What is going on with the BACB Website?

If you supervise anyone in this field, you have probably watched the same thing over the last few days. The feeds filled up with certificants who cannot get the Behavior Analyst Certification Board to answer them about problems that were routine a month ago.

One post in the ABA Business Collective group set the tone. A supervisor wrote that her supervisee had an error on her recertification, that the credential was set to expire that same day, and that she had been reaching out by email and through the online portal for weeks with no response. Her question was almost apologetic: is there a number for the BACB, and will they actually pick up?

The short answer is no. There is no public phone line. Every inquiry goes through an online form, and right now that form is where time-sensitive problems wait.

What Changed on June 29

The BACB went offline on June 29, then launched a new portal at portal.bacb.com to replace the old Gateway system. The board describes it as a significant upgrade to how applicants and certificants submit materials and communicate with staff.

Some of the changes are real improvements. Applications now flag missing information and show a live status. The printable ID card is gone, replaced by a Verification Report. Automatically generated emails are now visible in your account, and password resets now require an emailed verification code. Every existing account holder has to reset their password the first time they log in.

The major dilemma is the public Certificant Registry is down. A banner across the BACB site states it is unavailable “until further notice” due to unusually high traffic. The Registry is what employers, state licensing boards, and payers use to confirm that a BCBA or RBT is certified and in good standing. While it is dark, that verification does not work for anyone outside the portal.

When a Glitch Becomes an Emergency

A launch-week bug is survivable. A launch-week bug with no phone line, a backed-up ticket queue, and a hard credential deadline is not, and that is the combination people are describing.

One commenter put the workflow plainly: no phone number, submit tickets and hope someone gets back to you, and be ready to pay the late fee if they do not. Another supervisor said a behavior technician’s name had been entered incorrectly, which blocked her from registering for the exam; after the site changeover, with three weeks of silence behind her, she resubmitted the whole packet, something the BACB explicitly tells people not to do. A third said her supervisees were suddenly receiving emails informing them that their supervisor had changed.

“No phone number unfortunately. Submit tickets and hope they get back to you, may have to pay the late fee.” – a practitioner, ABA Business Collective (2026)

The grim humor writes itself, and the group delivered it. One member summarized the exchange as certificants asking for timely responses to time-sensitive testing questions, while the BACB instead offered a glitchy new website. Another, leaning on the obvious pun, said the board “exhibits avoidance bx” when it comes to talking on the phone. It is funny until it is your credential expiring on a Tuesday.

What the BACB Says

The board has acknowledged the rough rollout. It set up a dedicated Report an Issue form for the new portal, and the categories it offers, from “Data Incorrect” to “Portal Error Message” to “Missing Feature or Can’t Locate Feature,” read like a table of contents for what people are hitting. On the processing side, the board is reminding users that reset emails may land in spam and to mark bacb.com as a safe sender.

Commenters who have dealt with the BACB before offered reassurance that the board usually responds to inquiries within about 48 hours and that every platform upgrade has a bumpy first week. Both things can be true. The catch is timing: the office is closed July 3 and does not reopen until July 6, so the queue sits over a long holiday weekend while the Registry stays down and credential deadlines keep arriving.

The office reopens Monday, July 6. The Registry outage has no restore date, and neither does the wait for anyone whose certification lapses before someone answers the ticket.

AT A GLANCE

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