1. Gusto – Best all-in-one software to manage employees
Overview
Gusto tops our list for best employee management tool for small business with a wealth of easy-to-use, people-first features and fully integrated functionality. Their intuitive interface simplifies even the most complex tasks, and their suite of time tracking tools together with their robust reporting and team management elevate HR to enterprise level even for startups and small businesses.
Fully Integrated
Having a single worker management system to handle hiring, time tracking, PTO, sick days, performance management, and benefits administration—that seamlessly syncs to payroll—reduces your admin burden and streamlines your tech stack while saving you money.
With Gusto, Every time you run payroll, all federal, state, and local taxes are automatically calculated, filed, and paid along with benefits deductions, workers’ comp, and PTO. Plus built-in compliance helps you stay one step ahead of changing regulations in everything from overtime and minimum wage to hiring and firing.
Time and Productivity Management
Gusto’s robust set of time and productivity tools go well beyond clocking in and out. Employees can easily request PTO and check their balances, and managers can review and approve timesheets and time off requests in just a few clicks.
In addition, Gusto’s powerful project tracking and AI-powered reporting options will help you easily leverage data to optimize labor costs and distribute your team’s time more wisely. They don’t offer native shift scheduling, but they provide seamless integration with all of the most popular shift scheduling tools like Workforce, Homebase 7Shifts, and more.
Hiring & Team Management
With company org charts and handbooks, employee happiness surveys, and integrated learning and professional development options, Gusto’s people-first team management tools are built to keep teams engaged and on track. Performance reviews include both 1-on-1 and self-evaluations, and their suite of hiring and onboarding tools help them stand out from competitors who offer similar functionality with a bigger price tag.
Wrap-up
More than just an employee management solution, Gusto is a full-service HR platform. All of their tools feel designed with humans in mind, easily handling the entire employee lifecycle from recruiting and onboarding, to engagement and growth, to an employee’s last day. Gusto’s pricing is fully transparent, and the large majority of their powerful HR tools are available on their mid-range Plus plan. Overall, they offer more functionality at a better price, winning them the top spot.
Key Features
- Seamlessly integrated payroll, HR, time tracking, and benefits
- Seamlessly integrated payroll, HR, time tracking, and benefits
- Robust time tracking tools
- Project management software
- Integrated recruiting, hiring, and onboarding
- AI-powered workforce and project cost reporting
- Automated compliance and new-hire reporting in all 50 states
- Performance management suite
- Employee self-service portal
- Support for international contractors in 120+ countries; global payroll currently being rolled out
- Dedicated support from certified HR experts available
- Hundreds of software integrations
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Intuitive, easy to use interface | Shift scheduling only available through third-party integrations |
| All-in-one solution for payroll, time, benefits, and HR | Simple plan includes only the most basic HR tools |
| Transparent pricing, no hidden fees | Mobile app lacks full functionality |
| Extensive payroll, HR, time-off, and workforce costing reports | |
| Robust people management tools | |
| Great customer service; dedicated HR support available | |
| Hundreds of software integrations included with all plans |
Pricing
Gusto offers three pricing plans, with the Simple plan starting at $40 per month plus $6 per person per month. The Simple plan lacks the more powerful workforce management tools like time tracking and more advanced data and reporting, but it still comes loaded with basic support for hiring and onboarding, PTO, and benefits administration.
Plus plans start at $80 per month plus $12 per person per month and include the full suite of time tracking, reporting, and team management tools along with the bulk of their advanced HR suite. Plus plans also come loaded with popular features like next-day direct deposit and multi-state payroll.
Dedicated support from certified HR pros along with compliance alerts is available only with the Premium plan or through the HR add-on at $8 per person per month.
Premium plans are priced exclusively, and include everything Gusto has to offer with no hidden monthly fees. For more info on Premium pricing, contact their sales team today.
Free Trial? Yes, Gusto is free until you run your first payroll.
Free Version: No.
