The 18 Best ATS Systems Reviewed & Compared by Experts
We've researched, reviewed, and compared hundreds of ATS since 2018. Here are the best applicant tracking systems to streamline your recruitment process.
Best Applicant Tracking Systems
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that automates the recruitment and hiring process. For companies that hire more than 20 employees a year, an ATS is an essential tool. On this page you’ll find expert reviews and comparisons of the best ATS systems on the market.
We've been researching, reviewing and comparing ATSs since 2018 and update this article regularly. But we offer more than just research: Our writers have led recruiting operations and PeopleOps across industries. We combine our direct, hands-on experience with rigorous research, product demos, user reviews, and the input of impartial, third-party experts to provide consistent, reliable, and helpful advice. You can also book a free call with an HR tech expert who'll give you personalized help.
To create and update our list of the best ATSs we regularly participate in product demos, gather user and expert feedback, and leverage in-house knowledge. We assess each product's performance on core functions, including job post distribution, candidate screening, interview scheduling, and analytics/reporting. In our view, the three most essential components that best-in-class ATS software must score highly on are UX/UI, candidate experience, and integration/compatibility.
- UX/UI: Posting a job should take less than 30 seconds, syndicating this job to job boards should be a simple push of a button, and viewing applicants should be as intuitive as using platforms like Trello.
- Candidate Experience: Features like personalized communication, easy interview scheduling, and self-service portals for application status updates all enhance the candidate experience. Your talent acquisition team is also part of your public relations team, so it is critical to equip them with tech to ensure you maintain a strong reputation among all candidates, regardless of your hiring decision.
- Integration and Compatibility: We assess each platform’s ability to integrate with other tools in a typical HR ecosystem. Limited integrations can be a massive drag on ROI: manually entering data or downloading CSVs just to upload them to your ATS, for example, is suboptimal at best.
To address the needs of companies of any size, we've included a few all-in-one solutions. In our experience, many companies with lean HR/TA teams and fewer than 500 employees are better off with a platform that combines applicant tracking with other functions like CRM, HRIS, or payroll.
For more information on our methodology, read this article on how we evaluate HR tech vendors.
BambooHR
Greenhouse
Pinpoint
Workable
ClearCompany
Manatal
VIVAHR
JazzHR
Ashby
Recruit CRM
Trakstar Hire
Avature
iCIMS
Lever
Recruitee
VidCruiter
Teamtailor
SmartRecruiters
Rippling
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BambooHR
We love how this ATS operates within Bamboo’s larger HR Suite. We found seamless workflows between the ATS and other core HR features. The simplicity makes for ease of use, and helps ensure compliance.
PROS
- This is one of the few solutions that allow you to do month to month pricing, a nice option to have!
- Free 7-day trials are available (and you can definitely extend these another week or so if needed).
- The mobile app works well and offers built-in application review, communication, and collaboration features.
- They have a ridiculously fast response time on customer success queries, less than 2 minutes in our experience.
- Flexible packaging and custom pricing is the way they roll. You can pick out one or two packages and pick other modules as add-ons based on your needs.
- Very simple and straightforward tool, easy to use.
CONS
- If you go over your allotted time for customer support, you will pay extra.
- Customer support availability is restricted to U.S. business hours, potentially causing delays in addressing urgent concerns for international users.
- Certain modules like time tracking, performance management, and surveys are only accessible as add-ons, requiring additional investment if you want more HR functionality.
- Payroll is only available for US-based employees
- Customer support is only offered during US business hours.
- Some modules like time tracking, performance management, and surveys are only available as add-ons.
We’ve led TA teams, so we know the pressures growing orgs face. The fast pace can result in hasty decisions, which lead to problems down the road in terms of efficiency and compliance.
This ATS, built into the Bamboo suite, gets around the problem of siloed employee data. On top of this, we were also impressed with some specific features.
We used the app version on Android and iOS devices and found it easy to navigate workflows like posting jobs, viewing resumes, communicating with candidates and hiring managers, and scheduling. We know that if you’re a recruiter, your job probably has you on the run, so the well-built app is a big plus.
The cloud-based web version was also impressive. We were guided through each step of a standard hiring process without any confusion, and we found it easy to customize workflows when we tested the simplicity of creating our own. Ease of access to other elements of the suite highlights one of the biggest advantages: not only is it easier to be productive when all employee data is in one place, but it’s also much safer if you don’t have to move information across platforms manually. It’s more secure and less prone to human error.
Among the 30,000+ companies who use BambooHR are names like Quora, Universal Group, Reddit, Asana, Change.org, University of Maryland, Grammarly, Stance, Postmates, Wistia, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and ZipRecruiter.
BambooHR pricing is based on a per employee per month (PEPM) model. There is a minimum charge of $3,000, that usually starts to increase once you hit 25 employees.
In general, we've seen companies pay as low as $8 PEPM, but $12-14 PEPM is a good range (assuming you are using the full HRIS with a few modules).
Best For
BambooHR is a great pick for SMBs who want an all in one suite that can take care of the entire employee lifecycle. If you're just looking for an ATS, there may be better standalone options. But, if you are <500 employees, you are generally going to want an all in one anyways.
I use BambooHR for onboarding and offboarding. I also administer it personally in my organization. We've been digging into the performance management piece of it. We've been able to participate in trainings sponsored by BambooHR to acquire deeper skills. Overall, BambooHR is a key aspect of our employee experience.
I like BambooHR because it's user-friendly. I also like that it's a system where you can really track important data like job titles and salary changes. Finally, I like that BambooHR is easy to use.
We bought BambooHR to establish a centralized place that could securely store our employees' data for our HR team. We also wanted to create a seamless onboarding and offboarding process. The customer service is impeccable at Bamboo and they're always very helpful. It's also very user-friendly. I've used the product personally for one year.
I wish BambooHR offered a way for us to administer stock options and 401K directly through the program. I also wish we had a dedicated account rep, which we, unfortunately, do not have at this time. I would love to see more engaging ways for our employees to be onboarded, as well.
They're different because they have a very attractive interface and the response rate of the customer service team is higher. They also tend to offer a more diverse set of program features.
I'd recommend really digging in to make sure you're taking advantage of all of the features and integrations Bamboo has to offer. Also, I'd recommend smaller companies (less than 50 people) really consider if this is a tool that's right for their size.
The training content they've offered is impeccable.
I'd say an organization of at least 50+ people.
An organization with fewer than 50 on its team.
Greenhouse
Greenhouse is a feature-rich ATS best suited for midsize and large teams. In addition to advanced scheduling, workflow customization, and numerous seamless HRIS integrations, the platform also includes a well-liked onboarding feature.
PROS
- Onboarding module to ease the transition from candidate to new hire.
- 300+ integrations with third-party solutions for numerous people ops needs.
- Collaboration-enabling features distribute the hiring workload across multiple stakeholders.
- Customization options are plentiful, and template workflows are convenient.
- Greenhouse's onboarding feature is built and executed well. New hires transition smoothly from candidate to employee.
- iOS and Android apps work well for recruiters on the go. Users can review applications, schedule interviews, view candidates' profiles, and more.
- 450+ third-party integrations.
CONS
- Undisclosed prices, no free trial.
- The reporting feature can be challenging to navigate.
- Cost-prohibitive for budget-conscious teams.
- A full focus on ATS and onboarding means it lacks core HR features.
- Greenhouse’s pricing is undisclosed, and they do not offer a trial version.
- Some users note that reporting customization is quite limited and difficult to navigate.
- In-person/live support could be improved.
Our editorial team has always had good things to say about Greenhouse. Several of us have used it extensively as members and leaders of TA teams, and our sentiments align with most of the users who tested the product for us: it’s easy to use, and it saves time.
The dashboard is reflective of the product’s name: greenhouse. It’s visually appealing and offers a clear view of the collection of candidates that need attention. The whole hiring team can see the upcoming interviews, applications to review, and task status overviews.
In our most recent experience using an updated version, we were impressed with the developments in the “interview kit”. The standardization of the interview process is a massive help in combating bias. Clear-cut qualification criteria for each interview stage result in employee confidence in decision-making and valuable insights for process improvement.
We like the pre-built templates for creating and posting jobs. We found that even users with minimal familiarity can post a job in about one minute.
For experienced users who have created their own hiring workflow, this task is reduced to seconds. Even the process of creating custom workflows is a drag-and-drop, super-streamlined affair.
Our writers with professional experience using this tool report that once you’re familiar with it, it basically runs itself. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but the sentiment stands: Greenhouse is a popular ATS because the product meets the needs of actual recruiting teams (and writers who used to be recruiters!).
With more than 300 partners, chances are good that they can connect you with any tool or service you need, and with their well-established place among top HR tech tools, you can count on a smooth, well-supported integration. However, some businesses prefer the simplicity and security of an all-in-one platform, which Greenhouse is not. There’s no right or wrong choice here, but we encourage you to evaluate what is right for your team carefully.
HubSpot, DoorDash, Dropbox, Wayfair.
Pricing is unavailable online, but we found some information through our network.
Greenhouse offers tiered plans, and the pricing is based on the company’s total headcount.
- Essential: Core features and one event.
- Advanced: Everything from Essential, plus custom reporting, scalable workflows, and ten events.
- Expert: Everything from Advanced, plus upgraded CRM, enhanced security, developer sandbox, DEI feature set, and unlimited events.
The standard contract is a one-year prepaid subscription, and discounts are available for two and three-year prepaid agreements.
Best For
Midsize to large enterprises who are ready to invest in the full feature set of a top-notch ATS platform.
- I use greenhouse daily and multiple times a year.
- I used it for interviews which included setting up interviews, building interview kits and scorecards. When setting up interviews, I don't need to send them a resume and details, it's all there available to them in Greenhouse.
- Candidate communication with Greenhouse was quick and easy. I used it to acknowledge their applications, to reach out to coordinate interviews and also send out rejections as needed.
- Job posting management with Greenhouse is easy. I post jobs directly to our career page with Greenhouse and update the same as needed too.
- Developing hiring plans for each role and collaboration with interviewers is also done on Greenhouse.
- Managing our Vendors, and easily managing their candidates in the pipeline is easy with Greenhouse. Our external recruitment partners directly submit their candidates with details on our greenhouse platform.
- I like the notifications and alerts it provides to make sure you are able to keep things moving in timely manner.
- The ability to search resumes is great, which helps build our own resume database. With Greenhouse , the ability to customize workflows based on the needs of each team and or role is very helpful.
- You can integrate LinkedIn with Greenhouse.
As an organization we were growing and we needed a new online collaborative system which would assist us with our recruitment. As a global team, it was essential for us to use a single system. We also needed support with our interview process, being able to schedule interviews with ease. In addition, we wanted a system in place which would be used by our internal recruiters and our external vendors all in one single space. As the team grew it was not possible to effectively track our candidates, hiring process and create the necessary reports. Lastly we were looking for a tool which would be scalable as we grew and increased our hiring.
Personally, I have used Greenhouse for over 4 years and over the years have learnt more and more what can be done with it. I have used it as a part of an in-house recruitment team and as an external vendor.
Over time it helped us with onboarding too which was a plus as we needed support in that area as well.
- It does take some time to learn the platform and how to get its best use, training is important to use Greenhouse to the fullest.
- The UI is good, but may not be the latest compared to other products out there.
- More integrations with job boards and softwares would be great.
I have used Greenhouse and similar tools, Greenhouse is a robust and constantly evolving platform geared more to larger companies and or companies ready to invest more on their recruitment tool. Even though smaller growing teams can use it , I would say it is more geared to medium if not large enterprises from a price point and the initial set up time too. As mentioned quite a bit of training is needed to use Greenhouse which is not always the case for other recruitment tools. This can be a barrier to getting hiring managers to use the platform.
- A few of the key buying criteria includes assessing the tool to make sure it solves your company's problems. All company's recruitment needs are not the same.
- It is important to see if there is an option for a trial or atleast a demo to get an understanding of how it works, and its usability.
- Integrations are important to consider. Teams have multiple tools for productivity, project management, performance management, compensation, and onboarding. It is important to take a look at which integrations are available when choosing a tool.
They have a mobile app which is constantly improving but helps meet the needs of users, especially when many are working remotely. They have improved security and compliance over time too. Lastly, diversity, equity and inclusion features have been added to the tool as well which are constantly updated to the needs of the user.
Recruiters, HRBPs, Hiring Managers. Medium-large sized organizations.
Very small teams.
Pinpoint
A lot of ATS platforms don’t deliver on their claim to be user-focused, but Pinpoint does. With a sophisticated, sleek look and an intuitive interface, they clearly know great software is a mix of form and function.
PROS
- Best in class automations that will save your recruiting team time.
- Highly customizable and values collaborative hiring.
- Unlimited jobs and team members in all of its plans.
- Career site builder helps teams find and convert the right talent.
- Pinpoint is an agile ATS that is highly customizable and values collaborative hiring.
- It’s got a simple and transparent pricing structure.
- Pinpoint offers unlimited jobs and team members in all of its plans.
- Their customer service team is highly praised by users.
- The career site builder is very robust, allowing teams to attract and convert the right talent.
