If you’re busy running the human resources (HR) department at your company you’ll know just how demanding it can be. Similarly, if you’re a business owner, it won't come as any surprise to read just how much the best HR software can change your fortunes. Managing people is never easy, so it’s well worth investing in a package that can get the job done quickly and efficiently, as well as cost-effectively.
1. Best overall
2. Best for versatility
3. Best for onboarding
4. Best one-stop platform
5. Best for large businesses
6. Best all-in-one
7. Best for recruitment
8. Best for simple hires
9. Best for mobile
10. Best flexible
11. Best for ease-of-use
12. Best for large enterprises
13. Best simple option
14. FAQs
15. How we test
This type of software can be a massive boon to your business, especially if you struggle to find the time to tackle HR tasks yourself, or if you don't have an in-house department.
HR software can be complicated, though, so it's worth taking a closer look to make sure you've got the best software for the job – and at a sensible price.
Some help companies track job applicants and manage the hiring process, while others organize and schedule training courses. We feature the best payroll software, tax software, and other useful tools that check and analyze employee performance.
Alternatively, you could use HR outsourcing services or even a full Professional Employee Organization (PEO) service, where all HR tasks are taken over by a third party. And, if you need a new job, head straight to our round-up of the best job sites.
Ultimately, the HR software you choose will depend upon your business needs, and you'll have to figure out exactly which HR tasks you need to be automated or streamlined. We've picked out the best HR software currently available for a wide range of tricky tasks, looking at how well it solves the business need it sets out to address.
Here then, are what we think are the best HR software services currently available.
We've also featured the best time management apps of 2024.
The best HR management software of 2024 in full:
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Best overall
Gusto is one of the best HR software products on the market if you need a solution to handle several of the significant human resources tasks in your business.
This tool offers a full-service payroll solution alongside time tracking, tools to handle health insurance and employee's financial benefits, and modules that can help companies keep up to date with compliance and legal requirements. Gusto can streamline the hiring and onboarding of staff, and Gusto also has a team of HR experts to provide guidance in unexpected situations.
Gusto provides medical, dental, and vision benefits and can manage HSAs, FSAs, 401Ks, and college savings, and it can also supply life and disability coverage. In this way, it functions similarly to an HR outsourcing company and can provide small businesses with the kind of benefits that they wouldn't usually be able to access.
More than 200,000 businesses currently use Gusto, and it's a superb choice if you want a full-service system to handle your firm's biggest HR headaches.
Read our full Gusto review.
Best for versatility
Lots of businesses are moving to flexible, remote ways of working, and plenty of companies are growing quicker than ever. Rippling is the ideal HR provider if you need a company that can cope with the versatility of modern business.
Rippling offers remote laptop management and instant local tax registration, so you can manage staff no matter where they're located. It also provides a slick, straightforward dashboard that you can use to evaluate data, manage employees, pay salaries and alter employee benefits.
This company offers the sort of benefits you'd expect from the most prestigious organizations, and you can rely on one-on-one support from experts on a complete range of issues.
Rippling is eminently scalable, too: it's easy to upgrade or downgrade your services to match your business needs, and it's simple to stop using Rippling if you want to bring HR in-house. Services are billed using a flat per-employee rate, too.
If you've got a company dominated by remote or flexible working or if your business is growing rapidly, then Rippling could be the HR provider you need thanks to its balance of versatility and features.
Read our full Rippling employee management review.
Best for onboarding
Business and larger corporations have flocked to Remote Payroll, simply because it has a very powerful feature set, albeit at a higher cost than many rivals. And, while there’s no shortage of best payroll software providers on the market, sometimes you need a little more potency to get the job done. If you’re running a larger organisation then Remote Payroll makes an awful lot of sense.
Remote Payroll comes with an extensive list of features, which can help business owners tackle every facet of their onboarding needs. The functionality within Remote Payroll means workflow is pretty much seamless too. It can also be tweaked to suit different country requirements, with functionality that can be similarly adapted to meet local laws.
Read our full Remote Payroll review.
Best one-stop platform
Deel is an extensive package that combines all of the tools that best payroll software offers. It includes a dazzling array of the features and functions businesses need on a daily basis, but also proves really useful for building up a more efficient bigger picture of how your company ticks. If you’ve got employees to hire and subsequently manage, as well as pay, then Deel packs a sizeable punch.
Inside the Deel software suite there are tools for fast and efficient onboarding, functionality that facilitates paying employees, even on a global scale where it’s needed and lots of HR features. In fact, Deel boasts HR functionality that makes light work of handling employees, no matter where they happen to be located.
Adding to the overall appeal is a dependable level of compliance, with Deel proving able to stay on top of any relevant regulations, irrespective of where your business operates. Deel is well-known for its quick and easy setup processes and ongoing administration benefits, making it suitable to companies of all shapes and sizes.
