Alternative to BambooHR: What Other HR Software You Should Consider?

With more than 17,000 clients and 1,5 million active users worldwide, BambooHR is one of the most popular HR platforms used by small and medium companies to collect and organize all the information regarding the whole employee lifecycle. 

It’s indeed a great tool, but also has its flaws. For some users, it might be a better option to look for an alternative to BambooHR. What are the other HR platforms comparable to BambooHR that you should consider? Find out reading our article!

What is BambooHR used for?

Firstly, let’s have a look at what features you can find in the BambooHR software:

• • People Data & Analytics. With BambooHR, all employee data can be stored in one secure, centralized place. It also provides extensive reports and analysis of HR metrics to enable you to make data-driven decisions.
  • Hiring. The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) included in the BambooHR suite is a modern recruiting tool that makes finding and hiring the best people easier and more organized. It has everything a recruiter needs: adding application forms, posting offers on multiple job boards, communicating with candidates, and collaborating with other team members. 
  • Onboarding. After hiring, there comes the time to onboard your brilliant new joiners. BambooHR allows you to ensure that employees start their first days of work off on the right foot, equipped with the fundamental information, and without unnecessary paperwork. How? By using electronic signatures, setting up checklists, tasks, welcome messages, and other onboarding steps.
  • Compensation. Payroll, time tracking, and PTO modules allow you to take control of common processes related to employee compensation: all the data that was scattered between emails, calendars, documents, and different tools are now accessible in one place.
  • Culture. BambooHR helps you building a strong company culture by measuring employee satisfaction and conducting performance reviews. You can gather precious feedback and insights that will show you how to make your organization more friendly.

What are the disadvantages of BambooHR?

Besides the many perks of BambooHR, one of its significant quirks is its confusing and vague pricing. You might have realized that it’s not easy to get to know how much BambooHR costs, as there is no clear information on the website. You need to fill in a form and wait for a quote from the company, which is a nuisance if you want to quickly research and compare the options you’re considering.

However, before you ask for a quote, you should be aware that BambooHR uses a pay-per-employee monthly pricing model, which means that your fees will increase every time a new member joins your company. That’s not very convenient for fast-growing companies. 

Moreover, you’ll have to pay for every add-on that’s not included in the main packages, for example, such basic options as employee timesheets, approval workflows, automatic reminders, goals management, and many more. The result? If you want to get a comprehensive solution that will really make a difference in your day to day work, you’ll need to buy many of these extra features and fees will stack up. Therefore, the final price can be unacceptable for small and medium-sized businesses.

To add insult to injury, BambooHR offers only 7 days of free trial, so it can be hard to test the software properly in such a short time. If these disadvantages are a deal-breaker for you, you might want to consider other platforms alternative to BambooHR – if so, keep reading to check out your options.

What is the best alternative to BambooHR?

If you are looking for an alternative platform to BambooHR, you surely want a solution that solves the problems that BambooHR has: for instance, the complicated and unclear pricing model. In this case, you should try tomHRM: an alternative that is no worse than BambooHR in terms of features and offers much more transparent pricing. In fact, you can estimate the cost on your own using the calculator. 

tomHRM pricing is based on the modules you choose and the employee pool. Why that’s a better pricing model than the one offered by BambooHR? Basically, you only pay for what you really need, and your fee won’t increase every time a new employee joins your company, like in the price per user model. You can change your subscription anytime, for instance, to pick additional features.

The modules and features included in tomHRM without a doubt cover the needs of any SME:

• Leave & Absences Management: you can set your own PTO policies and leave types, integrate the app with Google Calendar and Office 365, define approval workflows, configure public holidays, and customized days off for every country.
• Time tracking & timesheet: time tracking and reporting shouldn’t be burdensome, and with this module, your employees will be able to easily clock in and out, register time worked in projects, and approve entries made by their subordinates. An indispensable feature especially when working remotely!
• ATS for recruitment: recruiting new talent has become easier than ever. Creating a Career Page, posting job offers, communicating with candidates, reviewing applications: these are only some of the possibilities that tomHRM gives you in the area of recruitment.
• Surveys & Quizzes: conveniently prepare surveys and tests to gather employee feedback on a given topic or evaluate employee knowledge pre- and post-training to measure progress.
• Training management: take care of your employees’ development and help them improve their skillsets with this comprehensive solution for planning and managing trainings.
• Goals management: you can choose between MBO and OKR methodologies and use the goal management app to enable your employees to achieve their objectives, as well as to monitor teams’ and the company’s progress.
• Intranet: company life happens here. The option of posting news and company events, sharing knowledge, chatting on public walls greatly improves internal communication, boosts employee engagement, and brings your workforce closer even in dispersed teams.
• Contracts: store contracts in one place, share with employees, and set reminders to never again miss an approaching expiry date.
• Requests: you can predefine online request forms. This way, the amount of paperwork is reduced significantly, you save time and money, and your employees are grateful that the piles of paper and prolonged procedures are long gone!
• Employee directory: a place where all information about employees can be stored, browsed, and updated. Thanks to the self-service, employees can edit their profiles on their own.

Moreover, tomHRM gives you a 30-days free trial period that allows you to thoroughly test the app and even invite your teammates to try the software together.