A Cloud Guru -

The platform's origin story is rooted in the early days of serverless technology. After missing out on a job at Amazon due to a perceived lack of cloud expertise, Ryan Kroonenburg teamed up with his brother to build a serverless training platform in just four weeks. This "by gurus, for gurus" ethos established ACG as a pioneer in affordable, accessible cloud education.

| Feature | A Cloud Guru | Adrian Cantrill (Self-paced) | Linux Academy (now defunct) | Coursera (AWS) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | ✅ Excellent | ❌ No (uses diagrams) | ❌ Gone | ❌ No | | Cost | $$$ (Subscription) | $$ (One-time fee) | N/A | $$ (Course only) | | Exam Focus | High | Very High | N/A | Low (academic) | | Instructor style | Fun & fast | Deep & methodical | N/A | Dry & academic | | Best for | Visual learners who need practice | Engineers who want to understand "why" | N/A | College credit | a cloud guru

| Feature | Description | | :--- | :--- | | | Spin up real AWS, Azure, or GCP servers instantly in a sandboxed environment. No credit card required. | | Hands-on Labs | Guided step-by-step missions (e.g., "Launch an EC2 instance with a load balancer"). You type commands into a live terminal. | | Cloud Sandboxes | Unstructured environments where you can experiment freely for a set time (e.g., 2 hours). | | Exam Simulators | Timed, realistic practice exams that mimic the real certification tests (including performance-based questions). | | Learning Paths | Curated playlists (e.g., "AWS Certified DevOps Engineer" → 40 hours of video + 20 labs). | | Mobile App | Download videos for offline viewing on iOS/Android. | The platform's origin story is rooted in the