CIW certification is different than other certifications because it is "vendor-neutral." This means that it's not limited to a specific company's product as are the Microsoft MCSE, Cisco CCNA, Novell CNA, etc. The emphasis is placed on “job skills rather than software or hardware skills.” A candidate who obtains a Master CIW Designer certification could choose to design with a variety of tools based on the work requirements instead of from the perspective of a particular product or programming language.

CIW has become the industry standard for webmaster certification. Prosoft Training reports that over 30,000 certifications have been issued. CIW certifications can be used by career changers to break into the IT field or by experienced IT professionals who want to solidify their skills. Prosoft Training encourages successful candidates to use their certifications to promote themselves. A webmaster, designer, or developer with a CIW certification should have a better chance of winning a customer's business. You can find out everything you need to know about becoming a Certified Internet Webmaster from the official CIW website

Before selecting any of the CIW tracks , you must pass the CIW Associate certification: Foundations/i-Net+ 5 day series CIW Exam 1D0-410 or i-Net Exam

The exams currently available for certification at this level are:
CIW Site Designer (1D0-420) (90 minutes in length). The single exam category is: Design Methodology and Technology.

CIW E-Commerce Designer (1D0-425) (90 minutes in length). The single exam category is: E-Commerce Strategies and Practices.

CIW Application Developer (1D0-430) (75 minutes in length). The three exam categories are: Fundamentals of CGI, Using Perl and Dynamic Server Pages.

CIW Database Specialist (1D0-441) (75 minutes in length). The primary exam categories are: Database Design Methodology and Building Database Client Applications Using JDBC 2.0.

CIW Enterprise Specialist (1D0-442) (75 minutes in length). The two exam categories are: Distributed Object Computing Using Java and CORBA; and Enterprise JavaBeans.

CIW Server Administrator (1D0-450) (75 minutes in length). There are two primary sections to the exam: Internet Systems Management and Advanced Internet Systems Management.

CIW Internetworking Professional (1D0-460) (75 minutes in length). The two exam categories are: TCP/IP Internetworking and Advanced TCP/IP Concepts and Practices.

CIW Security Professional (1D0-470) (75 minutes in length). The three exam categories are: Networking Security and Firewalls, Operating Systems Security, and Security Audit, Attacks, and Threat Analysis.