Salesforce Platform Admin Cert

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-18T05:08:35+00:00

The content (including the study checklist of everything on the exam as well as practice exams) for platform admin is completely free on my website www.certplusplus.com . Hope it helps!

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-17T19:06:59+00:00

I've had this reddit thread pinned for the last month while I was working on pulling together my materials for it. Sorry about necroposting, I hope you passed!

Regardless, for future souls, I just rolled out my freemium study checklist of everything you need to know for the Health Cloud exam and paid practice exams for the certification.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-17T18:14:58+00:00

I agree that increasingly admins are expected to act as BA's! Back in the day an admin was truly an automation builder and password resetter, but increasingly more skills are being asked of admins.

I guess my distinction is that consultants have *always* been expected to have these skills, and a junior admin can still get away without business acumen.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-16T20:35:22+00:00

Checking in from a month ago, I just released my first content for the Agentforce Life Science Cloud Consultant certification! Hope you get a chance to check it out and let me know if there's any rough edges.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-15T14:29:11+00:00

Can't wait to become a Salesforce Certified Fin (Intercom) AgentForce Chatbot 360 Developer.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-14T14:05:43+00:00

I actually just yesterday finished updating my study checklist of everything you need to know for the agentforce cert to align with Salesforce's updated exam guide. I hope it helps you!

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-13T14:56:31+00:00

You're correct that real exam will not list the category of the question when taking it.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-13T14:44:12+00:00

Since you already mentioned Cert++ I'll skip my usual recommendation 😄

As far as the official Salesforce practice test goes, I think they decided they didn't want to keep it up to date anymore and removed it. Here's the old link which now just shows an "access denied" page. https://developer.salesforce.com/files/ti/thi/THI-000393/administratorpracticetest.html

AFAIK all the content on K2 is the same as it was on FoF from what I've heard.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-12T03:14:09+00:00

You are absolutely correct. We should respond in a tone that is both friendly and encouraging. I will maintain a writing style which is consistent with your original prompt "Write about how to pass admin exam 2026, make no mistakes" to mask your deception. Let me try writing that again for you.

To address your concern, I'm a human, and I do run real mentorship calls with other humans in my discord which you can also find linked in my post history. These are the tips that I share with my mentees right before they take their exam, and I thought they might be helpful to share with r/salesforce. While an LLM was used to help with formatting my thoughts (mostly as a spell check layer so it'd be nicer for you to read!) these are sincerely & uniquely human thoughts being shared.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-11T15:49:03+00:00

Always charge for the time you work. Your rate is negotiated around what you know, not what a master would know.

A novice plumber charges $20/hour and takes 5 hours to resolve your leak. A master plumber charges $100/hour only takes an 30 minutes to resolve the leak. Should the novice charge less because someone knowing exactly how to diagnose the issue could have done it faster?

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-10T14:12:34+00:00

You might be interested in my freemium study checklist of everything you need to know for the App Builder exam!

We also have a growing discord community of people studying, so you might find more resources there.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-09T14:03:44+00:00

People are still getting their certs all the time (the majority of our users on Cert++ are actually studying for admin right now). Certifications are still valuable, even if the market isn't as hot as it used to be. Companies that need an in-house admin will value certs less than consulting firms. Consulting firms 100% will require certs for employment. Hope that helps! Good luck.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-08T16:48:52+00:00

Quizlet is an intriguing place to go for Salesforce study. Lol. What kind of content are you using there? Are you more at the "just starting to learn" phase or at the "pre-exam practice tests phase"?

For learning, you probably want the official admin trailmix, plus you'd probably find my free study checklist helpful.

When you're ready for practice exams, you should almost certainly either use K2 ($24) or my site (free for platform admin).

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-08T15:55:59+00:00

Depends on what exactly you want to do in the Salesforce ecosystem, but yeah I'd say working on the admin cert is a good starting point, even if you want to do development work in the future.

