The Best Human Resources Software of 2024

BambooHR is a mobile-friendly platform that is ideal for hiring and onboarding employees. Each service plan includes essential HR services, like document storage, employee records, benefits tracking, time-off management, reporting, and workflows and approvals. What sets BambooHR apart is its Pro plan: It offers everything you need to source, hire and onboard the best talent. Unlike some competitors, BambooHR includes applicant tracking capabilities so you can find the best employees for your open positions. You can post open jobs, search and filter resumes and cover letters by keywords, and create talent pools full of viable candidates. Once you’ve found the best candidate, you can automatically funnel them into BambooHR’s onboarding process.

With BambooHR onboarding, you can send electronic offer letters to be signed digitally. To enhance your onboarding process, you can set the software to send welcome emails and new-hire packets, as well as assign onboarding tasks. These help your new hires understand what they have to look forward to when starting at your company. BambooHR offers self-service features and the user interface is intuitive, so your new hires can get up and running in no time.

Bambee is a human resources outsourcing solution geared toward supplying small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) with custom HR support in a way that helps to mitigate HR risks. After you complete a brief survey about your organization, Bambee pairs you with a dedicated HR manager or director to meet your specific HR needs. This manager then conducts an HR audit on your organization to quickly identify areas where your business can improve to meet federal, state and local laws and regulations. Bambee works with you to create custom HR policies and procedures that are both legally compliant and match your company culture.

Bambee has other tools to help you mitigate risks and stay compliant, such as HR process automation, document retention and e-signature capabilities. It can help you onboard, train and terminate employees as well. With features such as Bambee Report Cards, you can easily track employees’ progress toward their goals to ensure no one falls behind. We like that the software can facilitate employee feedback, which can help you identify and navigate problems as soon as they arise. Bambee offers customer support by phone, email and chat.

Gusto is our choice for the best HR software for payroll. It offers full-service payroll functions, workers’ compensation administration and the Gusto Wallet app, which your employees can use to access their payroll and account information. Gusto can help employers run payroll for employees and contractors in multiple states or countries. For example, Gusto can take care of state tax registration for you, as well as handle exchange rates and payments in multiple currencies. This type of pay assistance is increasingly important as more employers move toward global and distributed workforces.

We like that with Gusto, you have access to unlimited and multistate payroll, tax filing and payments, direct deposit, state and federal unemployment insurance, year-end tax forms, garnishments, multiple pay rates and schedules, PTO policy management, holiday pay and time-off tracking. Gusto offers a variety of comprehensive benefits, so employers can seamlessly integrate those into payroll as well. It also provides reporting, accounting and time tracking integrations; new-hire reporting; and payroll reports.

Rippling is our choice for the best HR solution for ease of use. We were impressed with how quickly you can get your business up and running with the software — within just four weeks. Rippling’s workforce management platform starts at just $8 per user per month, and you can add on various HR management services, like recruitment, time and attendance tracking, payroll processing, benefits administration, learning management, app and device management, and an HR help desk.

If you employ workers overseas, Rippling can easily support your payroll needs through its global payroll system. You can run payroll off-cycle, correct historical pay runs and even pay employees in their local currency. It comes with customizable reporting, an open API, and more than 500 third-party integrations to help connect and streamline your business processes. 

We like that you can automate onboarding and offboarding, as well as create simple-to-follow workflows and approvals to funnel new hires through the process. Rippling says it takes 90 seconds, on average, to complete onboarding. To further simplify your HR needs, you can automate other processes, like time and attendance, applicant tracking, and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and COBRA administration. Overall, the Rippling platform is intuitive and easy to use, and it even has a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.

Paycor is our choice for the best HR software for analytics. We like that, instead of offering simple standard reports, Paycor provides users with several charts and graphs that can be easily digested. Users can view current workforce trends, like head count by employment type, as well as projected trends that are predicted based on past workforce data. You can access charts and graphs on benchmarks and demographics and easily compare multiple organizations or locations. We were impressed with how Paycor lists key drivers affecting certain workforce trends to help you quickly discover ways to improve your organization. With Paycor’s performance management metrics, you can easily track and improve employee performance as well.  

Paycor is full-service human capital management (HCM) software. It offers a variety of features for HR, payroll, benefits administration, talent and workforce management, and employee engagement services. We like how it provides metrics and analytics on these topics to better inform your business. A lot of Paycor’s features can be implemented with automated workflows, thereby simplifying the administration on your end.

