What Does This Mean, Exactly?
This does not mean that these vendors are bad. They’re just not as well known or charge too much. Many of them are among the best in the industry.
I’ll break down each category and mention certain vendors within each one so we can understand why they are here and not on the recommended vendors list.
Tech-Adjacent
It’s not that these aren’t technical in nature, but they are much more specialized to very specific job functions. At various points in my relatively short career so far, I’ve performed the job duties of a sysadmin, a network admin, a SOC analyst, a DevOps engineer, and a cloud engineer. This is not unusual. We will see so many different things over the course of an entire career.
That being said, the vendors listed here offer certification for skills that most of us are likely not going to use. Every career is different. Maybe you will want to move into project management, business analysis, CRM, or HRIS. Specializing is not a bad thing. If you do, these vendors will help.
The Salesforce certification program is one of the most established and well-designed certification programs in the industry. They have a plethora of certifications for Salesforce, Tableau, and Mulesoft (pictured below).
I struggled on where to place all of the GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) certification vendors. Technically, it falls under cybersecurity, which is relevant. That being said, I’ve seen many postings for jobs specific to GRC. Since it’s hired that way, I’ll assume it’s relatively adjacent to the tech professional generalist’s skill set.
Niche Vendor Products
There are a lot of competing services and solutions on the market today. These vendors offer certifications for their commercial products. This category is exclusively for certification vendors that offer a commercial product.
This does mean that these vendors also aren’t restrictive. Some are and some are not. The reason why they are here and not under the restrictive category is because they are also too niche. I would argue that the certification vendors under the restrictive category offer certification opportunities that would be relevant to most tech professionals.
There are several great reasons for pursuing the certifications listed here.
What if you want to specialize in something? If you really like working in a backup and restore role (a.k.a. BAR), then check out some of the certifications for the solution that you use. This knowledge will not directly carry over to other job functions within tech, but that doesn’t matter if you want to focus on one specific function. Another example of this is all of the cybersecurity companies listed here. These help with specializing in one specific platform. For being an all-around cybersecurity engineer, it’s better to focus on the vendor-neutral cybersecurity vendors on the Recommended Certification Vendors first.
What if you work somewhere that you could never see yourself leaving? If you are in it for the long haul, then consider getting certified in the various technologies that you often work with. There’s a chance that the training will be free since your employer is a customer, too.
What if you’re just really interested in something specific? It will likely benefit you sooner than you expect. Some of us work in silos, some of us do not. At every place that I’ve worked, I’ve always been exposed to many different concepts and technologies. You never know when you may benefit from having a better understanding of something that you do not touch often now.
Relatively Obscure
Some of these certification vendors may offer some commercial service, but as far as I know, these are only certification vendors that primarily offer certification as a product. This means that they will mostly be vendor-neutral (vendor as in company offering a product, not as in a certification vendor).
Maybe you’re more familiar with some of these, but I had not heard of them before starting this site. I had heard of Hack The Box, but not their certification program.
I mean this as no disrespect. They’re here for a reason. I discovered some of these because I saw highly accomplished people on LinkedIn include credentials they earned from them. That counts for something.
If their training is beneficial, then hopefully they will become more notable. Some of these here also offer free certifications. I’ll link them at the end.
Overly Restrictive
This is the most frustrating category. These certification vendors do several things to make their certifications restrictive.
Some of them make the cost of accessing their official training portal completely unaffordable for the average person. I didn’t have a specific cutoff for this, but I saw well over a thousand dollars for only one year of access several times.
Others do not allow people without a professional email address to access their training. I get it. They want to only allow access to people who work for companies that use their solutions. I don’t agree with it, but they have their reasons.
Some of them also do not provide on-demand training. By restricting education to classrooms only (virtual and in-person), it makes it restrictive for people who may only have time to study on the weekends.
These are my least favorite trends regarding tech certification. Hopefully these companies and organizations will shift away from that.
Can’t Beat Free
Vendors that make a certification opportunity free are clearly not trying to profit off of the educational opportunity provided. This is something that I wish more vendors would do. It’s also an effective form of advertising.
I’ll list the vendors that do not charge for some or all of their tech certifications. Please reach out if you are aware of any that I am missing.