“I meet the educational requirements for the PMP, but not the experience requirements, as I never formally occupied the PM position at my company.  However, I have been the owner of my own web development company for the past 5 years.

Can I take the PMP exam or given that I don’t have PM experience within a corporate setting, can I only do the CAPM?”

When considering PMP or CAPM certification, here are a couple of points to consider:

1. There’s no requirement that you formally occupied a “project manager” position within your company. What’s important is whether you managed projects – the title on your business card is irrelevant.

2. There’s no requirement that your experience come from a corporate environment. If you ran projects as part of running your web company, you can count that time towards your experience.  If you’ve run any projects outside of work, perhaps on a volunteer basis for a non-profit organization, you can count those hours as well.

If, by combining your web company projects with any corporate projects, you’re close to meeting the experience requirements for PMP, I would head in that direction. If you’re still well short of the requirement, I would go after the CAPM.