Introduction

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Awardco Versus the Competition

Thanks to their Amazon Business integration, Awardco is unique in basically putting Amazon’s product catalog at your disposal for employee rewards. They also have a points system for hotels, tickets, charitable donations and more.

If you're ready to get a Awardco demo, we suggest getting in touch for a look at the product and quote. Otherwise, read on!

Ratings

4.6

Ease of Use

Best For

Key Differentiator

Price

$2500 minimum annual fee

Free Trial

No

PROS

  • Amazon Business integration, huge reward catalog for a multitude of countries. 
  • The platform is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese.

CONS

  • Actual pricing is not publicly available, so getting started won’t be a quick and self-service process like with other companies in the space. 
  • With Awardco, digital and physical gift cards are ineligible for refunds. 
  • Only Amazon-delivered products are available from Awardco. Goods sold by third-party vendors on Amazon are not available. 
  • The Awardco mobile app is only available as a Progressive Web Application, not from the App Store or Google Play, which might be less intuitive for some users.

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Awardco Review

Although they stand out mainly for their Amazon integration and reward catalog, Awardco is also interesting because of its many modules. Within a single platform, they have the tools you’d expect for rewards and recognition, like a social media feed, shout outs, and a points system. But they also have the Celebrate, Earn, and Manage modules.

Celebrate is for recognizing employees when reaching a certain milestone in their career or other meaningful moments. The folks at Awardsco felt that the usual rewards, like a gift-card or company swag or even a plaque, could feel bland compared to the meaning of say, reaching a certain tenure within the company or getting a promotion.

So, they devised this module with reward offerings like trips, experiences, and digital memory books. As with most of the platform, you can set up automated reminders for dates like birthdays and service anniversaries. This also saves you the legwork of getting managers to sign off on an initiative or colleagues to sign a card for instance, thanks to the automated emails feature. 

Then we have Earn, of which we already explained a bit in the features section of this review. This basically grabs their entire catalog and makes it available to tie certain rewards to an individual or team objective. It can be used to incentivize performance or participation within an internal program. For example, an employee can get a certain amount of points if they reach 90% of their KPIs for the month, or get a gift card for attending a seminar and then sharing notes with the rest of the team. 

Finally, ‘Manage’ is the part of the portal where you keep track of everything going on with your rewards and recognition activity. It’s where you’ll set a budget, handle taxes related to the rewards and recognition expenses, manage HRMS and other integrations, and get reports which can be exported to .csv.

Who shouldn't buy Awardco

Awardco has plans that could be suitable for small businesses (1-100 employees), mid-market (100-1000) or enterprise (>1000). They do cater to businesses in several parts of the world and, as you can see from their client list, a variety of industries.

As far as rewards and features go, Awardco is one of the most complete tools we’ve seen. Hence, if you’re looking for a quick and simple solution to get started with rewards and recognition, for instance, a platform to send out gift cards and send shout outs, Awardco would definitely be more than what you need.

Awardco Customers

Amazon, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, Pinterest, Cornell, Chick-fil-A, Paramount, Hertz.

Awardco: Huge Selection of Rewards
visit Awardco

Awardco Key Features

  • Employee Recognition: From the same platform, you can recognize an individual or multiple team members at a time, tag a specific type of action, program, or network you’re recognizing them for, and then write a small text explaining why. Recognitions can be points or a simple “thank you”.
  • Employee Incentives: Awardco also stands out for having the “Earn” module, where you can incentivize employees to reach specific goals or be part of internal initiatives (for example, a safety training) in exchange for points. The remarkable thing about this module is that it lets employees take ownership of their rewards.
  • Zero Markup Rewards: Awardco’s partnership with Amazon Business means you pay the same price for products as if you purchase them yourself. You also save on shipping thanks to the eCommerce giant’s infrastructure, and avoid imports. For instance, do you have an employee in Amsterdam? Amazon Netherlands will send their product from a local warehouse. 

Awardco also has capabilities for: 

  • Spot Recognition
  • Social Feed
  • Budget Manager
  • Reporting & Dashboards
  • Bulk Recognition
  • Birthday Automation
  • Onboarding Programs
  • Branded rewards and UX

Awardco Key Integrations

  • Okta
  • Slack
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Compatible with all sorts of HRIS systems, mostly through an API or SFTP method
  • Only supports SAML 2
  • SSO is an option

Awardco Pricing

Awardco has a $5,000 minimum annual fee. The final pricing structure would vary according to your company size and reward needs.

Awardco is Best For

How has Awardco Changed Over Time?

Awardco Implementation

According to their sales page, implementing Awardco will take 4-12 weeks. Times will vary depending on the state of your recognition program and how many people it’s going to serve. With any implementation, there's a dedicated team to help with technical configurations and overall strategy.

Awardco Customer Success

As an Awardco client, you get a Client Success Manager that’s available by phone or email should you need any assistance. As part of their Customer Success efforts, Awardco also offers a User Support FAQ, they constantly publish content on best practices to increase the internal adoption of recognition programs. Also, their personal support is handled through Zendesk.

About Awardco

Although their LinkedIn lists their founding year as 2015, Awardco actually traces its origins back to 2012. Then, the company was a couple of people working on a picnic table. They started as a basic reward and recognition software platform, which we can say was a fairly novel idea at the time. The idea spread, the company kept growing and they were able to land their deal with Amazon Business a couple of years later. In turn, this enabled them to get other partnerships and keep growing their reward offering. For instance, now they can offer holiday packages or in-town experiences as rewards. Awardco are now able to cater to over 3 million users globally, in over 140 countries.

Company HQ

Provo, Utah

Number of Employees

370+

Year Founded

2015

Amount Raised

Last round was $65M in Series A funding in the fall of 2021.

FAQ

Awardco Alternatives

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Cooleaf

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Mo

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Workstars

An affordable rewards platform designed for US and UK-based businesses

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Connecteam

Rewards, time off, and training in one app, free plan available

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Guusto

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Vantage Circle

Suitable for global organizations operating in many countries

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/ 5
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