Transform your HR processes with Gusto, a platform that’s already the choice of over 300,000 businesses.
Create account2. monday.com – Best dedicated employee management software
Overview
While monday.com doesn’t offer a full suite of HR functionality like hiring, recruiting, and payroll, their employee management platform excels at what they do. They are laser focused on improving productivity while helping you make more informed business decisions.
Monday.com centers around beautifully designed dashboards to keep you and your team members on task. They offer pre-built dashboards for dozens of different project types, from marketing campaigns and content calendars to product development and event management. They also offer dozens of industry-specific solutions for real estate, construction, software development, and more. They can help you visualize everything from how many hours your team has spent on a project to higher-level portfolio management. Employees and managers can set goals, get granular insights, and stay on top of progress over time with automated triggers. And when it’s time for performance reviews, all of the data flows seamlessly into a single source of truth.
You can also use monday.com’s powerful automation to help your HR department onboard new employees, streamline hiring workflows, manage employee records, or implement training programs, but this is only to increase efficiency in your existing processes with third-party software—they don’t have any native tools to perform these tasks. They also have a sales CRM for pipeline and lead management.
Monday.com isn’t a one-stop shop for managing your team, but if you’re looking for a one-off tool to help boost productivity and keep your team on task, you can’t go wrong.
Key Features
- 200+ pre-built productivity dashboards
- Fully customizable workflows and automations
- Native communication tool
- Data-driven performance reviews
- OKR and goal tracking
- PTO & time tracking available
- HR workflow management
- CRM integration available
- 200+ integrations
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Highly focused workforce management tools | Lacking a full suite of HR, payroll, and benefits functionality |
| Beautiful dashboards to track goals, strategies, productivity, and more | No integrations or automations on basic plan |
| Robust performance review and goal-setting tools | |
| Fully transparent pricing | |
| Excellent customer support |
Pricing
Monday.com offers four pricing tiers in addition to their forever free plan. The Basic plan is $9 per seat per month and offers unlimited projects and unlimited free viewers, however you can only create one dashboard and there are no automations or integrations included. The Standard plan jumps to $12 per seat and includes timeline and calendar views, a dashboard that combines up to 5 boards, and 250 integration and automation actions per month.
For those with more complex workflow needs, the Pro plan comes in at $19 per seat and adds on private boards, time tracking, chart visualizations and 25,000 automations and integration actions per month. Finally, enterprise level requires you to reach out for a custom quote.
Free Trial? Yes. 14 days.
Free Plan: Yes. Up to 2 seats are available with basic functionality on their forever free plan.
Learn more about monday.com
3. Workday – Best AI-powered employee management software
Overview
AI is changing the way we work, and Workday is leveraging its potential to boost productivity and keep your team happy, motivated, and on track. Their impressive human capital management (HCM) solution includes a native communication platform, a customizable dashboard for easy navigation and access to essential tasks and tools, and provides mobile apps for payroll, time tracking, and HR tasks.
Workday offers integrated recruiting, hiring, and onboarding along with a full suite of AI-powered time and scheduling tools. Employees can easily clock in and out, swap shifts, and scheduling is both automated and compliant.
But where Workday really shines is their AI-powered, data-driven decision making. For hiring, they provide robust data on skills gaps and compensation, along with impressive workforce optimization insights. From an employee management perspective, they help keep employees engaged through tailored professional development and personalized HR experiences.
While Workforce does offer integrated payroll, it’s somewhat limited and is more of an add-on to their core employee management software. Additionally, their global payroll solution is limited to the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, and France, though they do offer integrations with a handful of global payroll providers.
If you’re a midsize company looking to jumpstart productivity, discover efficiencies, and ramp up employee engagement, Workday is a great tool for the job. But if you’re a smaller business looking for a simpler tool to manage your team, there are more affordable options out there.
