Bonusly Alternatives: 6 of the Best Tools to Check Out

1. Terryberry

Tailored Recognition and Engagement Programs

 

Terryberry is a highly configurable employee engagement platform that combines employee recognition tools with employee listening (surveys), wellness programs, and custom awards solutions.

Terryberry’s employee recognition platform lets you design and launch highly customized recognition programs and measure their impact with deep analytics. You can automate manager and peer recognition, tie recognition to company core values, and launch programs to meet strategic business goals (like developing a President’s Club to motivate your sales team).

We’ll show you how to build recognition programs with unique rewards and incentives tailored to your company’s goals, values, and objectives. Plus, you’ll learn how Terryberry’s analytics help businesses prove their recognition program’s impact, identify opportunities for improvement, and uncover employee engagement trends across your teams.

 

Launching and Automating Employee Recognition Programs

Using Terryberry’s recognition platform, you can customize:

• How people are recognized. Make it easy for managers to celebrate their team members’ milestones, achievements, and performance. Setting up social recognition also lets peers nominate each other for rewards and recognize special moments.

• What people are recognized for. Keep your program focused on driving business goals by tying recognition to performance and core values. Make sure managers and peers are recognizing each other for the right reasons. You can also create “recognition levels” to reward people more for achieving specific milestones, or during special moments.

• The rewards they receive. Create unique shopping experiences for your team by mixing and matching different reward categories, including merch, travel, charitable gifts, and experiences. Get customized awards (like jewelry or engraved awards) manufactured for special moments, like service milestones or your President’s Club.

Here’s a closer look at how companies have created custom incentive and recognition programs using Terryberry (and how you can too).

 

1. Amteck’s Value-Centered Employee Recognition Program

When family-owned Amteck's workforce sprawled across dozens of states, their legendary employee retention rates faced their toughest test yet. How could management keep their culture intact with their people scattered? Enter Terryberry's Custom Awards program — the bridge connecting their dispersed teams, which amplified their core values and reinforced retention.

 

"When we asked people about Amteck's core values, only 1 in 10 employees could articulate them correctly. This was a wake-up call, highlighting the need to show appreciation in ways that resonated and aligned with our core values," says Matt Noble, Marketing & Comms Manager.

As Amteck expanded, its employee recognition hit some big challenges:

• Values were getting lost in translation. Leadership understood core values, but frontline workers couldn't recite them.

• Recognition had become a vacuum. Their 90s-era ring program hadn’t been replaced, leaving milestone achievements to pass without acknowledgement.

• Distributed teams were having an effect. With teams spread out geographically, recognition efforts struggled to reach everyone equally.

• Data was in disarray. Years of HR system musical chairs meant that employee milestones had been buried.

• Leadership’s recognition was a lottery. Without a recognition champion, efforts relied on individual acts of appreciation rather than strategic celebration.

"Our workforce doesn’t have that traditional 'watercooler' experience," Matt explains. "Some team members never meet their colleagues at other job sites or offices. We needed consistent ways to bring people together emotionally, even if they’re physically apart."

What Was the Solution for Amteck?

Amteck collaborated with Terryberry to develop a modernized recognition program that preserved company values while addressing their specific challenges. Key components included:

• Legacy program revival: Amteck revived its signature ring program, offering classic and modern designs plus pendant options. Long-term employees could update original rings with stones marking additional service years, while Terryberry's 100-year history ensured ongoing program stability.

• Tailored design process: Terryberry delivered a streamlined design experience with rapid concept-to-mockup turnaround, flexibly accommodating Amteck's decision timeline.

• Leadership-driven recognition: Executives personally presented rings to recipients, nurturing meaningful connections. These moments were documented and shared in company newsletters to amplify recognition.

• Enhanced administration: Terryberry's systems helped manage recognition across Amteck's dispersed workforce, delivering personalized rings with clear distribution guidance.

The result was nearly 70% of employees correctly articulating Amteck's core values, up from just 10% previously. Administration was also made more efficient, with the admin time spent on managing recognition programs cut by 70%.

