In 2024, the average HR department at a small business will be accountable for a broad list of responsibilities. These can range from hiring new staff and managing expenses claims to analyzing employee data in order to shape wider company policy relating to wellbeing, benefits, salaries, and development.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that many small businesses need the best HR software as much as their larger counterparts. With lots of HR teams now fully remote or working from home some of the time, having a digital hub that all of your operations can be centered around fosters clarity and reduces confusion.
In this article, we’ll provide a side-by-side comparison of the features provided by five top HR software companies for small businesses, and tease out some key points of difference worth considering as a small operation.
The Best Small Business HR Software for 2024
- Deel: Best Value (Free) and Great for Global Hiring
- Paychex: Best for Basic Payroll Management
- Paycor: Best for Analytics and Reporting
- Rippling: Best for Automation and Conducting Staff Surveys
- monday.com: Best for Beginners, With Great HR Templates
| Price From | Key Features | Free plan? | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best Overall & Best Value  | Best for Basic Payroll Management  | Best for Analytics & Reporting  | Best for Automation & Feedback Surveys  | Best for Beginners  | |
| monday.com | |||||
| $39/month (+ $5/employee) | $35 plus $8/month/employee (custom prices) | ||||
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| Yes | No | Free demo | Yes | ||
| Try Deel | Try Paychex | Try Paycor | Try Rippling | Try monday.com |
The Best HR Software for Small Businesses: In-Depth Reviews
Here, we’ll go into a little bit more detail about the best HR software systems currently available. Most of the providers below offer demos rather than free trials, so that’ll be your first port of call if you’d like to get started immediately.
- Deel: Best Value, Free for Teams of Under 200
- Paychex: Best for Basic Payroll and HR Management
- Paycor: Best for Analytics and Insights
- Rippling: Best Integrated HR & IT Platform
- monday.com: Best for Beginners, with Great HR Templates
Deel
- Best for: Value, Global Hiring
- Price From: Free
Deel is a popular HR software tool used by Nike, Shopify Reddit, and more than 20,000 other companies – and it’s available for free if you have less than 200 users.
Pros
- Excellent free plan
- Stand-out compliant features
- Integrations with Quickbooks and Xero
- Expenses & PTO management
- Cons
- No mobile app
- US employment features come at a premium
- Most expensive plan is: $599/employee/mo
- Contractors: $49/user/mo
- Free plan for under 200 workers
Deel’s generous free plan limit of 200 users makes it the best value HR software tool on the market for small businesses. It’s got a clean, tidy interface that’s a lot more modern than the likes of Paycor and Paychex, and more similar to Rippling.
A gross-to-net report made in Deel. Image: Deel
Deel integrates with loads of other popular apps commonly used by HR teams, like BambooHR, Quickbooks, Workday, Netsuite, and Xero. But unlike some of the other providers on this list, you can actually create your own custom integrations using Deel’s API. So, the sky really is the limit when it comes to syncing up Deel with the rest of the platforms your small business uses.
There’s also 24/7 in-app support available, with an average response time of 1.25 minutes – by comparison, Paychex only provides support from 8am to 8pm ET on weekdays for most issues.
Along with its HR software, Deel provides plans that include extensive support for small businesses that want to hire contractors and employees abroad, and will help you handle visa and immigration processes, ensuring legal compliance in the territories you’re operating in. Deel’s EOR plan includes support from more than 200 local HR and legal experts and will let you tailor benefits packages to specific countries.
Deel is a great choice if you want a trustworthy, secure software tool. It’s GDPR, SOC2, and ISO 27001 compliant and the app is hosted by Amazon Web Services. There are also “Approvals and “Permissions” to ensure that system changes have to be given the green light by admins, and extensive data logging tools so you can stay on top of changes.
The company also says that it is audited annually by a third party, so you don’t just have to take their word for it when it comes to security.
The immigration/visa dashboard in Deel. Image: Deel
Deel pricing and demo information
Deel’s HR software is currently free for any company or team. That means no monthly fees and no additional costs. The software is ready to go right out of the box, making it one of the more tempting HR software pricing setups around.
