About the Channel Institute
Standardised, industry-validated certification for channel professionals worldwide.
Setting the Standard Worldwide
Training for the business aspect of the channel profession has historically been ad hoc. Each employer has their own training course, supplemented by various consulting companies providing non-standardized workshops. The Channel Institute aims to bring a more formal, standardized structure to learning for channel business professionals. This is why we submit to a vendor-independent Industry Advisory Council to approve our course syllabus.
Industry-Validated Courses
Our courses are reviewed and validated by the Industry Advisory Council, comprised of senior channel management thought leaders at major employers worldwide providing expert recommendations. Our syllabus is influenced and directed by these global employers to ensure you have the knowledge that they need.
Study at Your Pace
Channel professionals travel… a lot! Enjoy 24-hour access, 7 days a week from anywhere in the world. The courses and examinations are all 100% online so you can fit your learning plan around your work schedule.
About the Channel Institute
The Channel Institute provides structured, assessed training and certification for channel professionals across the first fifteen years of a channel career. It was founded in 2018 and its courses are taken by channel, partner and alliance teams inside technology vendors in the hardware, software and manufacturing sectors, rather than by the partners themselves.
Training for the business side of the channel profession has historically been ad hoc. Each employer ran its own course, supplemented by non-standardised workshops from consulting firms, so two people doing the same job at two vendors learned different definitions for the same words. The Institute exists to put a formal, standardised structure under that learning, which is why its syllabus is submitted to a vendor-independent Industry Advisory Council for approval rather than written in-house and published unchecked.
The Industry Advisory Council is an independent panel of 27 senior channel leaders at companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Dell, HP and SAP. It reviews and approves the syllabus for each certificate, so the content is directed by the employers who hire channel professionals.
There are four certificates: the Certificate in Channel Management, the Certificate in Channel Sales, the Certificate in Channel Marketing, and the advanced Certificate in Channel Partner Ecosystems. Each is ten modules, fully online and self-paced, approximately 20 hours of study, priced at USD 1,900. The three core certificates end in an exam requiring 70% or more to pass. A certificate is issued on passing the exam, not on finishing the material, and an employer can verify it.
The Channel Institute is not accredited by a national education authority, and no channel-specific certification is. Where the word accreditation is used in this field it means industry recognition rather than a regulator. That distinction matters to anyone putting a credential in front of an employer, so it is stated plainly here.
For individuals the certificate is proof of what you know. For teams it means the people recruiting partners, selling through them and marketing with them work from one set of definitions and methods. See channel training and certification compared for how the Institute sits against the other options available, and 4.9 out of 5 from 36 Google reviews for what graduates say.
The career span the Institute covers is set out in the stages of a channel career, drawn from research reading 362 live channel and partner job adverts at 53 technology vendors and distributors in September 2026. The definitions taught across the certificates are published in the channel management glossary.
See the certificates
Four certificates, each reviewed by the Industry Advisory Council.