And with 95% participation among eligible employees, the ring program's success prompted the introduction of new recognition tiers for 5-year and 10-year service milestones. In summary, Amteck saw:

• 65% increase in employees articulating core values within 3 months.
• 85% retention rate among employees with 10+ years of service.
• 80+ rings awarded across 13 states with personal, meaningful moments.

2. Chelsea Groton Bank’s Recognition Program to Support Core Values

As the Amteck story shows, Terryberry can help organizations develop and launch highly customized, always-on recognition programs around core values. This is especially valuable to brands such as Chelsea Groton Bank, the largest mutual bank in Eastern Connecticut, that want to reinforce their core values in day-to-day operations.

Chelsea Groton Bank approached Terryberry about developing their recognition program beyond a milestone awards program into one that also celebrates day-to-day contributions and reinforces the company’s seven core values: being innovative, collaborative, trustworthy, professional, knowledgeable, versatile, and positive.

The mutual bank aimed to gamify this employee recognition experience, so we used Terryberry’s social recognition platform to develop a custom peer recognition program called “Acorn Rewards”.

In this program, peers can recognize each other with a “Purple Acorn Award” and specify which of the bank’s seven core values they exhibited using Terryberry’s “Give a WOW” feature:

 

Employees can collect these Purple Acorns and use them to redeem gifts. After collecting the first 10 Purple Acorns, an employee receives a plush toy—the “Happy Squirrel”—which they can proudly display and even dress up for the holidays.

For every additional set of 10 Purple Acorns they collect, a team member gets redeemable points that they can exchange for luxury and lifestyle rewards.

You can introduce even more customizations for your own recognition program, such as by adding recognition levels to give priority to more special moments and achievements. For Chelsea Groton Bank, this meant allocating more points to higher recognition levels:

 

 

But they also had the option to link recognition levels to the “Purple Acorns,” such as by allocating two or three acorns for more significant milestones.

Here’s more from Rachel Evrett, Chelsea Groton’s HR specialist, on building their custom Acorn Rewards program with Terryberry:

“Having the team from Terryberry behind the scenes has really helped our program succeed. Alex, Donna and Arvid have always been very helpful in providing anything that we ever need, whether it’s reports or research or modifications to the site. That’s another reason for the level of success that we’ve seen.”

 

Standout Feature: Measure the Impact & ROI of Your Engagement Programs

Most Bonusly alternatives out there offer basic recognition analytics, revealing insights like the number of people participating in your program, who’s participating (e.g., are managers getting involved?), and specifics like the most common types of nominations.

While these recognition analytics are certainly valuable, they’re insufficient on their own for building a convincing business case for your engagement program. You might be able to point to correlations—i.e., after implementing a recognition program, retention has improved in your sales team—but you don’t have the data to prove it.

Terryberry bridges this gap by letting you combine basic recognition analytics with employee listening data, including eNPS and what we call “engagement indicators.”

These six indicators—belonging, leadership, equity, purpose, empowerment, and well-being—are part of Terryberry’s science-backed culture model that predicts employee engagement.

The model ties each indicator to an outcome, e.g., leadership predicts engagement because employees who rate their leaders as effective and empowering are 4x more likely to be engaged at work.

 

 

Terryberry’s employee recognition platform lets you collect this engagement data from your team using pre-made surveys designed by PhD researchers and backed by I/O psychologists.

Meanwhile, Terryberry’s recognition analytics automatically compiles your recognition program’s data, including participation data, the quartile each individual is in for giving/receiving recognition, and whether your manager gives recognition.

Using this data, you can uncover actionable insights into how recognition impacts job satisfaction, retention risk, leadership acceptance, employee wellbeing, belonging, and more.

You can also analyze engagement trends with visualizations and guide action plans by providing insights into recognized versus non-recognized employees.

Combining recognition analytics participation with additional data helps you measure your program’s real-world impact. For example, let’s consider a company like La-Z-Boy, which has a President’s Club. Recognition analytics reveal who their top performers are, but what if they want to measure their program’s impact on retention?