- There are over 100 HR software integrations to choose from, and Pinpoint’s team is adding 3-5 every month.
CONS
- The employee onboarding module costs extra
- Cost prohibitive for budget-conscious teams
- No free version or free trial offer
- The employee onboarding module does cost extra.
- It isn’t the best fit if you’re looking for the cheapest ATS.
- There isn’t a free trial or free version at this time.
The career site builder is a big hit with our team, especially for our writers and editors with extensive experience on TA teams. They emphasized that the need to stand out among other companies is one of the most critical tasks they faced as recruiters, and this unique approach was compelling.
We found the site builder feature to be so intuitive that a first-time user could complete the setup for a custom site in about 30 minutes.
This ease of use is no coincidence: Pinpoint is known for its emphasis on user experience, so the visual clarity and sequential logic of workflows were designed with care.
Users report attentive customer support via email, chat, or phone.
The platform also considers the experience of employees who make referrals by offering a low-friction process. An automated email is sent to current employees informing them about open positions. The message includes a link to share with their network, and the platform keeps track of the referrals they have made so far.
With an open API and more than 100 built-in integrations, Pinpoint plays well with others. However, bespoke integration is available exclusively for Enterprise plan users.
CoinShares, Pathways Global, Grant Thornton, Icario, Pivot Energy.
- Pinpoint pricing starts at $600 monthly when billed annually.
- Enterprise features, such as multi-page career sites, multi-lingual support, custom integrations, and help on data migrations, start at $1,200 per month.
- Discounts are available for startups with fewer than 50 headcount.
Best For
This ATS is best for in-house recruitment teams filling at least 30 openings annually, especially those with a strong, user-centric mentality.
We use Pinpoint to advertise all of our roles across the globe. We use to create all adverts, interviews and communications with candidates. We also use this to run reports on statistics from this on our sources of applications and diversity and inclusion data
- Easy for both HR and Hiring Managers to use.
- Ability to quickly build and download reports.
- Ease of booking interviews.
We have been using Pinpoint for just over 2 years now.
We bought it because of the great customer service we had been provided in the demo, the capability of the system and the cost.
I really don't have anything I dislike.
In previous ATS systems, I have never been able to quickly run reports and data which is a huge benefit. The customer service is also heads and tails above any other ATS I have worked with
I think this is really hard to answer because every business will have a different requirement of what they are looking for. For us, it was the ability to run reports, easy booking of interviews, ROI, candidate experience and hiring manager experience
I think the regular updates from Pinpoint are super useful. Continually partnering with other businesses for ease of linking other platforms into the recruitment process
I would say any organization.
Again I think it would depend on what you were looking for in a system to say this.
Workable
Workable is a robust and scalable recruiting solution. Their AI-powered sourcing tool integrates seamlessly with their ATS and other products and can provide over 400 million candidate records.
PROS
- Straightforward pricing plans.
- 15-day free trials with no card info required.
- Post jobs with one click to over 200 sites and access its talent pool with over 400 million profiles.
- Built-in features for cognitive and personality candidate assessment and management. No need for third-party tools.
- The anonymized screening feature can help reduce unconscious hiring bias.
- You can post jobs with one click to over 200 sites. You also get access to access to Workable’s talent pool with over 400 million profiles.
- Workable has built-in cognitive and personality candidate assessment. The platform also has features for offer management, which means you can create offer letters and collect e-signatures without needing to use third-party tools
- You can reduce unconscious hiring bias with Workable’s anonymized screening feature. It helps you hide identifying candidate information from the sourced and applied stages of the hiring process.
CONS
- No automated reference checking and onboarding features.
- Features like candidate texting, video interviews, and assessments are not included in plans but must be bought separately.
- Workable could do better with duplicate candidate merging since one person will have numerous candidate records on the ATS if they apply for multiple positions.
- The reporting feature needs to be more detailed and customizable.
- The candidate search function could have more filters.
- Workable doesn’t provide automated reference checking and onboarding features.
- Useful features such as candidate texting, video interviews, and assessments are not offered in any of Workable’’s plans and instead, sold separately.
- Several users complained about the reporting feature not being detailed or customizable enough, and that the candidate search function could use more filters.
Workable provides an applicant tracking system catering to medium and large businesses.
Besides covering the features expected from an ATS, like candidate sourcing and applicant organization, Workable integrates AI to suggest suitable candidates for posted jobs.
The ATS tries to foster a more structured and unbiased hiring process by providing anonymized screening, interview kits, and scorecards in all their plans. However, additional candidate evaluation tools like video interviews and assessments separately, as they’re not built within the ATS product.
Workable has been used by over 20,000 organizations, including Sephora, Forbes, Bevi, Moodle, and Navarro.
Workable has three plans:
- Paygo costs $129 per job per month
- Standard costs $299 per month
- Premier costs $599 per month.
- Add-on pricing starts at $59 per month.
Best For
Workable’s AI-powered sourcing tools suit medium- and large-sized businesses best.
ClearCompany
Launched in 2004, ClearCompany is an established platform that has kept pace with leading-edge HR tech. During our hands-on evaluation of the ATS, we found a comprehensive set of “talent management” features assembled into a logical and seamless workflow recruiting teams need.
PROS
- Multiple pricing options and add-on features.
- Intuitive UI across multiple HR modules.
- Numerous reports of a smooth implementation and attentive customer support.
- ClearCompany offers a host of HR solutions that work well with another. You can choose the solution you need or combine them all to have a comprehensive talent management platform in your stack.
- The majority of users find ClearCompany’s interface to be quite intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Many users have highly rated ClearCompany’s support team for speed and quality of response. Several users have also reported a smooth implementation experience.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing, no free trials.
- Some users felt underwhelmed by the customization options of the reporting feature.
- The candidate search function is reported to be somewhat unreliable.
- No mobile apps.
- ClearCompany’s pricing is not readily available on their website. You also can’t create a trial account on your own from the website and have to go through the sales team for more info.
- Some users felt that the reporting feature is limited in customizations.
- According to a few users, the candidate search function doesn’t always bring up the correct candidate(s) and could use some improvement.
- ClearCompany doesn’t currently have a mobile app, but the platform is well optimized for mobile use both for hiring managers and candidates.
ClearCompany is a talent management suite with an ATS feature that can be purchased as a stand-alone product or as part of the comprehensive HR tech toolset. Numerous configurations and pricing options are available so companies can create a plan that meets their needs and suits their budget.
We review all types of HR tech, but our team has a lot to say about ATSs. In fact, during our in-house evaluation, we found that several of us had extensive professional experience using this platform in previous positions. The consensus: the ATS works best within ClearCompany’s suite, but it is a super-solid ATS on its own.
Some standouts include the user interface, uniquely modern for a company founded in 2004. We were specifically impressed with the onboarding workflows that transitioned candidates into new hires in just a few clicks.
Mitsubishi Electric, Chick-fil-A, Goodwill, Axiom Bank, Bios, FlixBrewHouse, and Halco.
The software has custom pricing. Quotes are based on company size and customizations.
Best For
Large-size organizations with a budget that can cover paying for the whole suite are the best fit, but the ATS alone is excellent for mid-size teams.
We use Clear Company for every new hire to get through all the communication and compliance portions with them. We send offer letters through Clear Company that are customizable, and we receive communication back from applicants via Clear Company as well. Once an applicant has accepted an offer, we also use Clear Company to streamline their background check. Clear Company provides a nice portal where we can clearly see where we are in the hiring process for an applicant.
The applicant tracking system works well for our small (less than 500 employees) business. It integrates well with our background check processes. It improves our communication with potential hires.
My company started using Clear Company because we wanted to make the onboarding process smoother for new hires. Prior to using Clear Company, we had a disjointed process. We had to individually craft emails to applicants in the recruitment process, and check in constantly on where we were in the process of recruiting them and completing background checks. Clear Company allowed us to streamline the process. We were able to set up customizable templates for ongoing communication with new hires. We were also able to streamline the background check process.
It takes some time to learn how to use it. We have not tried integrating with our payroll/HRIS software because it doesn't seem like it will function that well. It doesn't integrate with our social media.
I have not used other tools just like Clear Company, but we added Clear Company to our tool chest because it offers functionality that our HRIS software does not when it comes to applicant tracking and onboarding.
If you're considering using Clear Company, think about what functionality it will add that you don't already have with your other HR software. In our case, it adds additional applicant tracking and background check integration functionality that we wouldn't otherwise have. I would also consider the price. It is well-priced for our smaller business where we only pay for the essentials for a few users each month. The price could add up quickly in larger businesses, so you need to consider if the value-add of the product is worth the price tag.
I know they integrate with more payroll/HRIS systems than they used to (but still not with ours). They have improved the user interface over time as well.
I think Clear Company is good for small to medium-sized businesses. It is right-priced for this size of business and adds functionality that most businesses this size might be lacking in their other HR software.
I don't think Clear Company would be necessary or very useful for very small businesses who are not hiring very regularly. My business is smaller but experiences high turnover, so Clear Company is a good add for us. If you are not doing a lot of hiring, I don't think it would be much of a value add for the price.
Manatal
Manatal made our top ATS list because it's budget-friendly, AI-equipped, and offers transparent pricing—no need to call a sales rep just for a ballpark figure.
PROS
- Among the most affordable ATS options in the market.
- Offers a 14-day free trial.
- Easy to use with drag-and-drop enabled pipelines.
- Native AI-based recommendations feature.
- Web-based, so it works on multiple devices.
- Free data migration from your existing hiring software.
- Transparent and flexible pricing.
- Manatal is quite affordable and offers a 15-day free trial for users to test it out before making commitments.
- Manatal is fairly easy to use. It features drag-and-drop enabled pipelines for candidate organization.
- Manatal’s AI-based recommendations feature can save hiring managers quite a bit of time. It’s able to scan job descriptions then search a users talent pool and bring up candidates most suited for the job.
CONS
- The AI recommendations feature only works well in English.
- There are no free plans.
- ADP and Zapier integrations are restricted to top-tier plans.
- Boolean Search and Advanced Search cannot be used together.
- The AI recommendations feature works best with resumes that are in English, and doesn’t work as accurately with other languages according to several users’ feedback. Several users have also complained about Manatal’s interface only being available in English and that career pages cannot be published in languages other than English and Spanish.
- Manatal doesn’t offer a free plan. We mention this as a con as several SMB-geared ATSs do offer a free-forever verison, and that puts Manatal slightly behind competition.
- Manatal doesn’t offer prebuilt integration modules. They do have an open API that allows users to plug in third-party products and custom tools, but that required a bit more time and technical knowledge to accomplish. It’s also worth mentioning that only Custom plan customers can access Manatal’s API and Zapier integration. Customers on the Professional and Enterprise plan cannot.
- Users can search for candidates via Boolean Search or Advanced Search, but cannot combine the two search methods together. E.g users cannot use the Boolean search operators (AND, OR and NOT) within Manatal’s Advanced Search tab.
Manatal has earned a spot on our top ATS list. As HR professionals, we understand the importance of finding the right talent efficiently, and Manatal has proven to be a valuable tool in this regard.
The first on our thumbs-up list: it’s budget-friendly. We appreciate the transparency in pricing, as there is no need to go through the hassle of contacting a sales just to get a ballpark figure. The platform offers a 14-day free trial.
Using Manatal was straightforward, thanks to its user-friendly interface and the convenience of drag-and-drop-enabled pipelines. The AI-based recommendations feature is a time-saver. It compares job descriptions' language to skills listed by individuals in the talent pool.
Manatal is web-based, so it is compatible with multiple devices. The ability to migrate data from our existing hiring software was also a welcome feature that made for a smooth transition. Additionally, they recently started offering free, live training webinars.
We encountered a few limitations during our evaluation. The AI recommendation feature does not operate well in languages other than English, and Manatal lacks a free version. Integration is limited, and ADP and Zapier integrations are restricted to top-tier plans.
Unilever, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, Toyota.
Manatal has four plans. When billed annually:
- Professional: This plan costs $15 per user per month for up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Customers on this plan can add unlimited guests.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $35 per user per month for unlimited jobs per account and unlimited candidates and guests.
- Enterprise Plus: This plan costs $55 per user per month and includes all Enterprise features, user groups, open API access, SSO log-in, priority support, and access to Beta features.
- Custom: Pricing upon request. It is tailored for larger businesses requiring advanced functionalities and support.
Best For
Manatal is well-suited for companies of different sizes representing many industries but narrowed down to one, it’s SMBs who can use the 14-day free trial to explore the product before they buy.
I use Manatal for many reasons. I source candidates, store their information, post my jobs on job boards, my career page and our website. I keep notes about candidates as well as my current employees. I also upload all of my new hire information and/or paperwork for each new hire and use it as a digital personnel file.
I like several things about Manatal. The first one being the ability to post on about 19 different free job board sites. I also like the ability to create my own pipeline categories as what I like to see doesn't typically come in a "standard" ATS. Another good thing about Manatal is the ability to email candidates through their personal candidate file, making the note taking a lot less tedious because it automatically keeps the email in that candidate/employee's file.
