HRIS software compared

A company with 30 employees usually reaches the same point. Time-off requests live in a shared spreadsheet, offer letters sit in someone's email, and the founder cannot say how many people were hired last quarter without an hour of digging. An HRIS, short for human resources information system, replaces those scattered files with one employee record that the rest of HR work reads from. This page compares eight products that meet three tests: they keep employee records, they track time off, and they produce HR reports. We read each vendor's own pages, and every product page links to the pages we used.

What counts as an HRIS here

The category is defined by three capabilities, and a product is listed only when the vendor's own pages describe all three.

The first is employee records: a central database with a profile per person, holding job details, documents and reporting lines, which employees can update themselves with manager or HR approval. The second is time-off tracking: policies for vacation and sick leave, a request and approval flow, and balances that stay current. The third is HR reports: standard reports and dashboards on headcount, turnover and similar measures, ideally with custom views.

Payroll, benefits administration, applicant tracking and performance reviews are common extras, but they are not required for a listing. Many buyers still start from payroll, and several products below sell payroll as a separate module on the same employee record. A buyer who only needs payroll should look at a payroll product instead, since the pricing and the buying questions differ.

These criteria are a draft and have not yet been approved by an editor.

Why the record matters before the features

Employment law puts record-keeping duties on every employer, and a system that holds the record in one place makes those duties easier to meet. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Department of Labor's recordkeeping fact sheet says employers must keep payroll records for at least three years and time cards for two years. The IRS tells employers to keep all records of employment taxes for at least four years after filing the fourth quarter for the year, with a six-year period for records tied to certain paid leave and employee retention credit wages.

Form I-9 has its own clock. USCIS says on its retention and storage page that the employer must keep the form until the date on Line C of its calculator, and it points to the M-274 handbook for the full rule. We did not find the formula spelled out on that page, so check the handbook before setting a retention rule in any system.

The point for a buyer is that three different retention periods apply to three different kinds of record. A tool that cannot keep documents by type, or cannot export them when you leave, turns an ordinary audit request into a scramble.

Headcount thresholds that change what you need

Several federal duties start at a specific number of employees, so the right tool at 20 people may not be the right tool at 120.

The Family and Medical Leave Act applies to private-sector employers with 50 or more employees in 20 or more workweeks in the current or previous calendar year. The Department of Labor's FMLA page says an employee becomes eligible after 12 months with the employer and at least 1,250 hours of service in the 12 months before leave starts, at a worksite with at least 50 employees within 75 miles. Eligible employees may take up to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period, and up to 26 workweeks for military caregiver leave.

For an HRIS, that means the time-off module should do more than count vacation days. A company that crosses 50 employees needs a way to track hours of service and separate protected leave from ordinary paid time off. Check whether the product handles leave types beyond PTO before you cross the line, not after.

The EEOC's EEO-1 data collection page says Component 1 applies to private-sector employers with 100 or more employees and to federal contractors with 50 or more employees who meet certain criteria. The most recent collection listed there is 2024, and the page says it is closed, with updates on the 2025 collection to follow. Filing requires workforce counts by job category, race, ethnicity and sex, which is the kind of report a good HRIS should produce without a spreadsheet detour.

State and local rules add further duties that this page does not cover, so location matters both for compliance and for price. We note below where a vendor's page does not state a country or currency.

Two kinds of vendor, two kinds of buying process

The eight products split into two groups, and the split shapes the whole purchase.

Two vendors publish a number. Rippling and Factorial each give a starting price per person. Zoho People has a free plan and a 30-day trial, but the dollar amounts for its paid plans did not appear in the page text we could read. HiBob, Humaans, Workday HCM, ADP Workforce Now and Paycor send buyers to a demo, a sales form or a custom quote.

That means only two of the eight give a buyer a number to plan around before talking to a salesperson. For the other six, the first real price arrives after a sales conversation or on a live page we could not read, and our product pages say so rather than estimating.

What the published prices say

Both published figures are starting prices, not rate cards, and both were checked twice. Zoho People is the only product with a free plan, and its own pages disagree on the limit: one says up to 53 users, while the comparison page says 5 users in one table and 3 in another. Rippling says plans start at $8 per employee per month plus a monthly base fee, and the page does not state the base fee. It sells products separately, and the total depends on which ones you pick and on headcount. A startup program gives eligible US VC-backed startups free access for 6 months, subject to funding status and stage.

Factorial says it starts at $8 per user per month and includes Factorial Core, which covers an employee directory, onboarding and offboarding, payslip distribution, bulk document sending and legal e-signature. Time Off, Time Tracking, Performance, Shift Management and Recruitment are add-on modules, and the page lists no prices for them. Because time-off tracking is one of our three tests, the $8 starting price may not include the module a buyer needs most. The page shows a dollar sign with no currency code.

Time off is where plans differ most

Time-off tracking looks like a commodity, but the pages show real differences in where it sits.

HiBob puts time off inside its Core HR module and says policies can be set by location, department or employee group, covering holidays, sick days and PTO. Rippling describes custom PTO policies, approvals and real-time balances. Zoho People describes customizable time-off policies, quick approvals and a combined view of leave balances and holidays. Humaans describes absence tracking and approvals, with sick leave and timesheets shown in the example views.

Workday handles absence inside Workforce Management rather than Core HCM, which matters if you are buying only part of the suite. ADP Workforce Now sells time tracking only in its Premium package, and the page says Premium adds it to Plus. Paycor's mobile app page describes PTO requests and manager approval, but it does not mention balances, so we could not confirm that balances are shown to employees from the pages we read.

Ask each vendor three things during a demo: whether accruals can be set by tenure, whether leave types beyond PTO are supported, and whether balances carry over by rule. The pages we read do not answer these questions for most products.

Reports and what to ask for

Every product here says it has reporting, but the depth varies. Paycor's analytics page lists custom dashboards, scheduled report delivery, shared favorites and up to seven years of workforce data. HiBob's analytics page lists configurable dashboard views with role-based data access and filtering by structure. Zoho People puts basic HR reports in Essential HR and advanced HR analytics in Premium. Humaans describes real-time access to turnover, headcount changes, salary spend, absence and tenure. Workday describes analytics and reporting guided by AI, and gives no detail on specific reports.

When you test a demo, ask the vendor to produce the report you already run by hand. For many small companies that is headcount by department, new hires by month and open leave balances. For companies near 100 employees, ask for the workforce counts needed for an EEO-1 filing and see how many manual steps remain.

Security and contract terms we could confirm

Security evidence was thin on most pages, and we record only what a page states in text.

Humaans states on its home page that its platform is GDPR compliant and holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 certifications, and its Enterprise option includes SAML single sign-on. HiBob shows SOC 2 and ISO 27001 badge images but does not state either certification in text, so we leave both blank. For Rippling, Factorial, Workday, ADP and Paycor, the pages we read did not state certifications, which does not mean they lack them. Ask for the report under a nondisclosure agreement before you sign.

On contracts, none of the eight vendors states a term, minimum seat count or cancellation rule on the pages we read. Ask for the order form, the renewal clause and the data export process in writing.

How to shortlist

Start from the three tests and your headcount. A company under 25 employees should compare Rippling and Factorial quotes line by line, since the per-person figures hide base fees and add-ons. A company approaching 50 employees should put leave handling at the top of the list. A company near 100 should test the EEO-1 workforce counts in the demo.

Treat every starting price as the price of one module. Get a written quote that lists the modules you need, the headcount it assumes, the base fee and the renewal terms, then compare quotes on the same basis. Before you sign, export a sample of your own employee data and check that it opens in a spreadsheet with the job history and documents intact.