From 0 to 8 AWS certifications. Are they worth it?

I am a Solutions Architect working since 2021 at AWS and would like to share my experience and learnings about my path getting 8 AWS certifications so far. I started with the Cloud Practitioner exam and continued with Solutions Architect Associate and after all the Associates, I moved on with the SA Pro, and DevOps Pro and continued with some specialist certifications. I am not done yet with getting more, but would like to share my experience how to best prepare for them, which platforms and materials to use for preparations, in which order you could do the certifications, and also if they are worth it actually.

If you want to get started with AWS and get a basic understanding about general AWS cloud concepts, AWS Regions, Availability Zones, and foundation services such as Amazon VPC, Amazon EC2, or Amazon RDS, the shared responsibility model, etc. you should start with the Cloud Practitioner certificate. The Cloud Practitioner was doable and relatively easy and is a good starting point. If you have no previous Cloud Computing experience, a video course will be quite helpful to understand the concepts. I watched a video course on ACloudGuru.

The second one for me was Solutions Architect Associate. It was more difficult than Cloud Practitioner indeed. SA Associate has more breadth and also more depth than the Cloud Practitioner. The questions are longer, there are more distracting words which are not relevant for the scenario. The answers are also longer than in the Cloud Practitioner exam. For the SAA, I used a video course - this time a video course on Udemy from Stephane Maarek. Additionally, I answered practice exams on Whizlabs.

Once you mastered the SAA, you probably don’t need too much time to prepare the Developer Associate. Especially, if you have some developer background, the Developer Associate should be doable. I only watched some selected videos from a video course on Cantrill.io. Besides that, I did practice exams on TutorialsDojo, and after writing the exam, I felt like I should have done the exam much earlier. The Developer Associate includes developer questions such as basics about IaC (CloudFormation, SAM), CI/CD questions with Amazon’s CI/CD services such as CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline. For details what the exam contains, read through the official exam guide!

Next was SysOps Associate. It was a little bit more difficult than the Developer Associate, but easier than the Solutions Architect Associate. It contained hands-on questions. The SA Associate and the previous exams were good preparations. TutorialsDojo practice exams were quite helpful. I also did hands-on workshops in the AWS console as well as deployed on AWS via CLI commands.

After that, I continued with SA Pro which was the most difficult exam I had so far. I watched many videos, took many notes, and created drawings and mind maps for me. I used TutorialsDojo practice exams again, and passed the exam in my first try even though I thought I am going to fail when I was sitting the exam. The exam questions are very long with many distractions. The answer options are also quite long. Sometimes, I needed to read the question twice because of the distractions and realized that it’s a relatively easy question.

I wrote the DevOps Pro exam a few months after the SA Pro. During the DevOps Pro exam, I realized it is very similar to the SA Pro. I remember I didn’t spend so much learning and preparation time for the DevOps Pro as for the SA Pro and my assumption was correct that if you have the SA Pro, the DevOps Pro should be doable and similar.

After the SA Pro and DevOps Pro, I continued with the Security Specialty and the Database Specialty which both were not at the difficulty level than the Pro certifictions. Each of the specialty was very much focused on their domain and is not as broad as the SA Pro. One strategy can also be to first do some of the specialty ones before taking the SA Pro, e.g. these two I did (database and security specialty) were quite doable and are indeed good preparations for the SA Pro or the DevOps Pro. However, the database specialty is now deprecated.

Are certifications worth it?

Yes. You get a solid understanding of how AWS services work, how they differ from each other, you learn patterns, sometimes you drift into external blog posts, videos, and channels and dive deeper additionally. For an AWS Solutions Architect, I think the more certifications I do, the better, since it is anyways part of my job to talk and work with AWS technology. Aligning my work with certifications, makes my job easier.
Furthermore, with every certification, you get addicted to collect more which is a positive side effect.

As a Startup Solutions Architect, do I think startups should invest in getting AWS certifications?

Yes, I think AWS certifications are great to get a deeper understanding of the cloud concepts, especially if the long-term strategy is to use the AWS cloud. It will be a great time investment in the future of the startup. Establishing a learning culture where learnings are also shared among each other, will have a positive impact.

