Top 3 Accredible Alternatives: Ultimate Comparison Guide

Sometimes, you just need to switch things up.

Accredible is a solid digital badge and certificate software, but it’s worth researching what else is there — another tool might be a better fit for your needs. 

Who knows, right?

That’s precisely what we’ll cover here: three great Accredible alternatives with similar scope of features, yet different enough to bring a breath of fresh air. 

We have tested about a dozen of the most popular alternatives and took organic reviews by verified users on multiple platforms into consideration for objective evaluation.‍

To replace Accredible, an alternative solution must provide these essential features:

• Digital certificates and badges with rich branding and design capabilities;
• Efficient certificate and participant management;
• Validation methods to ensure certificate/badge authenticity;
• Social sharing options.
  ‍

Everything else is an added bonus that makes each tool different from the next and a better choice for specific use cases.

As a result, we concluded that the best Accredible alternatives are:

1. Virtualbadge.io;
2. Sertifier;
3. Credly.

Depending on your certificate design and distribution needs, business size, and budget, one of these will be your new favorite. 

But first, let’s see what is good and bad about Accredible.

‍

Table of Contents

• Evaluating Accredible: The Good And The Bad

1. What’s Good About Accredible
2. Where Accredible Fails To Meet The Expectations
3. Final thoughts on Accredible

• Accredible Alternative #1: Virtualbadge.io

1. The pros of using Virtualbadge.io
2. Cons to consider
3. Virtualbadge.io Pricing

• Accredible Alternative #2: Sertifier

1. The pros of using Sertifier
2. Cons to consider
3. Sertifier Pricing

• Accredible Alternative #3: Credly

1. The pros of using Credly
2. Cons to consider
3. Credly Pricing

• Virtualbadge.io VS Sertifier VS Credly — Our Final Thoughts

‍

Evaluating Accredible: The Good And The Bad

‍

‍

With 4.8/5 stars on G2 Reviews and 4.5/5 stars on Capterra, Accredible looks hard to top — but it’s not perfect.

Accredible is praised for ease of use, thorough analytics, and certificate/badge distribution. On the other hand, it is costly, and the code could use some tidying up. Accredible is often slow to load and requires refreshing multiple times.

More on that below.

What’s Good About Accredible

1. A complete digital certificate/badge solution.

Accredible has digital certificates, badges, and credentials; it uses Digital Wallet Cards to validate them on the spot. This makes certificates and badges portable and enables its owners to display credentials on sight. 

It integrates with plenty of LMSs and publishing tools, some of them being:

• Canvas;
• Moodle;
• WordPress;
• Microsoft Azure AD;
• Ruby on Rails.

Job Market Insights is a feature that helps Accredible users show the value their certificate has for the job market. It will display accurate job data, salary ranges, and employers interested in employing the certificate-owners.

2. Good Badge designer.

Open Badge Designer is easy to use and rich in design options:

‍

Some certificate design templates are free for the ones just “looking around” the website.

3. Transparent pricing - per unique recipient.
   ‍

Accredible won’t make you pay for each certificate you issue. Instead, its pricing is based on a unique recipient, which means they can receive as many certificates as you wish.

But really... how many different certificates do you need to issue to one person, per course?

Where Accredible Fails To Meet The Expectations
‍

1. Its Free Forever plan isn’t worth much.
   ‍

Features for the free plan are pretty good: Accredible doesn’t skimp and provides unlimited badge and certificate design, email templates, along with basic branding and integrations.

However, the Free Forever plan only allows up to 20 unique recipients per year. No matter your business size or model, you cannot do much with a number of recipients that small. 

Essentially, the “free” plan is more like a demo or a free sample as it’s not a feasible plan that works long-term.

2. All plans are quite expensive.
   ‍

Lite plan is the cheapest option, with costs starting at $960/year for up to 1000 unique recipients. 

The Plus and the Premium plans come with custom pricing, with Premium being the only one to grant access to all the features. 

Furthermore it is important to note that the price increases significantly due to opaque pricing, resulting in a tenfold jump when adding just 100 more certificates or badges.

‍

3. Certificates don’t last forever.
   ‍

Once the certificate expires, additional payments are required to re-issue them:

‍

Final thoughts on Accredible
‍

With its pricing, integration capabilities, and overall performance, Accredible is better suited for businesses (medium-sized at least) than individuals. 

Accredible also has a severe lack of range: there are no plans for ones that belong between lite and corporate/enterprise.

Now, let’s proceed to Accredible alternatives that fill in the gaps. 

