Providing certificates for course completion is a great way to keep customers engaged and give them a professional document after they finish your online course.
In this article, you’ll learn how to enable and customize certificates for your online courses.
Certificates overview
Customers will receive a personalized certificate for your site after completing all lessons in your online course.
This is what the certificate looks like:
For courses with certificates enabled, customers will see a View Certificate option next to their completed course in the student dashboard. From there, they can view and download their certificate at any time.
Enabling certificates for course completion
Here's how to enable certificates for course completion:
From your home feed, click on your site name and select Admin from the dropdown menu.
From the Admin dashboard, click Products in the sidebar menu.
Click on the Edit icon next to the product you'd like to enable certificates for.
Navigate to the Details tab.
Scroll down until you find the Certificates option. Then, turn on the option “Provide certificates for this course”.
Now that certificates are enabled for your course, customers will automatically receive their certificate by email after completing all lessons in the online course.
Customers can also access their certificate anytime directly from their home feed.
Editing certificates
We will automatically generate a certificate with your site’s logo and a default message, but you can customize it if you want and add your own flair.
Here’s how to customize and edit your course certificates:
Enable certificates for a particular course and click on “Edit”.
You’ll get to modify all of your certificate’s details, such as Logo and custom fields for Certificate title, subtitle & more:
You can also choose if you’d like to show the completion date and a unique certificate serial number.
These will appear at the bottom of your certificates:
Once you’re done, click “Save changes”.
Previewing certificates
You can preview how your certificate will look by hitting the Preview button:
The system will show a preview of how your certificate will look to your customers based on the changes you’ve made.
For the preview, we’ll use placeholder data for any customer-related details, such as the customer’s name and completion date.
Sending a certificate email notification
By default, customers will be able to view and download their certificates directly from their home feed.
However, you can also set up an option to automatically send them an email notification when they complete all lessons. It will include a link to view and download their certificate.
Here's how to send a customer a certificate email notification:
Enable certificates for a particular course and click on “Edit”.
Turn on email sending for the certificate and make any modifications you’d like to this email:
Once you’re done, hit Save changes.
Customers will receive an email notification as soon as they complete the course, with a link to also view their certificate.
FAQs
Will my certificates still work if I close my course?
Will my certificates still work if I close my course?
Yes, certificates will still work even if your course is closed.
Closing a course only prevents new enrollments—it does not affect students who are already enrolled.
Existing students can continue progressing through the course and will still receive certificates once they meet the completion requirements.
Why can’t my students access their certificate after completing a course?
Why can’t my students access their certificate after completing a course?
If certificates were turned on after a student had already completed the course, their certificate won’t automatically appear.
This happens because certificates are only generated at the moment a course is marked complete.
Your student can trigger the certificate by re-completing the course:
Open the course
Uncheck any completed lesson
Mark that lesson as complete again
Once they do this, their certificate will be generated and appear right away.