COMPARED WITH THE USUAL STACK
Your stack already does all nine steps. It does them in seven places.
A form, a spreadsheet, a payment link, a WhatsApp group, a meeting register, a chat thread and a certificate made in Canva. Each one does its own job well, which is why the stack survives. This page is about what happens between them.
WHERE EACH TOOL STOPS
One record, or seven handovers.
The same nine steps, measured twice. Every gap in the upper rail is a place where somebody carries the work across by hand, and the last step has no tool at all.
The usual stack: Apply, in Google Form; Admit, in Spreadsheet; Pay, in Payment link; Enrol, in WhatsApp group; Attend, in Zoom register; Submit to Assessed by staff, in Chat and email; Credential, in Canva; Employer verifies, nothing. Alethris: Apply to Employer verifies, in One record per learner.
THE JOINS
Nothing breaks inside a tool. It breaks between them.
Four of the seven handovers, and what each one costs the academy that makes it.
An applicant's answers are copied into a sheet before anyone can decide on them, and the decision lands in a cell with no reason beside it. Six months later nobody can say why a place was given or refused.
The answers stay where they were written. A decision records who made it, when and on what basis, and an accepted offer enrols the learner without anyone typing a name a second time.
Transfers arrive as screenshots in a chat and are matched to names by hand. By the third week of a cohort, who has paid what is a question somebody has to stop and work out.
Every payment sits on the learner's own record: card, a bank transfer your staff confirm, or a sponsor's commitment, with receipts and a line in the earnings ledger.
Feedback is given in a thread. Which rubric it used, which attempt it answered and who decided are written down nowhere, so a learner who disputes a result cannot be answered from the record.
An assessment names its assessor, the rubric and the level reached against each criterion. A correction keeps the assessment it replaced, with who changed it and why.
A certificate proves that a document was made. An employer holding one has no way to check it, and neither has the academy whose name is on it.
A credential is issued from a completed record and carries a code and a QR. Anyone can check the issuer, the programme, the status, and each competency the academy approved with who assessed it and how.
SIDE BY SIDE
What is still a record in six months.
Not what each tool can do, but what survives once the cohort is over and somebody asks a question about it.
| THE USUAL STACK | ALETHRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| The application they sent you | In a form's responses sheet | On the learner's record |
| Why they were admitted | — | On the decision, with its author |
| What each learner has paid | In a spreadsheet, by hand | A receipt for every payment |
| Why one of them paid less | In a message, if anybody remembers | The discount that priced the place, kept on it |
| Who attended which session | In a meeting report | A register for every session |
| The work they submitted | A link in a chat thread | A submission, with its versions |
| How that work was judged | In a chat thread | A rubric, signed by its assessor |
| Which competencies they showed | — | Recorded, with the evidence |
| Whether an employer can check the certificate | — | A public verification page |
| What the learner keeps afterwards | A PDF | A Skills Passport they control |
WHAT IT COSTS
The honest comparison is not close, and it is not in our favour.
The usual stack is free. Here is what each way of working charges you for, and the part of the difference we will not pretend to measure.
| THE USUAL STACK | ALETHRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Each month | Nothing | A plan, by the size of your academy |
| When a learner pays by card | Paystack's own fee | Paystack's own fee |
| When Alethris collects for you | — | A share of what is collected |
| When you collect the money yourself | — | Nothing |
| Certificates | Nothing | Inside the plan's allowance |
| AI assistance | — | Prepaid credits, bought separately |
The part we will not put a figure on
When the usual stack is the right answer
- You run one cohort a year and you know every learner in it by name.
- Nobody has ever asked you to confirm that a certificate you issued is real.
- Fees arrive as a handful of transfers you can hold in your head.
- You are still finding out whether the programme will run at all. Do not buy software for a maybe.
Any of these and you should keep your form and your spreadsheet. Come back when a cohort stops fitting in your head.
MOVING
What the first month actually looks like.
You do not migrate an academy. You run the next cohort in one place and leave the last one where it is.
ONE
Bring one cohort, not your history
Start with the cohort you are about to run. Nothing that already finished has to move for Alethris to be useful.
TWO
Build the programme from what you already wrote
Give the Course Builder your syllabus or a brief and it drafts the modules, lessons and outcomes for you to correct.
THREE
Point applications at your own page
The application form moves to your academy's page. The Google Form stops taking answers; the ones it already has stay where they are.
FOUR
Keep collecting money the way you do
Record transfers against the learner from the first day, and turn on card collection whenever you are ready. There is no fee on money we did not collect.
Run one cohort in one place, and see.
If the record Alethris keeps is not worth more to you than the tools it replaces, you will know inside a cohort, and before any payment is due.