Certifications

Certifications surface on Pro and Premium mentor profiles. They display the issuing body, the certification name, the year, and a small "verified" badge once we approve them. Free-tier mentors can still upload them; the cards stay private until you upgrade.

What we verify

Every certification goes through manual approval. We are checking:

• The image is legible. We do not OCR; a human reads it.
• Your name on the cert matches your account. Within reason. Stage names are fine if the cert shows your legal name and you have told us; we can match the two.
• The issuing body exists. We Google the school / certifying organisation. We do not require it to be famous; we just need to verify it is a real thing and not a paper mill.
• The dates make sense. A "completed 2030" cert in 2026 gets flagged.

We do NOT verify:

• The teaching quality the cert reflects. A 200-hour yoga teacher training varies enormously across schools; we cannot adjudicate that.
• That you are still in good standing with the issuing body. Some certs require continuing education; we do not check.
• The medical claims on the cert (e.g. "trauma-informed certified" is something we cannot reality-check beyond the school existing).

Treat the verified badge as: "this person actually trained where they say they trained, and the school exists". Not: "this person is a great teacher".

How to upload

1. 1

   Go to settings

   Log in, click your avatar, go to Settings, then click the "Certifications" tab. Or go straight to /mentor/settings/certifications.

2. 2

   Click 'Add certification'

   A modal opens with the form.

3. 3

   Fill in the fields

   • Certification name: "200-hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training", "Pilates Mat I", etc.
   • Issuing body: the school or organisation. "Yoga Alliance", "Joseph Pilates Foundation", etc.
   • Year: when you completed it.
   • Hours (optional): the duration of the training in hours.
   • Image: upload a scan or photo of the certificate. PDF or JPG/PNG. Max 10MB.
4. 4

   Submit for review

   The certification enters a "pending review" state. Our team typically processes within 24 business hours.

5. 5

   Approved or rejected

   You get an email either way. Approved certs go live on your profile (if you are on Pro+). Rejected certs come with a reason; you can re-upload after fixing.

Where the image goes

The image you upload is stored in a private Supabase Storage bucket. Only our admin team can see it; it is never made public. The profile shows only the metadata: name, issuing body, year. The image itself is for verification only.

After verification, the image stays in storage in case we need to re-verify (very rare). You can request deletion of the image after approval and we will purge it; the verified status stays.

What if you have many certifications

There is no hard cap. We have seen profiles with 8-10 certifications listed. A few suggestions:

• Quality over quantity. Two prominent, well-known certifications are more trustworthy than ten obscure ones.
• Order by relevance. The first cert in the list should be your strongest credential.
• Skip the basic ones. A "Yoga Alliance 200-hour" is the entry-level expectation; adding it next to a 1000-hour with a notable lineage is fine but listing only the 200 is below the bar most experienced mentors hit.

What if the cert is in another language

Upload it as-is. We can typically read Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian directly. For other languages we may need a translation; we will email you to ask.

Reasons we reject certs

Most common reasons:

• Unreadable image. Re-upload with a clearer scan or photo.
• Name mismatch. If your platform name does not appear on the cert, attach a note (a quick email to support) explaining: "this cert is in my legal name Jane Doe; my stage name on MoveMentors is JD Wellness".
• Cert is for someone else. Common in studio settings where teachers share training. We need the cert to be yours specifically.
• Mill schools. A handful of online schools sell certs for $20 with no actual training. We have a small list of these we reject from. We are not gatekeepers of all training quality; we just refuse to lend the verified badge to obvious paper mills.

What the verified pill looks like

A small icon (a checkmark inside a shield) next to your display name on the profile. Students hovering over it see "Verified mentor: certifications on file". It is intentionally subtle; we do not want it to overshadow your name.

Common questions

Can I get the verified pill without uploading any cert? No. The pill specifically signals "approved certifications on file". A profile without certifications can still be excellent (some teaching traditions are not certifiable in the modern sense) but it does not get the pill.

Will adding more certs improve my directory ranking? Modestly. The directory's relevance score includes "has at least one verified cert" as a small signal among many. Going from one to ten certs does not meaningfully change ranking.

Can I list informal training (workshops, mentorships, self-study)? Not as a certification. The certifications surface is specifically for formal documents. You can describe informal training in your bio.

My cert expired and I have not renewed. Do I lose the badge? We do not track expiry dates. If a cert requires renewal and you have not renewed, that is between you and the issuing body. We may revisit this if it becomes a common problem.

Next steps

• Your public profile covers the rest of what students see.
• For the visibility benefits of paid tiers, see Subscription tiers for mentors.