Insperity stands out as the best HR software for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). We chose it, in part, because of its comprehensive suite of services, including talent acquisition and management, HR administration, payroll processing, risk management and employee benefit plans. All of these are easily accessible through the intuitive platform. One of the most notable aspects of Insperity is its employee training solutions. It offers access to thousands of resources, including over 300 online courses and other learning materials, like e-books, videos and book summaries. Businesses can arrange customized on-site or online training sessions tailored to their specific needs. These services make Insperity our top recommendation for HR software tailored to small and midsize businesses.

We like that Insperity offers these features via professional employer organization (PEO) and non-PEO plans, making it suitable for SMBs that need a flexible HR solution to accommodate their changing needs. We appreciate the user-friendly cloud-based portal, where employees can effortlessly clock in and out, track accrued paid time off (PTO), request leave, and review pay stubs. Despite offering extensive services, Insperity maintains a personalized approach by providing dedicated support teams. Such dedicated support, coupled with Insperity’s technology, helps small and midsize businesses stay compliant with evolving laws and regulations.

ADP is our choice for the best HR software for employee benefits administration. Whether you go with ADP for its HR software, HR outsourcing or PEO model, you can access ADP’s robust benefits administration capabilities. The company has connections with major healthcare companies, allowing you to tap into comprehensive benefits with flexible rate structures. If you’re new to the scene, ADP can help you set up your ADP plan and guide you through the benefits administration process.

We like that ADP offers services such as employee discount programs, open enrollment administration, election changes, dependent and beneficiary tracking, life event processing, absence management, and benefits invoice reconciliation. ADP also helps you maintain legal compliance by offering an ACA compliance dashboard, COBRA administration and COBRA event triggers. It can even act as a liaison with carriers for evidence of insurability approvals and help with the reconciliation of carrier error reports. All of these benefit services combine to make for a seamless benefits administration process.

Paychex Flex is our choice for the best HR software for remote teams. Paychex offers all of the features you need to manage your remote workforce. The software integrates with numerous third-party services, which is ideal for customizing a solution that can serve your remote workforce. We like how the software allows you to track employees’ information regardless of where they’re located and maintain legal compliance through data analytics, general ledger reports and automatic tax forms. It also offers a secure document management center that serves as a centralized location for remote and hybrid employee documents. It supports multiple uploads, in-app signing capabilities, real-time reporting and rule-based restrictions.  

Keeping employees satisfied can be tricky, especially with so many teams working remotely. Paychex Flex helps with this by offering direct deposit and pay cards, employee financial wellness assistance, and an e-learning management system. One feature that sets Paychex Flex apart from its competition is its mobile capabilities: The free Paychex Flex mobile app is comprehensive, whereas most competitors limit the functionality of their mobile apps. This is great for on-the-go managers, remote employees and teams with flexible working arrangements.

TriNet is a comprehensive HR software platform that has all of the services and features a startup needs to manage its HR needs. It offers multiple plans and add-ons with monthly and annual contracts. This allows a new business to customize a plan to its needs and budget. The cheapest plan starts at just $8 per employee per month, which is competitive with other HR solutions. TriNet’s modern and intuitive user interface is ideal for companies that want to get started on the platform quickly and easily.

TriNet offers vital HR services that help you manage your growing workforce, including employees and independent contractors. For example, it provides automated employee onboarding with background check integration, e-signature capabilities, document management services and automated workflows. You have the flexibility to partner with one of TriNet’s referred brokers to administer employee benefits, or you can use your own. This is especially helpful for startups, as they may or may not have a benefits broker already. TriNet can create staffing schedules, track employee hours and time off, process payroll, and manage employee performance. Although the specific features you can access will depend on the plan and add-ons you select, the software can be easily scaled to meet growing startups’ needs.

Papaya Global is our choice for the best HR software for international businesses. If you have employees in one or more countries, Papaya Global helps manage your global workforce. It currently offers support for workers in more than 160 countries, which is a wider reach than many competitors provide. If you don’t have a physical entity in the country where you are hiring, Papaya Global can act as your employer of record. We like that Papaya Global can run payroll for all worker types and help you automatically pay workers in their local currencies.

The Papaya Global platform allows you to set customized roles and permissions for specific workers. This is a great way to easily manage the types of access workers have and the actions they can take, as well as establish what type of data they can view, depending on who they are or where they’re located. Papaya Global is fully compliant with SOC2 requirements and GDPR requests, and it helps facilitate compliant digital contract management for your global workforce. If you have questions along the way, you can reach Papaya Global support by phone and web chat.