How are you handling certificate delivery?

Certificate delivery keeps coming up, so I wanted to share the approach I settled on after trying a few and hear how others are doing it.

The recurring problem: a learner finishes a course, and you want them to get a certificate that (a) looks exactly like the slide you designed, (b) lands in their inbox automatically, and (c) is recorded somewhere you can look up later. Native print-to-PDF and LMS certificates got me part of the way, but not all three.

What I ended up building:

• On the certificate slide, the Send button runs an Execute JavaScript trigger that posts the slide to a small backend endpoint.
• The backend renders that actual slide, so the PDF is pixel-perfect; no rebuilding the layout server-side and hoping the fonts match.
• It emails the PDF to the learner over SMTP, and logs every issue to a database with a simple admin dashboard (search, re-send, download).
• It runs on ordinary cPanel hosting - no monthly third-party service and no per-certificate fees - and one backend serves multiple courses.

How's everyone else handling this native download, LMS-issued certs, Google Sheets/Zapier, a paid service? Curious what's working for you.

I do this kind of Storyline-to-backend integration, so happy to go deeper on any of it if it's useful.