Educational
4
min read
15 Best Certificate Maker Apps & Software 2026
Key Takeaways
Necessity of Certificate Maker: The value of your training depends on the security of your credentials; an easily forged PDF instantly compromises your brand's integrity, making a best certificate maker system essential for business trust.
Wauld - The All-Rounder Solution: Wauld is among the top choices because it uniquely merges secure, unforgeable verification with instant bulk automation and a superior recipient experience, providing the definitive best certificate maker software for scaling professional services.
Tools Best for Visual Design: This group includes tools like Canva and Adobe Express, which excel at creating beautiful visual templates but are not suitable for professional use due to their complete lack of automation and secure verification features.
Tools Best for Enterprise Automation: This category features platforms like Accredible and Credly, which offer strong security and LMS integrations but are typically too complex and expensive for the average online coach or growing small to midsize business.
Platforms that are the Best for Simple, Free & Niche Use: This includes basic tools like Certificate Magic and educational add-ons like Certify'em, which are excellent for free, simple, or niche tasks but fall short of the professional branding, security, and scalability required by a paid training business.
A Comparative Checklist: The provided table clearly outlines how Wauld leads the market by offering both bulk issuance and secure digital verification on one platform, highlighting the crucial differences between professional and amateur credentialing solutions.
Your certificate is the most important proof that your learners take with them. It shows they didn't just finish a course; it shows the full promise of your training business is real.
For online coaches and people who teach others, this document is key to building trust in their brand. But here is the problem: many good trainers accidentally make their work look cheap by using simple PDFs. These files are easy to copy or change, and impossible to check if they are real.
If a potential employer or client cannot easily check whether your certificate is valid or not. It means the value you gave your learner goes down instantly. This, in return, hurts your whole brand's honesty.
We know you are focused on creating amazing content and building a great community. The way you issue certificates should be smooth, automatic, and highly professional, not a slow, manual task that takes all your time. We have spent years studying what makes a great way to give out credentials.
Today, in this blog, we will cut through all the confusing options and bring you an expert review of the best certificate maker software out there. This guide will help you pick a platform that will truly keep your brand safe and help your learners succeed.
Why a Certificate Maker is a Must for Your Business
As we all know, in the present job market, skills change quickly. It simply means the old way of relying only on a college degree is ending. Also, many companies now look for proof of a specific yet updated skillset to be up in the game when talking about talent.
Your digital certificate is the key to proving those skills. If your certificate is not verifiable, you are holding your learners back and losing credibility for your business.
A dedicated best certificate maker system does more than just print a name; it links your brand directly to job market value. Here are the clear reasons why this process is now essential for your success:
Higher Value for Your learners: Studies show that a digital micro-credential significantly helps job seekers. For example, 90% of employers say they offer higher starting salaries, sometimes up to 15% more, for candidates who have these focused certifications.
Stronger Hiring Chances: If your learners have a verifiable credential, it gives them a huge advantage. As per Forbes, around 85% of employers say they are more likely to hire a candidate with a micro-credential than one without. This shows your training has real, recognized value.
Employer Demand for Skills: The need for verified skills is not slowing down. A survey of executives found that 87% of leaders are already dealing with or expect to face major skill gaps in their companies. Your course provides the specific answer, and your certificate is the proof.
Employee Confidence and Security: Workers who have verifiable digital skills report much higher job security. 72% of employees using advanced digital skills rate their job security as an 8 or higher, which is a huge jump compared to those using only basic digital skills. Your certificate directly boosts this career confidence.
This data clearly shows that your certificate is a major competitive tool. It is not just for that required fancy touch, but a critical investment in your learner's future and your brand's integrity.
Now that you know why having a professional certificate maker is a must, let's look into the platforms and find the best certificate maker that is ready for 2026.
Wauld: The Platform Built for Growth and Trust
Expert Score: 9.5/10 (The Definitive All-Rounder)
We built Wauld to solve the common problems we saw in the market. Many of the tools claiming to be the best free certificate makers were simple but unreliable. Additionally, there are a few complex systems available that are often too expensive for most trainers.
Wauld is a modern, complete credentialing platform. It is truly the best software to make certificates online for any business serious about growth. We focus on making the process easy for you, the issuer, and on delivering real, lasting value to your learners, the recipients.