However, there are other plans with different focuses, including the EOR plan, which costs $599 per month and will let you hire hundreds of employees abroad while assisting you with all of the legal compliance work, although this price will be too high for most small businesses, who are unlikely to need the full functionality either. The Contractors plan, on the other hand, which is geared toward businesses hiring international contractors, costs $49 per month.
Deel shares no public pricing for its Global Payroll and Immigration plans, so if your department needs these services, you’ll have to contact the sales department for a custom quote for your business. Alternatively, if you’d like to try out a Deel plan without paying anything, you can book a 30-minute demo with one of Deel’s experts, which includes a Q&A session at the end.
Paychex
- Best for: Basic payroll management
- Price From: $39 per month (+$5 per employee)
Just like Deel, Paychex provides an all-in-one HR application that you can use to centralize all of your HR operations. It’ll ensure that your small company’s management processes are clearly defined and easy to follow, and can help you better understand the employment laws you have to comply with.
Pros
- Great payroll control
- Background check option
- Healthcare and wellbeing features
Cons:
- No free trial
- Lacks global payment features
- Starts at $39 per month
- Plus $4 per employee per month
- No free plan or free trial available
Paychex adds structure to the employee review process by providing dedicated tools that aid with scaling it appropriately and implementing it en masse, all while balancing considerations like data privacy/protection and company-employee transparency – something small businesses don’t always have lots of time or resources to pour into.
Paychex provides reporting and analytics tools that you can use to track your headcount, as well as other valuable data like turnover rate and information about the demography of your workforce. This can be used for reports and other internal company analyses.
Reviewing 401K plans with Paychex. Image: Paychex
It’s also possible to design an entire workplace safety and compliance program for employees with Paychex. There are also tools included that let you automate common administrative tasks, as many work-focused software tools now offer.
Paychex pricing and demo information
Paychex’s pricing consists of several payroll bundles that include many of the tools an HR team would inevitably find useful. Paychex Essentials – for teams of one to 19 people – costs $39 per month plus $5 per employee, but you’ll need to purchase most of the features as add-ons.
Paychex Flex and Paychex Pro have no public pricing, and you’ll have to contact sales for a quote. However, you can also fill in a short form provided on Paychex’s website. You can use this to outline your needs and specific use case, and then request a quote from the company.
Paycor
- Best for: Analytics and reporting features
- Price From: Custom (contact sales)
Paycor is a top payroll service used by many small businesses, but it automates and assists with many of the other duties typical of an HR department. On top of this, Paycor Analytics will let you easily glean insights from your employee data to inform your decision-making.
Pros
- Industry-leading reporting features
- Great employee-focused app
Cons:
- Time-tracking only available as a paid add-on
- Opaque pricing structure
- No free plan
- Four pricing plans available: Basic, Essential, Core & Complete
- Prices available on request
When it comes to payroll, Paycor has everything you could need to ensure that all of your staff are paid on time. Paycor has several flexible pay options and closely follows tax compliance requirements, while also providing support for earned wage access – something more and more US workers are demanding amid unstable financial conditions.
Paycor also has dedicated tools for two other crucial duties HR departments are responsible for – expenses and talent management. The provider makes it a lot easier to manage expense claims and reimburse employees when you’ve got all the info you need under one roof, and the ability to launch a progression and development framework from within the software will help your small business attract high performers and improve your retention rates.
The onboarding dashboard in Paycor. Image: Paycor
One of Paycor’s standout features is Paycor Analytics, which will let you ask questions in natural language (e.g. which month did our staff do the most overtime during?) and the software will fetch you an answer. This makes leveraging and acting on insights from your data as easy as possible and will prove particularly useful to small businesses that can’t afford to employ workers or teams to sift through it.
Far from being a generic piece of software, Paycor actually has tailored implementation options for lots of different types of small businesses, such as restaurants, manufacturers, and professional services teams.
Paycor pricing and demo information
Paycor doesn’t offer a free trial but will let you take a guided tour of the software if you send them your contact details. There is currently no public pricing available.
