Thinkific Certificates

Reward and motivate your students by issuing Thinkific Certificates on course completion!

About This Feature

Thinkific Certificates let you reward and motivate your students by celebrating and providing proof of course completion. Choose from different certificate styles, or take control and add your own background image. Automatically prefill details like student name, completion and expiry dates, and custom fields. Plus add your logo to make sure any of the certificate styles match your brand

Certificates are automatically issued on successful course completion, making it easy for you to automate your workflow. You can also look up student certificate history, edit and reissue certificates without ever leaving Thinkific!

How It Works

Certificates can be created and assigned to one or more courses by you as the Site Owner as well as Site Admins. Student name, course name and issue date automatically populate based on your student and course details, so it's easy to use the same design for multiple courses. However, if you prefer to have custom designs or text for each course, no problem! You can create as many certificates as you would like.

Your students will receive their certificate once they reach 100% completion in your course, and can access it anytime directly within the course or from their account settings.

You can also view and download each of your student's certificates through the student profile. If any updates are needed, like a name change, certificates can be updated on a case by case basis!

Check out a quick overview of customization options and and how to manage your certificates below.

When creating your certificate, you'll have the option to:

Choose a template - Templates apply a background image, font, text spacing and alignment to your certificate
Customize your content - Customize the text that appears on your certificate
Customize your design - Choose your font, colors and optionally upload your own background image and logo
Assign a course - Select one or more courses for your certificate

When a student reaches 100% completion and is issued a certificate, they can:

Click a Get your certificate button within the course to view and download a PDF of their personalized certificate
View and download it from within their account settings

Once a student has been issued a certificate, you can:

View and download the certificate
Edit a particular certificate if changes are required like a name change or issue date change

Student Experience

A certificate is issued as soon as your student completes all lessons within your course! They will need to make sure to click Complete & continue on every lesson to reach 100% completion. After that, your student can simply click Get your certificate to download it as a PDF.

If you are using the default completion page, they will see Get your certificate in a popup at the end of the course.

This popup does not appear for custom completion pages.

Your student will also see a Get your certificate button in the top left side of the Course Player that they can click to view their certificate.

Once a certificate is issued, it will also be available within your student's account settings. This means they can view and download certificates even if their course access has expired.

For a student to access a certificate from their account settings:

Login to the Thinkific site
Click the account menu on the top right
Select My Account
Select Certificates on the left menu
Click View on desired certificate

In order for students to view their certificates within their account page, you must be using a Site Builder Theme.

Templates

When creating your certificate, you'll have the option to choose from 7 templates. Templates apply a background image, font, text spacing and alignment to your certificate. Even if you decided to upload your own custom background, make sure to choose a template for your preferred text formatting!

Content

When creating your certificate, you'll see a Content tab where you can customize the text that appears on your certificate. You can customize everything from the certificate title and descriptions to custom fields!

Learn more here: Customize Your Certificate Content

Design

The Design tab is where you can select your desired font as well as 3 colors that are used for your certificate text. If you have a custom background image, it can also be added here!

Learn more here: Customize Your Certificate Design

How to Create a Certificate With a Default Template

Now that you have a general idea of how certificates work, lets jump in and set up a certificate!

We have several templates to choose from to create your course certificate. This is a great place to get started and if you ever want to add your own custom background in the future, check out the instructions below!

We recommend saving frequently while you are creating the following steps to make sure you don't lose any customizations along the way.

From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
Select Certificates
Click + New Certificate on the top right
Under Name, input a name for your certificate. This is for your reference only, it will not display to students.
In the Choose template tab, select your desired template
Select the Content tab to customize text included (Learn more here)
Click Save on the top right
Select the Design tab to customize font and colors (Learn more here)
Click Save on the top right

Congrats! You have created your certificate and can now assign the certificate to a course.

How to Create a Certificate With a Custom Background

If you prefer to use a custom design for your certificate, no problem! You can upload a background image directly to your certificate.

Also check out our tips on using custom background images here!

From your Admin Dashboard, select Users
Select Certificates
Click + New Certificate on the top right
Under Name, input a name for your certificate. This is for your reference only, it will not display to students.
In the Choose template tab, select your desired template. You will upload your custom background image later, but still need to choose a template here for your preferred text formatting.
Select the Content tab to customize text included (Learn more here)
Click Save on the top right
Select the Design tab to customize font and colors (Learn more here)
In the Design tab under Background image, click Upload
Select or Drag & drop your desired image (Recommended size is 1123 x 794 and supported file types are JPG, JPEG, and PNG)
Crop if needed
Click Save
Click Upload
Click Save on the top right

Congrats! You have created your certificate and can now assign the certificate to a course.

