A training provider issues certificates in cohorts. Twelve people in March, none in April, forty in September. The bill, on every hosted credential platform priced below, does not follow that shape — it follows an annual allowance you buy in advance.
What the vendors publish
Certifier — read 2026-10-11 and again 2026-10-12. Professional **$76/month billed annually** ($89 a month billed monthly) at the page's default position of its volume slider; Advanced $339 a month billed annually ($399 monthly). The Starter tier is "$0 / free forever" up to 250 certificates or badges a year. The meter is credentials per year, bought ahead of issuing them.
Sertifier — read 2026-09-24 and again 2026-10-12: *"The free plan covers up to 25 people"*; the page's default, credentials for 500 people a year billed yearly, is $750 per year, and *"Issued credentials will remain valid and accessible to recipients even if you cancel your subscription."* The page offers monthly billing too (*"Yearly payments come with a 2 months free"*), but the monthly amount is drawn by the page's script and was not in the page as read, so there is no published monthly figure to put in the table — and inventing one by division would be exactly the arithmetic this guide refuses to do silently. The meter is recipients per year, and the allowance resets on their calendar, not yours.
Accredible — read 2026-09-03 and again 2026-10-12: Launch *"starts at $45 /month"* on a 12-month term billed monthly, 50 recipients to get started; Connect and Growth are "custom plans available". The published figure is a floor and a commitment at once — it is monthly billing of an annual decision, not a monthly price.
The arithmetic, labeled as arithmetic
Only Certifier publishes a plain monthly price, so only Certifier gets a five-year row.
| monthly | five years | |
|---|---|---|
| Certifier Professional, billed annually | $76 | $4,560 |
| Sertifier | $750/year for 500 people, billed yearly | stated, not converted |
| Accredible Launch | "starts at $45", 12-month term | a floor, not a price |
| Certora | — | $79, once |
Certora's $79 is less than one month of Certifier Professional billed monthly: one is a month, the other is the license.
What Certora is
Single-tenant verification you host. Every certificate carries a unique code, and the verification page is served from your own domain — so the proof a learner shows an employer does not depend on a third party continuing to exist, or on your allowance being paid up this year.
Who should stay where they are
Stay with Sertifier if you want the hosted recipient portal, the badge wallet and the LMS/CRM integrations running on their infrastructure. Stay with Accredible if you need the program layer — learner pathways, engagement analytics and a hosted wallet.
Certora issues PDFs from your own installation and verifies them from your own domain, and it can publish Open Badges 2.0 data from that domain too. It has no wallet, no pathways and no analytics, and if those are the job it is the wrong tool.
The two links this guide owes you
Certora is $79, once, with the PHP source. Open the demo and verify a certificate from the issuer's side.
Try the Certora demo ↗Live, on sample data, no sign-up.