Read our full Deel review.
Best for large businesses
The BrightHR platform is packed full of advanced HR management features. It offers an excellent selection of staff management tools, including a neat holiday planner. On top of this, you can record absences and sick leave in just a few seconds. Documentation, including medical certificates, can be scanned directly into the system, and you will receive notifications when team members are due to return to work.
The BrightHR system also tracks various metrics to help you with payroll calculations, reducing the time you need to spend on admin processes. This includes overtime tracking, a complete record of paid and unpaid absences, and information about bonuses or other extra payments that you owe employees.
Another noteworthy feature is BrightHR’s unlimited cloud storage. This is designed to help businesses go paperless and features a range of tools to help you store, manage, and share digital files. In addition, files can be accessed from anywhere through the neat mobile app, which is available for both Android and iOS devices.
However, there’s no US version. It’s currently only available to customers in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland.
Read our full BrightHR review.
Best all-in-one
BamboHR aims to bring the human touch to human resources, and it does this by collecting information about your employees and delivering personalized insights and functionality.
BambooHR collects all employee information in a single database and provides businesses with an all-in-one software portal that can view and manage employee records, track job applications, view and analyze your staff performance and automate tedious administrative tasks. There's a mobile app, too, so you can keep on top of HR while you're on the move. It handles payroll and vacation requests, too.
BambooHR's software is available in two packages – Essentials and Advantage. The former only includes entry-level HR management and self-serve employee options, while the latter adds hiring and onboarding abilities, advanced workflows, customization and branding options, and better support. You'll also have to pay extra for payroll, time tracking, and performance management options.
Read our full BambooHR review.
Best for recruitment
Most HR software packages try to tackle every aspect of human resources, but Bullhorn concentrates on the hiring process – an essential part of every growing company's journey.
Bullhorn provides a modern, fully-featured applicant tracking system that can help you keep on top of the applications you've received for positions at your company, and you can see all of the relevant data in a single location. You can publish job adverts, see lists of potential candidates, and mail multiple candidates at once.
This tool integrates with platforms like LinkedIn, Outlook, and Gmail, so it can easily fit into your business, and it can gather information on candidates and parse resume documents for key data. You can also use a smart search feature to sift through candidates to find relevant information and potentially great additions to your workforce.
There are four levels of plan available with Bullhorn, allowing you to select the best HR software solution for your needs. The entry-level Team plan has a broad range of abilities. Still, the Corporate, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus tiers add added features, including API access, custom fields, advanced reporting, and sales quotas. If your company wants to streamline its hiring process, Bullhorn is an excellent choice.
Best for simple hires
Workable is another HR software product that simplifies and improves the recruitment process. When a business is only as good as its staff, it makes loads of sense to make your hiring as effective as possible.
Workable can post your job adverts to more than 200 job boards simultaneously, so you'll attract applications quickly, and it has more than 700 phrases that can build adverts and job descriptions. You can use this tool to anonymously screen job applicants and view essential data about candidates. You can use Workable's data to make better decisions about which candidates are right for the job.
This tool can automate many of the tedious actions associated with the hiring process, and you can plan, track, and manage your hiring workflow. Workable offers offer letter templates, and it has communication features that mean everyone can be kept up to date with recruitment.
If you want a specialist tool to help you find, interview, and hire the best candidates for vacant positions, there aren't many better than Workable. As with many of the best HR software products, though, you'll have to pay for a higher tier of access if you want more features, and pricing is only available on request.
Read our full Workable review.
Best for mobile
PeopleHR offers a web-based interface that aims to streamline every key HR process and offer transparent pricing at the same time.
The app's intuitive dashboard can automate dozens of tasks, from employee turnover reports and sickness tracking to approving holiday requests, and it can also track new job applicants and list job vacancies on top recruitment websites.
PeopleHR supplies loads of data that can show exactly how much time you've saved by switching to this system, and it recommends the best way forward for your decisions by showing you how other companies have acted in similar situations. There's a slick performance management system that can manage employee reviews and 360-degree feedback, and this software works on PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones so that you can work flexibly.
PeopleHR has a team of experts to guide you through the software, and it's easy to learn. Combine this with its clear pricing, where cost is based on the number of employees covered per month, and PeopleHR becomes a top choice for anyone who is not familiar with HR software.
Best flexible
BerniePortal is a full HR service that takes the hassle out of managing your entire employee life cycle.
This tool features plenty of options that allow you to screen and assess candidates and then communicate with them during the hiring process, and you can integrate them into the business with minimal time and fuss.
You can deliver an excellent benefits package with extra employee engagement and less paperwork alongside full IRS compliance. BerniePortal allows administrators to approve holiday requests and tackle other everyday tasks with one-click operations.
