Awardcovs.TerryBerry
With the right vendor, employee recognition improves every single business outcome. Two well-known options in the space are Awardco and TerryBerry, but how do they compare, and which is best for you?
The verdict
TerryBerry consists of several acquired technologies under a single umbrella, and while this is beneficial for some, the platform lacks many modern capabilities and workflows. This forces TerryBerry to position as a “low cost” recognition platform that makes up for those discounts with high markups on rewards. Awardco offers a modern and centralised platform with recognition, rewards, incentives, engagement, and wellness all powered by the world’s largest zero-markup rewards network.
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TerryBerry at a glance
Founded over 100 years ago as a jewelry and service awards company, TerryBerry has in recent years sought to modernise its offering through an online employee recognition and rewards solution.
TerryBerry offers a curated, high-markup catalogue of items for its customers to give to employees. Over the past two decades, TerryBerry has acquired several technologies in an effort to modernise the platform. This has led to a more comprehensive product offering than previously available, from recognition and rewards to engagement and wellness.
Key products from TerryBerry include:
- Peer-to-peer recognition: TerryBerry acquired MeritShare in 2013 to expand its social and peer-to-peer recognition capabilities
- Rewards and incentives: TerryBerry has long offered its own high-markup rewards catalogue, including service awards and jewelry, though in recent years it has expanded its reward network to other lower-markup marketplaces
- Health and wellness: Through three acquisitions in 2021-2023, TerryBerry was able to offer better benefit rewards and a third-party health and wellness application
- Employee engagement: In 2023, TerryBerry acquired a small employee survey and insights company to provide employee surveys and reporting to customers
While these acquisitions have helped TerryBerry offer a larger suite of products and services, these were not leading technologies at the time of acquisition and are today maintained by relatively understaffed engineering and customer support teams. This can lead to suboptimal product and performance.
What sets Awardco apart?
Awardco has spent years developing a purpose-built singular recognition and rewards platform, designed end-to-end to be easy to use and flow seamlessly in a unified experience.
Unlike TerryBerry, who has acquired and combined different tools into disconnected data and experiences, Awardco unifies, analyzes, and understands what is happening across the platform to drive greater actionable insights. These insights lay a powerful foundation that will drive adoption and action, transforming organisational engagement and performance. Recognition, reward, incentive, nomination, wellness, lifestyle, engagement, survey, and every other kind of programme can be managed and executed in a single place without any tradeoffs or compromises.
Additionally, Awardco provides access to the world’s largest reward network. Awardco does not charge markup or service fees for “premier reward options” or gift cards, while providers like TerryBerry offer discounts on the software licenses up front with the intent of making up those cost savings with markups and fees later on.
Key Differences: Awardco vs. TerryBerry
Programme Consolidation & Adoption
Awardco’s product design experience is built around ease of use and adoption. Programme adoption matters, and making things easy for admins, leaders, managers, and employees is only possible when the entire platform has been designed from a dedicated point of view. Every use case has been built into a modern workflow, from recognition to rewards to engagement. Additionally, Awardco recently introduced the next version of the platform’s user interface, Awardco 2.0, that goes even further to enhance usability.
See how Americare built a custom platform, complete with eight different recognition programmes, and finished implementation an entire month sooner than planned—and then saw an 89% login rate and lower turnover.
TerryBerry has acquired and integrated 5+ tools, each with their own user interfaces, architecture, and design. With less than 50 employees dedicated to product and engineering (Awarco has 150+), TerryBerry lacks the resources to both improve user adoption with these disconnected tools and invest in new product innovation that other platforms like Awardco are releasing. One small example: TerryBerry eventually did integrate with Amazon, but nearly ten years after Awardco.
Reward Options & Markups
Awardco invests in the idea of employee choice by providing employees the world’s largest rewards network of 100M+ items to select from. This leads to important outcomes, including positive associations with your company as the reward is something the employee truly wants, helping every employee understand the actual value of the points given. Additionally, 1:1 point redemption means the amount you give to employees is exactly the amount they will receive, with no hidden markup
TerryBerry rewards often have an additional amount charged, like service fees for gift cards or markups for items from their reward catalogue. This means that employees often pay an unseen “tax” on their rewards. This unseen amount often means organisations may believe they are giving employees a certain amount, but end up spending a significant percentage of that amount on hidden markups.
Customer Support & Advisory
Awardco offers extensive customer support throughout the lifetime of the partnership. This includes dedicated implementation team members and customer success resources, including extensive thought leadership, guides, and our Centre of Excellence advisory. Awardco has more than 100 employees dedicated to supporting our 3,000+ customers. Support resources start at implementation, and every customer has access to programme administration support (at the very least 24/5) and end user customer support 24/7 in 40+ languages via email, chat, and phone.
Read how WOW Mobile Boutique created a comprehensive compensation plan with Awardco’s incentives and rewards, driving a 120% increase in YoY performance.
TerryBerry purports 40,000 clients worldwide but staffs less than 50 employees to support these clients (an 800:1 ratio). As a result, TerryBerry is forced to provide minimal support to almost all customers, focusing its limited resources on a minimalist library of self help resources that are often out of date or incomplete.
Product Roadmap, Innovation, & Interoperability
Awardco is regularly releasing dozens of materially significant product updates and improvements on a quarterly basis. This is a direct result of Awardco’s investment in more than 150 engineers and developers. These product updates include improved integrations, workflows, and use cases with modern HRIS, payroll, and other HR and employee technologies. Awardco’s clean product architecture platform results in immense product speed, depth, and quality in every release.
See how All Access Staging utilized AwardCodes™, one of our recent developments, in conjunction with custom safety incentives to drive participation and excitement in their blue-collar workforce.
TerryBerry has significantly less resources to keep pace with innovations on par with Awardco. One small example: TerryBerry has <35% of the research and development resources that Awardco deploys, and as a result, TerryBerry is forced to make tradeoffs on what product developments they deploy depending on their customer base. For any given client there is no guarantee that TerryBerry will be able to prioritise client needs over the needs of their largest clients due to these limitations.
The strategic choice is clear
If you’re looking for a customisable recognition platform that can scale with your business, adapt to your organisation’s workflows, and truly reflect your culture, brand, and organisational objectives, Awardco is the smart, strategic choice.
Contact us today for a demo and see how Awardco can elevate your recognition strategy.
