Certly vs qadex
If you are weighing Certly against Qadex for supplier certificate work, the short answer is that they are different shapes of product rather than two versions of the same one. Certly does a single workflow, collecting supplier certificates and tracking their expiry dates, while our competitor research describes Qadex as a broader UK food supply chain compliance platform covering supplier approval,
Where each product sits
The first thing worth knowing is that Certly and Qadex are not the same shape of product, so a feature-by-feature scoreboard would mislead you.
Certly does one job. It holds your supplier list with the certificate types each supplier owes you, allergen declarations, certificates of analysis, audit certificates, and it tracks the expiry date on each document. When a date is approaching or has already passed, it emails the supplier contact and keeps emailing on a sequence until the document arrives, logging every send. The status of every supplier sits on one screen in four states, current, expiring soon, expired and missing, and that screen exports to PDF for an auditor to read. That is the whole surface area, deliberately. It is made for a QA manager at a mid-market plant who already knows roughly which suppliers are behind and wants the chasing to happen without a person remembering to do it on a Friday afternoon.
Qadex, on the description in our studio's competitor research, is a UK food supply chain compliance platform with a considerably wider footprint: supplier approval, supplier document and questionnaire collection, specification management, and food safety alerting or horizon scanning. On that description the overlap with Certly is the document collection part. Specifications, questionnaires and horizon scanning sit outside anything Certly does or is planned to do.
So the decision in front of you is not which tool is stronger. It is whether you are buying one workflow or a compliance platform, and whether specifications, supplier questionnaires and scheme paperwork belong in the same system as your certificate register or in a separate one.
What this comparison rests on
Being straight about the evidence matters more on a page like this than a persuasive line would.
Everything in the Certly column is a capability the product is built to have, taken from its own build scope, its declared plans and its written data-handling declaration. Certly is not launched yet: this site is a waitlist, so read the Certly column as what the product does by design rather than as a track record with customers behind it.
Everything in the Qadex column reflects what our competitor research records about Qadex, sourced to qadex.com and retrieved on 25 September 2026. We have not re-verified their current module list, packaging, pricing or contract terms for this page, and we make no claim at all about their reliability, security or support. Where our research does not record something, the table says that rather than filling the gap with a guess.
That means the honest use of this page is as a starting shortlist, not a verdict. Read qadex.com yourself, ask them directly about anything the table marks as not recorded, and hold us to the same standard. We would rather you found the gap here than after a purchase order.
Side by side, with the gaps marked
| Dimension | Certly | Qadex (from our research, 25 September 2026, unverified) |
|---|---|---|
| Product scope | One workflow: supplier certificate collection, expiry tracking and chasing | Described in our research as supplier approval, supplier document and questionnaire collection, specification management, and food safety alerting or horizon scanning |
| Supplier records | Add, edit and list suppliers with contact details and the certificate types each one owes, such as allergen declaration, CoA and audit certificate | Our research records supplier approval and supplier management capability; the record structure is not recorded |
| How documents arrive | Suppliers upload with no login, through a single-use signed email link that expires; the QA team can also upload and file a document manually against a supplier and certificate type | Our research records supplier document collection; the upload mechanism is not recorded |
| Chasing lapsed documents | Automated email chase sequences to the supplier contact for certificates approaching expiry or already lapsed, each with a one-click upload link, every send logged, plus a chase now button on a single | Our research lists supplier questionnaires and audit document chasing as a capability; the sequence behaviour is not recorded |
| Expiry alerting | Expiry date tracking with configurable thresholds at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry, computed by a scheduled job | Not recorded in our research |
| Specification management | Not offered and not planned | Listed in our research as a capability |
| Food safety alerting and horizon scanning | Not offered and not planned | Listed in our research as a capability |
| Auditor-facing output | Single-screen status view per supplier in four states, current, expiring soon, expired, missing, exportable as a PDF for auditor review, with a standing disclaimer on both | Not recorded in our research |
| Sites per account | Starter and Professional cover one site, with plant-scoped data isolation applied on every query; Multi-site covers up to 30 sites under one agreement, added and switched from one sign-in | Not recorded in our research |
| Supplier personal data | A right-to-erasure action removes a supplier contact's name and email while certificate records remain, and unused upload links sent to them stop working at the same moment | Not recorded in our research |
| Document history | A renewal never deletes the document it replaces; superseded versions, expired certificates and chase history are kept while the account is open | Not recorded in our research |
| Security and compliance paperwork | Not in place today: no independent certification such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, no single sign-on or two-factor authentication, no data processing agreement ready to countersign and no choice of hosting | Not recorded in our research |
| Published pricing | Starter 3,228 dollars a year, Professional 5,388 dollars a year, Multi-site 10,788 dollars a year, all billed annually, with a 14-day free trial on Starter and Professional | No public price list known to our research; an enquiry or demo route |
| Sign-in, hosting, billing | Email and password sign-in, hosted on Amazon Web Services with documents held in the product's own Postgres database, card payments through Stripe, chase emails delivered through Resend | Not recorded in our research |
When to choose which
Certly fits when certificates are the actual problem
You have somewhere between a handful and a couple of hundred approved suppliers, one plant, and a spreadsheet with conditional formatting that is accurate on the day you update it and drifting by the following week. The pain is not that you lack a compliance platform. It is that nobody has emailed the dairy supplier's quality contact three times about a certificate that lapsed in July, and you will find that out in the audit. Certly is scoped to that, it publishes its prices so you can decide without a sales cycle, and a QA manager can set it up without an implementation project.
