Paying for IT certifications without company sponsorship
Earning credentials like Salesforce helps prove you are serious before you start applying for roles. However, the high out-of-pocket cost of training and exams prevents candidates from getting certified when their current employer does not provide sponsorship.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Setting up a small homelab on a laptop to learn fundamentals
- 2Starting with IT helpdesk roles
- 3Building small projects with a VPC, EC2, IAM, and Terraform
- 4Attending local user groups or exam prep sessions that offer discount codes
- 5Encouraging employer to become an official partner to receive vendor certification vouchers
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
r/sysadmin1 person · September 2026
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 6Why am I paying for professional certs that barely increase my pay?
- 6Why are continuing education webinars just sales pitches?