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.
Ratings
Ease of Use
Best For
Key Differentiator
Price
Free Trial
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.
Need Help? Talk to an HR Software Advisor!
Tell us more about your company & an HR Software Advisor will help you find the right software
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.
Awardco is integral to our workflows for recognizing employees throughout their lifecycle. I use it daily in my role to manage employee recognition initiatives. Key workflows include driving peer-to-peer recognition through Awardco’s customizable programs and managing points allocation for our employees’ service anniversary program, where milestones are celebrated with points. It also involves utilizing Awardco’s reporting features to monitor employee engagement across teams.
- Awardco allows for comprehensive customization of recognition programs to fit organizational needs.
- The platform consistently introduces upgrades and enhancements.
- Its reporting capabilities and user-friendly dashboard help track program success effectively.
My organization sought a reliable recognition platform to promote a consistent culture of employee recognition for our 4,500+ employees worldwide. We needed a solution to enhance our existing recognition programs with a modern interface, an award points allocation system, and diverse redemption options.
Awardco perfectly met these needs. Additionally, it provides robust analytics and reporting features to measure the success of our programs. My organization has been using Awardco for over two years.
- Awardco could expand its partnerships with brands for gift cards outside the U.S.
- A feature to retain unused award points in the employer’s wallet would improve cash management.
- The integration with MS Teams could be enhanced for easier employee access.
Awardco stands out with its modern and intuitive interface compared to other recognition platforms. It integrates with Amazon, offering a wide variety of rewards to employees. Its redemption options are particularly appealing, making the experience more exciting for users. Awardco’s receptiveness to feedback and quick turnaround on enhancements make it a standout choice. I consider it one of the best recognition platforms available.
When purchasing Awardco, consider your budget and secure buy-in from key stakeholders like the CHRO and FP&A, as it represents a significant investment. Assess the internal resources required within HR to manage the platform effectively and maintain employee engagement.
Evaluate how the platform aligns with your organizational goals for recognition and retention to maximize its impact. Proper planning ensures the tool delivers value and meets expectations.
Awardco frequently introduces updates and enhancements to improve the user experience and address customer needs. These changes reflect their commitment to adapting the platform in response to feedback and evolving market trends.
Awardco is ideal for organizations with over 500 employees, especially those with a multi-generational workforce and geographically dispersed teams. Its customizable recognition programs and diverse reward options effectively engage a wide variety of employee groups.
Awardco may not be suitable for very small organizations or those with employees who do not rely on technology as their primary mode of collaboration.
We use Awardco for recognizing our employees for anniversaries with the company, birthdays. And personal anniversaries. We also allow supervisors to go in a recognize high performers.
- It keeps track of and sends gift cards for employee birthdays.
- It lets us supervisors highlight high performers.
- It makes employees feel recognized and us to gift them a small gift of appreciation.
Our office subscribed to Awardco to help with our retention issue. Although we had a good culture, talent is still hard to retain in this market and we wanted our employees to feel appreciated and want to continue working here.
There really is not much we dislike. This is the only service we have seen that’s been able to boost morale the way it has.
I am not sure of any competitors in this market
If you’re looking to boost employee moral this is a great tool and we have seen a big trend upward in our retention. We were hesitant at first to spend money on an award system but we are glad we did.
I’m not sure of any changes since we have started using it.
This is great for any company that has more than 30 or 40 employees and would like to recognize employees
Small business that you could easily track what Awardco tracks, or a company not wanting to spend money on employee recognition.
We use it for incentives. Anytime we want to shout out an employee we're able to offer them a bit of points to use at any major site they're interested in. This is great for employee recognition and overall morale. We typically aim to tie it to some measurement of performance.
It's easy to keep track of the expenses towards incentives. It's easy to use on both ends (sender and receiver). Employees also love the idea of receiving $25 in Awardco instead of receiving money on their check that they don't really notice.
We were interested in finding a way to reward employees in an organized fashion. This made taxes easier for us, while also easily creating a budget for each department. It also made it easy for us to track why incentives were being passed to each individual, creating better oversight of expenses.
I don't think there's really all that much I don't like about the software. We would appreciate a lower fee for using it! Other than that, it's truly great and I highly recommend it.
It's simple. It's very user friendly and the money can be spent anywhere.
Ease of use is one. Second would be the stronger sense of oversight.
I don't think there's really been any adjustments over time, but I also don't need it to. It does what its intended purpose is.
Larger organizations that care about culture and want an easy way to budget and control incentive spending.
I would say it's not necessary for smaller companies where you already have the oversight of incentive budgets.
Assembly
Assembly
Motivosity
Motivosity
Nectar
Nectar
Awardco
Awardco
Achievers
Achievers
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.
Amazon, Ford, Pinterest, Cornell, Chick-fil-A, Paramount, Pacific Life, and Hertz.
- 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
- 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 has a $5,000 minimum annual fee. The final pricing structure would vary according to your company size and reward needs.
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.
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.
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
About SSR
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. However we may earn a small fee if you click on vendor links on this page.
