Cloud certifications are as common as clouds in the sky. Many vendors have taken unique approaches to making their certification programs stand out. One vendor, CompTIA, has made its name by providing platform-agnostic certifications.
Cloud services are still one of IT’s biggest topics — even with the rising AI star — and job seekers need to be familiar with them. Cloud administration and business management are essential roles in today’s business environment.
This article compares Cloud+ vs. Cloud Essentials+ in various aspects, such as objectives, target audience and added career value. Learn more about these two certifications and how they can benefit today’s cloud professionals.
What is the CompTIA Cloud+ certification?
Cloud+ is among CompTIA’s top-tier certifications. It’s a challenging exam that requires a significant amount of prerequisite knowledge. CompTIA refreshes exams approximately every three years, with the latest revision in 2024. The current exam number is CV0-004.
The certification objectives list the focus concepts, skills and practices for the test. This exam covers six knowledge domains:
- Cloud architecture.
- Deployment.
- Operations.
- Security
- DevOps fundamentals.
- Troubleshooting.
CompTIA provides the following details:
- Exam number. CV0-004.
- Exam cost. $369.
- Length of test. 90 minutes.
- Number of questions. Up to 90.
- Passing score. 750 — on a 100-900 scale.
- Recommended experience. About five years of IT experience, with two to three years of system/network administrator experience and experience with at least one cloud platform.
Plenty of training and exam prep options exist, all designed to suit candidates’ needs and learning styles. Options include the following:
- Official CompTIA instructor-led training.
- Official CompTIA self-paced training.
- Third-party instructor-led or self-paced training.
- Undirected self-study.
Ensure that exam prep includes hands-on opportunities. Remember that the major cloud vendors offer free trial periods for basic cloud functionality.
Cloud+ target audience
CompTIA designed Cloud+ to cover a more technical, hands-on body of knowledge. It’s intended for IT administrators who will deploy, maintain and troubleshoot cloud services. It assumes a significant amount of system and network administration experience, as well as knowledge of CompTIA Network+ and CompTIA Server+ concepts.
Cloud+ candidates should understand design and deployment issues, including cloud migrations. You also need experience with cloud-based networking, such as virtual private clouds. As always, there’s a strong element of security and troubleshooting throughout the exam topics. Optimizing, rightsizing and scaling resources and cloud storage options are critical topics for Cloud+. The new version of the exam also places additional emphasis on DevOps.
Many businesses are taking an integrated hybrid cloud approach to cloud services, where some services are hosted on-premises and others by two or more cloud service providers. Organizations use this multi-cloud approach to maximize service and minimize cost. That means administrators need vendor-agnostic skills that span cloud providers, making CompTIA’s Cloud+ certification more practical than single-vendor training.
A well-rounded body of knowledge of these topics goes a long way toward advancing a cloud professional’s career.
What is the CompTIA Cloud Essentials+ certification?
Cloud Essentials+ is one of CompTIA’s professional series certifications, alongside Project+, Data+ and DataSys+. It emphasizes the business practices around cloud services and how those practices impact an organization.
The objectives sound similar to Cloud+, but this cloud certification focuses on business aspects rather than technical management. The four exam domains are the following:
- Cloud concepts.
- Business principles of cloud environments.
- Management and technical operations.
- Governance, risk, compliance and security for the cloud.
CompTIA offers these details for those pursuing Cloud Essentials+:
- Exam number. CLO-002.
- Exam cost. $138.
- Length of test. 60 minutes.
- Number of questions. Up to 75.
- Passing score. 720 — on a 100-900 scale.
- Recommended experience. Six to 12 months as a business analyst in an IT environment with cloud service exposure.
As with Cloud+, various exam prep options exist. Choices include the following:
- Official CompTIA instructor-led training.
- Official CompTIA self-paced training.
- Third-party instructor-led or self-paced training.
- Undirected self-study.
Hands-on experience with cloud services is less crucial for this business-oriented certification. Pay closer attention to accounting concepts, cost optimization techniques and monitoring technologies.
Cloud Essentials+ target audience
The first exam domain exposes businesspeople to cloud vocabulary and differentiates cloud-based services from traditional server-hosted resources. The idea is to give analysts an idea of what cloud administrators — who are most likely Cloud+-certified — talk about.
The remaining domains discuss the effect of cloud migrations on an organization’s business practices. For example, consider the shift from Capex in the form of large, expensive server purchases to Opex through monthly subscription fees. This change alone heavily impacts the accounts payable team and the annual budget process.
Cloud Essentials+ frequently covers topics surrounding cost management through cloud resource optimization. These topics relate to business concerns that analysts and decision-makers must be able to communicate to administrators.
Which cloud certification exam is best for you?
I was a systems administrator for years, and my career suffered because I lacked an understanding of business practices and concerns. Furthermore, these business skills are essential to move into IT leadership roles. That makes both Cloud+ and Cloud Essentials+ a great choice for technical people. The other reason I suggest Cloud Essentials+ for administrators is its relative simplicity. It’s not as technical an exam as other CompTIA tests, and it draws on common cloud terminology.
While I think in-the-trenches cloud administrators would benefit from the Cloud Essentials+ content, I don’t believe the reverse is true. Even in a cloud environment, business professionals don’t need to know anything about day-to-day cloud administration. That means Cloud+ probably isn’t the right choice for these nontechnical business analysts and decision-makers.
In summary, I find that cloud administrators benefit from both certifications and businesspeople probably only need Cloud Essentials+.
Editor’s note: The CompTIA Cloud Essentials+ exam is set to be retired in 2025, and the last day to take the exam is Sept. 25, 2025.
Damon Garn owns Cogspinner Coaction and provides freelance IT writing and editing services. He has written multiple CompTIA study guides, including the Linux+, Cloud Essentials+ and Server+ guides, and contributes extensively to Informa TechTarget, The New Stack and CompTIA Blogs.
