How It Works
In Kudos, users are granted points based on their job title. These point allocations can be used to give public or private recognition to other users. There are four recognition levels, each with its own point value: Thank You (5 pts), Good Job (10 pts), Impressive (20 pts), and Exceptional (50 pts). Point allocations are refreshed at the start of every month, but users that run out of points can still give non-monetary recognition. Earned points can be exchanged for digital gift cards in the rewards catalog. Earned points do not expire by default, but can be set to expire and return to the company rewards balance. Disabling the rewards catalog enables non-monetary recognition only.
Pricing
Subscription Fees
Subscription fees are based on the number of users in your account and is paid per user. Kudos dosen't have publicly available pricing, so you'll need to go through their sales process for a specific quote, but we've seen pricing in the range of $2.50-$3.00 per user per month.
Point/Reward Budget
Your Kudos rewards balance must be funded upfront. You can determine how many points equal $1 and can also set up separate rewards balances for different departments or locations.
Getting Started
Kudos doesn’t offer a free trial or free tier of service, so to get access to the platform you must reach out to them to begin a traditional sales process.
Once an agreement has been signed, your client onboarding specialist will help you get setup and onboard your users. From there, continued support will be provided by your account manager.
Ease of Use
Kudos’ interface is fairly stripped down. While not flashy, it avoids being boring or stale, giving off a clean, modern aesthetic.
After logging in, the homepage acts as the company feed, allowing users to view all public activity and comment or add to the recognition posts.
Navigation is simple, with the main menu relegated to the left side of the screen and broken up into the site’s main areas of navigation. The “Give Recognition” button is always in sight no matter where you navigate, making it easy to jump into giving recognition from anywhere.
All of this makes using the platform for the average user fairly intuitive. Admins will have access to many more settings, but Kudos still manages to avoid feeling overwhelming with clearly defined admin categories, though it won’t be perfectly clear what every category means until you’ve learned about the particular feature.
Reward Catalog
Kudos has a sizable reward catalog with over 200 gift card options for many recognizable brands, retailers, and services. Prepaid Visa/Mastercards are also available as cash out options.
All gift cards are digital and availability will depend on the users location. Since Kudos only works with one gift card service provider, their options for international users can be especially slim.
Gift cards can be gifted to other people, whether they are inside or outside of the company’s Kudos account.
While Kudos does provide charitable donations as redeemable rewards, the selection here is relatively slim.
To supplement the default rewards catalog, Kudos does allow the creation of custom rewards, making it easy to add rewards that are personally fulfilled by the company. Custom rewards can also be restricted to specific departments, groups or locations.
Integrations
HRIS
Kudos provides several pre-made integrations for some of the bigger human resource information systems (HRIS). This is convenient for setup and minimizing administrative overhead when it comes to managing your Kudos user list.
Beyond the pre-made integrations, Kudos can also integrate with other HRIS by having them send scheduled CSV files containing the data for all your users. Whether this kind of custom HRIS integration is possible will depend on your HRIS, so it's best to confirm with Kudos that your HRIS is supported.
SSO
Single Sign On (SSO) lets users sign into Kudos using the same credentials they use to access the company's other services. Kudos has pre-made integrations for all he major SSO providers, but also allows custom SSO setups with SAML configuration settings.
Common Tool Integrations
Kudos has a few integrations with existing business communication tools, with a primary focus on Microsoft tools such as Outlook, Skype, and Teams integrations.
Additional Integrations
Kudos has a limited API to serve the purpose of custom user provisioning integrations, but not much functionality beyond that.
There are browser add-ons for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer that allow you send recognition and view your feed without signing in or leaving your current tab.
There is also Kudos TV, which lets you display the most recent recognition from your company's feed on any screen that has a built-in or connected browser.
Analytics & Reporting
Kudos has a diverse, powerful set of analytics and reporting features. There are nearly 30 kinds of redemption and activity reports offering broad insights like rewards summaries as well as more granular things like redemption liabilities broken down by location, department, or users.
Admin dashboards allow you to view a variety of data visualizations that let you see the information in reports at a glance. You can also apply several filters on the fly to the dashboard data as well as export any section as a spreadsheet, image, or PDF. When choosing to export as a PDF, you are able to customize how the PDF will be generated. You can apply different settings to present your data in just the right way.
Support
Kudos provides chat, email, and weekday phone support during standard business hours.
Supplementing their direct support, Kudos has a strong library of help articles in their Help Center. Their articles cover the basics, but also dive into advanced topics and fine details that can be appreciated by new and veteran users alike. There are few topics about which a user can’t find at least some info about in the Help Center.
Additional Features
Voucher Rewards
In addition to the default rewards catalog, it’s also possible to enable a voucher rewards catalog. This lets users redeem their points for coupon codes that can be used at an internal store or some other store the company has an agreement with.
This requires your internal store or third-party vendor to be able to generate unique codes, which Kudos will then upload to their system to allow your users to redeem them.
Voucher rewards are a separately priced Kudos service.
Spaces
Kudos has a section accessible to all users called Spaces. Spaces are used for storing resources and sharing communications across the company. They provide a centralized location for sharing all manner of information across the company.
Each Space is made up of Pages, which hold your content. Pages can be formatted with text, photos, embed videos, links, tables, or custom HTML. When publishing a new page, you can also elect to post it to the main feed.
You can categorize your content into Spaces and Pages, organize the order of the information displayed, schedule publishing dates, and control viewing and editing permissions.
Albums
There is also an albums section to share photos of company events, charity initiatives, and other activities happening in the organization. Albums, too, can be shared on the main feed.
Mobile App
Mobile apps for Android and Apple devices that allows you to give recognition and interact with Spaces on the go.
Additional Notes
- Users can send non-monetary recognition to people outside of the account by providing their email address in the recognition.
- Users can allow other specific users to send recognition on their behalf.
- Can add on points to a piece of recognition by giving a K+.
- Supports 11 languages: English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Farsi, Czech, Greek, and Polish.
- Company announcements can be posted to the wall, in a top banner, or using the announcement sidebar widget.
- Can create a custom Terms of Use for users and set security policies for users such as logging them out after inactivity.
- Can enable a profanity filter
The Bottom Line
Kudos provides a flexible platform with an emphasis on peer-to-peer recognition and some impressive analytics. Kudos' additional features are reminiscent of a corporate social network at times, which may be more than needed for those looking to stick to the fundamentals of a recognition platform.