Key Features
- Integrated payroll, benefits, and HR
- Robust, AI-powered analytics and reporting
- Financial, workforce, and operational optimization
- Employee management portal
- Native communication tool
- Customized employee experiences
- Scheduling & shift swapping capability
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Best-in-class reporting and analytics | Payroll functionality is lacking |
| AI-powered workforce optimization | Global payroll is limited to just 5 countries |
| Employee-centric development and growth features | No transparent pricing |
Pricing
Workday’s pricing is not transparent, and you’ll need to contact them for a custom quote. However, according to Forbes, users have reported pricing around $99 per user month.
Free Trial? No.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about Workday
4. UKG Ready – Best employee management system for reporting & analytics
Overview
UKG Ready is a comprehensive employee management solution that integrates time and attendance, scheduling, talent management, workforce optimization, HR, and payroll into one powerful platform. All of their tools are designed with efficiency in mind—from real-time analytics to optimize staffing to employee engagement monitoring to increase retention.
UKG boasts a modern, intuitive user interface that is relatively easy to navigate, though there is a learning curve for new users. The dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of key metrics and tasks, and employee self-service saves time and reduces errors. Where UKG really shines, however, is their robust reporting and analytics. In addition to hundreds of pre-built metrics and data, you can run custom reports on nearly any data housed in their system. They are focused on helping medium-sized businesses optimize their workforces from day one.
The platform offers a high degree of customization, enabling businesses to tailor it to their specific needs and workflows. This flexibility, combined with its scalability, makes UKG Ready an attractive option for growing, white-collar businesses looking to manage an expanding workforce without the need for significant system changes. For smaller businesses, shift-based businesses, or businesses with complex payroll needs, however, UKG Ready is not the ideal solution.
Key Features
- Time tracking and time-off management
- Talent management & nurturing
- Hiring & onboarding tools
- Automated labor-law compliance
- Integrated payroll & tax services
- Over 150 standard reports + endless customization
- Employee self-service portal
- Mobile app
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Robust built-in and custom reporting options | No transparent pricing |
| Fully integrated HR, payroll, time, and people tools | Expensive, and not great for smaller businesses |
| Efficiency-driven approach to workforce management | Onboarding can be cumbersome |
| Highly scalable | Customer support is lacking for smaller customers |
| Difficulty with third-party integrations |
Pricing
UKG Ready does not offer any pricing information on their site. You’ll need to reach out for a custom quote. Their enterprise solution, UKG Pro is quoted at $600 per year for every 5 employees, however it’s unclear how that translates into their solution for small- and midsize businesses.
Free Trial? No.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about UKG Ready
5. ADP Workforce Now – Best employee management system for midsize businesses
Overview
ADP is a behemoth in the space and offers two payroll and HR solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses: ADP Run for businesses with fewer than 50 employees and ADP Workforce Now for businesses with 50–999. ADP Run includes payroll, onboarding, and reporting features, while ADP Workforce Now also includes retention tools like employee engagement and development. They also offer a full-service PEO option, ADP Total Source.
While ADP Run is a highly rated platform, and includes hiring and onboarding tools, its lack of employee engagement and retention tools puts them at a significant disadvantage. It’s primarily a payroll tool with a few extra HR functions, and their pricing puts them out of reach for many. For this reason, we don’t recommend it for startups or smaller businesses.
For businesses with more than 50 employees, however, ADP Workforce Now consistently tops lists of best employee management softwares, likely because their list of features is so long. Workforce Now offers everything any team might need to manage HR, payroll, benefits, and more, along with over 700 integrations. They have time tracking, PTO, accruals, performance management, compensation management, a huge library of learning materials, and advanced reporting and analytics. Unfortunately, many of their best employee management tools are only available as add-ons to an already expensive base price, and finding out how much it will cost requires reaching out for a custom quote.