What Makes Wauld Your All-in-One Professional Credentialing Partner
Secure Issuance and Trust Protection
We know your brand’s reputation is everything you have built. Therefore, our team ensured that every credential you access is much more than a simple email file.
It is a secure and verifiable digital asset. This important feature keeps your organization safe from fraud and gives instant, solid proof that your learner's achievement is absolutely real.
Verifiable Credentials with Unique IDs: Every credential has its own permanent ID, a secure QR code, and a reliable link. This allows anyone, like an employer, to check instantly that the certificate is authentic, ensuring your brand maintains maximum credibility.
Secure and Fraud-Proof Issuance: Your credentials are sealed with unique identifiers (UUIDs) and strong security checks. This simple action makes it impossible for someone to fake your certificate, protecting your hard work and your learners' effort.
[Please Note: Add a Graphic showing a digital certificate template with a clearly visible, unique QR code.]
Effortless Automation for Scale
Your time is precious and much better spent coaching and building new courses. We designed Wauld’s automation to cut out the slow, manual work of sending individual certificates. This allows your training to scale easily from just a few learners to tens of thousands, which is the mark of true best certificate maker software.
Lightning-Fast Bulk Issuance: You can send thousands of personalized, verifiable certificates instantly. Just upload a simple list of learners (CSV file). The system handles all the personalization and sending with a single click.
Integration Ready: Easily pull in learner data from your course platforms. This makes your certificate generation fully automatic. Your certificate process finally works smoothly in the background, removing a major barrier to your business growth.
Affordable Scalability: We built our system to handle massive volume without breaking your budget. You only pay for the scale you need, ensuring this powerful automation remains a cost-effective solution for every business size.
This level of automation is critical for any growing business. You can get a full, clear look at how our pricing adapts perfectly to your growth and volume by reviewing our transparent tiers by clicking here.
The Recipient’s Digital Wallet Experience
We deeply believe your certificate is only truly valuable if it is easy for your learner to access and share. We designed Wauld for your learners, the recipients. They get a personal, branded space to truly own and manage all their achievements.
Digital Wallet for Easy Access: Recipients receive a private, clean online space. Here, they can see, manage, and download all the certificates they have earned from you. They will never have to search through their old email inbox again.
One-Click Sharing Across Platforms: We make it incredibly simple for recipients to show off their achievements instantly on professional sites like LinkedIn. This feature turns every successful learner into a constant, sharing advocate for your brand.
Who is Wauld Best For?
Wauld is built for the smart professional who understands how to grow their business without losing quality or trust.
Online Coaches & Course Creators: You can easily automate issuing certificates after a learner finishes the course. Use verified social sharing to consistently drive new sign-ups. Find out more about our solutions for training businesses here:
Associations & Membership Organizations: Easily manage yearly renewals and issue special, verifiable membership certificates that truly matter to your members. This simple process helps you keep them for longer.
Growing Businesses & Corporate Training: Work faster and more efficiently with an affordable, branded solution. This avoids the cost and difficulty of old enterprise systems.
The Learner/Certificate Recipient: Wauld provides a personal space for your learners. They can view, manage, and securely share their hard-earned credentials for life.
A Close Look at Other Top Certificate Maker Platforms
To give you a full expert review, we look at other leading platforms. Many promise to be the best awarded certificate maker, but the truth is that only a few can handle the complete job needed by a professional, growing business.
Category 1: Best for Visual Design (The Static Builders)
These tools are excellent for making things look good. They are built for graphics first, and as a result, they completely miss the automation and security needs of a scaled business.
Canva: Your Design Playground
Our Expert Verdict Score: 8.0/10
This is the most popular graphic design tool today because it is pretty straightforward to use.
It gives anyone the ability to create visually stunning designs, making it a natural choice for those who are looking for the best software to make certificates with ease.
What it Does Well: The design editor is simple for everyone, even beginners. It offers a massive library of templates and design elements, making it easy to create beautiful, custom designs quickly. Your finished certificate will look highly polished and professional.
Where it Falls Short: This platform has no automation features at all. It simply means you must manually type in every student's name, which is a massive waste of time as your business grows. Most importantly, it has zero verification security, meaning that the PDF can be easily edited by anyone, making your certification worthless to an employer.