How to Duplicate a Certificate

If you have already created a certificate with various customizations and would like to copy your design to use for a new certificate, you can simply duplicate it from your certificates page!

Go to Support Your Students
Select Certificates
Click the ellipses (3 dot icon) on the certificate you want to copy
Click Duplicate

Important Considerations

Choosing a template will override any customizations added in the Content and Design tabs
When customizing your certificate design, there is a file size limit of 4mb. Uploading larger image files may impact student access to the certificate and result in a 500 error
Changes are not applied until you click Save on the top right when creating a certificate; simply click Discard changes if you do not want to apply your changes
Making changes to a certificate template will not affect previously generated certificates, see details in the FAQ below
If you add a certificate to a course with existing students, certificates will not be issued to students who have already completed 100% of your course. See details in the FAQ below
Thinkific Certificates are not available for students when using our Legacy Course Player. If you created your Thinkific account before 2019, you can see how to update your Course Player here!
Certificates are in English by default; if you need to change the language of your certificate, you can customize the text within each certificate to your desired language
We only support English characters on certificates at this time. This means languages with non-Latin-based alphabets (like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic alphabet, Arabic, etc.) are not currently supported.
If you want to issue certificates for the completion of all courses in a Bundle, check out our Learning Paths feature!
We do not have an option to manually generate certificates; certificates are automatically issued on successful completion of a course

This is the first version of Thinkific Certificates. We’re still working behind the scenes on improvements and would love any feedback on what functionality would be most valuable to you. Please contact us if you have any feedback to share!

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I edit an existing certificate template?

When a certificate is issued, you can think of it as a certificate snapshot in time. It will include all of the customizations of your certificate settings at the exact time it is issued (when your student reaches 100% completion in the course).

If you edit a certificate that is currently assigned to one of your courses, only students who complete the course after your edit will see the new certificate. Any student who was issued a certificate before your change will not be affected.

If you need to make changes to a student's certificate after it was generated, see Managing Thinkific Certificates

Can students who already completed my course receive certificates?

If you add a certificate to a course with existing students, certificates will not be issued to students who have already completed 100% of your course. This means certificates will only be issued for students going forward (ie. students who complete 100% of your course after you assigned a certificate).

If a student completed your course before you assigned a certificate, they will simply not see the option to click Get Your Certificate. Note that marking all lessons as incomplete and then completing them again will not change this behavior.

If you need to issue certificates to students who completed your course before you set up certificates, we recommend creating a new private course with a single lesson that is connected to a certificate. You can then manually enroll students into this course to generate a certificate as needed.

Is there some way of identifying a particular certificate given to a particular student?

Yes — every individual certificate includes an automatically-generated Certificate ID field that is unique to that particular certificate. This can help you identify a specific certificate, by comparing the ID in your local version of the certificate with any external certificates (downloaded PDFs, etc.)

Can I issue a certificate for a Bundle?

If you want to issue certificates for the completion of all courses in a Bundle, check out out Learning Paths feature! This feature allows you to quickly create a curated student experience to engage with course content in an organized way. No need for workarounds - build directly in Thinkific, this feature allows you to guide your students through their learning content and even assign a certificate after the completion of the whole path.

Are there alternatives to Thinkific Certificates?

Digital Badges are a great alternative to Thinkific Certificates. Thinkific Certificates let you reward and motivate your students by celebrating and providing proof of course completion. The certificates can only be awarded after a course completion and they can be shared by students to their social networks.

Digital Badges are a way to encourage and reward a variety of different behaviours, such as engagement, customer loyalty, etc. Badges serve to gamify the learning experience, motivate students by recognizing their achievements, and encourage them to engage more deeply with the course material. This builds a connection between you and your students while encouraging consumption of the learning content/courses.

For more alternatives, see: Are there any alternatives to Thinkific Certificates?

Next Steps

Now that you have created your certificate, make sure to assign it to a course! You can also preview your course as a student to see what your student will experience when they receive a certificate.

How to Assign a Certificate to a Course

Previewing Your Course as a Student