The main reason I chose Manatal was due to its price. It was one of the less expensive, web-based, customizable ATS systems I could find online. I have to say, however, that this isn't one of those "you get what you pay for" type programs. I was pleasantly surprised at Manatal's capabilities.
There are a few things with Manatal that could be improved. First one is their match system. I feel that the percentages I see on each applicant's file do not match the job description even close to the percentage it gives me. I also don't like that you can't just perform a search in the system without naming a specific field (i.e. I couldn't search by phone number). The other thing I don't care for too much is the email integration. I integrated, and then later removed, my work email because once integrated, all of my emails had to go through the Manatal program and there are emails that I don't want or need to stay within my ATS.
I would say for the price Manatal is awesome. It's better than I thought it would be given how inexpensive it is compared to its competition. Other ATS programs I've used in the past were specifically built for the companies I worked for previously, which cost $10K+. The company I'm with now is about 30 people, and Manatal suits my needs for a company this size.
ATS programs vary in so many ways that I really think it depends on what kind of company you are and what your needs are for an ATS. For a small business that doesn't specialize in just staffing, but has a few internal staffing needs themselves, this is great. For a large(r) staffing agency, Manatal is capable of handling what is needed; however, a custom built software would be more appropriate. Another thing to consider about Manatal is that its integrations are limited to just a couple email programs, another reason why it wouldn't work out so well for a larger company.
I've only been using Manatal for about 3 months now so I can't really answer that question. I know not much, if anything, has updated and/or changed in the time I've been using it.
Any business with smaller staffing needs. The industry doesn't necessarily matter (unless it's a larger staffing agency). We're in the construction industry and unfortunately we can't integrate it with any other program we use...which is fine for our needs right now. If we continue to grow the way that we are, then I would say we would have to consider another ATS that we could integrate with our construction software.
Larger staffing firms or any business that would need integration either with a scheduling and/or timekeeping program, industry specific software and/or accounting programs.
VIVAHR
VIVAHR left a lasting impression on us with how much they care about making things easy for users and helping teams work together better. Their Pipeline Triggers take care of mundane tasks that come up during the hiring process, while the Shared Inbox keeps all the messages, questionnaires, and scorecards coming in safe and sound.
PROS
- Intuitive UXUI with Pipeline Triggers that automate repetitive actions based on a candidate's stage, such as sending thank-you emails or requesting hiring team feedback.
- Shared Inbox provides team access to incoming messages, questionnaires, and scorecards in one location.
- Data migration service is available at no additional cost.
- Transparent pricing, free trial available.
- Culture Profiles let you add videos, photos, and text to showcase your company's work environment.
- Pipeline Triggers automate repetitive actions based on a candidate's stage, such as sending thank-you emails or requesting hiring team feedback.
- Custom questionnaire builder for candidate pre-assessments.
- Data migration service is available at no additional cost.
- Transparent pricing, free trial available.
CONS
- A credit card is required to sign up for a free trial.
- Some of the classic ATS features like resume parsing, interview scheduling, and custom search are currently unavailable.
- Other features, like eSignatures and employee referrals, cost extra to use.
- No free plan, a free trial requires a credit card.
- Pricier than competitors like Loxo and Zoho Recruit.
- Additional charges for features like eSignatures and employee referrals.
- Interview scheduling feature is unavailable (still in development).
After testing VIVAHR, we were struck by its thoughtfully designed interface and how easy it made every step of the hiring process. From the moment we logged in, we could tell the team behind this tool had put serious effort into crafting a user experience that’s intuitive yet powerful.
A standout feature right from the start was the Pipeline Triggers. Based on where an applicant is in the process, it can automate tasks like sending thank-you emails or requesting feedback from the team— to spare recruiters from the mundane, easy-to-miss details.
The design of the Candidates section is also really nice. It offers a bird' s-eye view of all applicants' key information, including their application dates, hiring stages, and contact details. During our tests, the filter function worked great for narrowing down candidates by job title, department, and other criteria. The only minus was that we couldn’t find any advanced options like Boolean searches.
On par with other robust ATS systems, VIVAHR's candidate communication features let us send emails and SMS messages directly from the platform. For these workflows, you can use templates and bulk actions to make things fasyer. Our favorite, though, was the Shared Inbox. It kept all incoming messages, questionnaires, and scorecards, which made it much easier to manage candidate interactions and keep the team aligned.
However, we noticed that the interview scheduling feature was absent at the time of this review. Thankfully, it’s already on the vendor’s roadmap. We’ll keep you posted on how this feature plays out once it’s released.
We think VIVAHR should also improve its integration capabilities a bit more since seven options are a modest number compared to other platforms we’ve evaluated.
And while the team offers free data imports if you’re migrating from another ATS (which we love), we can’t say the pricing is as competitive as some competitors like Zoho Recruit, considering there’s no free plan and some features, such as eSignatures and employee referrals, will come with extra fees.
1,000+ companies, including Redirect Health, BuzzRX, and State Farm.
VIVAHR offers 3 pricing plans: Starter at $89 per month, Grow at $179 per month, and Pro at $279 per month (billed annually).
Best For
US-based companies with more than 100 employees.
JazzHR
This platform is built with the small business in mind. When testing it, our writers were impressed at how easy it was to set up and use “out of the box,” which is a clear sign of its simplicity, attention to user experience, and understanding of the down-to-business mentality of most SMBs.
PROS
- Affordable pricing, no user limit, and a 21-day free trial.
- Built-in features for offer management, including templates and DIY options.
- Emphasis on automation for those in the pipeline shows dedication to candidate experience.
- JazzHR is quite affordable and doesn’t place any limits on the number of users added. It also offers free, 21-day trials that anyone can sign up for.
- JazzHR has built-in features for offer management. You can choose from existing offer letter templates or create your own and share them with successful candidates
- You can automate triggers for candidates to be automatically notified via email when their application has moved a stage further in the hiring process. Several other email responses can be automated.
CONS
- No free version for orgs with minimal needs.
- A few users thought reports could be more customizable and easier to create.
- No mobile apps.
- Some users reported a learning curve with JazzHR's UI and that it took them some time to get used to it
- For a product geared towards SMBs, it lacks a free plan. We mention this as a con since other SMB-geared recruiting products do offer free-forever versions, which puts JazzHR slightly behind the competition.
- Several users have mentioned that the reporting feature is difficult to use with very little room for report customizations.
- JazzHR currently lacks a mobile app, and the browser version isn’t well-optimized for mobile use.
We like how simple it is to post and syndicate jobs across portals, and we love the upfront pricing on the website. Many customers start with JazzHR’s lowest-cost plan, and as their needs expand beyond basic features, they often upgrade incrementally. Being able to select features as needed keeps spending under control.
Because they do not offer mobile apps, our product testing included a considerable amount of time with our phones in hand, navigating the mobile web environment. We were impressed with how well it could manage the tasks a recruiter does on the go, like sending out a quick reply in the 15 seconds you have before your next meeting.
However, at least among our in-house recruiter veterans, the consensus was that complex tasks should be saved for the desktop version.
One of our writers shared this real-world story from a former job with a tiny company: they signed up for a free payroll software trial before they were actually ready to buy. They used the software for a couple of weeks just to get a sense of the basics of how to run payroll; then, they ended their relationship with the company.
Of course, we don't recommend this - but we know how hard it is to run an SMB. So, along with JazzHR, which we DO recommend, we suggest getting creative with your professional development!
JazzHR is used by over 6,500 businesses, including the Seattle Seahawks, L'Occitane En Provence, TED Conferences LLC, and Chick-fil-A.
JazzHR has three plans. When paid annually:
- Hero costs $75 per month.
- Plus costs $269 per month.
- Pro costs $420 per month.
Best For
JazzHR is built for organizations with 5 to 500 employees and works exceptionally well for TA teams with little to no experience.
- We use JazzHR in Job postings to create and publish job postings on multiple job boards and our own careers pages where necessary and consequently source for candidates
- Resume screening: JazzHR provides tools like customizable screening questionnaires, keyword searches, and evaluation forms to help you screen resumes and identify qualified candidates based on your job requirements.
- Interview scheduling: JazzHR allows you to schedule interviews with candidates and send automated reminders to keep everyone on track.
- These tools have helped us streamline our overseas resume screening process and identify qualified candidates more efficiently.
- JazzHR has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate, making it simple for our team to manage the hiring process from start to finish.
- It also allows users to customize job postings, screening questionnaires, and evaluation forms, which allows us to get more suitable candidates.
- JazzHR also automates many tasks such as resume screening, interview scheduling, and candidate communication. This is an important time saver which helps us move faster.
JazzHR is a cloud-based applicant tracking system that streamlines and automates the hiring process.
Our organization was looking to engage highly specialized consultants from the US as well as Europe in IT Security, Cloud Computing, and Enterprise Solutions.
We found that JazzHR provided centralized hiring where the team could manage the entire hiring process, from job postings to candidate screening and interview scheduling which saved us a lot of time. It also provided impressive data-driven insights and analytics on hiring metrics which enabled us to identify our areas of improvement.
- There are limitations on candidate search, especially for local searches in Africa. The candidate search functionality could also be more robust, allowing for more targeted and advanced searches.
- Customer support response time can be slower at times which can be frustrating when trying to resolve issues quickly.
- The reporting features could also be improved on to provide more insight and more informative data analytics.
- Affordability: JazzHR is priced competitively, making it more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the budget for enterprise-level solutions.
- It also allows reliable customization, from job postings and screening questionnaires to evaluation forms and workflows. It also integrates with a wide range of other HR tools, including HRIS and payroll systems like BambooHR, providing us with greater flexibility and automation.
- Indeed and LinkedIn have significantly larger candidate pools than JazzHR, making them a better option for organizations looking to cast a wider net in their candidate search. However, JazzHR integrates with a range of other HR tools, including payroll and HRIS systems, while Indeed and LinkedIn do not offer the same level of integration.
- This makes JazzHR more all-rounded than Indeed & LinkedIn which fills a niche and builds on the value it offers making it slightly preferable for overseas hires.
- Consider the HR tools that you currently use or plan to use and evaluate whether JazzHR can integrate them. JazzHR integrates with a variety of HR software for different purposes such as assessments, background checks, payroll, and onboarding. Some examples of HRIS systems that JazzHR can integrate with are BambooHR, Namely, TribeHR, and Workday. Do your research before engaging JazzHR.
- Pricing: Evaluate the pricing structure to ensure that it is affordable and that it aligns with your organization's budget. JazzHR has different payment plans like Hero, Plus, and Pro.
- You can evaluate the level of customer support that is available and ensure that it aligns with your organization's needs, particularly if you are a smaller organization without a dedicated HR team.
Over time it has Increased customization by introducing more customization features over time, including the ability to create custom screening questionnaires and evaluation forms.
It has also improved integrations by expanding its integration capabilities, allowing users to connect with a wide range of HR tools, including HRIS and payroll systems.
In my opinion, JazzHR would work best for teams looking for a recruitment and applicant tracking system that can be integrated with an existing HRIS system to streamline their recruitment, onboarding, and payroll operations among other HR functions.
JazzHR may not be the best fit for large organizations with complex hiring processes that require highly specialized workflows.
Ashby
Ashby offers the entire TA tech stack: ATS, CRM/Sourcing, Scheduling, and Analytics—an excellent recruiting solution for fast-growing companies.
PROS
- Analytics dashboard with crucial statistics on all aspects of your hiring process.
- Flexibility and ability to customize across almost all aspects of the platform.
- Consolidated ATS, CRM, Scheduling, and Analytics.
- Fast data migrations, no setup fees.
- Your TA team can have one system that truly has best-in-class options for ATS, CRM, Scheduling, and Analytics.
- Flexibility and ability to customize across almost all aspects of the platform
- Their analytics dashboard is great to understand weaknesses in your hiring process, conducting capacity planning, or determining which teams are running suboptimal hiring processes.
CONS
- This is a powerful product, and understanding all the different features can take some time.
- No multi-lingual support.
- Your company must use G Suite in order to make the most of Ashby
- No multi-lingual support
- This is a powerful product, and it can take a bit of time to understand all the different features
Ashby is an all-in-one TA solution that combines your recruiting CRM, ATS, sourcing, scheduling, and analytics into one platform.
We recently met with Ashby’s to look at recent product developments, and what stood out is how easy they have made it to re-engage with former applicants. If our experience working in recruitment positions has taught us anything, it is that efficiency is essential.
We see it like this: you’re wasting time and effort if you don’t maintain a connection with former candidates because these folks are primed, familiar, and pre-vetted members of your talent pool.
Some are “silver medalists” or applicants who made it to the offer stage, and others may possess a unique skill or trait that your current team is lacking. Ashby can create custom attributes to filter your talent pool, so you’ll never lose touch with “good fit, bad timing” candidates.
We would recommend this ATS to TA teams seeking powerful reporting capabilities. Ashby’s reports are highly customizable, track all data points throughout your hiring process in real-time, and are easy on the eye.
We also noticed that Ashby has consistently worked hard to improve its product based on user feedback. Check out their blog page, and you’ll see that the ATS literally rolls out new features every month.