Do certifications mean that you know everything?

Definitely not. To be honest, the more certifications I do, the more I think “I don’t really know much”. The more you know, the more you realize that there is a lot more to learn. However, in general, it makes things easier: you learn about AWS services, you learn about integrations between AWS services, about patterns, and you map use cases to AWS services faster.

Which AWS certifications to start with and how to continue?

Depending on where you are, here are some suggestions where to start if you have no certifications or how to continue if you have the SA Pro.

You have no certifications

If you have no or some AWS knowledge, start with Cloud Practitioner/ AI Practitioner/ SA Associate
Once you passed SA Associate, schedule and learn for Developer Associate (easy peasy!)

You have SA Pro and want more

In general, after doing the SA Pro, you should quickly do some more because a lot of SA Pro topics are a very good foundation for some other exams, for example:
- If you have SA Pro, schedule the Security Specialty exam in a few weeks - it should be easy peasy with some practice exams (e.g. on TutorialsDojo)
- If you have SA Pro, schedule Database Specialty in a few weeks, do practice exams, and you will pass
- If you have SA Pro, you can consider writing the DevOps Pro soon as it comes with a similar difficulty level and lots of overlappings as the SA Pro

How to approach the exams

The most difficult part is sitting down, learning, and ignoring everything else. The other most difficult thing is to schedule the exam. I suggest to just schedule a date, e.g. book the exam in 2 months, block a few full days in your calendar where you don’t do anything else but studying. Do practice exams, take notes, watch videos, read documentation. If the exam date is coming closer and you don’t feel prepared, I officially postponed it through PearsonVue (test center), and went into preparation phase again. Write the exam and you will pass it. I suggest writing the exam on-site at a test center to have full focus, to be allowed to go to the toilet during the exam, and to not get disturbed when writing at home.

Materials / Resources

Don’t stick to a single resource, but learn hybrid. A mix of practice exams, videos, documentation, Youtube, AWS Repost questions, Reddit, hands-on in the AWS Console, AWS CLI, deployments via Terraform and CloudFormation, worked best for me.

Practice exams on TutorialsDojo
- Practice exams are must to have in the preparation phase. I used TutorialsDojo. It has a review mode, time mode, and section based questions. I often started with the review-mode questions and when I answered a question wrong, I studied the question via documentation, video, etc. I also liked the section-based questions on TutorialsDojo to dive deeper into a certain domain I think I need more practice.
More resources
- Must read: Exam Guides for each certification on the AWS Certification page. When you open details about a certification on the AWS Certification webpage, there is an exam guide to download and read through to get a sense of what the exam is about. It includes all necessary details about the exam such as unscored content, topic domains what the exam is about, which service are in-scope, and out-of-scope, etc.
- AWS documentation, AWS whitepapers
- Youtube, r/AWSCertifications on Reddit
- Conversations at AWS meetups, community meetups, hackathons. I recommend to share and discuss learnings with colleagues and friends.
- Choose a video course from one of the platforms (Udemy/ ACloudGuru/ Cantrill.io, etc.) for exams you think you need more depth. Don’t watch every single video because it takes a lot of time, but rather do practice exams and observe where you have gaps and watch then those videos. You can test different platforms for different exams.
  - Cantrill.io - more expensive than the other ones, but I liked the videos.
  - ACloudGuru
  - Udemy, e.g. Stephane Maarek

Summary and Next Steps

There were a few changes in the AWS Certification domain in 2024. Some certifications are deprecated, and some new certifications were added. The current state with all active (and beta) AWS certifications are on the AWS certification webpage: https://aws.amazon.com/certification/. Definitely check out the exam guide for each exam that you are interested in. A video course is quite necessary, especially for your first exams. Practice exams (I used TutorialsDojo) is pretty much a must have. All other materials are mentioned in the Materials/ Resources section. For me, I probably will take the Data Engineer, AI Practitioner, and ML Associate as my next ones.

Any opinions in this post are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.

Site Terms, Privacy, and more.