Accredible Alternative #1: Virtualbadge.io
‍

The number one Accredible alternative is far more flexible, cost-effective, and has plenty of use cases — meet Virtualbadge.io:

‍

Virtualbadge.io is a scalable digital certificate and badge software that can be used in multiple ways:

• For issuing official certificates and open badges;
• Handing out recognition awards;
• As an integral part of your marketing strategy.
• Send certificates and badges for onsite and live training or event formats

Digital certificates are stored on European servers and can be validated at any time. 

Virtualbadge.io provides a rich knowledge base and, as a welcome gift, several awesome badge design templates! Check them out!

‍

The pros of using Virtualbadge.io
‍

1. Platform designed with social media in mind.
   ‍

Virtualbadge.io puts special emphasis on social media. The badges and certificates are designed to be shared across LinkedIn and other networks easily.

LinkedIn integration lets you add the company’s LinkedIn ID while creating digital certificates. The certificates created by your participants will then point to your company’s LinkedIn page.

All course information is pre-filled and ready for participants’ approval.

All friction in the process of receiving or sharing badges, like creating user accounts, have been completely eliminated.

Course participants and badge owners turn into your online advocates and promoters.

Virtualbadge.io users receive authentic testimonials from clients, build their online presence and authority, and create and issue professional online certificates with ease. 

Clients get noticed for improving their skills, while their network learns more about your work and the knowledge you provide. 
‍

2. The platform is intended for multiple use-cases.
   ‍

Virtualbadge.io caters to different educators and participants — with badges and certificates made for:

• Coaches and trainers;
• Digital academies;
• Enterprises with MS Teams integration;
• Live Training and Events
  ‍

3. Ease of use
   ‍

With Virtualbadge.io, what you see is what you get, with no learning curves involved. Design is as simple as it can be so that a complete novice can create a certificate from scratch. Another option is to simply use the ready-made templates or upload designs from other platforms.

‍

‍

You can upload all the recipients in a single click or just drag the CSV file into the designer. 

Enable instant sharing for Twitter and LinkedIn from admin settings, with more control over what gets published once you hand over the certificate:

This way, you can incentivize and inspire your recipients to create a heart-felt post about your course, and strengthen your online authority at the same time.

‍

‍

Customize your certificate and badge validation page in an intuitive editor. You can even integrate your certificate validation page including a browsing function into your own website with our wordpress plugin or code snippet:

‍

Once you’re finished, all it’s left is to track and measure the success.

Cons to consider
‍

1. Clear focus on badging and certification processes
   ‍

While Accredible is expanding its reach to address various HR-related use cases, Virtualbadge.io is laser-focused on the issuance, management, and creation of badges and certificates.

Skill management of the workforce is not a core feature of Virtualbadge.io.

‍

2. No user accounts on Virtualbadge.io
   ‍

Virtualbadge.io doesn't need users to create accounts on its own platform to access and collect certificates.

While this leads to a frictionless experience on the engagement side, this might be a disadvantage for organizations that want their recipient's certificates to be collectable on a third party platform besides LinkedIn.

Virtualbadge.io Pricing
‍

Everything about Virtualbadge.io is scalable, including pricing. 

The flexibility of the pricing plan makes Virtualbadge.io ideal both for casual users and companies looking to distribute professional certificates and badges.

‍

‍

Each plan has a 7-day free trial to test the waters, and yearly plans come with worthy discounts.

If you’re ready to start issuing digital certificates and badges in no time, try out Virtualbadge.io’s 7-day free trial and start rewarding the people who deserve it.

Accredible Alternative #2: Sertifier
‍

Sertifier is a digital credential management software that helps educational institutions create, manage and send digital certificates and badges.

What we noticed and really like is that Sertifier is free for students, proving their dedication to spreading knowledge. 

The pros of using Sertifier
‍

1. Rich integration capabilities.
   ‍

Out of all Accredible alternatives (including Accredible), Sertifier has the best integration capabilities.

In addition to LMS integrations (Moodle, canvas, Thinkfic), the well-explained API documentation bridges the gap between Sertifier and the most popular software. Google, Zoom, Slack, HubSpot, Active Campaign — and more.

‍

2. Further™ mobile app.
   ‍

Further is Sertifier’s learning mobile application.

It acts as a personalized educational platform that helps users hone their skills and learn more about their interests. 

Further ties together with Sertifier to reward users for pursuing knowledge, and it is available on AppStore and Google Play Store.