BerniePortal keeps track of attendance and delivers detailed reports, and staff can access, view, and sign important documents from within the app, which includes support for electronic signatures. BerniePortal handles your payroll and IRS filing with increased speed and accuracy.
It's not the best-looking HR suite, and it's not the cheapest either, but it offers a broad range of features and a clear design, so it's still an excellent choice.
Best for ease-of-use
Zenefits is one of the clearest options around when it comes to offering a complete HR solution for any size of business. It makes complex situations simpler, and it starts with one of the best dashboard designs in the business.
The sleek system can manage your company's payroll, attendance tracking, performance management and job applications. It can also tackle federal, state, and local taxes and the administration of your staff's various benefit and insurance packages. You can use Zenefits to get quotes from different benefits providers, and employees can use their own interface to update personal information and access resources.
It's an impressive full-service HR solution that will be especially useful if you want a clear system that's easy to use, although you'll only get all the features if you pay for the Growth or Zen plans – and Zenefits is also a little pricier than some of the other HR options on the market.
Read our full Zenefits HR and Payroll review.
Best for large enterprises
Lanteria offers a broad platform of HR solutions for medium and large enterprises. Companies like Warner Bros and Lufthansa use it, and it's based on Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365, so it's easy to integrate with many of the packages that are popular in loads of big companies.
The central dashboard has modules that tackle a variety of common HR tasks. You can manage and monitor employee attendance, payroll, recruitment, performance, and training from different areas of the straightforward software, and the dashboard's home screen provides clear statistics on your business, from absences and helpdesk tickets to goals and documents that need your attention.
Lanteria's software is cloud-based, so it works from any internet-connected device, and it can also automate tasks and workflows, handle custom signatures, and manage employee reviews.
There aren't many HR products that offer as many features as Lanteria, but it will be overkill for many businesses. That said, if you need a comprehensive HR product for a larger company, this is a top-notch choice.
Best simple option
Although Breathe HR is aimed more at the small business community, that doesn't mean that it’s lacking in any department. In fact, Breathe HR is literally bursting with lots of features and functions, all within the framework of a simple to use system.
It lets you tackle all of those everyday HR tasks including leave and absence, rotas and shift planning, people and employee management, time tracking and wider HR management. The software can also be integrated with the Breathe API and Xero Payroll, which broadens both its reach and appeal still further.
Drill down inside those core features and you’ll find that Breathe HR can facilitate quick and easy staff and holiday planning, track employees holidays and monitor absenteeism. There’s scheduling for working out rotas, team management tools and a way of forecasting salaries too. You can also manage payroll, track performance and carry out both location and Covid 19 management as and when it’s needed.
Read our full Breathe HR review.
Also consider these HR solutions
There are a wide range of HR software solutions available for all sorts of situations – some of them supply the full range of HR options while others focus on single tasks.
Namely is a full-service HR software platform that deals with issues from onboarding to training, to payments and benefits. You can monitor and review employee training, cover time and attendance, and allow employees to manage their own progress and development using a self-service portal.
Paycor covers all major HR areas, from recruiting and onboarding to payroll, training, attendance and time management. It delivers comprehensive reports to get critical business insights, and prides itself on the level of expert support it provides its customers.
JobDiva focuses on the applicant recruitment and training process. It primarily features candidate searching and matching modules alongside career development tools, and it integrates with popular Vendor Management System tools like Workday, Beeline, Vizient and Medica.
Ciphr provides an easy-to-use platform to manage most aspects of HR. Key features include onboarding, timekeeping, payroll, compliance, and self-service options for employees. Configurable dashboards provide analytics and data to help you set up automated, intelligent workflows, so you can use Ciphr to make your entire business more efficient.
We've also featured the best employee experience tools.
FAQs
What is HR software?
HR software exists to help businesses oversee all aspects of employee management from a central dashboard. Many programs on our list offer an all-in-one HR solution that handles recruitment, onboarding, payroll, tax, and more. Others specialize in managing one or more of these tasks.
How to choose the best HR software for your business
Choosing the best HR software package should revolve around your business needs. If you have a small company and have no specific requirements, one of the do-it-all programs will likely be an excellent fit for your organization.
Conversely, if you have a specific pain point in your HR workflow, software tailored to that use case will be far more helpful. Recruitment and payroll are both examples of processes with dedicated solutions. Larger companies should consider enterprise-level HR software.
How we test
Where possible, we sign up for every HR software product that we review. We review how easy it is to get started and enter data to see what the program is like to use. Every key feature is put to the test and compared to what's offered in competing products.
We research a range of other factors, including data security, ongoing support, and pricing models, looking at free versions where available. If we can't physically test the best HR software, we base our verdict on information found on the company's site, peer reviews, and user testimonials.
Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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