To get a quote, you’ll have to first tell Paycor whether your company has more or less than 50 employees. With fewer than 50 employees on your payroll, you’ll be able to choose from the Basic, Essential, Core, and Complete plans. You need to sign up to get accurate pricing figures for these – but you will get 50% off for the next six months.
Businesses with more than 50 employees will need to sign up and talk to sales. You will, however, get one month of the software free of charge.
Rippling
- Best for: Automation and feedback surveys
- Price From: Custom (contact sales)
Rippling is more than just a solution for HR departments – unlike some of the other providers on this list, Rippling is designed to seamlessly knit together all of your finance, IT, and HR data and processes, for more holistic solutions to human resource challenges.
Pros
- Excellent EOR service
- Lots of custom automation
- Flexible payment featres
Cons:
- Fairly opaque pricing system
- No 24/7 live support
- Starts at: $35 per month
- Plus $8 per employee per month
- No free trial
With Rippling, you can purchase the highly scalable “HR cloud” package, which includes features such as a survey tool called Pulse, which can be used to generate surveys and compile feedback from your employees. You can also customize your own hiring process (and, as you grow, customise different processes for different teams) so it can be repeated in an accurate, structured way.
You’ll need one of the four aptly named Rippling “Unity” plans if you want the benefits of the software to be felt beyond just your HR department, but as a small business, your operations may not be extensive enough to benefit from this anyway.
Whatever plan you choose, we’re confident you’ll like Rippling’s interface – it’s a lot more modern and clean than Paychex or Paycor’s, and if you have non-tech savvy team members, you’re going to need a straightforward UI.
A new hires/headcount report generated using Rippling. Image: Rippling
If you’re a small business, opting for a Unity bundle could mean you actually save a bit of money in the long term – one software solution that brings three different departments together under the same roof is often cheaper and easier to manage than three platforms.
One standout feature offered by Rippling on all of its plans – including just the HR call is its automation – it’s by far the most automatable HR software tool on this list, aside from monday.com – and that’s not dedicated HR software.
Rippling provides hundreds of different automation templates, so if you’ve never used this kind of feature before, there’s not much to learn.
A compensation report in Rippling. Image: Rippling
We also think Rippling’s staff survey features are quite unique – you can send out surveys, compile feedback on different topics, events, and decisions, and then create automations based on the responses you get. This will be a feature larger small businesses with more than 50 staff will find most useful.
Along with being a top choice for small businesses looking for something a little more than an HR solution, Rippling is an especially good choice for companies employing people across the globe. The software can automate compliance with local employment laws and will ensure your company is doing everything by the book, wherever it’s based.
To find out more about this provider, check out our Rippling review.
Rippling pricing and demo information
You can get access to an interactive demo with Rippling via the website, but you’ll have to hand over your details if you want a free quote tailored to your business. Rippling does say that pricing starts from $8 per user, per month, but there’s no other public pricing information.
As we’ve already mentioned, you can get a Rippling Unity plan for your whole operational workforce, and this incorporates tools for finance and IT teams. There are four unity plans to choose from: Core, Pro, Unlimited, and Enterprise, and the only real difference is the limits on management features like custom workflows and advanced reporting.
If that level of sophistication is unnecessary for your small operation, you could simply opt for a cloud bundle that includes features geared specifically toward small business HR teams.
Check out our guide to HR KPIs to learn more
Monday.com for HR
- Best for: Beginners
- Price From: $9 per month (contact sales)
Work and project management app monday.com isn’t a dedicated HR platform by trade, but it does have a lot of the features that a very small HR team will find useful, and is worth considering because it’s so easy to use.
Pros
- Highly customizable platform
- Pre-made recruitment templates
- Wellbeing support for employees
Cons
- Free plan has 2-person user limit
- No payroll features
- Higher tiers required for basic features
- Free forever plan
- Paid plans from $9/user/month
- Standard Projects Plan ($12/user/month)
monday.com has a range of HR templates which will help you get started managing your team straight away. In fact, there are 10 in total, covering everything from feedback surveys to new employee onboarding.
