Certn
Certn provides online background screening with published per-check pricing across 200+ countries and territories.
Founded
2016Certn provides online background screening with published per-check pricing across 200+ countries and territories.
Certn sells background checks through a self-serve checkout at published per-check prices, with individuals and small teams ordering standard checks for $4.99 to $29.99 in Canadian dollars. Larger programmes move to enterprise quote requests, and customers embed screening through an API and applicant tracking system integrations. A partner programme adds use, refer, and resell motions with revenue share and wholesale pricing, while the mycrc.ca portal sells personal checks directly to individuals.
About 40 active Meta ads run under Certn Holdings in the United States, and the third-party promoter TechExit.io adds three further ads for the brand. Earned exposure follows press coverage of funding rounds, acquisitions, and certifications, and the company collects enterprise demand through quote requests on its pricing flow.
Source: certn.co
Rivalry in background screening pits Certn against large established platforms and specialist vendors, so pricing, integration breadth, and turnaround speed decide most wins. Published per-check pricing and API delivery are its main competitive levers, and acquisitions added regional reach against global incumbents. Rivalry is high.
Entry costs for aggregating public records and building check front-ends stay modest, and gig-economy screening demand keeps pulling new vendors into the market. Compliance requirements such as SOC 2 attestations and accreditation regimes like DIATF raise the bar for serious competition. The threat of new entrants is medium.
Buyers can run in-house reference and identity steps, rely on informal background opinions, or fall back on paper-based checks, which caps what they will pay for outsourced screening. Automated continuous monitoring and accredited identity verification separate Certn from those manual paths. The threat of substitutes is medium.
Published per-check pricing makes switching a price comparison rather than a negotiation, large employers can still bundle volume for discounts, and small buyers face little switch cost. Enterprise integration depth raises switching costs where screening sits inside applicant tracking workflows. Buyer power is medium.
Certn depends on external data sources, including courthouses, credit bureaus, and motor vehicle registries, and provincial policy such as the June 2025 shutdown of Ontario motor vehicle records to every provider shows how quickly a data source can disappear. Fee pass-throughs for some records signal limited pricing control over key data. Supplier power is high.
Source: certn.co
Strengths: a broad check catalogue spanning criminal record, identity, credit, driver abstract, education, employment, and reference checks with continuous monitoring, delivered across more than 200 countries and territories. Published per-check pricing, API delivery, applicant tracking system integrations, and SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, and ISO 27001:2022 attestations lower buying friction and buyer risk. UK identity work is accredited at DIATF Gamma level.
Weaknesses: check pricing passes through third-party and provincial fees, so headline rates vary by jurisdiction, and Ontario motor vehicle record checks became unavailable to every provider in June 2025, trimming a sold check type. Direct-to-consumer reach is concentrated in Canada through the mycrc.ca portal.
Opportunities: enterprise expansion runs through applicant tracking system integrations, and identity verification deepens after the Trustmatic acquisition as AI-driven fraud pushes investment onto the technology bench. Personal check sales beyond Canada and reseller growth extend the partner programme.
Threats: a federal and British Columbia privacy investigation into its tenant screening data handling creates regulatory and reputational exposure under PIPEDA and provincial law. Established screening platforms compress prices, and some demand reaches Certn through third-party promoters such as TechExit.io rather than channels it controls.
Source: certn.co