My Favorite Courses to Crack AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification SAA-C03 in 2024

javinpaul
Javarevisited
Published in
12 min readDec 31, 2019
best online courses to crack AWS Solution Architect associate certification

Hello guys, are you preparing for AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate Exam? or do you want to become Amazon Web Services (AWS) Certified Developer to give your Cloud Computing career a push? and looking for some useful resources to prepare well for your exam then you have come to the right place.

In the past, I have shared some free courses to learn AWS for beginner and in this article, I will share some of the best online courses to pass the AWS Solutions Architect — Associate Exam and become Amazon Web Services Certified Associate — a certification which will not only add value into your resume but also help you to get the high-paying job you always wanted.

The next generation of IT will be all about Cloud and Cloud Computing and there is a growing demand for Cloud experts as more and more companies, both big and small are going towards Cloud.

Though there are many popular Cloud providers like Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Service or AWS is the leading Cloud Platform provider and it makes a lot of sense to get certified for your AWS skills.

There is also a huge demand for AWS Certified Solution Architects both Associates and Professionals as Amazon itself drives value for that by mandating its partner to employ a certain number of certified AWS professionals.

Talking about the exam, It’s like any other IT certification like Java, Oracle, or Spring certification but again time management is key to passing the exam.

You will get 60+ multiple-choice questions that need to be solved in 130 minutes, which means you roughly get 2+ minutes to solve one question. Even though questions are multiple-choice, they are not easy to solve because they are scenario-based questions unlike simple ones like what is the full form of S3 (Simple Storage Service) and IAM (Identity and Access Management).

You also need to score almost 72% to pass the exam, I mean 720 out of 1000, which is quite high and if you don’t do enough practice, you may fail the exam even though you know everything about AWS.

That’s why the choice of a good course and a couple of practice questions and the exam simulator are very important. I like to get certified and I have a passion for collecting useful resources and that’s what you will find in this article.

Btw, if you buy any course using my links on this article, I’ll get paid with no additional cost to you, but you should only purchase a course after watching the preview and whether you can connect to the instructor or not. Purchasing a course where you don’t connect to the instructor will be both a waste of time and money. Thanks for your support.

A Brief List of AWS Certification

If you are new to the world of AWS certification, let me tell you that there are many certifications out there, focusing on different skills. Amazon also keeps introducing new certifications to cater to the growing and evolving market needs.

Here is a list of various AWS certification exams, which is listed in their order of difficulty from Easy to Difficult:

1) AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03)
2) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)
3) AWS Certified Developer Associate (DVA-C02)
4) AWS Certified Big Data Specialty (BDS-C00)
5) AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional (SAP-C01)
6) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional (DOP-C01)
7) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate (SOA-C01)
8) AWS Certified Advanced Networking Specialty (ANS-C00)
9) AWS Certified Security Specialty (SCS-C01)

AWS Certification RoadMap

Here is the AWS Certification RoadMap which also provides a certification path to achieve all these certifications and become the real AWS Guru:

AWS Certification RoadMap

Top 5 Online Courses for AWS Certified Solution Architect — Associate Exam

In this article, I am going to share some of the best online courses you take to both learn and pass the AWS Certified Solution Architect — Associate-level exam as well as learn AWS from scratch.

Since the exam itself costs 150 USD, you just can’t afford to fail. You need to invest your time and money into the right resources to get through this exam and earn the AWS certification you want.

1. Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2024

This is another AWS Certification course to prepare for the Amazon — AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam. It’s one of the most up-to-date courses to prepare for the AWS Certified Solution Architect exam.

Like previous courses, it also covers most of the exam topics you need to know for this exam but the best thing about this one is that the instructor Stephane Maarek has good experience of how to do well in this exam.

He himself has passed the exam with a score of 984 out of 1000 which is phenomenal and he can certainly help you to do really well on the exam.

The course is relatively new so no piled-up ratings and students but the content is really good. On average this course has 4.6 ratings from close to 16500 students which is fantastic.

Here is the link to join this course — Ultimate AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate 2024

Best Udemy course for AWS Solution architect associate exam

2. Exam Prep: AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate [Coursera]

This is probably the best Coursera course to prepare for the AWS Solution Architect Associate-level exam in 2024. It’s packed with close to 11 hours of content and covers everything you need to know to pass the exam.

The best thing about this course is that it comes directly from AWS and it is tightly aligned with exam topics and goals. This is an intermediate-level course and it is designed to help you to assess your preparedness for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate exam.

In this course, you will not only learn how to prepare for the exam by exploring the exam’s topic areas and how they map to architecting on AWS but also you will review sample certification questions in each domain, practice skills with hands-on exercises, test your knowledge with practice question sets, and learn strategies for identifying incorrect responses by interpreting the underlying concepts.

I really like the clear and concise flow of information and the much-needed hands-on practice before you can appear for the exam.

After completing this course Coursera AWS solution architect course you will have all the knowledge and tools to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses in each certification domain area that are being tested on the certification exam.

Here is the link to join this courseExam Prep: AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate

Best Coursera course for AWS Solution architect associate exam

You will also learn about key AWS Services like EC2, S3, Route53, Cloud Front, Autoscaling, Load Balancing, RDS, RedShift, DynamoDB, EMR, VPC, etc. They also keep the course up-to-date which is a great thing as AWS certification is only valid for 2 years.

Overall, a must join the course if you are serious about passing the AWS Certified Solutions Architect (CSA) — Associate Exam.

By the way, you can either join this course individually or you can take Coursera Plus, a subscription plan which allows unlimited access to more than 7000+ courses from top universities and companies like AWS, and Google for just $59 per month. Coursera has many AWS and cloud computing courses so it makes sense to join Coursera plus to prepare better.

3. AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams

Ideally, you don’t need any other course once you joined the previous course for preparing for the AWS solution architect associate exam, but this course is a little bit different than previous ones, it’s about practicing questions and increasing your speed to solve 60 questions in 130 minutes.

This course has 390 top-notch questions divided into 6 sets of AWS Practice Tests with 65 Unique questions and a 130-minute time limit for each set. This will give you exam-like practice and check your real speed.

As I have told you before that you can fail this exam even if you know everything about AWS if you don’t put attention on time.

You roughly have 2 minutes to solve one question and that’s why practicing before a real exam and doing time management can be the difference between passing and failing this exam.

Here is the link to join this course AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exams

best AWS solution architect practice tests

Another thing I like about this course is that it’s highly up-to-date and they have a dedicated team updating questions on a regular basis, based on the feedback of thousands of their students on what appeared on the actual exam.

The course has also got on average 4.5 ratings from close to 12,000 students. A Big thanks to instructor Jon Bonso of Dojo Tutorials you can use this along with the Cloud Guru course to prepare better for your AWS exam.

4. AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate [Pluralsight]

This is another awesome online course to prepare for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate-level exam. AWS is the most popular and most widely used cloud platform in the world and this certification is very sought after especially for people who want to become Cloud Engineer and Cloud Architects.

This course will teach you design principles, including strategies for networking, storage, DNS, DBaaS, Monitoring, Load Balancing, and much more.

You will learn about VPC — Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic Load Balancer Amazon Storage Service, Route 53, Direct Connect, and much more.

The author Elias Khnaser is an expert in Cloud and Virtualization space specializing in Microsoft, Citrix, and VMware virtualization technologies. Overall a nice course to prepare AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate exam with code SAA-C03.

Here is the link to join this courseAWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate

best Pluralsight courses for AWS Solution architect exam

By the way, you would need a Pluralsight membership to join this course which costs around $29 per month or $299 per year (14% discount). I highly recommend this subscription to all programmers as it provides instant access to more than 7000+ online courses to learn any tech skill. Alternatively, you can also use their 10-day-free-pass to watch this course for FREE.

5. Whizlab’s AWS Solution Architect Practice Test + Course

Whizlabs is one of my trusted places for certification practice questions and training material. I have used Whizlabs material to pass several Java certifications like OCAJP, OCPJP, and OCEJP in the past and highly recommend it for its quality and affordable pricing.

Their AWS course + Practice bundle also is of the same quality and a great addition to your preparation strategy to score high marks. There AWS Mock simulator contains 500+ Unique practice questions for the AWS Solution Architect Associate certification exam, which is more than any other AWS Solution Architect practice test.

They are also currently offering a 25% discount on their AWS Solutions Architect Practice and Training course material. Just use the AWSPACK coupon code to avail of a 25% discount.

Here is the link to join this courseWhizlab’s AWS Solution Architect Practice Test + Course

best AWS solution architect practice tests from Whizlabs

By the way, if you are preparing for certification, consider taking Whizlabs subscription which provides full access to all of their online training courses and practice test for different certifications like AWS, Java, Cloud, Docker, and Kubernetes with just $99 per annum (50% discount now). I highly recommend this subscription plan as Whizlabs has the best materials to prepare for IT certifications.

6. Amazon AWS-Solutions-Architect-Associate: (SAA-C03) DUMPS

This is another useful resource for preparing AWS Solution Architect Associate certification from Amazon with code SAA-C03. This site contains hundreds of exam dumps for AWS certification.

Exam dumps are real questions from the previous exam which is contributed by candidates who have gone through the AWS solution architect exams by themselves. They are nothing but a memory dump of exam questions.

Here is what you will get in this course:

- Number of Questions: 407

- Exam Tests: 9

- Last Update: 2024–01–15

You can use exam dumps to find out the format and difficulty level of exam questions as well as important topics. While I don’t advise solely relying on Exam dumps because many people try to mug them, they are still a great resource to get a feel of the real exams.

Here is the link to join this test — Amazon AWS-Solutions-Architect-Associate: (SAA-C03) DUMPS

best AWS Solution Architect certification dumps

They also have a free test with 10 sample questions to check out the quality of the test before you buy, I highly recommend you to check those questions as well.

That’s all about some of the best courses to prepare for Amazon’s AWS Solutions Architect — Associate Exam. As I have said, it’s a very useful and valuable exam and if you are on the infra and cloud side, then this certification can provide a significant push to your career.

Is AWS Solution Architect Certification right for You?

If you are wondering whether this certification is right for you or not then it’s worth knowing that the AWS Certified Solutions Architect — Associate exam is for solution architects or software architects.

The exam validates your ability to design secure and robust solutions by using AWS technologies. The exam also checks if you can design a solution by using appropriate AWS services and by following architectural principles based on requirements or not.

It also checks whether you can provide implementation guidance based on best practices to the organization throughout the workload lifecycle.

If you are a solution architect or want to become a solution architect and design an AWS cloud-based solution then this is the right certification for you.

Many of my friends on the Cloud and System admin side are learning AWS and getting certified, particularly for this certification. It not only has an improved number of calls they receive for Jobs but also their role in the current organization is expanded and chances of promotion have increased.

Other Certification Resources for IT Professionals and Java Programmers

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like this article and these best online courses and practice tests to prepare AWS Solution architect associate exam then please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S. — If you are new to the world of Cloud and AWS and looking for some free courses to learn Amazon Web Service then you can also check this AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Introduction [FREE] course on Udemy. More than 100,000 students have already joined this free course.

--

--

javinpaul
Javarevisited

I am Java programmer, blogger, working on Java, J2EE, UNIX, FIX Protocol. I share Java tips on http://javarevisited.blogspot.com and http://java67.com