The Salesforce Certified Administrator exam is the core CRM admin credential. Job posts and searchers still say ADM-201; the live exam is the current Administrator blueprint on Salesforce’s site.
Start practicing: Free Salesforce Administrator questions →.
You need a hands-on Developer Edition or Trailhead Playground. Reading Setup menus from screenshots is not enough.
Exam overview
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Credential | Salesforce Certified Administrator |
| Common search name | ADM-201 |
| Questions | 60 multiple choice / multiple select |
| Duration | 105 minutes |
| Passing score | 65% |
| Cost | ~$200 USD |
| Prerequisites | None; Trailhead + a real org is the real prerequisite |
| Maintenance | Salesforce release maintenance exams |
Official: Salesforce Administrator. Always re-read the current exam outline — Salesforce updates weights with major releases.
What the exam covers
Study the live outline. These areas show up every cycle:
- Configuration and Setup — company settings, UI, user management, licenses.
- Object Manager and App Builder — standard vs custom objects, fields, page layouts, record types, Lightning App Builder.
- Sales and Marketing — lead conversion, opportunities, campaigns, products/price books at admin depth.
- Service — cases, queues, assignment rules, Knowledge at a recognition level.
- Productivity and collaboration — Chatter, AppExchange recognition, activity management.
- Data and analytics — data loader vs import wizard, validation rules, duplicate management, reports vs dashboards, sharing model impact on reports.
- Security and access — org-wide defaults, role hierarchy, sharing rules, profiles vs permission sets vs permission set groups. This is the highest-miss cluster.
- Automation — Flow (record-triggered, screen, scheduled). Process Builder and Workflow are legacy — know they are retired/retiring and that Flow is the current tool.
5-week study plan
| Week | Org work |
|---|---|
| 1 | Users, profiles, permission sets, OWD, roles, sharing rules |
| 2 | Objects, fields, record types, page layouts, Lightning pages |
| 3 | Leads, opportunities, cases, queues, assignment rules |
| 4 | Flow automation + validation rules + data import |
| 5 | Reports/dashboards + 300+ questions + 2 timed exams |
Trailhead modules are useful; your playground org is the study guide. Recreate every sharing and Flow scenario yourself.
After Administrator
Salesforce’s ladder after Admin is role-specific (Platform App Builder, Platform Developer I, consultant tracks). On CertStud today the live catalog cert is Salesforce Administrator.
Resources on CertStud
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