Why the incumbents don't fit small firms
Certificate-tracking software grew up in enterprise risk departments. myCOI publishes a 200-certificate minimum to get on the platform. Jones is a fully managed service aimed at large general contractors with complex owner requirements, with no self-service option. TrustLayer and Billy offer self-service tiers, but human document review is an upgrade and pricing is quote-only. None of them list a price a 15-person GC can put on a card.
For a firm with 20–200 subs, that leaves a spreadsheet and a shared inbox — which works until the one month nobody has time to open the PDFs.
What to compare
Minimums and pricing model: per-certificate, per-vendor, or flat. Who does the reading: your staff, an AI with human review, or an outsourced team with a days-long turnaround. Vendor experience: do subs need to create an account, or just click a link. Requirements: can you set different limits per project or trade. Reminders: automatic, with the vendor's upload link included. Audit trail: can you export what you had on file on a given date. Integrations: Procore, Buildertrend, accounting.
How CoverClerk compares
CoverClerk is self-serve and priced by vendor count — $99 a month up to 50 vendors, $199 up to 250, $349 unlimited — with a 14-day trial and no minimum. Certificates are read by AI in about twenty seconds; anything uncertain is flagged for a quick human check in a side-by-side view. Vendors upload through a no-login link that is included in every reminder. Requirements are set per project or trade, and every change is written to an exportable audit log.
Where the enterprise tools win: outsourced human review of every certificate, direct carrier verification, and integrations with ERP systems. If you have 500+ certificates and a risk department, they are the right call. If you have an office manager and a spreadsheet, you are our customer.
Try it on one certificate
The free checker reads any ACORD 25 and compares it with standard GC requirements. No account needed. If it finds something your spreadsheet missed, that is the argument.