The 14-day free trial: no card, and what happens on day 15
Certly's free trial runs for 14 days with no card asked for at the start, and it is the whole product rather than a cut-down demo. You can load real suppliers, let the chase emails go out and hand yourself the audit PDF before any money changes hands.
What the trial is for, and what it has to prove
A trial of certificate tracking software is not really a feature tour. It is a test of two things: whether the expiry picture on one screen matches what is actually in your filing system, and whether your suppliers respond when something other than your own inbox asks them for a document.
So the trial is the full product for 14 days, with no card at the start. The order most QA managers work in is this: add the suppliers and the certificate types each one owes you, or import the list from the spreadsheet you already keep with its expiry dates carried over, upload the documents you hold, set the alert thresholds, let the chases go out in your plant's own wording, and export the dashboard as a PDF to see what an auditor would be handed. By the end of two weeks you know whether the needs-attention count is believable, and whether your slowest suppliers answer an email that did not come from you.
On day 15 the decision is a plan, taken on the billing screen inside the app. Prices are per plant, monthly or with the year bought up front, and your records stay where they are while the account is open. The questions below cover both ends of the two weeks: what is inside them, and what happens to the supplier list you loaded if you decide against it.
Questions
Is there a free trial, and how long is it?
Yes: 14 days, free, with no card asked for at the start. Every plan carries the same 14 days, so you are trialling the plan you expect to buy rather than a stripped-back version of it. The supplier database, certificate upload and storage, the no-login supplier upload links, the expiry alerts at 90, 60 and 30 days, the automated chase sequences, the status dashboard and the PDF export are all inside those two weeks. Signing in is by email address and password.
Do I need a credit card to start the trial?
No. No card is collected at the start of the 14 days, so nothing can be charged while you are still looking. When you do take a plan, payment runs through Stripe, which also works out VAT at checkout from your billing address and VAT number. Card numbers never reach our servers; only your subscription status is mirrored back from Stripe so the product knows which plan your site is on.
What can I actually do during the 14 days?
You add suppliers with their contact details and the certificate types each one owes you, such as an allergen declaration, a CoA or an audit certificate, either one at a time or by importing your spreadsheet with column mapping and a preview. You upload the documents you already hold with their issue and expiry dates, and for a type with no printed expiry you can set a renewal period per certificate type so the due date is derived from the date on the form. Alert thresholds sit at 90, 60 and 30 days and can be changed per certificate type or plant-wide, and chase emails go to the supplier contact in your plant's own wording, carrying a single-use expiring upload link so the supplier never creates an account. A supplier's own upload is held as awaiting review until someone in QA accepts it or sends it back with a reason, each certificate takes a reviewed stamp that shows on the row and in
What happens on day 15?
Day 15 is a plan decision, made on the billing screen. Starter is £149 a month for one site tracking up to 50 suppliers; Professional is £249 a month for up to 200 suppliers and gives every supplier a full chase history log; Unlimited is £399 a month with no cap on suppliers and chases sent from your own connected mailbox. Each of those can be bought a year up front instead, at £1,519.80, £2,539.80 and £4,069.80 a year, which is 15 per cent less than paying monthly. The pricing page sets the three side by side with their limits, and the annual billing page explains the prepay discount.
Is 14 days long enough to judge a certificate tracking tool?
For the tracking half, yes, because status is computed from the dates you enter: once your documents are in, the current, expiring soon, expired and missing split is there straight away, and the 90, 60 and 30 day thresholds show how much warning each certificate would actually give you. The slower half is supplier behaviour, and two weeks covers a first round of chases plus their results, since every send is logged and shown as sent, failed or opened on the supplier's page with a resend action beside a failure. If nobody replies in two weeks, that is useful information about your supplier base rather than about the software. Load the suppliers nearest their expiry dates first so the two weeks tell you something.
How many suppliers should I load during the trial?
Enough to make the dashboard honest, which usually means the suppliers nearest their expiry dates rather than the whole approved supplier list on day one. If the list already lives in a spreadsheet, import it from the Suppliers screen and map the columns, including an existing expiry date per certificate type, so the first chase can go out the same day. Supplier caps belong to the plans, at 50 on Starter, 200 on Professional and no cap on Unlimited, so pick the trial load that matches the tier you are weighing up. Archiving a supplier later keeps its records and stops its reminders.
Can I use real supplier contacts and certificates in the trial?
That is what the two weeks are for, and the product is built around it: every supplier and certificate query is scoped to your own site, so your records are isolated from other plants. What is stored is your account details, your site name, alert settings and chase wording, supplier company and contact details, the certificate documents themselves with issue and expiry dates, the chase log and sign-in session records, all on Amazon Web Services in the product's own Postgres database rather than a shared file store. A supplier contact's name, email and phone number can be erased on their own from that supplier's page, behind a confirmation that spells out what goes and what stays. Payments run through Stripe, and chase and upload-link emails leave through Amazon SES until you connect your own sending account.
If I do not buy, what happens to the suppliers and documents I uploaded?
Everything stays while the account is open, including expired certificates, the versions a renewal superseded and the full chase history, because that trail is what an auditor asks for. Deleting the account from Settings, Site details, confirmed with your email address, removes your sites, suppliers, certificate documents, chase history, settings and sign-in details at once, and cancels any live subscription. The same screen downloads a JSON file of your data first, so you can take the record with you, and the audit PDF and audit pack are there if you want the auditor-facing version on paper. Upload links already sent to suppliers expire on their own.