Qadex is worth a call when the scope is wider than certificates
If your requirement list includes supplier approval questionnaires, specification management, or food safety alerting and horizon scanning alongside document collection, then on our research Qadex covers ground Certly does not and will not. Buying a narrow tool and then buying a second system for specifications a year later is a worse outcome than buying one platform now. The same logic applies if procurement wants a single UK supplier relationship covering more of the supply chain compliance picture than expiry dates.
If specifications and questionnaires are somebody else's job
Plenty of mid-market plants keep specifications in a different system entirely, run supplier questionnaires once at approval, and never touch them again until something changes. If that is you, a platform priced and implemented for the full scope is paying for ground you will not walk on. That is the case where a single-workflow tracker earns its keep.
If the paperwork trail is what your group's IT asks for
Worth saying plainly: Certly has no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, no single sign-on, and no data processing agreement sitting ready to countersign. If your sign-off process requires those documents before a tool touches supplier contact data, that is a reason to wait for Certly or to put a vendor through your own due diligence, whichever vendor it is.
And be honest about the incumbent
In a lot of these decisions neither vendor is the real competitor. The spreadsheet is. It is free, it belongs to you, and it does everything except chase a supplier who ignores the first email. Whichever way you go, the test to apply is whether the tool removes the human step of remembering, because that is the step that fails.
Five questions to ask on either call
- How does a document get from the supplier's inbox into the system?
Ask whether the supplier needs an account. Certly sends a single-use signed link that expires, so the supplier clicks, uploads and is done with no login. If a tool requires supplier registration, price in the suppliers who never complete it.
- What happens when the supplier ignores the first email?
Reminders to you are not the same as chasing them. Certly sends an automated sequence to the supplier contact for certificates approaching expiry or already lapsed and logs each send with its delivery result, so the chase history is evidence rather than memory.
- Who sets the warning thresholds, and can they differ by certificate type?
Certly alerts at 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry, and those thresholds are configurable per certificate type or as a plant-wide default. Ask any vendor whether a 12 month audit certificate and a batch CoA can be treated differently.
- What can the auditor actually be shown?
Ask to see the output, not the dashboard. Certly's status view exports to PDF with the same four status labels the screen uses, and a renewal never deletes the document it replaced, so an auditor asking what was valid last March can be answered.
- What does it cost, in writing, for my supplier count and site count?
Certly's three plans are published and billed annually, from 3,228 dollars a year for 50 suppliers on one site. Where a vendor quotes on enquiry, get the number tied to your supplier count before you invest time in an implementation conversation.
What Certly costs, so you can compare like for like
Starter, 3,228 dollars a year
For a single plant tracking up to 50 suppliers, billed annually, which works out at 269 dollars a month, 10 percent off the 299 dollar monthly rate for paying up front. Includes the supplier database with required certificate types, expiry tracking with 90, 60 and 30 day alerts, automated chase emails with supplier self-upload links, and the dashboard with PDF export. Carries a 14-day free trial, with no card at the start.
Professional, 5,388 dollars a year
For a single plant with a deeper supplier base, up to 200 suppliers, billed annually, which works out at 449 dollars a month, 10 percent off the 499 dollar monthly rate. Everything in Starter, with the same 14-day free trial.
Multi-site, 10,788 dollars a year
For groups and consultants covering up to 30 sites under one agreement, billed annually, which works out at 899 dollars a month, 10 percent off the 999 dollar monthly rate. Everything in Professional, no supplier cap, and sites added and switched from one sign-in.
Questions
Is Certly a direct replacement for Qadex?
Only for the certificate part. On our research, Qadex covers supplier approval, questionnaires, specification management and food safety alerting as well as document collection. Certly covers supplier records, certificate collection, expiry tracking and chasing, and nothing else. If your requirement is the wider scope, Certly will not fill it.
Does Certly handle specifications or supplier questionnaires?
No. Certly holds suppliers, their required certificate types and the certificates themselves, with expiry dates and chase history. Specifications, questionnaires and horizon scanning are outside its scope by design.
Do suppliers need an account to upload a certificate to Certly?
No. Each request goes out as a single-use signed email link that expires, so the supplier contact clicks it, uploads the document against the right certificate type and is finished. There is no password for them to forget.
Does Qadex publish pricing?
Our competitor research, retrieved on 25 September 2026, records no public price list for Qadex and describes an enquiry or demo route. We have not re-verified that, so check qadex.com directly. Certly publishes all three of its plans: Starter at 3,228 dollars a year, Professional at 5,388 and Multi-site at 10,788, all billed annually.
Can Certly cover more than one plant?
Starter and Professional are single-site, with data isolated per plant on every query. The Multi-site plan covers up to 30 sites under one agreement with no supplier cap, at 10,788 dollars a year, and lets you add and switch sites from one sign-in. There is a separate page on tracking certificates across more than one plant.
Does Certly check that a certificate is genuine?
No. It tracks the documents you and your suppliers upload and reminds you when dates approach or pass. It does not verify authenticity and it does not guarantee compliance, and that disclaimer appears on the dashboard and in the PDF export.
Is there a data processing agreement for EU supplier contact data?
Not yet. Certly's declaration is explicit that a standard data processing agreement ready to countersign is not in place, nor is an independent security certification, single sign-on, two-factor authentication or a choice of hosting region. What does exist is an erasure action that removes a supplier contact's name and email and stops any unused upload links sent to them.
Can I use Certly today?
Not yet. Certly is at the waitlist stage, so everything described here is what the product is built to do rather than a customer track record. If you are mid-decision and need a tool in place this quarter, that is a real reason to look at an available product instead.