Regarding implementation, it takes SMBs a few days and larger organizations 6-8 weeks to get Ashby up and running. The ATS doesn’t charge for data migrations and system setup, and according to our research, Ashby’s customer support and success teams have been immensely helpful in making the switch a seamless experience.
1,000+ customers, including Quora, Deel, and Ramp.
Ashby offers two core plans for its All-in-One platform and a 3rd option for connecting Ashby Analytics to your existing ATS.
- All-In-One Foundations: Ranges from $300/month to $900/month depending on company size. 10% discount for annual commitments and emerging market pricing available.
- All-In-One Plus: Contact for a quote.
- Ashby Analytics for your existing ATS: Contact for a quote.
Best For
Ashby works for early-stage startups, SMBs, and large enterprises, but those who make the most of this recruiting software are companies at the hyper-growth stage.
I use Ashby for candidate tracking and management, interview set up, feedback collection, and reporting. We use Ashby for all of our open roles. We also manage our job board through Ashby. I use Ashby's email collection tool when sourcing on LinkedIn, and we integrate with Hireflow for sourcing. We also integrate with Rippling for offer letters, background checks, and onboarding new hires.
I love the easy, intuitive UI. Their customer success team is very quick to respond and helpful. I also like the custom reporting features.
Price, easy UI, 2+ years
I think duplicating jobs and updating interview flows can get a little clunky. Same with integrating with Google Calendar.
Cheaper but does all of the same things, I'm an Ashby convert from Greenhouse!
Cost, reporting needs, easy UI and integration with other tools are all key features when evaluating any ATS tool. In my opinion, Ashby is a modern, clean, easy to use ATS that won't break the budget.
Since I've started using it, they've added a lot of features, especially with LinkedIn recruiter and importing candidate profiles. Scheduling and reporting have improved as well.
Startups/smaller companies
I don't know if it wouldn't necessarily be a good fit, but not sure how large of an organization they've ever supported.
Recruit CRM
Recruit CRM is priced at $85 per user per month for unlimited open jobs, Chrome sourcing extension, AI resume parsing, advanced search, deal pipelines, client portal, and invoicing—just about everything one would need for their staffing firm.
PROS
- Multi-lingual, agency-oriented ATS and recruiting CRM tool.
- Transparent, scalable pricing structure. Generous free trial offerings.
- Zapier and Integrately integrations enable access to 5,000+ third-party tools.
- Live chat support, unlimited training, and dedicated account manager for all plan users.
- No extra fees required for basic data migration that includes importing Excel/CSV files with candidates & clients. During the implementation process of this software, the customer service personnel will help transfer your data for free.
- Great customer service. Their average response time is under two minutes.
- Powerful Linkedin Integration & Executive/Recruitment Report PDF Generator to save time
- Tons of resources made available to users including blogs and articles that give you all the information you need to know about how the software works, job description templates to help you get acquainted with all the possible job openings you will be looking to close, and a glossary that gives you the A-Z of recruitment practices.
CONS
- Native AI candidate matching limited to 2 matches per candidate for Pro plan users.
- Not the best fit for in-house recruiting.
- No referral management system.
- Limited native integrations. Recruit CRM only integrates natively with LinkedIn, Zapier, Logic Melon, some email apps, and Google and Outlook calendars. If you want to run background checks, for example, using Checkr or other background verification platforms, you won’t be able to do that unless you use Zapier’s API extension.
If we were seeking potential candidates within our large internal talent database, we'd turn to Recruit CRM once again. This feature lets you combine text filters, Boolean, and radius search to get the best results. You can even mark unavailable talent (e.g., those currently hired by other clients) as “off limits” so your team won’t find them and communicate with them by mistake.
One common approach we see in most ATS to keep candidate data fresh and accurate is the use of Social Enrichment—the software auto-enriches candidate profiles with their available social media accounts. Recruit CRM does not offer such a feature. Yet, it allows users to bulk or individually email candidates to update their application info. Once candidates submit the form, the data is auto-pulled into the ATS. While this process may not be entirely automatic, it does simplify the work of maintaining talent data and, just as importantly, ensures GDPR compliance.
Recruit CRM knocked it out of the park on its recruitment agency tools. It lets you send certain candidate data to clients in a few clicks. Plus, the client portal is interactive—clients can choose between Kanban and list view, move stuff around, and give feedback on each profile—then all of which are logged into the system for tracking purposes.
Automation-wise, Recruit CRM offers GPT features for crafting job postings, emails, notes, and even call and candidate profile summaries. What particularly sticks out to us, though, is how this vendor partners with Workato to enable some real convenient 3rd-party automation for users. For example, your TAs get Slack notifications for every new candidate added to Recruit CRM. Additionally, the vendor will jump in to solve arising automation issues, so you don’t have to seek Workato’s support yourself.
Our primary issue with Recruit CRM is the limited number of in-system profiles matching the user ideal candidate it provides: 2 matches per candidate for Pro and 50 for Business and Enterprise. Lastly, designed with staffing firms in mind, this vendor doesn’t do employee referrals and is not ideal for corporate recruiters.
Recruit CRM’s clients include global staffing firms like Cooper Coleman, Zeren, and Avizio.
Recruit CRM has three plans: Pro is $85 per user per month, Business is $125 per user per month, and Enterprise is $165 per user per month when billed annually. A free trial is also available, no credit card is required.
Best For
Recruit CRM works best for recruiting and consulting agencies.
I use Recruit CRM to recruit employees from different locations worldwide. The tool helps me create assignments and tasks for employees and generate meeting notes before online meetings. I also use it to visualize employee performance data and share it with the higher management team.
I like the integration with calendar and online meeting tools like Zoom. The pricing is affordable and does not negatively impact the ROI of any business. The customer support team is responsive to technical questions.
Managing, tracking, and recording employees working remotely around the globe was a significant challenge for our company. We faced difficulties in understanding employee needs and improving human resources. Emailing one employee at a time and CCing others was cumbersome. Recruit CRM offered a solution by allowing us to manage employees from a single dashboard and providing robust communication features for emailing employees directly from the tool. I have used Recruit CRM for three years, which has helped me gain more experience as an HR business partner.
The user interface requires significant improvement. The rich text editor for composing emails is unresponsive. The email signature maker offers limited customization options.
Recruit CRM provides more modules at the same pricing level and has a support team that responds promptly to technical questions.
Consider the size of the organization and the pricing of the tool. Also, evaluate the technical knowledge required to set up and use the tool effectively.
There haven't been many changes to the Recruit CRM platform yet.
Recruit CRM is suitable for human resource managers and talent acquisition professionals from medium to large-sized businesses.
Recruit CRM may not be suitable for startups and other smaller businesses that do not require a lot of hiring.
Trakstar Hire
Trakstar Hire is highly customizable. The ATS provides a single plan that includes all its features without limits, making it an excellent choice for mid-sized businesses.
PROS
- Highly customizable workflows that make navigating the hiring process easy.
- Unlimited job posts.
- Management must-haves are built-in, letting users create offer letters and collect e-signatures without integrating with other tools.
- Trakstar Hire’s recruitment workflows are highly customizable. You can edit them as needed to reflect your company’s hiring process.
- You can post as many jobs as needed with Trakstar Hire without any limitation.
- Trakstar Hire has offer management tools built-in. Users can create offer letters and collect e-signatures within Trakstar Hire without needing to integrate it with third-party tools.
CONS
- Limited integration options with third-party HRIS and payroll solutions.
- All-or-none plan: customers may pay for features they don’t use.
- No free trials. Undisclosed pricing.
- Trakstar Hire has limited integration options with third-party HRIS and payroll solutions.
- Several users have complained about being unable to sort candidates and search results in an order other than displayed.
- Trakstar Hire isn’t a scalable platform; they have a single plan, all features included, which means customers may end up paying for features that they don’t need.
- Trakstar doesn’t publically list their pricing nor allows visitors to create trial accounts directly from the website, which is unusual for a software solution aimed at mid-market companies.
Trakstar Hire (formally RecruiterBox) is a web-based ATS for midsize companies. Our experience navigating the platform was quite positive. The platform supports unlimited job posting on multiple job boards and social media sites. Users can sponsor those listings for maximum visibility and receive resumes through customizable application forms.
We especially liked that customizing the workflow takes just a few clicks. They’ve done a great job balancing ease of navigation with numerous features and configurations available.
Trakstar Hire’s automation stood out as we tested the tool. Once resumes are in, the platform parser automatically extracts candidates’ details and creates profiles in seconds.
The offer management feature is well-made. We especially liked the offer letter templates that were ready to send after just a few tweaks for personalization: end-to-end, we created a mock template in less than 5 minutes. It also manages e-signatures without third-party integration.
However, when the need arises to connect to a third party, Trakstar Hire’s integration abilities are a relative letdown.
They have covered some of the critical basics with the following apps: Namely, BambooHR, Slack, Checkr, QuickBooks, PandaDoc, G Suite, and Outlook/Office 365 Calendar, but we hope more integrations are in the works!
Makita, Couchsurfing, Lonely Planet, Untappd, Quality Ironworks.
Trakstar Hire has one plan that includes all of its features without any limits. The pricing is custom, depending on the headcount.
Best For
Trakstar Hire’s current feature set and pricing structure makes it best suited for medium-sized businesses that hire regularly.
We use Trakstar Hire for tracking applicants, compliance, job postings, record keeping of applicants, central database for info sharing internally with hiring managers and hiring teams. HR staff can also easily communicate with employees.
I like that it is intuitive and easy to use. The fact that it's an all-in-one database that houses compliance, record keeping, communication internally and externally, is a real winner and very helpful.
We were looking for a tool that solves recruiting related compliance. It also needed to include storage capability. Sharing internally was a factor. Another was intuitiveness and ease of use. Compatibility with our performance appraisals was a plus as well.
I dislike that you have to download documents when you only need to view them. It would be nice to be able to just have it open in a new window. There are a few other glitches like this that I wish the company would address.
For people that are trying to solve many things with an applicant tracking tool, an all-in-one system like Trakstar is a really nice perk to hav
They do facelifts to their interface pretty regularly.
HR people will love this tool, and organizations that hire in teams would find it very helpful
I don't think anyone would hate this tool but it probably would be less broadly used if only HR people use it and not anyone else in the company
Avature
We’re big fans of customized workflows and attention to user experience, and Avature’s platform is a blend of ATS and CRM that strikes the right balance between both.
PROS
- A full-fledged ATS with built-in video interviewing, management features, and onboarding solutions.
- It also has a CRM, allowing TA teams to increase candidate engagement and plan for future hiring.
- Avature leverages AI with talent matching and candidate ranking.
- The recruiter mobile app supports offline use.
- Avature’s solution is quite comprehensive. They have a full-fledged ATS with built-in video interviewing, offer management and onboarding solutions. They also have a CRM, allowing TA teams to amp up candidate engagement and plan for future hiring.
- Avature leverages artificial intelligence with features of automatic talent matching and candidate ranking.
- Avature comes with a recruiter mobile app that allows key stakeholders to perform several recruiting tasks while on the go. The app also supports offline use, and syncs with the system the next time it’s connected to the Internet.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing. No free trials.
- The UI can be confusing and takes some time to get used to.
- The assessment feature is quite elemental compared to other similar platforms.
- It lacks a built-in reference-checking feature, so users must pay for and integrate third-party solutions.
- Avature’s pricing is not readily available on their website. They also do not offer a free trial.
- Several users noted that the UI isn’t intuitive and takes some time to get used to.
- Avature’s assessment feature is quite basic and isn’t built out enough compared to point solutions in that space. So if you want to test the skills and cultural fitness of candidates, you’d need a third-party solution.
- Avature doesn’t have an automated reference checking feature built-in. The platform does integrate with third-party solutions that facilitate reference checking, but you’ll have to purchase those solutions too separately.
The Avature platform allows users to customize dashboards set up automated workflows, and leverage the power of an all-in-one ATS + CRM.
We got some hands-on experience with the tool, so we asked our colleagues with the most recruiting experience to test the limits of its purported customizability.
The results? This tool is easy to tailor to your company’s processes and goals. During our test run, we quickly built unique recruiting workflows for individual roles or entire departments.
The platform operates through a no-code interface that allows non-technical users to modify the system (with lots of permissions in place). While this level of detail may be overkill for smaller organizations with simple needs,
This is a premium tool for large teams. Those that operate at a global enterprise scale will get the most out of Avature.
More than 6,500 companies use Avature. This includes Shell, Cisco, L'Oréal, Mondelez, Siemens, and KPMG.
Avature pricing is custom, so contact their team for a quote.
Best For
Avature best serves enterprise-scale companies, especially those that operate across international borders.
I have used Avature daily. I have used it as a Recruiter and as a Recruiting Manager. As a recruiter, the workflow is very easy from requisition inception to offer stage. It breaks down candidate statuses into their own buckets. As a leader, creating the job requisition was a bit challenging. The reason is the levels of approvals it needed to go through before reaching the assigned recruiter. The levels of approval can be altered to fit the needs of the company.
It is user-friendly for all stakeholders using the system. We very seldom had system outages. It is cost-efficient as many other Applicant Tracking Systems are much more expensive. Data analytics reporting was very easy for tracking recruiter KPIs.