Verdict: Canva is excellent for creating the initial visual template design, but it is not a tool for issuing credentials at scale. It’s not a viable option for your core business because it requires too much manual effort and doesn’t protect your brand.
Adobe Express: The Professional Look
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.5/10
Adobe Express brings a touch of professional quality from the Adobe company into a simple web-based tool. It is perfect if you want a clean, modern aesthetic and may use other Adobe products for your business.
What it Does Well: It provides high-quality, polished templates that look more professional than many basic tools. The platform is simple to use and allows for easy control over your brand’s logo and primary colors.
Where it Falls Short: The tool is entirely focused on static design, meaning it has no functionality for bulk sending, secure recipient tracking, or anti-fraud verification. It cannot handle the necessary data merging required for a scalable business process.
Verdict: You get a slightly more sophisticated design look here, but you are still stuck with a manual, non-secure process. This tool is a document creator, and we will not consider it to be one of the best software to make certificates online. It is because the platform will slow you down as your student count rises.
Fotor: The Image Editor's Choice
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.0/10
Fotor is an image editing and design platform known for offering a wide range of quick design tools. It provides a simple environment for users to create branded documents, including certificates.
What it Does Well: It offers good, diverse templates and a friendly editor that allows you to make quick visual changes and effects. The tool is easy for beginners to pick up and design with or without a steep learning curve.
Where it Falls Short: It is strictly a design application that cannot manage student data, issue certificates in bulk, or provide any digital verification that the certificate is real. You will spend time exporting, renaming, and emailing every file one by one.
Verdict: This is a useful tool for graphic design, but it completely misses the mark on two of the core requirements of a training business: automation and security. You must prioritize verifiable proof over template variety if you want the best certificate maker.
VistaCreate: Design with a Free Brand Kit
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.0/10
VistaCreate is another tool that directly competes with Canva. It is appealing because its free version allows for basic setup of your brand’s colors and logos, offering good visual consistency from the start.
What it Does Well: The platform has a very generous free plan that helps you keep your brand's look consistent across documents. It offers many quality, modern templates for certificates and awards.
Where it Falls Short: Just like all design-first tools, you can only create a graphic image using VistaCreate. The tool cannot help you send, track, or give a unique security ID to the recipients. This makes it impossible to manage a large group of students.
Verdict: Use this only if you want a visual alternative to Canva. You will still need to handle all the slow, manual, and insecure steps yourself.
Venngage: The Visual Storyteller
Our Expert Verdict Score: 6.5/10
Venngage specializes in making clear, engaging documents, often used for infographics and reports. It offers certificate templates that are more design-heavy and visually distinct from other basic tools.
What it Does Well: The templates are compelling, creative, and well-suited to businesses that want a strong, different visual look that helps tell a story. It has a powerful editor for customizing elements easily.
Where it Falls Short: It is a static design tool. There are no features for bulk mailing, merging data from a spreadsheet, or fraud-proof verification. This prevents it from scaling with your students' volume.
Verdict: This tool is excellent for creating single, high-end templates. You’ll get the required results when you pair it with an automated platform like Wauld. It ensures secure issuance and shows that the best certificate PDF makers need a powerful backend to truly work.
Category 2: Tools for Enterprise Automation and Legacy Systems
These tools focus on the needs of very large organizations, often coming with complex features, high prices, and a less user-friendly experience. They solve the volume problem but not the usability problem for a growing business.
Accredible: The Higher Education Standard
Our Expert Verdict Score: 8.5/10
Accredible is a mature and powerful credentialing platform used by major universities and large corporate training teams. The system emphasizes security, detailed reports, and deep integration with the old-style Learning Management Systems (LMS).
What it Does Well: The platform provides excellent security features and deep, complex connections to various LMS systems. It gives you powerful reports about who is viewing the certificates and where.
Where it Falls Short: The cost is often too high for growing online coaches and small training businesses. The interface can be confusing and feels less modern than newer platforms built with a user-friendly design in mind.
Verdict: This is a reliable choice if you run a huge program and money is not an issue. However, for businesses that need to manage costs while keeping things simple and flexible, Wauld serves as a better option. Simply because our platform delivers the same high-level security with a smarter setup for expansion.
