Awardcovs.Nectar
With the right vendor, employee recognition improves every single business outcome. Two well-known options in the space are Awardco and Nectar, but how do they compare, and which is best for you?
The verdict
While Nectar showcases its Culture Suite story, Awardco offers superior capabilities from recognition and rewards to engagement and communications without overselling and providing a lackluster experience. Awardco’s depth in flexible program design, customizable branding, global scalability, frontline and remote support, reporting and tax compliance solutions, and built-in reporting and compliance better meet the needs of organizations of any size.
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Nectar at a glance
Nectar’s “Culture Suite” is designed to make appreciation simple and accessible while bringing together key features around communication and employee surveys on a single platform. Additionally, they offer a large catalog of rewards and make it easy to offer incentives, such as physical items, gift cards, donations, awards, and more.
Notably, Nectar has an exclusive marketing agreement with the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), which it uses to showcase its focus on small businesses. This focus on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) aligns with Nectar’s product design, which offers a streamlined approach to recognition without a steep learning curve, though it does have trade-offs of limitations in scalability and program design flexibility.
Key features include:
- Classic peer-to-peer recognition solution: Employees are awarded points via peer-to-peer recognition, incentive programs, and milestones.
- Large, points-based reward network: Points can be redeemed for gift cards, Amazon items, experiences, charity, custom swag, and more.
- Nomination programs: Nomination programs via a separate nominations tool can be purchased as an add-on.
- Engagement solution: Employee engagement surveys were recently launched as a paid add-on.
- Internal communication: Admins can build and send internal communication then track results to refine communication and engagement strategies.
For small teams or companies looking for a simple approach without much configuration, Nectar provides an easy-to-deploy recognition solution that can also address other singular HR needs.
What sets Awardco apart?
While Nectar focuses on a more simple, one-size-fits-all approach to engagement, Awardco delivers a more customizable and scalable recognition and engagement solution for organizations of all sizes.
Built to serve companies ranging from 50 employees to 10,000+, including those with a distributed workforce, Awardco offers significantly greater ability in many areas. These include configurable programs, user management, reward networks, workflows, budgeting, taxation, and reporting. This robust flexibility fits specific needs, regions, and roles, while tools like Nectar either require challenging workarounds or simply cannot meet the more complex needs of many organizations.
Awardco makes it easy to design programs that align with any company culture, structure, goal, and budget—all without compromising on the capabilities you need now and in the future.
Key Differences: Awardco vs. Nectar
Reward & Recognition Options
Awardco goes beyond a one-size-fits-all points system with robust configurability across programs, budgets, and rewards. Instead of pushing budgets into the platform to force adoption, Awardco emphasizes the return on recognition, helping increase engagement, improve performance, and reduce attrition through meaningful, well-designed recognition strategies backed by meaningful rewards. We focus on intrinsic motivators to drive authentic engagement and lasting cultural change.
Nectar’s approach to recognition is simplistic, offering limited flexibility in how points and rewards can be configured. This makes it challenging, if possible at all, to tailor recognition programs to different initiatives, audiences, or business needs without complicated workarounds.
Recognition Program Depth
Awardco supports diverse recognition strategies, including peer-to-peer, top-down, service awards, nomination, offline recognition, external recognition, and multi-channel programs. Organizations can easily design programs around events, causes, special moments, or region and department-specific needs, ensuring recognition feels personal and relevant across every part of the business. For example, whether you work in finance or are part of an HR team, you can set up and redeem rewards the way you want..
Nectar focuses on tried-and-true recognition methods like peer-to-peer, incentive, and milestone programs, providing a clear and structured way to celebrate employee contributions, but is unable to go beyond. One exception is the recent addition of nomination program capabilities. Newer program features from Nectar are often surface level, similarly lacking in configurations and customizations needed to go deeper for more complex organizational needs.
Pace of Innovation & Integration
Awardco is regularly releasing significant improvements and innovations across all products and capabilities. Such a cadence of releases is possible with more than 150 product developers and engineers. These innovations include adding to our comprehensive suite of integrations, focusing on advanced options and proprietary tools like Awardco Connect, enabling seamless connections across multiple systems. With a significantly larger product development team and higher investment in R&D, Awardco consistently delivers new capabilities and updates that help organizations stay ahead.
Nectar has a leaner development team (25% the size of Awardco), which forces them to prioritize more standard integrations and out-of-the-box capabilities. Its release cycle is slower and innovations often follow existing market trends. Rather than investing in product, Nectar invests heavily in sales, marketing, and business development (accounting for more than 50% of all employees), which makes it hard for Nectar’s product to keep up with other recognition vendors like Awardco.
Scalability
Awardco scales from SMBs to global enterprises, supporting multi-language programs, regional compliance, and advanced administrative controls. High configurability enables tailored programs, easier administration, and stronger employee engagement for SMB and enterprise-level organizations.
Nectar currently remains a good choice for small to mid-sized teams or newer companies just launching their first recognition program, Awardco offers more compelling value and long-term scalability as organizations grow. With more than 1,000 SMB customers, Awardco services just as many small businesses as Nectar. Although Nectar is slightly faster to implement due to its platform’s greater simplicity, limited options can restrict the types of recognition programs that can be run effectively, even for smaller organizations, leading to decreased adoption and an ultimate lack of impact of recognition programs.
Pricing
Awardco offers value-based pricing packages that combine together for true results. These features help organizations maximize the impact of their recognition budgets, while robust reporting and dedicated account support allow them to effectively measure ROI and program effectiveness.
Nectar advertises competitive pricing for small teams or simple programs, but their list prices are often significantly higher initially and are typically reduced only when buyers are comparing multiple options. Larger or more complex programs may still require additional administrative effort or reporting tools to track adoption and impact.
The strategic choice is clear
If you’re looking for a customizable recognition platform that can serve your current needs and scale with your business, adapt to your organization’s workflows, and truly reflect your culture, brand, and organizational objectives, Awardco is the smart, strategic choice that will take your recognition and rewards programs from launchpad to lightspeed.
Contact us today for a demo and see how Awardco can elevate your recognition strategy, build a rewarding employee journey across every team culture, and partner with you for your ultimate success.
