-hundred-page content architecture without it becoming doorway pages, and prove it works.
12 lessons · Planned
See the outline
Paid advertising
Google and Meta advertising with the tracking done properly, from a first live campaign to managing real budget.
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Intro Free
Your first campaign, tracked properly
You can structure a small campaign, write compliant ads, and set up conversion tracking that actually reports.
7 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Standard Paid
Google and Meta ads in practice
You can plan, launch, optimise and report a campaign against a cost-per-qualified-lead target.
16 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Advanced Paid
Managing client ad budgets
You can run other people’s money responsibly: compliance, attribution arguments, reporting that survives scrutiny, and knowing when to tell a client to stop.
11 lessons · Planned
See the outline
AI tooling and prompting
The rules-file method: how to turn your own standards into something an AI tool enforces, so quality stops depending on how you feel that day.
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Intro Free
Your first rules file
You can write a machine-readable standard and watch an AI tool hold itself to it.
5 lessons · Open now
See the outline -
Standard Paid
Building your own standards library
You can build and maintain a personal library of standards and skills that makes your output consistent across every job.
12 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Advanced Paid
Enforcement and quality gates
You can build gates that block bad work automatically, so standards hold without you reviewing every line.
10 lessons · Planned
See the outline
AI automations and agents
Practical automation: lead pipelines, enrichment, notifications and the agents that are actually worth building.
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Intro Free
Build your first AI automation
You can build a working form-to-CRM-to-notification pipeline with an AI step in the middle.
6 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Standard Paid
Automations in client delivery
You can automate onboarding, reporting and the chasing that eats your week, without creating a system nobody else can run.
13 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Advanced Paid
Agents that earn their keep
You can judge which agent work is worth building, build it safely, and keep a human gate where one belongs.
11 lessons · Planned
See the outline
Running the agency
Scoping, pricing, contracts, onboarding, delivery and handover: the commercial half of the business, written down.
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Intro Free
The agency starter: scope, price, propose
You can scope a job properly, put a defensible price on it, and send a proposal that answers the questions a buyer actually has.
7 lessons · Open now
See the outline -
Standard Paid
Delivery and quality
You can run a project from kickoff to handover against a documented lifecycle, with quality gates that do not depend on your mood.
14 lessons · Planned
See the outline -
Advanced Paid
Contracts, retainers and client acquisition
You can win work predictably, contract for it properly, and turn finished projects into recurring revenue.
13 lessons · Planned
See the outline
What the three tiers mean
- Intro
- Free with an account. A complete piece of work, not a trailer.
- Standard
- The working method, in depth, with the standards we deliver client work to.
- Advanced
- The hard parts: the edge cases, the failure modes and the commercial side.
No course on this site starts from zero, and every one names who it is not for. Nobody has taken these courses yet, so there are no reviews, no student numbers and no results here. There will not be any until they are real.
While the courses are being built, the template and pricing library is public, free and needs no account at all.
Questions about the courses
Are the AI courses really free?
The intro course in every subject is free. You create an account, there is nothing to pay and no payment details are asked for, and the course is a complete piece of work rather than a preview. The standard and advanced levels of each subject are paid, and we say so everywhere rather than burying it.
Do I have to sign up to see the courses?
To take a course, yes. The lessons, videos and downloads live in the portal and an account is free. The course outlines, the template library and the pricing guides are all public and need no account at all.
What do the three tiers mean?
Intro is free and gets you one real result in a subject. Standard is the working method in depth, with the standards we deliver client work to. Advanced is the hard part: edge cases, failure modes and the commercial side. Tiers sit inside a subject, so you can go deep on one thing rather than buying breadth.
Do I need to be able to code?
For the web development subject, yes, at the level of reading HTML and CSS. The search, ads, automation and agency subjects do not need code. None of the courses starts from zero, and each one says plainly who it is not for.
When do the courses open?
We do not have a date and we will not invent one. They open when the first course meets the standard we hold client work to. People with an account hear first.