Credly: The Digital Badge Specialist
Our Expert Verdict Score: 8.0/10
Credly is a leader in digital badges and micro-credentials. Their system focuses on small, visual tokens that verify specific job-ready skills and meet industry standards.
What it Does Well: The platform is very well-recognized for issuing skill-based badges that are easy to share and respected in many professional industries. It offers strong verification and tracking for these specific types of credentials.
Where it Falls Short: The main focus is on badges and not on full-page certificates. Also, the costs are structured for large, high-volume enterprise clients, making it too expensive and rigid for smaller operations.
Verdict: You can choose Credly if your primary goal is to provide skill badges to your learners. However, if you want formal, verifiable course-related certificates that not only look great but are secure, you’ll need a more comprehensive solution like Wauld.
Badgr: Focusing on open badges
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.8/10
Badgr is another specialized platform that strictly follows the Open Badges standard. It allows users to create skill-based achievements and learning outcomes that are easily recognized and shared across the web.
What it Does Well: It makes issuing Open Badges incredibly simple and ensures your credentials are recognized by any system that supports the standard. The tool is an excellent choice for educational institutions that prioritize skill interoperability.
Where it Falls Short: Just like Credly, it’s primarily a badge platform rather than one for creating and issuing formal, full-page course completion certificates. Design options are limited, focusing more on functionality than brand aesthetics.
Verdict: This platform is a great choice for educators and organizations that issue a large number of Open Badges for specific skills. However, if you’re looking to create professional, branded certificates, a dedicated award certificate maker will be a better fit for your brand.
Category 3: Tools for Simple Management and Budget
These platforms strike a middle ground, offering basic automation and management features without the high cost of enterprise-level solutions. They are functional but often lack modern design and advanced capabilities.
SimpleCert: The Basic Manager
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.5/10
SimpleCert positions itself as an online dashboard for managing certificates. It helps you track and manage basic issuances, sitting comfortably between simple design tools and large, complex enterprise systems.
What It Does Well: It provides a basic management dashboard for easily tracking which recipients have received their certificates. The platform offers bulk sending capabilities by just uploading a list of names.
Where It Falls Short: The system's design and overall user experience feel dated and not as clean as modern software. The security features and personal space for the recipient are very minimal compared to the modern focus of a platform like Wauld.
Verdict: This is a practical choice if your main need is simple list management. Do not choose it if you care about having a modern, attractive system or strong security features. Your best software to make certificates must include an updated user experience for both you and your learners.
Certify'em (Google Workspace Tool): The Google Forms Solution
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.0/10
Certify'em is a popular addition that works directly within Google Forms. It automatically creates a certificate when a student passes a quiz you set up. This simple process makes it very handy for teachers.
What It Does Well: It allows seamless automation that is driven by Google Forms submissions. This makes it an excellent, simple tool for fast testing, and one of the best teacher award certificate maker options for educators.
Where It Falls Short: Design options are very limited, and the tool relies entirely on Google Forms, which is not built for strong professional branding. The security features are also basic and not enough for formal professional accreditation.
Verdict: This is a highly practical and free solution if your entire course system is already built on Google Forms. For businesses that need strong professional branding and top-tier security, a dedicated platform is essential.
ProProfs Certificate Maker: The Assessment Integrator
Our Expert Verdict Score: 7.0/10
ProProfs is a large platform focused on quizzes and online assessments. This certificate maker provides a direct feature for testers, automatically issuing certificates upon test completion.
What It Does Well: It offers simple, smooth automation for businesses that already use ProProfs for training and quizzes. The workflow from taking a test to receiving a certificate is very direct.
Where It Falls Short: The design options are often very plain and generic, making the final certificate look unprofessional for a high-end course. The system is usually geared toward internal training and might lack branding flexibility for public-facing courses.
Verdict: This is a convenient, functional choice if you are deeply invested in the ProProfs testing ecosystem. However, if you are selling your courses publicly and need to impress, you will require much better brand control.
Category 4: Tools for Quick, Basic, and Free Use
It's easy to use the following tools, but they fail when it comes to professionalization, scaling, and security of your business. In other words, they are non-scalable solutions at their very core.