My organization has been utilizing Avature for years. I have used it strictly as an Applicant Tracking System for recruiting efforts. One of the top benefits is that it is easily integrated into another HRIS such as Oracle. Another top benefit is that it is extremely user-friendly. It also has the capability to work globally as well as in the US to streamline recruiting processes.
Depending on the format a candidate submitted a resume, it could look distorted, making a strong resume appear elementary. I did not see a place to submit a ticket if there was a glitch in the system. There was no Q/A section.
Avature is a cheaper alternative to more robust Applicant Tracking Systems. While it can be used in larger global organizations, the reporting features have been more detailed in other systems. For a smaller organization, Avature is the way to go.
Cost-effectiveness is particularly important for a startup company. The ability to run large complex data reports is still lacking a bit. User-friendliness is a key component; if you have a small team of recruiters, they will be able to navigate Avature with very little direction.
Avature doesn't give the best updates for system changes.
Smaller organizations or startup companies will fine Avature the best fit.
While Avature can be used for mid-sized or larger companies, I do not recommend it. There are more robust systems out there that will also have a higher price tag attached.
iCIMS
iCIMS, is a massive, global presence serving large companies with high-volume talent managemt needs, so isurprise it operates in more than 70 languages. Still, we are impressed with the attention to user needs demonstrated by the massive toolset.
PROS
- A powerful recruiting solution that can handle high-volume hiring of up to 50,000 candidates.
- The reporting feature is robust and retrieves data accurately.
- iCIMS is constantly expanding its roster of integrations with third-party products. Currently, 300+ and rising, including Workday, SAP, SuccessFactors, ADP, Oracle, and UKG.
- iCIMS is a powerful recruiting solution that can handle high volume hiring of up to 50,000 candidates.
- The platform is constantly evolving through developments and acquisitions, giving users more features.
- The reporting feature is robust and retrieves data accurately.
- iCIMS has a growing marketplace of over 300 integrations with third-party products.
CONS
- The UI is complex and dated compared to other cloud-based recruiting products.
- Customer support is sometimes slow and only available by phone or ticket—no live chat support.
- Though packing many features, it lacks automated reference checking.
- No transparent pricing and no free trial.
- The cost of implementation and integration is relatively high compared to other recruiting solutions.
- A significant number of users complained about the UI’s complexity and that it looks dated compared to other cloud-based recruiting products.
- Customer support is slow at times and only available through phone and by creating a support ticket online - no live chat support yet
- The platform packs an overwhelming amount of features yet still lacks some useful capabilities such as automated reference checking.
- No transparent pricing or free trials, and according to several users, the cost of implementation as well as integrations is high compared to other recruiting solutions.
iCIMS ATS is feature-rich and well-suited for large, multilingual organizations and high-volume agencies. Users can create custom-branded career sites, employee-generated testimonial videos, and personalized email or text campaigns through the platform.
In addition to externally-focused features,iCIMS facilitates users in promoting existing employees through internal mobility programs. This is especially relevant in the context of enterprise scale, as is their global support and industry versatility. This platform is used by businesses operating in healthcare, manufacturing, technology, retail, and more.
The takeaway from our demo and hands-on testing is that although this tool offers an astonishing number of features, it’s somewhat difficult to operate. This is reflected in user reviews, too. Remember that our writers scrutinize HR tech all day, so we tend to be sticklers for good design and intuitive UI. However, for some, no sacrifice is represented using a tool that looks and feels a little clunky.
iCIMS has over 4,000 customers, including Ulta, Target, Microsoft, PwC, Uber, and UPS.
Pricing is undisclosed – custom quotes only.
Best For
iCIMS is best for global enterprises and recruiting agencies with high-volume hiring needs.
Our HR team uses iCIMS daily. Hiring managers regularly use iCIMS within our organization as well when they have an open role they are recruiting and screening applicants for. We use iCIMS for posting our roles, screening applicants, processing pre-employment checks, offers, onboarding and more. We also heavily use the functionality to create recruitment campaigns right from iCIMS. Reporting another feature we use frequently and there is a lot of customization in that area.
- Moving from a 100% paper process, iCIMS allowed my team to collect applicant information and respond to them (advancing/declining) efficiently and fully electronically.
- The user experience for our HR team and other staff has been great. It’s very easy to navigate.
- The continuous improvements done to their offering.
Our organization bought iCIMS to move from a paper-based process to one that is electronic and all online. We did not have an ATS until iCIMS. When looking at vendors, we were seeking a robust offering that could help us elevate our recruiting efforts. We loved the ability to customize the business processes to our company’s needs and that we can do outreach campaigns right from the software.
- It can be difficult to create custom reports and find them easily when trying to quickly pull information. You have to know very specific prompts and is not very intuitive.
- The cost of the iCIMS offering.
- When creating targeted recruitment campaigns, we wish we could incorporate more of our own branding and formatting.
Overall, it’s an offering that will easily support most organizations recruiting efforts from start to finish. iCIMS focuses on recruiting and onboarding as its primary focus rather than trying to support all areas of HR like many of its competitors. They specialize instead and do it very well!
First, evaluate when your organization needs are for a vendor. If you need a vendor to support your recruitment efforts, iCIMS is a wonderful offering! If your company needs a more complex system that provides a full HRIS offering, you may then want to consider alternatives.
One of the biggest benefits of iCIMS is that they are always looking for ways to innovate and be better. For example, after we partnered with iCIMS they launched a feature to be able to text candidates, which really elevated our experience working with candidates.
Medium and large organizations needing a solution to support recruitment and onboarding efforts.
Smaller organizations or those looking for a more complete solution for a full HRIS.
Lever
We like Lever’s focus on engaging passive candidates. Candidate nurturing is a critical recruiting strategy that deserves the spotlight it’s been given with this platform. In addition to solid product decisions, the execution is excellent. Put more simply, Lever put together a collection of well-thought-out features, and they’ve succeeded in making them all work together.
PROS
- The simple interface is easy to use and requires little training or experience.
- A unified recruiting platform combines elements of ATS and CRM.
- Diverse external sourcing channels and low-friction internal referral process.
- According to most users, Lever's UI is very intuitive and easy to learn.
- Lever combines the capabilities of an ATS and a CRM into a single platform that not only supports your current hiring needs but allows you to actively engage and nurture prospective qualified candidates for future roles.
- Lever takes diversity hiring into consideration with Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) surveys that help you collect diversity data from applicants, sourced candidates, and referrals regardless of whether they applied to an open position or not.
- Lever provides role-based visual analytics with over 20 key TA metrics in its basic TRM package.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing and no free plan or trial version.
- 3rd party integrations in place of features that could be built in.
- No mobile apps.
- Lever doesn't disclose their pricing on their website. Interested users are also not able to create trial accounts on their own.
- The platform doesn’t have features for background or reference checking but they do integrate with third-party solutions that specialize in those checks.
- Lever currently lacks a mobile app, but the platform is optimized for mobile use.
From our collective in-house experience, we know that the right approach to recruiting is full-cycle. Lever leans into the CRM mentality with functions that attend to potential candidates, current candidates, and (ideally) current employees who used to be candidates.
This may seem like an obvious strategy, but it’s genuinely (and surprisingly!) unique among ATS platforms.
Users can source candidates from multiple channels, including numerous career sites, social media, and internal referrals. Connecting with potential hires is streamlined with automated workflows that include the sophisticated nurture campaigns mentioned above. Regardless of where they end up in the hiring pipeline, these campaigns keep talent engaged with your company.
The video interview integration with Zoom stands out. In addition to synchronizing seamlessly with scheduling features, it allows for customization of interview type between live, structured, and asynchronous, or some mix of the two.
Another highlight is the range of industries and company sizes that Lever can serve. This platform works for any user with consistent hiring needs, whether a tiny but rapidly growing tech start-up or an established business in a field with high turnover rates (think retail or hospitality).
Our testers found some shortcomings in line with other reviews you might read: resume parsing, and report generation features could be improved.
Lever is used by over 5,000 companies, including Netflix, Shopify, Eventbrite, Cirque du Soliel, and Reddit.
Lever offers custom pricing, so users must contact Lever for quotes.
Best For
Excellent for any org that needs to maintain a connection and easy access to a particular candidate pool, including tech startups, healthcare, and retail.
Lever is an everyday tool we use on the Talent Acquisition and HR side. It's the introductory portal for interview candidates and eventual employees. We've used Lever for managing job postings, hiring, managing the hiring process, collaborating on jobs, getting recruiting metrics, organizing communication and scheduling, and overall making the interviewing process more streamlined. The key workflows we utilize it for are around job board management, interviewing, interview scheduling and management, communication management between hiring managers & recruiters, resume screening, reporting, and onboarding. It's most vital in providing key diversity, equity, and inclusion stats to monitor the equitability of our interview processes.
- Lever's interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to use.
- It's very collaborative and allows you to tag hiring managers and recruiters, and write notes around resumes and candidates for quick highlights.
- It has robust reporting capabilities to get the reports and metrics showing how well your team is doing, or where the funnel is catching for a job.
We were originally doing and organizing interviews via Excel and Google Docs, and were getting to a point where that was not the best solution. Initially, we utilized Lever as our main ATS to build out more optimized interviewing and recruiting processes. I've personally used it at 2 separate companies for a total of about 2.5 years. The key benefits it provides are the easy-to-use interface, the customizability of the user interface for applications, the easy-to-use screening tools and notes section, the privacy settings, and the affordability. It's an affordable ATS that helps you organize, understand recruiting metrics, and recruit easily.
- Lever’s integration options with third-party HRISs were not great, specifically with Paylocity or Rippling. It would be nice to see a more robust integration in which candidates would only have to input important contact information once throughout the whole process.
- Technical bugs/issues would happen specifically with the scheduling tool, so manual back and forth was usually the most reliable way to set the scheduling. It would be nice for them to partner with a great scheduling vendor.
- Lack of customizability. There wasn't a lot you could do around customizing the look and logo of job boards and such, it was very minimal. It would be nice to be able to customize a bit more.
Overall, Lever is definitely high up there. I would rate it second to Greenhouse. It's a much more affordable option with similar functionalities. Lever is the best for an up and coming start-up that values collaboration and has multiple people working on roles.
- Budget - Your budget is definitely important in making the decision. Lever is probably the best choice in the affordability category.
- Integrations - It's important to think about what you want your ATS to integrate into ( Usually an HRIS or payroll system). Lever may not integrate with all, so it is definitely important to take a look to make sure that it does.
- Reporting - Know what metrics are important to your team and org. Lever can help build the reports you need.
- Customization - If you want to customize the look of your job boards, you'll have very limited customization. but for the price, it's not too shabby!
Their customer service wait times have gotten significantly better. Also their user interface and usability evolves pretty quickly.
If your requisition load for roles does not exceed 50, Lever is a great fit. Most companies probably won't hit 50 until down the road. Until then, it's a great tool!
It would not be great for requisition loads that are over 100 and organizations with HRISs that aren't included in the current integration partners list. I imagine that would be difficult in the onboarding process.
Recruitee
Recruitee emphasizes user experience and collaboration, and we’ve seen firsthand how much impact these two factors can have on recruitment efficiency and effectiveness. Coupled with other solid product choices and month-to-month pricing, this platform is an excellent option for SMBs.
PROS
- Transparent, month-to-month pricing and unlimited seats.
- Features that control for bias in interviewing.
- Built-in AI to job descriptions to target ideal candidates.
- Pro: Recruitee is highly rated by customers for its ease of use. The majority of them are able to implement and get on with the software without much hassle.
- Pro: Recruitee features a customizable, kanban-like recruiting pipeline. Companies can add as many stages as needed to the pipeline and move candidates easily as they progress through the stages.
- Pro: Recruitee incorporates some measures to reduce hiring bias. For example, you can adjust the permission level for your interviewers and prevent them from seeing the scores each of them are assigning to the same candidate. This way, they won’t be influenced by each other's evaluations.
CONS
- Recruitee relies on third-party integrations for some essential functions like skill assessments, onboarding, video interviewing, and e-signatures.
- Our user researchers ran into data accuracy issues with the reporting function.
- Some users noted Recruitee’s support team was hard to reach.
- Con: Several functions that are advertised on Recruitee’s feature list, including skill assessments, onboarding, video interviewing, and e-signatures are not actually built into Recruitee and are only possible through integration with third-party tools, which can be misleading to potential users, especially if it’s their first ATS.
- Con: Several users noted that the Recruitee’s reporting function is limited and at times, doesn’t retrieve data accurately.
- Con: Several users have complained about Recruitee’s support team being slow in responding, and at times, not able to solve issues.
- Con: For a product that’s geared towards SMBs, it lacks a free plan that businesses who are just getting started with ATSs can use for as long as they need, without any time constraints. We list this as a con as several solutions in this space do offer free-forever plans and similar feature sets as Recruitee, which puts it slightly behind the competition to users.
Recruitee knows SMBs and designed a tool for this market. The most apparent SMB/ bottom-line-focused elements are transparent pricing, month-to-month options, and unlimited seats. There is no mystery there: SMBs tend to be budget-conscious.