Cons to consider
‍

1. Complex interface and onboarding process.
   ‍

Sertifier is not that easy to use and requires some time to get a hold of it; it’s also clunky in the complete setup. 
‍

2. Requests additional (mobile) app downloads.
   ‍

To store certificates and badges earned via Sertifier, participants need to download a different app — Verified. Sertifier advertises it in a pushy way, obstructing the view for recipients:

The certification process almost feels like an ad for Sertifier. It may be perceived as inconvenient and results in less engagement with the tool — making the experience far from frictionless.
‍

3. Too much focus on one use case.
   ‍

Sertifier works great for educational purposes; while not a flaw in itself, it makes the software somewhat weaker for businesses.

Sertifier Pricing
‍

Similar to Accredible, Sertifier’s pricing is based on unique recipients instead of the number of certificates issued.

Each plan has a week-long free trial. However, Sertifier is the most expensive alternative to Accredible:

Like Accredible, the Free plan leaves much to be desired: it has up to 20 recipients with decent features and working capabilities.

Accredible Alternative #3: Credly

‍

Credly is a well-respected Accredible alternative used to supercharge profiles by issuing digital badges, certifications and managing it all on one organized platform.

What we liked about Credly is its robust and polished platform that supports enterprises with a range of digital credential solutions.

Here’s what we liked (and disliked) about Credly.

The pros of using Credly
‍

1. It’s a robust, all-in-one, platform.
   ‍
   
   The Credly platform helps you create, manage, and monitor all aspects of your credentialing, certificate, or badge program. You can design, send, and even expand your brand reach using it.
   
   
   
2. Advanced security.
   ‍
   
   If you’re an SMB with a small number of employees, you’re probably not going to need security as advanced as this. Enterprises, on the other hand, will love the multiple ISO certifications.
   ‍
   
   
3. Metadata mapping.
   ‍

It might sound confusing, but it’s really not. You’re essentially able to provide more context and narration to your digital badges and certificates. 

By adding skill tags and attributes, you can differentiate your virtual badges from each other. Frequent attributes are for types, cost, time spent, seniority, and so on.
‍

4. Promote opportunities.
   ‍

As someone earns a virtual badge or certification, they get recommendations for additional events, new certifications, job openings, and more. Learning never stops!

Cons to consider
‍

1. Not aimed at casual users

While Credly is terrific for enterprises, casual users like teachers, coaches, and small course creators should opt for more simple and cost-effective solutions. It’s hard to justify the cost when you’re not using it often.

2. No easy sign-up

To create an account (or learn about pricing), you’ll need to schedule a demo with the sales team. This makes it harder to budget in advance whether it’s cost-effective compared to other Accredible alternatives, and it is too much of a hassle for someone looking to try it first. Other tools enable interested parties to try their tools way faster.

3. Slower learning curve

Unlike other Accredible alternatives on this list, creating metadata can initially take some time getting used to as it’s not as intuitive and straightforward. 

4. Again, it could be more intuitive and easier to use

Some users complained that uploading a badge takes a lot of time. The upload process for issuing bulk badges is not difficult but involves multiple steps that all have to be properly done without errors.

Source: trustradius.com

Credly Pricing
‍

Strangely, Credly provides no pricing information whatsoever. This is usually because pricing can depend largely on the specific needs of the enterprises.

To get in touch with Credly’s sales team, go to the pricing page and fill out the contact form with the required information, and they’ll get back to you.

For this reason, it’s not possible to compare Credly price-wise to other Accredible alternatives. 
‍

Virtualbadge.io VS Sertifier VS Credly — Our Final Thoughts
‍

Here are our findings summarized:

• Sertifier focuses on educational institutions with impressive integration capabilities and mobile apps to enrich the service.
  At the same time, it’s the most expensive alternative, clunky, and requires some time for users to learn how to use the software — not that user-friendly.
• Credly is a trusted digital credentials software best for robust businesses. It’s a good choice for companies in need of global credentialing programs.
  However, not being able to quickly deploy and test the functionality or instantly know the prices is a huge inconvenience. Moreover, some functionalities are not the most intuitive and require hand-holding, so Credly isn’t the fastest fix.
• Virtualbadge.io is a frictionless solution that puts focus on your branding and a pleasant user experience for recipients. It is easy to use and scalable, covering more use cases than other Accredible alternatives. If you want to establish authority and improve market reputation, Virtualbadge.io is the way to go.

If you’re ready to start issuing digital certificates and badges in no time, try out Virtualbadge.io’s 7-day free trial and start rewarding the people who deserve it.