Key Features
- Fully integrated HR, payroll, benefits, and time tracking
- Flexible and mobile time collection
- Robust employee scheduling capabilities
- Employee self-service
- PTO / Time-off accruals
- Time-off requests and processing
- Comprehensive analytics and reporting, including overtime
- Over 700 software integrations available
- Large professional learning library
- Mobile app
- Every HR, time, and people tool imaginable
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| HR Outsourcing and PEO options available | Pricing quickly adds up |
| Robust options for businesses with 50–999 employees | Software feels clunky and dated |
| Tons of products and features for maximum scalability | Slow customer service |
| Largest offering of learning & development courses | More powerful workforce management tools are only available in Premium plan or as add-ons |
| No employee retention tools or benefits administration available in small business packages |
Pricing
ADP’s pricing tiers are confusing at best. For businesses with fewer than 50 employees, they offer 4 pricing tiers: Essential Payroll, Enhanced Payroll that includes wage garnishment, unemployment, background checks and job postings, Complete Payroll and HR+ that adds on some HR tools like employee handbooks, proactive compliance alerts, a job description wizard, and access to the HR help desk, and HR Pro Payroll and HR, that includes an applicant tracking system, onboarding tools, and an LMS.
Where ADP stands out is their Workforce Now packages for medium-sized businesses from 50–999 employees. They offer three tiers: Select, Plus, and Premium. Select is a basic suite of HR and payroll tools. Plus includes benefits administration, and Premium adds on their suite of employee management tools including time tracking, scheduling, and PTO management.
With any of the Workforce Now packages, you can add on modules for Talent Acquisition, Performance Management, Compensation Management, HR Assist, Analytics and Enhanced Insights, and Learning Management.
According to Forbes, users reported pricing starts from $62 per month, but the average business should expect to spend a lot more than that. For example, the ADP support team quoted payroll only for 50 employees at $400 per month.
Free Trial? Yes, three months free on select products.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about ADP
6. BambooHR – Best purebred HR management system
Overview
BambooHR is great for both small- and medium-sized businesses who want to easily manage personnel records, payroll, and perks. BambooHR is the most HR-focused entry on this list—it’s a purebred Human Resources Information System (HRIS) with payroll, benefits, and time tracking as extras.
Onboarding, offboarding, document storage, employee satisfaction, and robust reporting options are all built right in. Out-of-the-box workflows for time off requests, salary changes, and more make it easy to save time on admin while being sure nothing slips through the cracks.
For tools like performance management, payroll, and benefits administration, you’ll need to pay extra. But their performance management tools are some of the best out there, and visualizations of employee progress and satisfaction, along with customizable automations and reporting on almost any piece of data set them apart as a team management tool. Employee self-service for onboarding, personal information, document storage, and benefits is also best-in-class.
While BambooHR does come with “benefits tracking,” it’s a clunky feature that requires a lot of manual entry. If you’re looking for employee management software with benefits, you’re better off paying for their benefits administration add-on or choosing a provider that includes benefits, like Gusto.
If you don’t have complex payroll needs, and you’re looking for a more HR-focused tool, BambooHR has all the bells and whistles to help streamline admin and manage your team while improving productivity across the board. Or, if you already have payroll and time tracking tools you love, using Bamboo to jumpstart your performance management is a great choice.
Key Features
- Best-in-class performance management tools and visualizations
- Intuitive, user-friendly onboarding and offboarding workflows
- Automated workflows
- Employee self-service portal
- Payroll processing in all 50 states
- Multiple PTO policies and automated accruals
- Custom reporting options on any data housed in the system
- Payroll, benefits, time tracking, and performance management available as add-ons
- 125+ software integrations
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Industry-leading HR suite | Limited functionality in mobile app |
| Best-in-class onboarding, offboarding, and employee self-service | Essentials plan is bare-bones |
| Powerful reporting on any data in the system | No transparent pricing |
| Automated workflows save time and ensure accuracy | No international support |
| Chat & phone support only available on Advanced plan |
Pricing
BambooHR no longer shares pricing information on their website, and you’ll need to reach out to get a custom quote. For companies with more than 20 employees, their HR software is priced on a per-employee, per-month basis. For companies with 20 employees or fewer, pricing is charged at a monthly flat rate.