However, what might be less obvious is what a small TA team can accomplish with unlimited seats, user-focused design, and factors that facilitate collaboration. Recruitee’s feature set represents a clever strategic insight: if the tool is easy to use and designed to distribute the workload among everyone involved in the interview process, the result will be increased efficiency and effectiveness.
We’ve seen it firsthand (several writers here have backgrounds in SMB recruitment), and our user research has confirmed it.
When we test-drove the tool, we were disappointed to note the absence of some features we consider standard. Video interviews, skills assessment, offer management, and onboarding are ubiquitous in modern ATSs, but none are built into the platform.
Recrutiee leans into integrations with Recruitee Marketplace, a collection of preferred third-party tools prepped for ease of integration.
There’s no right or wrong when it comes to built-in vs. add-on. It’s a matter of personal preference and what works best for your business. For those who prefer add-ons, Recruitee is a great choice: you’ll find what you need, and the integration process will be seamless.
Vice, Greenpeace, Autodesk, Tide, Mollie
Recruitee offers tiered and custom plans based on the number of active jobs and other particular needs. The three tiers are:
- Start starts at $199 per month
- Grow starts at $249 per month
- Optimize has custom pricing.
Best For
Budget-conscious orgs who prefer customized feature sets over all-in-ones and SMBs and who want to leverage the power of collaboration to boost the effectiveness of TA efforts.
- We use Recruitee as an Application Tracking System on a daily basis.
- We have five job openings right now, and each one of them has distinct pipelines, responsibilities, and workflows.
- Email tracking. All emails are tracked within the tool, making it easy to manage and understand all communications made by our employees and applicants.
- Questionnaires. We can create custom questionnaires and send them to applicants. Their answers are collected and kept automatically on their profiles.
- Interview scheduling. It's easy to send a link to users so they can schedule their interview directly within the app.
We've been looking for an ATS (Application Tracking System) for a long time, and we've been using Recruitee for about 3 years. As a small game development studio, handling the dozens of applications we receive daily takes time. By using Recruitee, we're able to properly categorize, evaluate and keep records for every applicant.
- Pricing. It's one of the most expensive ATS in its category.
- It's not trivial to change the pipeline steps. If we could change the pipeline steps directly on the pipeline screen, it would be awesome.
- Mobile application is still far from ideal, and has some bugs.
- We've tried many other ATS systems, but Recruitee was the best I could find in this price range.
- The best parts of it are the application workflow and how easy is to keep all information we have on an applicant on his profile.
I recommend keeping an eye on how the communication between the applicants is handled within the app. When trying ATS tools, make sure to apply with another email so you can evaluate the whole pipeline.
The tool hasn't changed significantly over the last 3 years, so I can't speak a lot about this.
It fits companies that need to be more efficient in it's hiring processes, normally larger than 20 people.
Budget is an issue, so if you have a really small company with a tight budget, you might need another solution.
VidCruiter
VidCruiter is known chiefly for video interviews, but the platform also offers a solid ATS solution and Quick Apply, a hit feature with both TA teams and candidates.
PROS
- VidCruiter can be fully customized to meet specific recruiting needs.
- Easy to use for both job seekers and recruiters.
- Works on all devices. No app installation is needed.
- Quick Apply feature lets candidates apply directly from Indeed and LinkedIn and auto-syncs the candidate's info to the user’s existing ATS.
- Dedicated client success manager, 24/7 applicant support, phone, email, and live chat.
- Scalable and customizable — users pay for what they need and can purchase more features as they grow.
- Robust pre-recorded and live video interviewing with advanced automation.
- Browser-based, so it works across devices without installing apps.
- Available for recruiters in eight languages and supports job seekers in dozens more.
- 24/7 live agent support, assigned account manager, and on-demand training.
CONS
- Some users reported that implementation was time-consuming
- Advanced search and technical skills testing features within the assessment module leave room for improvement.
- There is no trial version, and no price is listed on their site.
- Screenshots of VidCruiter (one of the best ATS software) Showing Different Features of their ATS
- Because the product is feature-rich and highly customizable, the implementation phase can be time-consuming.
- Advanced search and technical skills testing features within the assessment module leave room for improvement.
- No free or trial version.
- Undisclosed pricing.
VidCruiter has been a significant player in the video interviewing software market for years, but the platform is less well-known for its ATS. However, our research proves the ATS is robust enough to be listed among other top vendors in the space.
The platform balances the needs of those on both sides of the interview pipeline. TA teams are well-equipped with highly customizable features like job posting, pre-screening, interview scheduling, and real-time reports, and applicants are met with a user experience that was clearly designed with them in mind.
For a glimpse of team culture, vision, and values, users can build a custom career site that delivers a branded digital experience to candidates. The site editor is simple to use, and in our in-house testing, we managed to set everything up without help from the IT or VidCruiter support team. One feature of note: when a candidate accesses a career page supported by VidCruiter, the platform automatically generates recommendations for jobs available near them.
Quick Apply benefits both employers and candidates. With this feature, TA teams can rev up the hiring process without implementing a new ATS, so it’s perfect for teams on a budget. It is also helpful for those counting down the hours left on an ATS contract they don’t plan to renew. The platform offers job seekers the convenience of applying directly from portals such as LinkedIn and Indeed.
VidCruiter is used by over 100,000 recruiters, including Lowe’s, Lionsgate, Samsung, Bears, US Foods, and the United Nations.
The price varies based on company specifications, so contacting the vendor directly for a quote is best.
Best For
VidCruiter is a perfect ATS for large companies (U.S.-based and otherwise) hiring 100+ people annually. At the same time, the VidCruiter Quick Apply tool is an excellent pick for smaller companies that want to streamline their hiring process without going separate ways with their current ATS.
We would determine, with the leader of the department we were hiring in, what basic questions we wanted to ask all qualified candidates, including required questions we had created as an organization. We then had a variety of HR members record themselves asking these questions to put into VidCruiter. We then assigned the interview questions to the proper job postings, and as long as we funneled a list to VidCruiter of the qualified applicants, they would handle inviting those candidates to respond to these questions. We were then able to review the videos on our own time, save them and share them with the leaders, and follow up accordingly. It saved us a lot of time compared to the traditional phone screen method.
The interface for admins was very easy to use, and it was easy to set up new questions and to record ourselves professionally. We also found it easy to overlay our company logos so that the process aligned with our branding. The ability to watch back the interview responses was great, along with their easy-to-use rating scale.
In a previous organization I worked with, we bought VidCruiter because we had an onslaught of recruiting needs that took up a lot of time for our recruiters. We had basic questions we needed all of our applicants to answer, but due to time constraints, we were only able to target maybe 15% of the applicant pool at a time. With VidCruiter, we were able to set up a basic video interview of pre-recorded questions that we could automatically send out to all qualified candidates, without needing to schedule individual interviews with them. The tool was easy to use and to rate candidates on their responses. Plus, it integrated with our ATS, making it easy for applicants to transition to their platform.
Some users had issues with the technology required to complete the video interviews. This caused us to lose out on some candidates because responding to a video interview not only requires some technical acumen, but it is also a little less personal than an actual phone call. The video also had some lag issues with us in the past, both in recording new questions and listening to responses. The design of how to navigate the back end of the website could also use some work.
VidCruiter offers a competitive price, and their ability to integrate with a large number of ATS systems makes them a preferred service in this industry.
Integration is key. The last thing you want for your applicants is to force them to log in to multiple systems, to have to redo any part of their application process, or to feel like their candidacy is not being taken seriously. Find a vendor that can integrate well and gives a positive experience for your candidates.
Not that I'm aware of. The system has been pretty consistent for a while now.
Anyone that is doing a lot of hiring for the same position. This can be for entry-level jobs or for higher-end jobs that have a lot of openings. For us, we used VidCruiter for project management and sales openings, both of which get a large volume of applicants.
VidCruiter is not a great tool for one-off hirings or for companies that have a wide range of requirements for each position.
Teamtailor
Known for ease of use and exceptional customer service, this platform is excellent for startups and SMBs looking to create custom career pages that make a strong impression on candidates. It supports anonymous hiring and internal referral programs and streamlines nurture campaigns to meet current and future hiring needs.
PROS
- iOS and Android apps.
- Simple and quick drag-and-drop features to build custom sites.
- Features anonymous recruitment and EEO surveys to support DEI.
- Responsive and knowledgeable customer support team.
- Free trial and unlimited job postings, candidates, and seats for all plans.
- Teamtailor’s ATS comes with a robust career site builder that’s also easy to use. It works with drag and drop - no coding knowledge necessary.
- Teamtailor backs several features that support diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), including anonymous hiring, equal employment opportunity (EEO) surveys, etc..
- Teamtailor is highly rated for their ease-of-use. It’s quite simple to post and promote jobs through their platform.
- There is really in-depth and intuitive help documentation for this solution
CONS
- The analytics function could be more customizable.
- Limited to ATS-specific features with no tie-ins to other core-HR functions.
- The customization and video interview features are limited.
- Undisclosed pricing.
- Teamtailor’s analytics are good, but enterprise clients need to use BI Connectors to build the reporting they need. Right now, you can’t sport data from the system. This is particularly important for companies with 500+ employees, or those who have many different locations or franchises.
- Analytics doesn’t allow recruiters to see their cost per hire, which is a really impactful metric
- While they offer integrations with HRIS, onboarding, etc - they have focused on just being a really good ATS now.
- There are predefined user access levels, but you cannot define your own user access levels which is important, especially for the largest companies.
Teamtailor stands out for its affordability and built-in employer branding features. This makes it an excellent fit for startups and SMBs trying to build their brand and headcount.
Most small teams need some help making themselves stand out to attract talent. There are countless approaches to this, but we like in-house custom career sites because they serve two essential purposes: they introduce the brand and can be fine-tuned to appeal to the talent demographic you’re hoping to hire. That is a win/win without allocating funds to marketing!
When assessing the platform, we especially liked the drag-and-drop features. Specifically, we were impressed with how quickly we could mock up a career site using super-intuitive workflows. It took less than five minutes from start to finish. That’s not bad for someone with zero technical experience!
The free trial is also a highlight, and we were impressed with the simplicity of setting up a nurture campaign to keep the talent tool engaged.
Some users experienced technical hiccups with integration, but most reported that customer support was able to address the issue quickly.
Kry, Goodbye Kansas, Vitamin Well, Ponsse, Daniel Wellington.
Teamtailor’s pricing is custom-based on business size and requirements, but users report a base plan of around $3,000 annually.
Best For
Teamtailor works best for startups and SMBs (50-400 employees) that need a straightforward ATS coupled with employer branding functions.
We used teamtailor to publish jobs to job boards and social media and update or deactivate postings. We also were able to set up recruiting teams and set up the questions we needed for candidates. Also, it was very useful in keeping track of the many candidates, where they were in the process and, if they were not selected, the reasons why. We also used the triggers to communicate with candidates throughout the process, get needed information, and track communications. We also created career pages to better attract candidates and give a better sense of our company to potential applicants and increase the number of applicants.
I really liked the templates to create career pages, and felt it gave users a sense of the company and really made us look polished. The ability to track candidates was a huge advantage, eliminating the need to remember or to scroll through notes or emails to recall where someone was in the hiring process. I felt it was really easy for the entire team to use, especially hiring managers who are not in the HR department and needed an intuitive, simple way to participate.
I used teamtailor for a little over a year, and it was incredibly helpful in attracting and recruiting hard-to-get top talent. We needed our company to stand out, and to create an experience for applicants that would give a sense of our culture and why we are special and unique to work for. The ease with which we could create ads, the great templates provided, and the overall immersive experience for applicants improved not just the quality and number of applicants we received, but the conversion to hires. We also felt that throughout the process, our candidates had a better sense of who we are and seemed more engaged in the interviewing process as a result. Also, it integrated well with the various job boards and social media we needed to use, making it more efficient in getting the word out regarding openings.
I was not impressed with the analytics. Also, though it makes communicating and tracking candidates easy, being able to opt out of automatic emails would have been good on occasions, and it didn't have flexibility that way. Sometimes there were issues with scheduling too, and it didn't seem to always coordinate people's calendars completely.
This is a very comprehensive and complete ATS, and very easy to use. I have only used one other, and would say that teamtailor had better features and was easier to use.
I think it is important to consider the needs of the business. If you don't do extensive recruiting, this product may be more than you need. Is simply posting ads and getting responses enough, or are you finding a lack of quality candidates? If so, this may solve that. Are you hiring candidates who are in very high demand? If so, you should consider how you are presenting your company and if the process and features this tool provides may be able to make it more attractive to such candidates and is often what they expect.
It appears the company has increased the amount of knowledge, advice and resources regarding the recruiting process to users over time.
This is ideal for an organization that does a great deal of hiring, and has a lot of people involved in the hiring process. It is also great for companies that need to hire candidates that are in very high demand.
I think a small company that doesn't have a lot of hiring, or that maybe has mostly part time or more entry level jobs may not need something like this.
SmartRecruiters
Encompassing solutions beyond the standard candidate sourcing, assessment, and engagement features, SmartRecruiter is an enterprise-grade talent acquisition suite that provides native collaboration and AI-driven functionality.
