Check out the best hiring and onboarding software apps, and use them to streamline HR processes like welcoming new hires.
The success of your business is heavily dependent on your ability to hire and welcome new employees successfully. Onboarding includes bringing them up to speed about the various business operations, consumers of your products, significant competitors in the industry, and your business's traditional culture. Get it wrong, and you might not get the best out of your new hires. You must engage professional services of the best hiring and onboarding software to get ahead of everything.
It's no surprise that properly onboarding new hires takes time and resources to ensure success. But is this process worth the investment?
We're confident that is a yes. An excellent onboarding procedure can sky-rocket employee retention by 82% and increase productivity up to 70%. Furthermore, the employee management tools in this article offer top-notch features and solutions to help you curate a practical onboarding experience.
Please stay with us as we dive into the best hiring and onboarding software options in 2022. We also mention the best use cases, notable features, what we like, and plan prices of these HR tools.
Our criteria: How we select the best hiring and onboarding software
We spend weeks and thousands of hours researching hundreds of apps to ensure we only list the best to our readers. Every app we list offers tailored solutions that meet your specific requirements in any software category.
Here are the criteria we use to select various software services:
- Product background: Understanding the background of any product is crucial before we can recommend it to our readers. We sort to find the number of years it's been in service and the customer-base volume. We always top it with a live demo to experience what the product offers. We use the chance to cross-check the user interface, ease of use features offered and supported desktop and mobile apps.
- Customer feedback: We check multiple rating sites like Trustpilot to see what verified users say about the product. The technique presents a different perspective from various strangers for effective comparison. We then use this information to determine whether the product app is worth recommending.
- Financial activity: We cross-check the product's revenue streams, retention, scalability, and profitability to determine whether they're best overall. A product that does well in the market also implies that it has active subscribers who are happy with its service – another effective way of judging the service and customer support.
- The best solution for a use case: In most cases, the best tool is also the cheapest solution for small businesses and large enterprises alike. Our listings always include multiple software services that specialize in various aspects. The diversity allows our readers to get numerous options to find the solution that best meets their needs.
The five Best Hiring and Onboarding Software Options to Consider:
- Gusto – The Best Onboarding Software for Beginners
- Paychex Flex – Best onboarding tool for small, medium and large enterprises
- ADP Workforce Now – Best comprehensive onboarding software
- BambooHR – Best for full-service and affordability
- Zenefits – Best cloud-based all-in-one onboarding software
Gusto: The Best Onboarding Software for Beginners
Gusto is the best hiring and onboarding software for beginners who have never used an HR tool before. This is primarily attributed to its numerous customizable options that are easy to use. Gusto lets you recruit, hire and onboard employees to your business from the comfort of your desk. Furthermore, Gusto goes the extra mile to help you identify high-talent employees by making public job posts and sending personalized offer letters.
Gusto also allows employers to tailor onboarding procedures and checklists that match the company culture with a few clicks. Additionally, employees get free access to state and federal documents (including W-2s, 1099s) to share and sign before being safely stored online. Case in point, Gusto includes essential must-haves, but you're also free to custom items and even delegate tasks. The best part is that Gusto allows you to integrate multiple hiring workflows like jazz HR, ApplicationPro, Breezy HR, Gusto Recruiting and more.
You can then send, sign and store new employees' documents online. Finally, with Gusto, you can add new hires to various work platforms like Slack, Asana, Twist, Zoom, GitHub, Microsoft 365, etc.
Gusto hiring and onboarding features
- Available state and federal documents
- Pre-populated onboarding checklists
- Compliance tools
- Basic HR tools
- Safe cloud storage
- Benefits
What we like
- Makes public job posts
- Sends personalized offer letters to potential new hires
- Offers pre-populated onboarding checklists
- Allows customization of onboarding procedures
- Allows employees to share, sign and store state and federal documents freely
- Easy to integrate with various hiring platforms
- Easily add new hires to various work platforms like Slack, Asana and more.
- Employee benefits
What's missing
- Health insurance is limited to 39 states only
- Not suited for large enterprises
Gusto's pricing
- Core: $39 per month plus $6 a month per person
- Complete: $39 per month plus $12 a month per person
- Concierge: $149 per month plus $12 a month per person
- Select: For growing businesses (strictly minimum of 25 employees); contact Gusto sales agents for pricing
- Contract-only: $6 a month per contractor
Or read our complete review of Gusto
Paychex Flex: Best onboarding tool for small, medium and large enterprises
Paychex is the de facto leader in the employee management software industry. And its hiring and onboarding product is the best one yet. Paychex Flex identifies with offering simplified onboarding procedures. Furthermore, Paychex Flex onboarding guarantees efficiency and makes an excellent first impression on your new hires. The service offers easy-to-complete digital forms and checklists on mobile or PC apps.