BambooHR has two available plans along with a handful of optional add-ons. The Essentials Plan comes with employee records management, standard reporting and analytics, time-off management, as well as a few automated workflows. Previous pricing started at $108 per month for the first 20 employees.
The Advantage Plan includes advanced reporting, custom workflows, onboarding and offboarding, their applicant tracking system, and employee wellness features.
They also offer four add-on packages: payroll (previously priced at $150 per month for up to 20 employees + $7.25 per employee per month after that), benefits administration (previously priced at $5 per employee per month), performance management (previously priced at $5.75 per employee per month), and time tracking (previously priced at $3 per employee per month). These modules all have volume discounts, so the per employee cost will drop as your business grows.
Free Trial? Yes, 7 days.
Free Plan: No.
Learn more about BambooHR
7. Homebase – Best employee management software for shift-based businesses
Overview
Homebase is an all-in-one scheduling, time tracking, payroll, and HR solution created specifically for shift-based businesses. HR needs for restaurants, retail, and other hourly businesses differ significantly from traditional white collar offices. But a lot of employment management systems focus on tools targeted toward salary-based businesses and lack even basic scheduling functionality.
Luckily, Homebase has one of the most robust scheduling tools on the market. Auto-schedule by availability or using sales and labor forecasts. You can further optimize your workforce with team management tools like collecting shift feedback to take employee pulses, team ‘shouts’ to give kudos to fellow employees, and powerful shift swapping tools to save time on schedule changes with minimal involvement from management.
While Homebase is more of a time-tracking tool with an HR add-on, they’ve got everything hourly-based businesses need to manage their teams. Their HR suite includes hiring and onboarding with automated job postings across multiple job boards, employee happiness surveys, no-cost benefit options, and secure document storage and compliance designed with shift-based businesses in mind. Sick leave, PTO, and vacation time are easy to manage and track, and a team of HR pros is available to answer your compliance questions.
While there are more powerful HR-focused platforms on the market, and more robust, AI-powered scheduling tools, they often come with a hefty price tag. Homebase is the easy winner for small, shift-based businesses looking to streamline their tech stack while still accessing all the tools and functionality they need—at a price that won’t break the bank.
Key Features
- Designed specifically for shift-based businesses
- Powerful time and scheduling tools
- Recruiting, hiring, and paperless onboarding
- Payroll add-on available with automated tax filings
- Track employee certifications
- Built-in compliance for meal time, breaks, and minimum wage
- Integrations with popular POS, recruiting, accounting, and payroll software
- Robust, native communication tools
- Mobile app for time tracking, communication, shift swapping, and more
- Employee happiness surveys and retention tools
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Automated scheduling saves hours each month | Payroll add-on is expensive |
| People-focused tools to keep your team happy and engaged | Full suite of HR tools is only available in the All-in-One plan |
| Competitively priced, even for top-tier plan | Difficult to correct time for incorrect clock-ins |
| Easily integrates with payroll providers | Occasional software bugs reported |
Pricing
Homebase offers four pricing tiers. Their Basic plan is free and includes just scheduling, time, and hiring features for up to 20 employees at a single location.
The Essentials plan is $20 a month billed annually for unlimited employees and includes team communication, performance tracking, and remote and field tools.
At $48 per month (billed annually), the Plus plan adds on labor cost control and budgets, time-off and PTO tracking, as well as permissions and policies. The All-in-One plan adds the HR tools you need to thrive including new-hire onboarding, employee document storage, and their full HR and compliance suite at $80 per month.
For the payroll add-on, it’s $39 a month + $6 per employee paid per month.
Homebase offers no-commitment monthly plans at slightly higher prices than listed above.
Free Trial? Yes, 14 days.
Free Plan: Yes, basic scheduling, time, and hiring features for up to 20 employees at a single location.
Learn more about Homebase