PROS
- Candidate assessment, skill testing, and offer management are built-in, so need for add-ons or integrations.
- Enables easy posting to multiple job boards, integrating social media tools, and facilitating internal recruits.
- Friendly with mobile devices.
- SmartRecruiters has a built-in candidate assessment and skill testing module that allows you to predict cultural fit, future performance and retention, without needing to integrate third-party solutions.
- SmartRecruiters provides features for offer management. You can create offer letter templates, share them with successful applicants, and collect their e-signatures from any device using SmartRecruiters’ DocuSign integration.
- Speaking of integrations, SmartRecruiters has pre-built integrations with over 500 HR solutions and job boards. You can also ask SmartRecruiters’ team to build additional integrations for you if it doesn’t integrate with products in your tech stack.
CONS
- Undisclosed pricing.
- No free trials.
- Users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes time to get used to.
- Features like candidate filtering, report customizations, and KPI tracking are limited.
- SmartRecruiters’ pricing isn’t transparent. Interested users have to go through the sales team to receive a quote. Users are also not able to create trial accounts on their own.
- Users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes time to get used to. Some users have also reported that the system can be slow and glitches at times.
- The reporting feature doesn’t always retrieve data accurately. Some users have also complained that report customizations and KPI tracking capabilities are limited.
- Candidate filtering is quite limited. As it stands, only basic options such as degree, location, gender etc are provided.
SmartRecruiters ATS is built to serve mid-size and large businesses. The platform allows you to cast a wide net with customizable career pages, targeted ad campaigns, and job post distribution to multiple job boards. It also provides features for candidate assessment and offer management.
One unique fact our evaluation uncovered is that SmartRecruiters encourages customer feedback and rapidly integrates suggestions into the product. That’s an excellent reputation to have, and it’s in keeping with a key element of their business model: SmartRecruiters aims to enable their customers to attract talent. It follows that they would want direct feedback from their users on how to do that best.
The downside of this platform applies mostly to smaller businesses. It’s not cheap, and the scope of its feature set means that it’s complex to set up and use. These factors are less relevant to larger businesses, which are more likely to use all the features and have time and money to spare for integration and implementation.
More than 5,000 companies, including Ikea, Visa, LinkedIn, Equinox, and Skechers
SmartRecruiters ATS has custom pricing, and so do the other products of the system.
Best For
SmartRecruiters works best for medium and large-sized businesses.
As a recruiter in my organization, I rely on SmartRecruiters to handle the complete recruitment process from beginning to end. One of the key features of SmartRecruiters is the ability to post job openings on various job boards in a matter of a few clicks. Once the job gets posted, I can manage the entire hiring process from within the platform, including scheduling and conducting phone interviews, reviewing resumes and applications, and moving candidates through different stages. of the hiring process such as scheduling in-person interviews.
As the hiring process progresses, SmartRecruiters provides a dashboard view that allows me to track the status of each candidate, from initial application through to hiring. When a candidate has been selected for a position, SmartRecruiters also make it easy to generate and send offer letters directly from the platform.
Overall, SmartRecruiters has proven to be an invaluable tool for managing the recruitment process efficiently, keeping track of candidate information, and ensuring that the hiring process is smooth and streamlined.
I like SmartRecruiters as it offers a comprehensive and integrated platform for recruitment needs, which helps in streaming the hiring process. The user interface is intuitive and straightforward, allowing users to quickly navigate and access different functionalities.
One of the key benefits is its ability to connect with leading national job portals, which widens the pool of potential candidates and increases the chances of finding the right fit for a position.
Moreover, the platform offers a centralized candidate database, allowing recruiters like me to easily manage and maintain candidate information throughout the hiring process. The lifecycle management feature makes it easier to track a candidate's progress from the initial application to hiring, reducing the risk of overlooking any important steps.
Another amazing feature of this tool is its ability to draft and present offers within the platforms, making it more convenient to manage the hiring process from start to finish.
Overall in my opinion, SmartRecruiters offers a user-friendly, efficient, and integrated recruitment solution that can benefit both recruiters and candidates.
Our organization used SmartRecruiters to make the hiring process easier and better. SmartRecruiters is an HRIS that helps our organization post multiple job openings, keep a track of people who have applied to those jobs and keep a track of the whole hiring process.
With the help of this tool, HR managers and recruiters were able to save time and effort by posting job openings in many job portals at one time without having to go to different portals and post jobs one by one.
The tool also helps the HR team move candidates through different stages of the hiring process, so they can see who is the most qualified for the open job positions and make good decisions. The tool can also show different reports about the hiring process, like how many people have applied, so the organization can see how to make it better.
Our organization has been using this tool for almost one year and being used by different people in the organization, like managers, HR heads, recruiters, and senior management without any hassle.
SmartRecruiters doesn't allow integration with many applications, and their support team is not very responsive and is unwilling to make changes. They seem content with their current clients, as many big companies are already using their product and their support team is not willing to work on the new changes requested by the users.
SmartRecruiters stands out from other recruitment software by providing a platform that is easy to use and can be linked with both big and small job portals. It also offers a database that makes it easy to keep track of potential hires. With these features, SmartRecruiters can help recruiters save time and resources, making the hiring process more efficient. SmartRecruiters' ability to connect with various job portals and organize candidate data sets it apart from other recruitment software.
- Before buying recruitment software like SmartRecruiters, there are some important things to consider.
- Firstly, think about how many people will use the tool and which industry they work in. This affects which features will be most helpful.
- Secondly, check whether your team is skilled enough to use the tool, as some tools are harder to learn than others.
- Finally, think about how long you will need the tool. SmartRecruiters offers discounts for yearly models, so that might be worth considering.
- By keeping these things in mind, you can choose the right recruitment software for your needs.
SmartRecruiters has improved over time to meet the needs of their users. They have done this by adding new job portals, especially local job portals that are popular in different countries. They have also made their platform more affordable by offering discounts with yearly plans. Finally, they are working on integrating new applications into their platform, which will make it more versatile. By doing all this, SmartRecruiters is able to better meet the changing needs of its users.
SmartRecruiters is good for IT and Software companies, or any company where employees use technology for sourcing and recruitment process.
SmartRecruiters should not be used for organizations where employees do not use technology for the recruitment process like Warehouse and Distribution companies.
Rippling
Rippling is known for its uniformly solid platform, so after test-driving their newly updated ATS module, we weren’t surprised to discover it’s intuitive to use, intelligently built, and succinctly integrated with their HRIS environment.
PROS
- The transition from candidate to employee is nearly seamless, with minimal manual data transfer.
- Mobile app for recruiters on the move.
- Candidate-friendly with no account creation required.
- Intuitive UI and intelligent workflows.
- Job board integration.
- All-in-one platform for employee management + PEO services offered, and even a suite of other IT products
- With 500 integrations, it’s very likely that they integrate with other key tools from your tech stack.
- Operates globally with any currency
- Workflow automation
- Analytics opportunities
- Provides a holistic view of company outflows—headcount costs included
CONS
- Not offered as a standalone product
- US-centric but globally focused-updates are in the pipeline.
- Users report occasional issues with the mobile apps.
- Some users report that customization options are limited.
- Total buy-in to Rippling is essential
- Very SMB-oriented, in case you’re a larger company.
- New features tend to be buggy in ways that tech teams are not accustomed to fixing
Ripplings ATS offers intelligent, intuitive workflows built into dozens of features and automation.
Typically, when an HRIS adds an ATS to their suite, it’s a half-hearted afterthought. Many are perfunctory, underpowered, and easily out-classed, even by mediocre standalone ATS platforms.
But Rippling has built a reputation based on solid product choices, and this one is no exception.
Their ATS is fully built out and offers a feature set that would be a viable standalone product if it weren’t so nicely intertwined with the rest of the Rippling platform.
Based on what’s included, it is clear that they’ve considered the candidate's experience. Little touches, like text messages to connect with candidates, show they know that personal preferences matter.
Another nod to the candidate experience (and what you can learn from it) is the abundant, customizable, anonymous surveys. Rippling recognizes the connection between their public reputation and their candidate experience.
Even with all these candidate-focused features, Rippling hasn’t lost touch with the needs of the people who will use their product most: busy TA/HR teams hiring for SMBs and startups.
Though demand generation is still on the roadmap, elements of their recruiting feature are laudable. It automatically integrates job boards like LinkedIn, Monster, and Zip Recruiter.
Finally, mobile access is a nice touch for busy recruiters, and their open API partnerships with vendors outside their platform leave little to be desired.
For years, companies have had to choose between the superior performance of standalone ATS solutions and the efficiency and security of all-in-one platforms. With Rippling’s ATS, companies who chose the all-in-one solution no longer have to rely on an external ATS.
Bank of America, Motorola, Citigroup, Inc., Dwell, Superhuman, Expensify, Checkr
Rippling pricing starts at $8 per user per month for HR Unity, but the ATS is made available on a higher tier plan (HR Cloud) with undisclosed pricing.
Best For
Though the platform itself and the ATS module are used most by companies with 25 to 150 employees, it can support the needs of much larger teams.
We use Rippling for many different things, but some of the most important are payroll and benefits. If we didn't have Rippling, we would likely need to hire a full-time payroll person who could also manage benefits administration. Additionally, because we are so small, we likely wouldn't have great options for benefits whereas with Rippling we have more options.
It is very comprehensive, providing everything I need, which eliminates the need to connect multiple different platforms. Also, the site is clean, and it runs smoothly and quickly.
We use Rippling for a variety of functions including employee offer documents, onboarding, payroll, PTO, expense reimbursements, and benefits. Without it, we would need to hire several different people, which isn't feasible as we are a smaller company. It makes sense for us to use Rippling instead of hiring a large number of support staff.
There's nothing I really dislike about it; I feel like it gets everything I need done without any headaches.
With one of the companies I used in the past, it felt like I still needed many other tools and platforms to connect to it, whereas Rippling seems to have everything integrated already.
I think it depends on the cost-benefit for you. For us, as a small company, it makes sense to use Rippling rather than multiple different platforms and people. However, for a larger company, it might be more cost-effective to manage these processes in-house.
I haven't noticed any changes myself.
I think it's best for small to mid-size organizations that would benefit from having everything in one place with one provider.
Maybe a larger company, as they may have more economies of scale where the cost-benefit of using different platforms or hiring more support staff could be more beneficial to them.
SparkHire
Spark Hire has packed a massive framework for analytics into a program that looks very simple. The product is easy to navigate and appeals to hiring managers with scarce time and attention.
PROS
- Data analysis dashboard and features are top-tier.
- Efficiency-focused elements, like one-way video interviews, are great for busy TA teams.
- Collaboration is enabled by features that offer pipeline transparency to multiple stakeholders.
- Data analysis dashboard and features are top-tier.
- Efficiency-focused elements, like one-way video interviews, are great for busy TA teams.
- Collaboration is enabled by features that offer pipeline transparency to multiple stakeholders.
CONS
- No free trial version.
- Some users require more customization than what is offered.
- No caption or translation features in video limits access for some candidates
- No free trial version.
- Some users require more customization than what is offered.
- No caption or translation features in video limits access for some candidates
Spark Hire enables truly collaborative hiring, and that's no easy task. All top-tier ATSs are equal parts powerful and pleasant to use. Spark Hire goes beyond that by providing features that appeal to the entire hiring team, encouraging collaboration across roles, and, ultimately, better hires.
One feature that demonstrates this is the interviewing interface, which provides an impressive amount of context at a glance. Without shuffling papers or trying to manage a dozen open tabs, the candidate’s info, including their position in the pipeline, is organized thoughtfully in a single dashboard. The interviewers can directly add their thoughts and impressions to the platform in real-time.
We asked our colleagues with the most recruiting experience to weigh in, and they were most impressed with the analytics dashboard. Spark Hire stands out, with notable strengths in data quantity and quality. For example, if a candidate withdraws from the process, it records the point on the pipeline at which they dropped out. This may seem obvious, but it’s a rare find.
Recruiting Empowerment was also emphasized during our demo. Our writers are all familiar with the relentless dedication it takes for TA teams to keep their heads above water, so we know the value of seamless automation. This ATS knows where digital assistance can help and where a human touch is needed.
6000+ including Fiverr, Monday.com, Sodastream, Vimeo, KPMG
Spark Hire’s ATS pricing starts at $250/month.
Best For
Spark Hire is the right tool for small and medium-sized companies. The platform is made to grow alongside scaling companies, but small teams holding steady with a minimal headcount are likely to pay for features they don’t use.
We use Spark Hire for initial screenings, aiming to shortlist candidates based on their communication skills, relevant experience, and alignment with the company's objectives and culture. Using Spark Hire, we were able to conduct initial screenings across multiple positions in various departments. Apart from initial screenings, we conducted technical screenings wherein the questions were set up by the technical lead, making the process efficient for selecting apt candidates.
Spark Hire makes the initial screening process efficient. It gives the recruiting team an edge for quality hires. It is a time and cost-effective solution for startups looking to scale up their operations.
