Comparing The Top 4 BambooHR Alternatives

If your organization is looking to procure a new HR system or replace your existing one, then it might be a good idea to look into alternatives to BambooHR.

BambooHR is a great platform for managing everything related to your human resources. From recruitment to onboarding, employee benefits and payroll, managing employee data and building an internal community, BambooHR has got it all.

BambooHR is known for having everything related to HR under one platform, and that’s how they market themselves. Their tagline “One Easy-to-Use Platform for Everything HR” truly reflects what their platform is all about.

However, there is a downside to this. Having everything means that the platform doesn’t have the depth of capabilities for one function. For instance, in payroll management, some alternatives are much better than BambooHR.

This is what this article is about. We compare alternatives to BambooHR so you can understand and make a more informed decision.

Why Should I Consider Alternatives to BambooHR?

Before we jump on to comparing competitors, let’s first set a point of reference as to where BambooHR stands.

Here is a list of 4 things we think BambooHR is good and not good at.

Good points about BambooHR

• BambooHR has got all HR services under one platform.
• Manages well across the entire employee lifecycle. From sourcing applicants to offboarding employees, you are covered.
• It’s an easy-to-use platform and doesn’t require much training to use.
• Great features for conducting 360-degree performance reviews.

Downsides of BambooHR

• Reporting tools are basic and not flexible enough to create certain custom reports.
• Payroll management is difficult for non-traditional employees. For example, employees working on a flexible schedule.
• Can’t create department or team goals to measure team performance.
• Employee engagement features are too basic. For example, can’t summarize people’s hobbies, or give a shoutout or praise to high achievers.

4 BambooHR Alternatives

Gusto

Gusto is an alternative to BambooHR that specializes in payroll management, with a range of features designed to help you process payroll for your workforce. These include automated payroll processing, tax filing, benefits administration and much more.

This, however, doesn’t mean that Gusto doesn’t offer platform capabilities for other HR needs. Gusto also offers a good range of features that are needed for HR and people management; hiring and onboarding, time-tracking, talent management, etc.

What we particularly love about Gusto is its expertise in payroll management. You can seamlessly run payroll within minutes, as many times a month as you want. If you are a company in the US, Gusto can automatically file taxes for you. You can seamlessly integrate with your accounts software (Quickbooks, Xero, etc.). All of this while ensuring compliance requirements are met.

Pros

• Automatic tax filing for US companies.
• Seamlessly run payroll as many times as you want in a month without being charged extra.
• Seamlessly integrate with your accounts software (Quickbooks, Xero, etc.)
• Great compliance for payroll and benefits administration.
• Offers all the basic functionality that is required for HR management.

Cons

• Limited features are available for companies that are not in the US.
• Benefits and time off management are not as good as the competition, and lack flexibility.
• Online reviews mostly complain about the quality of customer service.

Hibob

Like BambooHR, Hibob offers all the features you’d need for HR and People Management. It has the capabilities needed for hiring, onboarding, payroll, compensation, talent management, and employee engagement.

What we particularly love about Hibob is its employee engagement features. It can essentially enable you to build a social-media-type homepage for your employees internally. It helps employees learn about coworkers’ birthdays, hobbies, working locations, etc. through interactive charts. These capabilities are useful for companies with remote employees or multiple offices in different regions.

Anonymous reporting is also an interesting feature offered by Hibob. This enables employees to voice their opinions and raise concerns anonymously.

Pros

• It’s an easy-to-use platform without much training required.
• Great employee engagement features.
• Has everything related to HR under one platform.
• Seamlessly integrates with payroll systems.

Cons

• Mobile app isn’t that great.
• Performance management features are not as flexible and versatile as its alternatives.
• Time-off management for public holidays isn’t automated.
• Limited flexibility in terms of data reporting tools.

Namely

Namely is an all-in-one HR solution just like BambooHR. The platform promotes the narrative of asking organizations to switch from their legacy HR systems to Namely, and emphasizes on the ease of the process.

A lot of reviews on G2 has in fact mentioned the ease of switching to Namely. The platform offers an initial implementation team with great customer support to help you in the journey.

In terms of capabilities, the platform offers great employee engagement tools. You can create an internal social-media-type platform for your employees to engage with each other.

It also offers everything related to HR under one platform; from hiring to onboarding, payroll, benefits, and performance management.

Pros

• Offers an intuitive interface that is easy to use.
• Has everything related to HR under one platform.
• Seamlessly integrates with payroll systems and other 3rd party systems (for example, document signing systems).
• Great payroll reporting tools and functionality.

Cons

• Not the best for global companies with employees across regions due to payroll capabilities.
• Data reporting tools lack flexibility.
• Payroll management does not offer the functionality to file taxes efficiently.
• Limited flexibility in terms of time-off management.

Zoho People

Zoho is an HR management software that offers a more diverse set of capabilities than the others on this list. It offers everything related to HR under one platform: recruitment, payroll, hiring, talent management, analytics, etc.

This is a good option if you’re a global company or one that also operates in regions other than just North America or Europe. This is because Zoho People has better international features and support than any other alternative on our list.

Zoho People has great time tracking capabilities, including employee attendance management, with integrations to manage attendance via facial recognition or biometric devices.

Other than the basic HR functionality, Zoho People also offers great employee learning capabilities, which most competitors do not offer. Zoho People also offers an employee AI chatbot to expedite HR processes, something which is not offered by other alternatives on our list.

Pros

• Offers learning capabilities.
• Offers an AI chatbot to answer employee queries.
• Offers case management capabilities; a task management system for employees to raise issues and HR staff to efficiently them.
• Is available in multiple countries and has an international network of partners.

Cons

• Employee engagement capabilities are very basic.
• User reviews have complained about the interface being less intuitive than other HRIS tools.
• Time-off management capabilities aren’t that good.
• Pricing is higher than competition.