Yes, you can get a design review of your schematic, PCB layout, or product enclosure. There are two types of design reviews we offer depending on your plan:

Community Design Review (All Plans)
With the Standard plan, you’ll have access to Community Design Reviews right in our forum. Share your design challenges and receive guaranteed feedback from our expert engineers and fellow community members. It’s a collaborative space where you can get valuable insights in a shared setting.

Private Expert Design Review (Premium Plan only)
As a Premium member, you’ll benefit from Private Expert Design Reviews conducted in a private forum area. These reviews are checklist-based and come with a summary of our findings all in a confidential environment.

Not at all. Many members are not doing the actual design work themselves. Instead, they use the Academy to get expert feedback on the work being done by their engineers or contractors.

You can use the design reviews and private support to oversee your team, catch issues early, and make sure you are getting high-quality results without needing to dive into the technical details yourself.

You don't need to learn electronics or product design. You just need to stay in control of your product’s development, and we help you do exactly that.

The Hardware Academy is a global platform with members from around the world. You will benefit from joining regardless of where you are located.

In addition to the U.S. we also have members from Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America. To my knowledge we don’t have any members yet from Antarctica, but otherwise we have members from every region of the world active in the Academy.

Most discussions, courses, and resources are completely independent of your location. Some topics like regulatory certifications are location dependent, but even then the requirements are very similar regardless of the country.

Yes! With Premium you get private engineering support.

Regardless of where you are in your product's development, the Hardware Academy is a valuable resource.

If you're still evaluating ideas, the Academy will help you pick the best one to pursue and identify the risks early.

If you have a definite product in mind, you'll learn what the right next steps are.

If you have a proof-of-concept prototype, you'll learn how to move it toward a manufacturable design.

If you already have a manufacturable prototype, you'll get help with manufacturing partners, supply chain, and production readiness.

The Hardware Academy covers every technical aspect of developing a new electronic product, regardless of where you are in the process.

The Hardware Academy was created primarily for electronic hardware products. However, outside of the electronics design, the other steps and challenges are pretty much the same for any physical product, so the Academy can be a good fit for non-electronic products too.

Obviously the content and discussions on electronics design won’t apply, but everything else applies almost equally well for any physical product.

Anything you share privately is kept strictly confidential and is protected by an NDA. All intellectual property remains 100% yours. 

When posting in the open community area you can get support and feedback from lots of other engineers, experts, and members. But what you share there is not private and all other active members can see it. 

Anyone can post in a free forum so how do you know you can ever trust any of the advice?

A lot of the information in a free forum is garbage. Everyone thinks they are an expert, but very few really are.

Public forums can also be very unfriendly places where you may get verbally attacked for asking the wrong questions.

That is not the case at all with the Academy community!

First of all, it's a private forum so only Academy members can access it. This alone filters out a lot of the bad stuff because only more serious people are allowed access.

It also means that the general public can never see your questions or any details about your product.

Secondly, John is in the community all the time personally answering questions and sharing advice. He also heavily moderates the community so the quality remains very high.

Finally, we've hand selected lots of experts to help answer your questions in the community. So you know you can trust the advice you are given in the Academy. It really is much more than just a community, and it's a place for you to get low-cost, low-risk access to trusted experts.

The courses mostly consist of recorded video content. Each course is broken down into multiple lessons which you can watch at your own pace. Total course length is usually between 1-4 hours.

Obviously I'd love it if all our members stuck around forever - but I know that is not realistic and things change! So, if you do decide to cancel obviously I'll be very sad, but if you're intent on leaving then you'll be able to do so with just a few clicks.

I don't hide the cancel button, nor do I require that you get my permission to cancel your subscription. You can cancel at any time. In fact, here’s a video showing you how to cancel your subscription.

Yes, you can rejoin at any time. However, if the membership fee has increased you will have to pay the new higher price.

Yes. Whether you want to keep your design work confidential, or keep your identity private (perhaps from your employer), you'll still get full value from the Academy.

That said, we encourage members not to be overly secretive, especially about their identity, so they can get the maximum benefit possible from the Academy.

If you want fully private engineering support that's available on the Academy Premium plan.

You get access to everything already inside the Academy straight away. We don't artificially delay anything just to hook you into staying longer.

Instead, we hook you into staying longer by continually helping you move forward with your product!

Yes. You are allowed to upgrade and downgrade between the different plans as needed. Although, we do ask that you plan to stay on the new plan for at least 3 months. Please email us for help switching plans.

Yes, as long as you're all working on the same product or project at the same company, you can share the account.

Absolutely not! All of your intellectual property remains 100% your property. We claim absolutely no rights to your intellectual property.

For more details see the section titled “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS TO YOUR MATERIALS” in the terms and conditions for the Academy.

Absolutely not! As long as you stay an active member your price is guaranteed to never increase. Any price increases will only impact new members, not existing ones. 

However, your current pricing is only guaranteed if you stay on your current plan or downgrade. If you wish to upgrade you are subject to the same price increases as new members. 

Also, if you cancel your subscription you are subject to all of the price increases and you will need to join at the current rate.

The price for the Hardware Academy is constantly increasing so the sooner you join the more you save.