When I first decided to write this Shaw Academy review, I had pretty positive initial views on it (which I’ll explain). But as I dug deeper and read some other insights and reviews, I saw a couple of interesting, and controversial things being said.
In this Shaw Academy review, what I want to cover are the following things:
- How this course site works.
- What to expect from it.
- If it’s a legitimate place or a scam.
- The controversies I found.
- And specifically, it’s digital marketing training (making money online), because it’s something I do for a living and often browse other places and sites to see if there’s other good stuff to recommend.
Now for the last thing, if you are someone who is interested in the digital marketing field, I can tell you that based on what I saw, in my opinion, there are better options available and you’ll likely spend less to learn it. But I’ll cover that in more detail later.
A short review and summary of Shaw Academy:
Who runs Shaw Academy?
The main people who started Shaw Academy are James Egan and Adrian Murphy.
What does Shaw Academy teach?
There are wide ranges of subjects taught at Shaw Academy from online business courses to language courses and many more (over 70).
But despite this valuable stuff, my opinion of it is not very high after what I discovered:
My rating for Shaw Academy: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Do I recommend Shaw Academy? It’s mixed.
Had I not done outside research on Shaw Academy, the score would have been higher, but as of now, I have mixed views on this program for numerous reasons and controversies I found and will cover in a moment.
Overall, what I can tell you is that the content quality in the courses is good and has high reviews across the board. On the flip side though, there are certain recurring controversies I found such as hidden fees, a bit of an annoying sign up process, and better alternatives overall.
Alternatives?
In my personal opinion, you can likely get as good if not better courses (for less) in places like Udemy and Skill Share.
And as for digital marketing courses on making money online specifically:
A deeper look at Shaw Academy (the good stuff):
My initial view of Shaw Academy was quite positive (and it still is in certain spots). You can check out the site for free, sign up for a 4 week free trial and draw your own conclusions.
Additionally, you can also check their courses and previews of them, to see what modules of training are provided and basically give you a preview of it:
But from that point, in order to access ANYTHING on the site, I would first need to sign up.
Here’s where my experience with Shaw Academy began to drop a bit:
I tried browsing some of the courses to get a feel of what they teach, specifically in the digital marketing sphere, but any click, anywhere took me to a sign up.
Now I don’t mind signing up to get access to their free trial, but the problem is 2 things:
1) First, I had an annoying time getting through the sign up process. I had to log into my email, reset my password, and then using that new login, get into the site. But that led me to have to check out first (you can’t do the free trial unless you enter your cc info).
I actually have a hard time trusting this kind of stuff because I don’t like entering my CC info in anywhere. I don’t mind making an account (I get that part), but entering in CC info for trials, after my Entre Institute experience is just not something I trust.
2) Second, you actually have to consent to them sending you updates, messages and promotions and while YES, you can elect to opt out afterwards, I have rarely seen signups that require me to check this box to do it. You may not find a problem with this, but I personally do and this is because I don’t like getting SMS alerts from companies:
Let’s address the Shaw Academy controversies:
After having a bit of an annoying experience with the signup process (I didn’t finish it because I didn’t trust having to pay for it until I knew what others were saying), I went to the internet and did some research:
2 particular sources came up that I found very interesting:
Here’s the first source. It’s an Indeed site with people who have been members, share how much they paid (prices range from little to a lot and that’s where you’ll find that proof). Most of the reviews are pretty positive.
Here is the second source. It’s a review of the program and this is where I saw some alarm bell ringing stuff. There’s talks about incorrect billing, overcharging and other stuff I did not like. The reviews in that actual post get into the details of that. Stuff like this:
And that’s 2 of many more (similar) that I saw there. Now I personally cannot comment on the validity of that stuff, but I don’t see why people would take the time to write this, and in plentiful numbers like this if it weren’t the case.
Everyone deserves a fair shake here though, and again if you look at the first source above, there are mostly positive reviews of Shaw Academy.
Conclusions on Shaw Academy:
For me there are 3 bottom lines worth noting:
1) A reputable company should not be this annoying to sign up with or have so many instances of the same kinds of controversies.
2) If there is any doubt about this company (and I have some of them), then there’s more established companies you can trust like Udemy and Skill Share.
3) Again, if your intent is to learn digital marketing, no other program has more value or better training than Wealthy Affiliate. You can actually try Wealthy Affiliate free without entering your phone number, or credit card (and that is something I wish I could do with Shaw Academy).
Those are the 3 main things I wanted to make clear in this Shaw Academy review. You should check out those other sites yourself and draw your own conclusions though.