FREE IT Certification Training – is it actually worth the price you pay?
There are a ton of “free” it certification programs available online today, but what is the real cost of these programs?
For many of us, the most important cost is time. Everyone knows that nothing in life is free – including IT certification training. Companies such as CompTIA, Mile2, ISC2, Cicso, Redhat and many others charge around $1,500 and up for the exact same type of on-demand IT certification training that you can find here at LearnTITAN for a fraction of that cost. So how come they are able to charge the prices they do when there are so many “free” IT training options available online?
Because their training is actually worth it.
Just as nothing in life is free, you also get what you pay for. As an example, the CISSO certification program that you can find here on our website is taught by Kevin Henry, who is the author of both the CISSO and CISSP certification exams, among others. We also provide live labs which allow students to practice the concepts of their certification course in real-time, on real equipment, in a simulated learning environment. You just can’t get that quality of training with any of the free sites or programs.
How much do your love marketing emails?
If you sign up for their free service or course, you better be prepared to burn your email address because their business model calls for them to send you marketing messages – forever. “Till they buy or die” is a common phrase in sales and marketing, and it illustrates the point that the free training you are signing up for is only there to capture your information so that they can market to you until you buy or… you get the point. Very annoying.
And why would someone who has just signed up for a free IT certification course be a good prospect to market a paid version of that exact same course to?
Because many of the free websites and courses that are available are authored by individuals who are not true experts in the field. Our on-demand CISSO training is delivered by the same person who wrote the CISSO and CISSP exams. To say they are an expert would be an understatement. If you’re serious about passing one of those exams, taking a course from the person who wrote it is probably one of the best decisions you could make.
Many of the sites that offer thousands of IT training courses for free all follow this same model. They offer you a bunch of free stuff which sounds amazing via a ton of pop-ups and other methods, and then send you marketing messages forever when the awesome free stuff you signed up for just isn’t cutting the mustard and you’re back to square one, searching for an IT certification training course.
A lot of the courses and materials that you will come across at the free sites are authored by people from various locations around the world, and that’s all fine and dandy, but if I’m sitting through 20 hours of highly technical material I don’t want to have to work to overcome a language barrier. This language issue can also happen with people whose native language is English, but who are not professional speakers, presenters or teachers. If I am going to try to upgrade my career and earning potential by obtaining a particular certification, then I want to study material that is free of typos, grammatical errors, low-talkers, microphone or audio issues, thick accents, bad writing and a host of other issues that set premium, paid training programs apart from their free competition. Problems like those listed above can be huge barriers to learning, and in a worst case scenario, could even contain outdated or inaccurate information, causing a failing score on an expensive certification exam.
Of course, by the time you are able to review the free training and realize it’s sub-standard and won’t work for what you want, you have already given over your email address. Now, because the free training that you gave up your contact information for is sub-standard, you are still in the market for IT certification training, making you an extremely “hot prospect” for the free training providers to sink their formidable marketing teeth into.
Trigger “until you buy or die” marketing campaigns urging you to upgrade to their paid course for a much better experience. My two cents: skip the middle man and start out with a paid course. It will save you a ton of time and provide the best experience possible right from the start.
Case in point:
The following is an EXACT QUOTE from one of the leading providers of free IT certification training. It is taken from one of their certification program pages, which happens to be arguably the most popular IT security certification in the world. This quote appears at the very top of the training module listings, and has not been edited in any way:
PLEASE NOTE: There is a simple mistake made in this video course. The instructor says that ifconfig is for Windows and ipconfig is for Linux. That is not the case. It is, in fact, the opposite.
I don’t know about you, but if I was trying to learn highly technical material that is very important to my life and career, having to work through errors like the one above would get very old, very fast.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the business models of the free providers. Offering free material in exchange for an email address that you can send repeated marketing messages too is far and away the best method for an online business to generate revenue in today’s business and social environment. As a business person, I’m actually ok with that.
But they aren’t my potential client, and you are. I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into with the free programs so that later on down the road, once you realize you actually need a high-quality solution, you will remember LearnTITAN and our fairly priced, high-quality, on-demand IT certification training systems.
My advice to any and everyone who is thinking about IT certification training is instead of going through all the rigmarole and getting put through the ringer, just purchase a course from a reliable vendor that will actually teach you the skills you need in the beginning. You will undoubtedly save yourself a whole bunch of time and annoyance in the long run.
Incidentally, my company can set you up with a free training account so that you can review the quality of our training before you purchase anything. Just click the link below and we will setup Module 1 of our Security+ training for you to review for 30 days. No phone number or credit card is required.
Click Here For Your Free Training Account