With a free trial for monday.com, you’ll be able to download these sorts of templates and check out the platform’s vacation requests, HR general requests, employee onboarding, employee portal, and open positions boards that are auto-generated by the provider.
monday.com’s employee onboarding template for HR teams. Image: Tech.co
As monday.com is so customizable and simple to get to grips with, you can create boards for employee evaluations and your recruitment pipeline, and the automations available will help you streamline the process. It’ll be a great choice for any small business HR team that wants these tools, but doesn’t want to pay through the nose for lots of features and functionality that they don’t need. A small business of 10 with an HR team of one or two, for example, is unlikely to need Paycor’s powerful analytics tools.
The other advantage monday.com has is that it can be used for pretty much any type of desk-based work – it’s great for general scheduling, project management, and tracking employee productivity. So, it’ll be good for small HR teams that want an organizational boost and don’t need the raft of advanced HR and payroll features provided by Deel and Paychex.
monday.com HR pricing and demo information
Monday.com offers five plans, including a free plan – but that has a two-user limit, so won’t be suitable for most HR teams. However, as we mentioned above, this might be ideal for some very small businesses that just need a space to organize their day-to-day work.
There’s a Basic projects plan available for $9 per user, per month, which is the plan most small teams of five to 20 will want, while the Standard Projects plan (probably the best value plan overall) retails at $12 per user, per month.
There’s also a Pro Projects plan ($19 per user, per month) that will suit businesses with multiple teams working on lots of projects simultaneously, whereas the Enterprise plan is geared towards large businesses with thousands of employees.
How Did We Compare the Best HR Software?
We understand how important choosing the right HR software for your team is, and that’s why we go the extra mile when researching and reviewing the top providers.
First, we conduct an initial exploration to find the most relevant and useful platforms on the market. Then, we analyze their potential using a vigorous methodology that focuses on the concerns businesses care about the most, including the quality and quantity of HR and payroll features, entry price, average plan cost, presence of a free plan, and user experience.
These findings then help determine each software’s overall potential, which businesses they are best suited for, and how they size up against the wider competition.
So much more goes into our research process, though. If you’d like to learn more about how we test and review products at Tech.co, you can learn more about our research here.
How to Choose the Best HR Software for Your Small Business
When choosing HR software, there’s quite a range of factors you’ll have to contend with, and how important they ultimately end up being will depend on the size of both your department and your budget. Here are some key things to consider:
- Pricing: Of course, not every small HR department will have the same budget to spend on software – and some providers will charge you a lot more than others depending on the number of users and features that are needed.
- Ease of use for admin/managers: If you’re a small business, you’re probably going to feel like every day is an all-hands-on-deck day – so you can’t afford for your HR managers to be spending all day fiddling around with slow, clunky software.
- Ease of use for employees: if your employees can’t use the HR software you’ve chosen they’re going to avoid using it, and most importantly, logging important information. It can’t just work for experienced managers.
- Ready-made integrations: There’s nothing worse than settling on a software tool and then finding out that sharing data between your other apps is complicated and time-consuming. So, understanding what it integrates with is very important.
- Help and support channels/availability: Some software companies only let you contact them via email – others provide phone support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So, thinking about the technical level of your team, and whether you’d prefer to have that safety blanket of round-the-clock support, is an important decision to make.
- Security: HR teams store a lot of sensitive data about employees – which makes their systems a target for hackers and cybercriminals. So, ensuring your software has the necessary security features to withstand such attacks is crucial.
Check out our HR software guide for more information
The Best Small Business HR Software: Final Thoughts
While there are some great options out there for businesses that want a heavy-duty, holistic HR solution – Rippling, with all its automation capabilities, is a great example – we think Deel will be the best bet for most small businesses.
While it might not have the powerful analytics tools providers like Paycor offer, the fact that Deel is completely free for up to 200 people – and there are no hidden costs once you sign up for the software – sets it apart. It means huge savings when compared to rivals featured in this article, and with its range of global hiring tools, it’s highly scalable. If you’re a small business without much of a software budget, there’s really no better option currently available.
What’s more, Deel can more than keep up when it comes to HR-focused features, with excellent security and compliance options as well as annual third-party auditing. However, options like monday.com, which lean into day-to-day management and are built with beginners in mind – might suit small HR teams at very small businesses that don’t need all of these features.