ISO 20000-1 online: from self-assessment to certificate

The whole process runs in a browser. You do not need an account to start, and you do not need to schedule anything with an auditor. Four steps lead from the first question to a certificate you can send to a customer.

1. 01

   Answer the self-assessment

   The assessment has 36 yes/no questions on ISO 20000-1:2018. Thirteen of them are mandatory requirements of the standard and must all be answered yes. Of the other 23 questions, at least 16 need a yes.

2. 02

   Pay for the first year

   Once you have passed, you pay online. You do not have to create an account to buy.

3. 03

   Review by SICE

   SICE reviews every assessment before a certificate is issued. The certificate itself is issued by G6 Agency AG under licence from SICE.

4. 04

   Receive the PDF

   The certificate arrives within 4 hours after you have passed and paid. It carries a certificate number and a QR code that leads to the public verification page.

• Start the free self-assessment
• See how it works in detail

The questions follow the requirements of the standard, so the best preparation is to look at how your services are actually run. A yes means you can show the practice, not that you intend to introduce it. Have the people who run support and operations at hand, because they will know the answers faster than a manual does.

These are the areas the questions cover:

Service portfolio and catalogue

A defined list of the services you provide, with a description of what each one includes.

Service level agreements

Agreed targets with your customers, for example response times and availability, and a way to report against them.

Incident and problem management

A ticket process for disruptions, and a separate way to find and remove their root causes.

Change and release management

Changes are recorded, assessed and approved before they reach production.

Capacity and availability

You monitor load and uptime and plan ahead, instead of reacting once a system is full.

Continual improvement

Review results lead to documented actions on the services.

• Read about ISO 20000-1

Both routes assess the same subject: how you run IT services. They differ in how the evidence is gathered and how much of your calendar it takes. The classic route with an on-site audit by a certification body suits companies whose customers explicitly demand it. For many suppliers, the question in a questionnaire is simply whether a valid, checkable certificate exists.

• Compare the certification routes
• Read the cost guide

The price is CHF 799 (€799) in the first year, then CHF 529 (€529) per year including the yearly online re-audit. The certificate is valid for 3 years and is confirmed each year by that short re-audit. Customers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein pay the price including 8.1% Swiss VAT.

The fee is billed as an automatic yearly subscription. You cancel it at any time in your customer account, effective at the end of the current year. If you cancel, the certificate ends with the year you have paid for.

If you certify against several standards, Zertify takes 20% off for two standards and 30% off for three or more. The discount also applies to the yearly fee.

• See all prices

Every Zertify certificate is listed publicly. A purchasing department or an auditor on the customer side enters the certificate number on the verification page, or scans the QR code printed on the PDF. They see whether the certificate is valid, without calling you or asking for a copy.

In practice this shortens the exchange around supplier questionnaires and tenders. You attach the PDF to the quote, and the reader can confirm it in seconds. The yearly re-audit keeps the entry current, so a certificate that has lapsed does not stay listed as valid.

• Certification without an on-site audit

Zertify is for IT service providers, managed service providers, SaaS and cloud providers, data centres, consultancies and internal IT departments that already run their services in an orderly way and want the certificate without the audit logistics. If you are unsure whether you are ready, the self-assessment tells you. It is free and takes place before you pay anything.

The standard page explains the requirements in more depth, and the pricing page lists every option. If ISO 20000-1 is one of several standards your customers ask for, the overview of all standards shows which ones can be combined.

• ISO 20000-1 standard page
• Pricing
• Start the self-assessment