They could assess this by using Terryberry’s employee listening tool to measure engagement indicators that predict retention, like “belonging,” and comparing them with different cohorts in your President’s Club (e.g., top performers vs. lowest performers).

You can then see if and how your recognition program impacts a sense of belonging in your top performers. Here’s what your results dashboard might look like:

 

If your top performers have a strong sense of belonging, you’ll know the program has a positive impact. On the other hand, if you find that your top performers actually feel the least sense of belonging across all cohorts, it may indicate an underlying problem that you’d want to investigate.

If you’re also running another engagement program, like a wellness program, combining analytics from it adds another layer of insights to work with. For example, in this same President’s Club scenario, maybe you’ll discover that your cohort of top performers is experiencing burnout, which is negatively impacting retention.

Terryberry is the only employee recognition platform and Bonusly alternative that provides this level of granularity and combines analytics across employee recognition, employee listening, and wellness programs.

 

Pricing

Our admin fees are among the lowest in the industry, typically 30-40% below market average. We always protect you from hidden costs, and we work with local fulfillment providers to deliver employee rewards to more than a hundred countries without the hefty international shipping costs.

Our platform follows a pay-for-what-you-use model, meaning we only charge customers for gifts upon redemption, ensuring cost efficiency. Plus, our flexible pricing structure allows you to scale your recognition program as your organization grows.

 

Reviews and Customer Success Stories

Some of the benefits of using Terryberry mentioned by reviewers include the ability to choose which solutions to include, streamlined workflows, and support with program setup and maintenance. Read some of the customer success stories from 40,000+ clients worldwide here.

Schedule your Terryberry demo today to learn how you can increase employee engagement in your organization.

 

2. Kudos

Kudos helps companies reinforce their company values through top-down and peer-to-peer recognition. The platform is designed to encourage employees to build a daily culture of appreciation. Kudos also supports employee rewards and recognition, awards, and surveys inside the platform.

Kudos offers a dedicated space to share multimedia content, from event images to games and educational content. This feature effectively creates an internal communication hub where employees can review new content and engage with it, from company updates to games.

 

Pricing information

The Kudos website doesn’t currently provide any pricing information.

Kudos reviews

Kudos reviews mention reward program customization as one of the main benefits. That said, some reviewers reported limited options for quantifying employee metrics and no protection from bad-faith peer reviews. (Note: Terryberry’s platform offers AI content monitoring, screening recognition messages for inappropriate content before they're published). You can read more about what customers think about Kudos on the main review websites.

 

3. Awardco

Awardco is focused on providing multiple types of employee recognition programs, including peer-to-peer recognition, awards, and team recognition.

It supports multiple currencies and offers rewards, fulfillment, and shipping around the world through its partnership with Amazon Business. Recognition program administrators can create separate recognition programs across the organization and customize program catalogs for each of them.

Since Awardco limits companies to Amazon for rewards, you won’t have the option to create highly customized awards for special moments and incentive programs, like your President’s Club or for anniversary awards.

As well as the features we’ve mentioned already, Awardco offers “Lifetime Spending Accounts” that act as a recurring allowance that employees can spend on products they want, such as wellness items, memberships, or professional services.

Pricing

Awardco lists plan details (Core, Plus, and Pro) on their website, but doesn’t include specific pricing information.

Reviews of Awardco

While most of the Awardco reviews are positive, some of the reviews mention that the administrative load on program managers was higher than expected and that communications under the public recognition program didn’t offer as many opportunities for personalization as other solutions. You can read more Awardco reviews on the major review websites.

 

4. Motivosity

Motivosity is an employee recognition platform with manager and peer recognition, in-platform communication, various award types (including swag), and employee listening tools (although they’re quite basic).

You can use Motivosity to customize your recognition program, and the vendor’s listening tools let you run pulse and eNPS surveys. However, Motivosity’s employee listening and recognition tools are separate modules on its platform. This restricts your ability to measure the impact of recognition on engagement—e.g., you can’t gauge how eNPS varies across different cohorts (like most vs. least engaged employees, or top vs. lowest performers).