Certificate Magic: The Instant PDF
Our Expert Verdict Score: 6.5/10
Certificate Magic is the fastest, simplest way to get a PDF. You do not need to sign up for anything; you just type in the few details you need, and you will download the file instantly. This is truly the fastest and best free certificate maker available.
What it Does Well: It costs nothing and requires zero effort or sign-up. The tool makes it perfect for incredibly fast, one-off, personal use where security is not a concern.
Where it Falls Short: The templates are extremely limited, and frankly, they look a little unprofessional. It has zero automation and zero security, meaning the certificate is completely insecure and requires you to manually handle everything for everyone.
Verdict: This tool should only be used for fun and personal awards. Due to its incompatibility with professional best certificate maker software, it is not suitable for any course or membership for which your business charges money.
SmartDraw: The Diagramming Utility
Our Expert Verdict Score: 6.5/10
SmartDraw is a tool primarily known for helping people create flowcharts and diagrams. It includes a basic certificate template option within its larger toolset for making documents.
What it Does Well: This tool offers a simple environment that is easy to navigate if you are already familiar with diagramming tools. It helps you create a functional, if somewhat plain, document quickly.
Where it Falls Short: The certificate templates are minimal and truly lack the professional look required for a high-value training program. SmartDraw has no automation features and no way to secure the document or verify it is authentic.
Verdict: This is a general utility tool, not a dedicated solution. It cannot fulfill the needs of a professional business looking for secure, best software to make certificates.
Lucidpress / Marq: The Branded Document Creator
Our Expert Verdict Score: 6.5/10
This tool helps you create many types of branded documents, such as flyers, brochures, and simple certificates. It gives you good control over your brand’s assets, including specific fonts and color codes.
What it Does Well: The tool is excellent for keeping your brand's look consistent across all your marketing and course materials. It provides a professional design environment for visual consistency.
Where it Falls Short: Lucidpress is strictly a tool for creating static documents. It is not built for bulk sending, data merging, or securely verifying information required by any professional organization.
Verdict: This tool is a suitable choice for design control. However, it is not a professional credentialing system, so you will be stuck with a non-scalable, manual process that ultimately fails to protect your brand integrity.
The Ultimate Checklist: Which Best Certificate Maker Platform Wins?
The best choice for your business comes down to which platform solves the problem of Automation, Security, and Recipient Value all at once. This table filters out the noise, weighing all the platforms based on what is most important for your professional integrity and long-term success.
Platform | Professional All-in-One Platform | Bulk Issuance (CSV/API) | Secure Digital Verification (Anti-Fraud) | Modern, Easy Design Editor | Recipient Digital Wallet (Personal Space) | Affordable for SMBs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wauld | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Canva | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Adobe Express | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
Fotor | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
VistaCreate | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Venngage | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
Lucidpress / Marq | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
Accredible | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
Credly | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
Badgr | ~ (Badge Focus) | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
SimpleCert | ~ (Basic Management) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Certify'em (Google Add-on) | ✗ | ~ (Via Google Forms) | ~ (Basic) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
ProProfs Certificate Maker | ~ (LMS Feature) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Certificate Magic | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
SmartDraw | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Key: ✓ (Excellent/Core Feature), ✓ (Available/Functional), ~ (Partial/Niche Focus), ✗ (Not Available/Unsuitable)
Conclusion: The Right Choice for Your Professional Future
Your digital credentials are a valuable part of your product, not just an additional cost. We have carefully examined a wide range of options, from simple free templates to complex enterprise systems.
The key takeaway is clear: for your business to earn trust and grow, your certificates must be secure, verifiable, and easy to share. Any platform that makes you choose between automation and security is holding your business back from reaching its full potential.
Wauld was built with a single goal to give you everything you need in one place. It is the best certificate maker for online coaches, trainers, and growing associations because it combines beautiful design with reliable automation and top-tier security.
As our Co-Founder often says,
“A certificate should not be just a file in someone’s inbox. It should be a living credential that speaks for your brand, builds trust, and travels with your learners wherever they go.”
Wauld brings this vision to life. It gives you a powerful automated system while offering your learners a verified digital asset they will be proud to share.
So, why wait? Move beyond manual PDFs and turn your certifications into a trusted, automated marketing tool.
