Is the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification worth it?
Welcome to Certification Roast. In this series, you’ll follow me as I collect certificates, speculate whether they are worth your time, and give recommendations on how to prepare for the exams effectively.
In this article, we will look at the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification: the most foundational of a multitude of certifications that Amazon offers.
Who Is This For?
I’m a Web Career Coach, so I will examine how useful these certificates are for progressing your career as a web developer (from frontend to backend, deployment to security, communication to working effectively in a team). The recommendations and insights are custom-tailored to you!
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification focuses on the core of AWS: things you will almost certainly need or at least want to be aware of when designing your AWS architecture.
It covers the most common services that perform common needs, such as getting code to run in the cloud (EC2, Lambda), storing different kinds of data for different purposes and durations (S3, EBS, EFS, and many database solutions), and the mechanisms to communicate securely and reliably between the components of your application (VPCs, Subnets, ACLs, Security Groups, SNS, SQS, and more).
Next, you will take a tour of most of a few more specialized services that AWS provides—just enough to be aware they exist and know when to reach for them if necessary without drowning you in the details.
It’s important to know that this certification focuses on the concepts and doesn’t require you to understand how to provision your architecture (although it will make it much easier to do this because you’ll actually understand the heaps of configuration that AWS offers).
After getting this certification, you will be able to:
✅ have informed discussions about AWS with teammates
✅ make sense of the AWS architecture at your company
✅ identify and suggest AWS solutions to problems your team is facing
✅ teach teammates who are yet unfamiliar with AWS
Should you get certified?
Learning about the cloud’s possibilities is necessary for every Web Engineer serious about their career. Most modern companies deploy their applications to the cloud through cloud service providers (CSPs) like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or cloud platforms like Vercel or Netlify. Even if you’re part of a team that doesn’t use the cloud, it’s helpful to be aware of your options, and having this expertise can be a great way to discover potential improvements.
Getting this certification isn’t a huge commitment, but it is definitely non-trivial. It costs $90 per attempt, and I recommend spending 15-25 hours studying, which equates to spending 1-2 weeks studying for ~2 hours a day.
I'd say that, for most people, this is a worthwhile investment. Becoming more knowledgeable and skilled with tools relevant to your job will pay off generously throughout your career. Even if you don’t end up using it yourself, it will help you understand the people who do, and by understanding alternatives, you will better understand the tradeoffs you’re making and you'll be able to see opportunities.
Next to the knowledge you’ll gain while preparing for the certification, the certification itself is a great way to increase the chances of being hired, negotiate a raise or promotion, and earn respect from your peers. It communicates to others that you have skills and knowledge in an area without having to painstakingly prove it to them, and it proves you are disciplined enough to commit to and finish something that takes time and effort to achieve.
I recommend this certification to everyone working on the Web, excluding Engineers competent enough to configure a basic microservices architecture by hand in AWS. This certification might be especially interesting for you if:
You work for a company that already uses AWS: It helps you better understand the company and eventually start contributing to its AWS architecture.
If you work for a small company: There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit in most small companies. Firm knowledge of AWS will help you take advantage of that. If you are the only person in the organization skilled enough to work with AWS, you’ll be an incredibly high-value player.
You are interested in any of the following specializations: Cloud Engineering, Security, Microservices, DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Site Reliability Engineering.
How To Study?
There are a lot of ways of preparing for this exam; most will be good enough, but some are noticeably better than others. I want you to have the smoothest experience possible, so after I got my certification, I went back to review some of the available courses out there.
Legend: ✨ strongly recommend | 👍 recommended | 👎 not recommended
👎 AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials - AWS Skill Builder
This is Amazon’s own course, and I used it to study for the exam.
The quality of the course was relatively high: they used great analogies, good teachers, excellent visuals, interactive quizzes, and everything the course covers is relevant to the exam.
It only covers theory and no practice, which is too bad. Technically, you only need theory to pass the exam. Still, practice helps solidify your understanding of these concepts and allows you to apply them to solve real-world problems.
The course also had a salesy vibe at some points. For example, it clearly nudged you toward AWS proprietary technology over open-source solutions and only talked about the “benefits” while not always mentioning the necessary nuances.
Although these previous points aren’t a dealbreaker, I can’t recommend this course for one big reason: the theory it covers is insufficient to reliably pass the exam. There are some AWS services it doesn’t cover and doesn’t go into quite enough depth for some of the services it does cover.
You might be able to piece together a complete preparation by combining this course with other resources. Still, I recommend you take a single course that covers everything you need to know from start to end to avoid studying the same content twice and potentially still ending up with gaps in your knowledge.
✨ Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 by Stephane Marek
This is my most recommended course.
It isn’t a surprise that the production quality can’t top the quality of a multi-billion dollar company, but I’d say it’s a close #2, with a steady pacing, clear diagrams and explanations, pleasant instructor, quizzes at the end of each module, and overall polish.
What this course provides that the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials doesn’t is completeness, meaning you can follow it start-to-end, and you’ll have covered everything you need to know to be successful in the exam. Next to that it includes hands-on experiments in the AWS Management Console to help illustrate the covered theory. Finally, it ends with a full-blown practice exam, including 65 questions comparable to those seen in the actual exam.
I like this course because it teaches you not only the knowledge required to pass the exam and get your certification but also the skills to actually start applying this knowledge, which is arguably more important. After this course, you can actually start solving real-world problems with AWS.
👍 AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification Course (CLF-C02) by Andrew Brown
This is a free alternative to Stephane’s course. It is also complete, covering everything you need to know, including hands-on experiments and a 65-question practice exam.
Andrew includes some of his own interpretations, experiences, and fun facts to enrich the main content and make for a more authentic mix. He also offers a paid tier that adds quizzes, flashcards, and a cool validation feature that checks your AWS account to see whether you’ve followed the steps of the hands-on correctly.
Additional Study Tips
Complete at least one practice exam: Before you walk into the exam room, you should know what to expect. Completing at least one practice exam will give you a sense of the kinds of questions you can expect and the overall difficulty of the exam.
Book your exam in advance: Book the exam before you start studying. The easiest way to stay motivated is to have a hard deadline creeping closer every day. I recommend you book two weeks in advance, which will put your daily study time at about 1-2 hours. If you want to push yourself, you can knock it out on a weekend. It all depends on the time you have available and your current level of knowledge.
A big benefit of collecting certificates like the AWS Certified Cloud practitioner it that A: You'll grow and B: You'll do so in a visible way. This visibility is great for your career. Skills will help you do your job well. Visibility of those skills will help you negotiate that raise, be offered that opportunity or land that job.
I specialize in helping developers grow visibly. I'll help you follow your interests and grow, while also reaping rewards and recognition for that growth!