Motivosity helps global, remote, and hybrid teams create stronger connections. The features supporting this range from a company directory for large global companies to interest-based spaces that encourage employees to interact with each other.

Pricing

Motivosity’s pricing is based on tiered plans (Standard, Pro, and Custom), but no specific pricing information is available on the website. Customers can also choose add-on features, such as:

• Spaces for community-building
• Surveys
• Service shoutouts for customers to recognize employees
• Built-for-you swag store

Reviews

Positive Motivosity reviews mention higher employee engagement and overall appreciation of peer recognition programs. Some of the issues that reviews mention are insufficiently detailed reporting, and a lack of granular access permissions and HRIS integrations. You can read more detailed Motivosity reviews on the major review websites.

 

5. Nectar

Nectar combines employee recognition and employee communication. Their employee recognition features include peer-to-peer recognition, awards, milestones, and challenges that can be connected to company values. Nectar’s communication module lets you create and share company announcements, coordinate messages across different departments, schedule messages, and tailor them to specific departments. You can also track basic communication analytics, like open, delivery, and click-through rates.

Nectar contains some useful corporate communications features. These can be used to send out company announcements and updates via text, email, or messaging apps like Slack or Teams—as well as directly via the Nectar dashboard. Admins can also segment recipients and send out team-specific messages.

 

Pricing

According to the Nectar pricing page, minimum contracts start at $4,000 for recognition and rewards programs. You’ll need to contact them for a custom quote, and you can see the features breakdown for each plan (Plus, Premium, Custom) along with add-on options on their pricing page.

 

Reviews

Many online reviewers appreciate that Nectar is easy to use and can help align recognition with company culture. Some of the issues that program administrators mention are challenges with exporting data for reporting, and limited searching and filtering capabilities. You can read detailed reviews on all the major software review websites.

 

6. Guusto

Guusto provides core employee recognition features, such as employee rewards and milestone awards. It also lets you send rewards to customers, doubling as a corporate gifting platform. The vendor doesn’t support a points-based rewards system—it instead offers a dollar-for-dollar redemption experience.

Unlike most Bonusly alternatives, Guusto is focused on servicing non-desk workers. For example, you can use Guusto to allow employees to redeem rewards using a QR code or a link if they don’t have company email addresses (or phone numbers in your system).

Guusto’s platform is more focused on quick, on-the-spot recognition, especially for non-desk workers. The platform lacks employee listening capabilities and has limited customizations.

Note: At Terryberry, we support non-desk workers with password-less login options, so they can still engage in your recognition program and redeem awards in-platform.

To make it easier for frontline and deskless employees to get recognized and receive their awards, Guusto supports offline recognition options. In this case, you won’t need to have employees’ email addresses or phone numbers to enroll them. Available options include print-out options, QR codes, TV displays.

 

Pricing

Paid plans begin at $125 per account per month for a top-down recognition program that includes milestones, birthdays, and onboarding in addition to manager rewards. Essential and Premium plans support peer recognition programs and start from $2.50 and $3.50 per seat per month respectively.

 

Reviews

Most of the reviews from Guusto users are positive, and many mention that it’s easy to use. That said, some reviews mention that it may sometimes be hard for employees to understand what they need to do to redeem awards. You can read more Guusto reviews on the major software review websites.

 

Choose Terryberry for Impactful & Measurable Employee Engagement

Terryberry helps companies design, develop, and launch custom recognition programs that engage and motivate their workforce. You’ll find everything you need to recognize and engage employees, from custom awards to social recognition— all in a single platform.

The key to building impactful programs lies in tying recognition to your core values and strategic business goals, which is where highly customizable platforms like Terryberry’s recognition software come in.

We work closely with our customers to tailor Terryberry to their needs, measure the performance of their recognition programs, and build a business case that proves their program’s ROI.

Schedule a free demo with us to discover how Terryberry can help your business design and scale impactful, goals-driven recognition programs.