Are course certificates a must-have, or nice-to-have?

I'm deciding whether to build completion certificates into Achene and I want your honest opinion before I spend the time on it.

Here's what I know about how other platforms handle this:

Teachable has them, but calls them a "compliance control", tied to course completion requirements rather than being a celebration of achievement.

Thinkific doesn't include them on their base plan at all.

Kajabi, despite being the premium all-in-one option, actually requires a workaround to send certificates natively.

So the market hasn't exactly nailed this.

Here's what I think a good implementation looks like:

Not just a PDF. A PDF certificate is fine, but it lives in a downloads folder and gets forgotten.

What actually moves the needle for students is a shareable digital credential, something they can add to the Licences and Certifications section of their LinkedIn profile.

Research suggests candidates who list relevant certifications are significantly more likely to get noticed by recruiters.

If your students share their certificate on LinkedIn and tag your course, that's free marketing every single time.

Brandable. The certificate should carry the creator's logo and colours, not Achene's. Your students completed your course, not ours.

Verifiable. A QR code or unique credential URL that anyone can click to confirm it's real. This matters more as AI-generated credentials become a concern.

Automatically triggered. The moment a student hits your completion threshold, the certificate goes out. No manual work for the creator.

But here's the thing. I could spend time building all of this, or I could ship other features first and come back to it.

That decision should be informed by whether creators and students actually value this.

So I'm asking directly:

👇 Is a completion certificate a must-have for your courses, or is it something you could live without?

If you have strong feelings either way, especially if you've seen certificates drive real behaviour change in your students, I'd love to hear it in the comments.