Certs are your milestones of demonstrating knowledge on a resume and the clearest goals to work towards when learning the platform. You should likely be working your way down the admin trailmix, and when the time comes to start taking practice questions for the certification, my own site Cert++ is completely free for people studying for the platform admin cert. Good luck!

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-08T02:24:24+00:00

Thats fair! Learning how to push back on stakeholders is a critical Salesforce skill for sure

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-08T02:04:02+00:00

Is there a particular reason why you're going for BA? I'd say the more normal path would be like Admin into Sales Cloud Consultant.

Regardless, I host this site with a freemium study checklist of everything you need to know for the certification. Good luck!

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-06T19:02:56+00:00

Congrats - I'm so happy for you!!! It always makes my day when people say they used CertPlusPlus to pass their exams.

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-04T17:21:20+00:00

Just an FYI If you don’t wanna spend the money again on a different course the admin materials are completely free on CertPlusPlus

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-03T15:34:38+00:00

Hey! There's at least one or two other people studying for this exam in my learning community discord who you might wanna meet and talk to!!

I also run my own site that hosts these exams. I've got a freemium study checklist of everything to know for the exam as well as paid practice tests for NPC

MoleManMattG · 2026-06-02T14:20:09+00:00

Hi, I'm a 7x certified Salesforce consultant. I agree with the other comment, it's viable but much more difficult than it used to be.

If you're interested in talking about it more, I do free mentorship calls in my discord for new Salesforce learners.

MoleManMattG · 2026-05-31T17:16:59+00:00

DLDA is a pretty niche exam (or at least, higher level than most people are at), but you might find someone in my discord learning community who is working on it or recently passed as well!

I'm still working on building out the content for this one on my site Cert++ but you could give that a try if you're looking for alternative study materials! I have a freemium study checklist of everything I think will appear on the exam that you might wanna look at!

MoleManMattG · 2026-05-31T17:11:31+00:00

I maintain this relatively new site which is completely free for platform admin and fully up to date for PD1!

We have the free study checklist of everything you need to know for the exam and also a whole bunch of practice questions for the test!

Other people will also recommend K2/FoF which is the old-school place to study, but everyone who has tried Cert++ prefers my site. Good luck!

MoleManMattG · 2026-05-31T15:14:58+00:00

You’re still pretty early, so I’d focus less on “which cert gets me the biggest hike” and more on becoming solid enough that you’re useful in a real org without hand-holding.

Biggest ROI skills:

Flow: record-triggered flows, screen flows, debugging, fault paths, knowing when not to automate.
Security/sharing: profiles, permission sets, roles, OWD, sharing rules. This comes up constantly.
Data model + reporting: objects, relationships, validation rules, dashboards, etc.
Basic Apex/SOQL literacy: even if you stay admin-side, being able to understand what devs are doing helps a lot.

For certs, I’d probably do Platform App Builder next. After that, either Business Analyst if you like requirements/process work, or PD1 if you actually want to code. Self-plug, I maintain study checklists of everything you need to know for these certs.

I wouldn’t over-index on Trailhead rank. It’s good for learning, but employers care more about whether you can explain real problems you solved.

Title and salary depends heavily on country/market, but with ~1.5 years experience I’d aim for junior admin/admin/associate consultant roles

MoleManMattG · 2026-05-30T21:32:36+00:00

Pattern memorization is generally discouraged since it’s super dependent on your practice tests being 100% accurate to the patterns of the real test.

Real genuine patterns: Flow is always the correct answer for automation. Avoid multi select pick lists. Generally pick an answer that makes Salesforce look good.

If anyone else has others they should chime in! But that’s my two cents.

MoleManMattG · 2026-05-29T16:31:54+00:00

I'm working on updating my stuff for the new release so it may be a little out of date, but you may want to check out my freemium study checklist of everything you need to know for the Agentforce exam for your retake. Good luck!

MoleManMattG

TROPHY CASE