Certivo vs Spreadsheets

Run the math against your current stack. If you're spending ~$130/month on Acuity + SimpleCert + QuickBooks plus ~8 hours/week on admin glue at $40/hr ($1,280/month of your own time), the real cost of your current setup is closer to $1,400+/month. The question isn't whether $249 is cheap, it's whether Certivo replaces those tools and gives you back 8 hours a week. Test that before you subscribe: until the public launch (targeting January 2027) the way in is a Founders Membership application, which the founder reviews personally. Subscription fees are not refundable once billed, apart from SLA service credits or where the law requires a refund, as the Master Subscription Agreement sets out.

The Starter tier at $49/month is built exactly for shops your size. Even at 30 classes a year, that's roughly 4 hours/month of admin. Certivo cuts that to under 1. You save 36 hours a year, a long weekend back. And the certificate quality + client compliance proof works the same whether you do 30 classes or 300. You'll look more professional than 90% of trainers your size.

Both. Any class can be published as open-enrollment with seats and a per-seat price, and you get a shareable booking page plus an embed widget you drop straight onto your own website. The public registers and pays in under a minute, no account, no back-and-forth. Seats are held in real time so you never oversell, payment runs through your own Stripe account, and certificates issue automatically the moment the class wraps. It's a new revenue channel that runs on the same platform you already use for your contract work, no separate storefront to manage.

Most common concern I hear, and it's the right one to have. For Founders Members the founder personally migrates your data in week one: Excel CSVs, Acuity exports, SimpleCert backups, by hand if that is what it takes. You don't lose a single class history. And your old system stays in read-only mode for 90 days as a safety net while you settle in.

Certivo isn't trying to be a better SimpleCert. It's the thing that replaces SimpleCert + Acuity + your spreadsheet + your invoicing + your reminder system in one platform. The math works when you stop paying for 5 tools and 5 hours of glue work and start paying for 1 platform. SimpleCert by itself is fine. SimpleCert plus the other 4 tools you're using is the actual problem.

Good: that's the right question to ask any SaaS. Three answers. (1) Compute and Cloud Functions run in Google Cloud's Toronto region (northamerica-northeast2); data at rest (database, file storage, authentication) is hosted in Google Cloud's US multi-region under Google's SOC 2 Type II controls, full cross-border detail in our DPA and sub-processor list. (2) Built for PIPEDA from the start, not bolted on: the audit logs you'd need for a compliance review are already there. (3) SOC2-aligned audit logging on every privileged action: every login, every cert issuance, every data export. Multi-tenant security is enforced at three layers: client guards, Firestore rules, and Cloud Function authorization. Security white paper available on request.

Two thoughts. (1) The migration is the founder, not you. You spend ~90 minutes total, one onboarding call, one mid-week check-in. (2) If 'right now' is wrong, when's right? Every quarter you wait, that's another 100 hours of admin you're not getting back. And Certivo can run alongside your existing system while you move over, so you're not 'switching' on day one. Worst case you spend 90 minutes on the onboarding call.

The most legitimate question I hear. Three answers. (1) The founder has indefinite personal runway, no investor clock forcing a fold or sell. (2) There's no outside money in Certivo: no cap table, no board, nobody who can force a pivot or a sale. It's pre-revenue today and the running costs are small enough to carry out of pocket. (3) Your data is not locked in: an admin can export your business data at any time, and after a subscription ends you have a 30-day export window. There is no source-code escrow agreement today; if your business needs one, raise it before you sign.

Two reasons. (1) A free tier would force gating features every customer genuinely needs. The Starter tier at $49 includes everything: full cert generation, full Stripe payments, full client portal, because every customer pays. (2) Free-tier customers don't tend to give the kind of feedback that improves a product. Paying customers do. We're an early-stage product optimizing for product quality, not signup count. Until the public launch (targeting January 2027), Founders Membership is the way in, after launch, the 30-day free trial will be the no-commitment way to try it.

Three things. (1) Export your business data whenever you want, at no extra fee: an admin can download a full JSON archive from Settings, and the student, client, invoice and expense lists export to CSV. (2) After the subscription ends you have 30 days of read-only access to export anything else you need, and your data is deleted within the 60 days after that. Training records (classes, rosters, certificates and sign-ins) are kept for 5 years after each course, and financial records and incident reports for as long as tax and safety law require. (3) Subscription fees are not refunded for the unused part of a billing period, as the Master Subscription Agreement sets out. Your data is yours to take with you.

Yes: Instructor Suite is built offline-first. A LocalActionQueue stores operations in the browser when there's no signal and automatically syncs when connectivity returns. Your instructors complete a full class: attendance, incidents, photos, signatures, without internet. Cross-tenant safety is stamped at enqueue so a shared field tablet can't leak data between orgs.

Fair question. Three honest answers. (1) Ready 4 Everything operates in Alberta only, if you're outside Alberta, there's no competitive overlap whatsoever. (2) Tenant data isolation is enforced at three independent layers (client-side guards, Firestore rules, Cloud Functions), so nobody signed in to the R4E account can see your students or pricing. The founder is also Certivo's platform administrator, and that role can technically access any account for support and operations. The governance policy prohibits using it for any competitive purpose, the account requires multi-factor authentication, and support sessions inside an account are time-limited and recorded in the audit log. (3) The standard agreement does not include a non-solicitation or non-compete commitment from Certivo today; if that matters to you, raise it before you sign. The reason R4E exists on the platform is actually the most useful thing for you: the founder is finding bugs in production before you do.

The first 10 paying customers get the Founders Membership: Professional at $149/month for life (40% off the standard $249 rate), plus direct founder access, roadmap vote, white-glove migration, and a Founders Council seat. The public launch is targeting January 2027. Apply now to secure your spot, capped at 10, first-come.