As the startup aimed to expand its operations, the limited size of the recruiting team faced a huge challenge with the scale-up. Spark Hire streamlined the process by allowing managers and technical leads to review candidate recordings at their convenience, once approved by the recruiting team. It engaged a two-way dialogue between managers and the recruiting team without the need to schedule calls, thus saving valuable time for everyone involved. The team only connected with the candidate once they had received approval from both the technical lead and the project manager. We have been using Spark Hire for about a year.
Spark Hire or similar platforms eliminate personal interaction. If a candidate is not comfortable with virtual recording, the recruiter may miss out on a good candidate because of the setup. Bad internet connections can lead to low-quality videos, reducing the probability of moving to the next step in hiring. It's crucial to ensure that questions are relevant and tailored to the role to maximize the effectiveness of the interview process.
Similar to Spark Hire, we have used HireVue. In our experience, Spark Hire has a better user interface.
The tool eliminates personal interaction at the initial level, which needs to be considered by management before proceeding. Another factor to consider is whether the scale of the requirements matches cost-effectively with the services provided by Spark Hire. Lastly, providing initial training to all recruiters is essential to ensure the team can maximize the features offered by the platform.
The constant updates regarding the user interface and the ability to communicate within the team are promising factors with the platform.
Startups looking to scale up their operations can find Spark Hire to be a great fit.
Large organizations looking for AI-driven features may not get all that they want with Spark Hire.
What are the Benefits of an Applicant Tracking System?
The primary benefit of an ATS is that it increases the efficiency of your talent acquisition team through streamlined, automated workflows. These tools can also be quite impactful: 94% of recruiters believe using ATS software has positively impacted their company's hiring processes.
Other benefits include improved employer branding, access to detailed analytics, and smooth engagement of managers & employees outside of HR/TA teams.
- Customized workflows: An ATS that can customize and automate tasks like application processing, screening, and collecting feedback can dramatically improve hiring efficiency. This benefit is especially significant to organizations hiring from very different candidate pools. If, for example, your team is hiring both truck drivers and software engineers, you can bet these workflows won’t be interchangeable.
- Improved employer branding: A top ATS will help your organization create and manage a custom career site to help your company stand out. Showcasing your best features will make it easier to attract top talent, and with integrations with networks like LinkedIn, reaching a wide audience is easy.
- Better quality talent pools: The best ATS software can save time and money by maintaining already-sourced candidates. If you maintain occasional contact with a pool of qualified candidates, your recruiting process doesn’t start from zero each time you open a new role.
- Wider internal engagement: Rather than relying exclusively on your HR/TA teams for recruiting, the best ATS software will also include your hiring managers and employees as part of the process. Employee referrals, feedback on job candidates, and social media can all be leveraged to fill open positions.
- Streamlined hiring and onboarding: An ATS can do more than streamline recruiting; it can work wonders for onboarding. A good first impression sets the stage for employee engagement and, ultimately, retention, so it’s critical to make the onboarding process employee-focused, timely, and effective.
- More effective recruitment strategies: An effective hiring process is data-driven. Any good ATS software dashboard will put recruiter productivity, cost per hire, cost for job boards, cost for paid media, time to hire, and other data at your fingertips.
How To Choose The Best ATS System for Your Business?
Any business choosing any type of ATS should aim to get the maximum functionality for its price point (while ensuring key functions for its specific business are best-in-class), focus on potential long-term benefits rather than short-term costs, and understand the software vendor's product roadmap.
- What do you want to achieve with the ATS?: Depending on your business, you can have one person or multiple teams across your company branches interacting with the ATS day-to-day. Each may have a different pain point they want the recruitment tool to tackle. Knowing the center goals of these stakeholders and the importance of each can equip you with a list of features ranking from most to least desired.
- What can you afford?: An ATS that can schedule interviews, manage employee referrals, and parse resumes will lighten the load on your HR/TA team, leading to increased efficiency. That said, investing in a feature-rich ATS could mean more complexity, steeper learning curves, and higher costs to the system. So, besides the feature list, you’d need to note down your allowed budget and the human resources involved in onboarding and maintaining the ATS system.
- Focus on individual features during your vendor research: Evaluate precisely what you need. The feature list and resource note that you have prepared in the earlier steps will help you stay focused on options that truly matter.
- Think long term: Trying to anticipate the future is critical given how hard these tools are to replace over time (migrating tons of candidate data, different workflows for different types of job, etc.). Beyond the capacity for the platform to scale up as you grow, you should pay attention to how this growth will affect product pricing and, therefore, the ATS ROI.
- Understand the road map: A tool with no future plan for improvements may cause trouble for future software switches, but a vendor with an ambitious list of feature enhancements announced yet a very humble track record of delivery is not any better. Ask the sales rep specific questions relevant to your business needs and review content published on company channels for more information.
ATS Pricing
Below are the most common ATS pricing models.
- Flat rate: This pricing model offers a fixed monthly or annual fee for unlimited usage of the ATS and hence, is ideal if you’re a large enterprise and prefer long-term contracts.
- Pay per user: This model is best suited for small teams with limited recruiter usage (like us!). It charges a monthly fee for each active user of the ATS.
- Pay per vacancy: Designed for small businesses with low hiring volumes, pay-per-vacancy charges a fee for each job you post using the ATS.
- Pay per module: This model is suitable for companies with an existing HR platform that includes ATS as an add-on. It allows companies to pay for only the ATS module they need, rather than the entire platform.
Keep in mind that:
- Additional costs may apply for selective integrations, premium support, and advanced features.
- Prices can be negotiable: Some ATS offer discounts for startups, non-profits, and buyers willing to sign multi-year contracts.
How Much Do Applicant Tracking Systems Cost?
Here are some guidelines on pricing based on company headcount. This information is intended to help you get a general sense of ATS pricing. Keep in mind that ATS software comes in all shapes and budget sizes. Here we provide mid-range samples for reference.
- Small business (<100 employees): $250 up to $3,000 USD per year.
- Medium-sized business (100-500 employees): $3,000 to $15,000 per year.
- Large business (<500-5,000) employees): $15,000 to $50,000+ annually.
- Enterprise (5,000+ employees): From $125,000 per year.
What Are the Key Features of a Top ATS?
The best ATS features include automated resume parsing, reliable data security, and great analytics.
- Third-party integrations: Almost without exception, the top ATSs are built with robust integration capabilities and a substantial network in their “partner ecosystem”. You should aim for seamless ATS integrations, meaning the ATS should be ready to interface (connect to, plug in to, play nice with) with whatever software you use for hiring.
- Sourcing: The top ATSs include dynamic features like Google Chrome extensions that allow you to source candidates directly from the web. You’ll also find databases of job seekers that you can query for specific skills and outreach tools that will enable you to build sequences that engage candidates through email and texting.
- CRM (candidate relationship management): Recruiting CRM nurtures your relationship with your entire job-seeker ecosystem, whether active or passive. It helps your TA keep leads warm by setting reminders to ping individual candidates (“silver medalists”) or to check in periodically with larger candidate pools. Structured communications and automated workflows help maintain good relationships and free up your TA team’s time.
- Blind screening: This is an effective method for controlling hiring bias, which is a foundational element of all D&I initiatives. ATSs with a blind screening feature obscure the candidates' names, photos, addresses, and other demographic identifiers to prevent assessments based on non-relevant characteristics.
- Employer branding and career site: Modern applicant tracking systems are built with the candidate's experience in mind. Making a good first impression is critical, so top ATSs include features to build and maintain a bespoke career site. With a bit of help from your marketing team, your ATS can create a distinctive, bespoke, on-brand career site.
- Data and analytics: Any ATS worth its salt has a basic analytics dashboard. The best (and often the most expensive) ATS also incorporates a powerful analytics engine to make light work of your heaviest statistical loads.
- Interview scheduling: ATS software that is focused on recruitment automation will include scheduling for everything from phone screens to final-round interviews. Some enterprise options, such as SparkHire and VidCruiter, even have a video interview tool built in so you don’t have to rely on a third-party app for such use.
- Offer letters: Automated distribution of offer letters is a standard ATS feature. Most platforms offer templates that can easily be customized for each offer presented to each potential hire.
- Onboarding: An onboarding feature helps ensure that the transition from candidate to colleague is as smooth as possible. Few ATSs offer onboarding features because this process is so dissimilar to the platform's core functions. That said, if the ATS you’re looking at doesn’t offer one, it should at least integrate with software that can handle the onboarding process.
The above features are highly specific and intended to help buyers and decision-makers make swift, categorical decisions. However, some critical aspects of ATS performance and functionality can’t be summed up so easily.
Our guest expert, Zach Larson, suggests buyers consider the following three basic elements: First, consider how well the product will respond to market challenges. Second, estimate the quality of candidates based on the ATS's sourcing methods, and last but not least, involve your TA team in the process. Your internal stakeholders must be on board with your choice.
ATS Demo Questions: How Many, and Which to Ask?
The questions should all be about your specific requirements for an ATS, but the following can offer some ideas and inspiration on what to ask during your ATS vendor demo.
- Is there a bi-directional API to share information between this system and my HRIS?
- How does this ATS help my recruiting efforts beyond capturing candidate information? For example, will it allow me to pipeline candidates, source, boost referrals, etc.?
- How does this system improve the candidate experience?
- What is your partner strategy, and do I have to pay to integrate my other recruiting tools?
- What metrics do you focus on to prove the effectiveness of this solution, and where can I see these in my analytics dashboard?
- Can I speak to my future customer service rep about implementation and how exactly your organization will be involved?
- Walk me through the candidate experience.
- Can I store candidate profiles in this system in a way that is searchable for future candidate sourcing?
- Walk me through how recruiters post jobs, vet applicants, and leave feedback.
- How do employees outside of HR interact with this ATS?
- Do you have social recruiting capabilities?
- We use {{XYZ indispensable recruiting tool}}, do you integrate with it? If yes, how?
- What is the onboarding process after we buy this solution? Ask for specific steps and who in your org needs to be involved.
For those wondering what’s the right number of questions to bring to a demo, here is a piece of advice: ask as many as you can. If a vendor doesn’t have time to help you understand their product from the ground up, they are probably the wrong vendor.
FAQs
What is ATS?
ATS stands for applicant tracking system, a type of recruitment software designed to make it easier for companies to find, organize, and keep track of people who apply for jobs.
Read more: What Is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
How do applicant tracking systems work?
Applicant tracking systems act as a liaison between an employer and an applicant. Once an application is submitted, the ATS extracts and stores the candidate’s work experience, education, and contact information in a database. HR teams use the database to review applications, communicate with applicants, schedule interviews, and sometimes administer skills tests.
What is the difference between an ATS and an HRIS?
An ATS (applicant tracking system) is the core operating software for your recruiting team that deals with hiring records. In contrast, your HRIS (Human Resource Information System) is the core operating system of your human resources team and deals with employee records.
What is the difference between ATS and CRM?
ATS focuses on streamlining application logistics, while CRM (candidate relationship management system) builds relationships with potential candidates early on through engagement activities. ATS is used in the later hiring stages, and CRM is used in the early stages of candidate attraction and engagement.
Why is ATS software used in recruitment?
An ATS is used in recruitment to make the end-to-end hiring process easier. ATSs were initially designed for large corporations managing thousands of job applications every week. The use of software dedicated to specific purposes has become part of our everyday lives, and so has the ubiquity of the ATS in small and medium businesses. Teams of all sizes, with various hiring needs, can benefit from a tool that increases efficiency by streamlining tasks.
Are there any free ATS?
Yes, there are. Some of the best applicant tracking systems we've tested that offer a free plan or free trial include Manatal, which offers a free trial; Dover, which has a free-forever plan; and Recooty, which is free for one user. Check out our free ATS buyer guide for more options.
What is the best ATS for startups and SMBs?
Startups and small businesses tend to have a tight budget for recruitment tech, so the above free ATS could be a good starting point for such companies. Additionally, Workable, Zoho Recruit, and Recruit CRM are among other top SMB-focused ATS systems we tested that offer a good range of features at an affordable price.
What is the best ATS for recruitment and staffing agencies?
Recruit CRM, Manatal, and Zoho Recruit provide comprehensive features tailored to the needs of smaller agencies. On the other hand, larger firms with increased volume and complex recruitment processes may find Bullhorn and Avionté to be more suitable.
Final Advice for Buying ATS Software
- Know your needs: Get clear on the specific needs your ATS must satisfy. Meet with vendors and watch demos only after you are absolutely sure of your current ATS requirements and confident of your future forecast. Don’t agree to anything less (or more) than exactly what you need.
- Two-for-one ROI analysis: Being CFO-ready with an ROI report will refine your thoughts on why and how an ATS is an essential purchase for your team, which will lead to more clarity on which features to prioritize.
- Consider the context: As the sophistication of ATS platforms have become more sophisticated, the cost has decreased. This means capabilities like sourcing, CRM, talent re-discovery, and even top-rate analytics capabilities are readily available to most.
About Us
- Our goal at SSR is to help HR and recruiting teams to find and buy the right software for their needs.
- Our site is free to use as some vendors will pay us for web traffic.
- SSR lists all companies we feel are top vendors - not just those who pay us - in our comprehensive directories full of the advice needed to make the right purchase decision for your HR team.
