For Canadian businesses under 5 years old with fewer than 25 employees. Select Startup at signup, enter two numbers, and the free period starts the same day.
Creating an account is free. No application, no review, no minimum. You add a card when you trigger your first check.
6 months
Reference checks free, starting the day you sign up
$9.00
The standard rate they return to at month 7
Reference complete
Dinesh Chugtai
2 of 2 referees responded · PDF emailed
In progress
Bertram Gilfoyle
Reminder sent to 1 referee · day 2
Why this program exists
The moment you are most tempted to skip a check is the moment it costs the most.
Small companies cut corners on hiring to save a few hundred dollars. At ten people, one bad hire is a tenth of the company, and the founder is the person who has to manage the consequence. There is no HR function to absorb it and no bench to cover the gap.
So the free window is the first-hires window, by design. Reference checks are free for your first 6 months, starting the day the account is created. That is deliberately the period when a young company makes its earliest hires and has the least money to spend on getting them right.
What you get
Free for 6 months, then discounted where it counts.
Reference checks, free for 6 months
Free for months 1 to 6 of the account. After that they return to the standard $9.00 rate, with no change to anything else.
Year-round discounts on the rest
The checks a young company runs most, criminal record, employment, education, and social media, are discounted every month you hold the account.
Your rates before you commit
You see your exact per-check pricing at step 4 of signup, and again in the step 5 review, before the account exists.
Not everything is discounted.
Some checks carry no program discount, and this page will not pretend otherwise. You see every one of your rates, discounted or standard, before the account is created. There is nothing to discover on your first invoice.
Reference checks, in detail
What the free period is spent on.
Turnaround depends on how quickly your referees reply, so there is no fixed number to quote. What Credibled controls is the chasing, and it does that without you having to remember to.
Automated reminders to referees every 24 hours, for up to 10 days
Bounce alerts the moment a referee address fails
Referees need no account and can complete on a phone
The finished report arrives as a PDF by email
Integrity alerts: same IP as the candidate, a personal email domain, the same device
Duplicate detection across everyone on your team
On hiring from your own network
Your first employees often come from people you already know, and the referees are frequently people you know too. That is normal and usually fine. It is also the situation where you are least able to judge a reference objectively, so integrity alerts surface the question rather than answering it for you.
Do you qualify
Four conditions, all set at signup.
There is no application and no review. You answer these during signup and the program is applied automatically before the account exists.
01
Company Stage set to Startup
The option reads "under 5 years, fewer than 25 employees".
02
Under 5 years in operation
Entered as a number during signup.
03
Fewer than 25 employees
Also entered as a number during signup.
04
Canadian billing country
The billing address must be in Canada.
Any condition unmet means standard pricing. A young company billing from outside Canada receives standard pricing, whatever its size or age.
Two numbers and the free 6 months starts today. Nothing to submit, nobody to wait on.
From the co-founder
Elvine Assouline
Co-founder, Credibled
Credibled is bootstrapped and still is. I have made first hires with no HR budget and I know the arithmetic: a reference check looks like the easiest hundred dollars to save, right up until it is not.
That is why the free period covers your first 6 months rather than a trial week.
When it starts and ends
The clock starts on the account, not on the first check.
If you sign up today and make your first hire three months from now, you have three months of the free period left. So sign up when you start thinking about hiring, not on the day you are ready to send an offer. Your welcome email states the start and end dates.
Day 1
Account created
The free period starts immediately, whether or not you run a check that week.
Months 1 to 6
Reference checks free
Run them on every candidate you are serious about. This is the window your earliest hires fall in.
Month 7
Standard $9.00 rate
Reference checks return to $9.00 each. Your other program discounts continue.
There is no reminder before the free period ends, so keep the end date from your welcome email. Month 7 arrives quietly, and reference checks are billed at $9.00 from then on.
If you are a registered non-profit
Take the NGO Program instead.
Only one program applies per account, and NGO is evaluated first. The two are identical except on reference checks: Startup gives 6 free months and then $9.00, NGO gives $4.50 permanently. Past month 7, NGO is the better program, so a young registered charity is better served there. NGO also covers Canada and the United States. This one is Canada only.
Startup6 months freeReference checks, then $9.00. Canada only.
NGO$4.50 alwaysReference checks, permanently. Canada and the US.
★★★★★5.0 from 45 Google reviews
"We are very happy with the services they provide and also appreciate how fast they are at getting back to me."
Questions
Everything a founder asks before signing up.
01
Qualifying
Who qualifies for the Startup Program?
Canadian businesses under 5 years old with fewer than 25 employees. You select Startup at signup, enter your years in operation and your number of employees, and the program is applied automatically. There is no application and no review.
What counts as under 5 years?
Years in operation, entered as a number during signup, must be under 5.
What if we have exactly 25 employees?
The condition is fewer than 25, so a company with 25 employees receives standard pricing.
Does it apply outside Canada?
No. The billing country must be Canada. A young company with a billing address outside Canada receives standard pricing.
Can we combine this with the NGO Program?
No. Only one program applies per account, and the NGO Program is evaluated first. A registered non-profit that is also under 5 years old receives NGO pricing rather than Startup pricing.
02
The free period
What is free, exactly?
Reference checks, for months 1 to 6 of the account.
When does the free period start?
On the day the account is created, not on the day you run your first check. Your welcome email states the start and end dates.
When does it end?
6 months after the account creation date.
What happens after month 7?
Reference checks return to the standard $9.00 rate. The year-round program discounts on other check types continue for as long as you hold the account. There is no reminder before the free period ends, so keep the end date from your welcome email.
03
Pricing after the free period
How do I see my rates?
At step 4 of signup, and again in the step 5 review, before the account is created. What you see is what you pay.
Is everything discounted?
No. Reference checks are free for 6 months, and a handful of the checks a young company runs most, criminal record, employment, education, and social media, are discounted year round. The rest are standard. You see every rate before you commit.
Does the free period apply to RefMe?
No. RefMe uses self-serve signup at standard pricing, with no Startup or NGO program pricing applied.
04
Using it
What do reference checks tell me that an interview does not?
An interview tells you how someone presents. A reference tells you how they worked: what they were actually responsible for, how they handled pressure, and whether the people around them would work with them again.
What if a referee does not respond?
Credibled sends automated reminders every 24 hours for up to 10 days, and raises a bounce alert if the address fails. You can see where every referee stands in your dashboard.
Can I run criminal checks too?
Yes. Criminal record checks, employment verification, education verification, and social media checks all run from the same account, at the program discount.
Your first hires deserve the same care as your fiftieth.
Select Startup at signup and the free 6 months starts today. No application, no review, no minimum.