Employers can also send customized experiences to new hires in video cuts, personalized messages, automated forms and more. You also can introduce new stuff to the company culture on day one. The best part, Paychex Flex cuts the hassle of using paperwork by substituting it with a positive online experience. And this, of course, means that Paychex Flex uses top-shelf security standards to secure shared data over the internet.
But the highlight of Paychex Flex onboarding is the new hire technology feature. It provides new employees with valuable insights, such as training policies and procedures they'll need to perform well.
Paychex Flex's features
- New-hire technology
- Digital signatures
- Customized experiences
- Candidate-friendly portals
- Hiring tools
- Benefits
What we like
- Employee benefits
- Paperless onboarding solutions
- Customized experiences like video cuts, personalized messages and more
- All-in-one onboarding services
- Candidate-friendly portals
What's missing
- Pay extra to get tax compliance tools
- Lacks total price rates transparency
Paychex Flex's pricing
- Paychex Solo: Only plan that offers onboarding solutions; contact sales team for custom prices based on your needs
Or read our complete review of Paychex
ADP Workforce Now: The Best Comprehensive Onboarding Software
ADP Workforce Now is the turnkey software that offers personalized onboarding to new employees. Essentially, this is an an-all-in-one employee management tool that includes extensive onboarding features, benefits and automation. For instance, you can use the various automated onboarding solutions to offer helpful information and guidelines new hires require even before they report to work. Thanks to this, new hires get to do less paperwork and concentrate more energy/ time interacting with coworkers.
You can create personalized welcome portals, which provide unique features that familiarize and introduce them to their new workplace. Some of the versatile onboarding tools and services include mobile access, customizable & dynamic templates, and turnkey integration with the central ADP HR system.
Bear in mind that onboarding ships under ADP Workforce Now. You can also get onboarding if you purchase the Enhanced HR package, but it's not yet available to ADP TotalSource subscribers.
ADP's features and benefits
- Automated, turnkey integrated systems
- HR Configuration
- New hire paperwork
- Manager functionality
- Convenient Mobile Access
- One-Stop Management Functionality
- Customizable and Dynamic Templates
- Accessibility
- Introduction to Company Culture & Work Environment
What we like
- Streamline the employee onboarding process
- Assign and easily track manager tasks
- Make it easy for new hires to submit their vital data
- Get paperwork completed and out of the way
- Share your organization's core message and values
- Benefit from ADP's 3Cs (Comfort, Connection, & Culture) of onboarding
What's missing
- Lacks transparent pricing
- Pay extra for services like health insurance, compensation, and time-tracking tools
- Pay addons for W-2/1099 delivery and filing
ADP's pricing
- Essential plan: Custom pricing based on your needs
- Enhanced plan: Custom pricing based on your needs
- Complete plan: Custom pricing based on your needs
- HR Pro plan: Custom pricing based on your needs
Or read our complete review of ADP
BambooHR – The Best For Full-Service and Affordability
BambooHR excels at offering full-service hiring and onboarding tools at affordable rates. It best services medium-sized businesses by relying on customizable new-hire packets and information centralization. You can use BambooHR to conduct new employee onboarding by concentrating less time on formalities and more on giving better first days at work.
BambooHR's onboarding tools allow you to finalize paperwork faster, give meaningful introductions, let you use customizable preboarding packages to collect electronic signatures. You can also create advance welcome emails departmental checklists even before new hires report to work. BambooHR also lets you send these customizable onboarding procedures to new hires to complete on their own time. However, you can include the deadline dates and location of these procedures.
Finally, the BambooHR onboarding portal sports an incredible dashboard that makes it easy to navigate and use various welcoming features and tasks.
BambooHR Features
You'll get BambooHR onboarding services when you upgrade to the Advantage plan. Here are the highlighted features:
- App tracking system
- Employee database
- Mobile hiring app
- Training tracking
- Electronic signatures
- Hiring
- Onboarding tasks
- Off-boarding procedures
What we like
- Easy to set up and use
- Friendly interface
- Tailor the new hire experience with onboarding templates
- Integrates well with 5o plus apps
- Keep new hires engaged
- Can create personal connections
- Improve time-to-productivity for new hires
- Allows collection of electronic signatures
What's missing
- It doesn't provide transparent price rates
- Lacks benefits
BambooHR's pricing
- Essentials plan: Custom pricing based on your needs
- Advantage plan: Custom pricing based on your needs. We estimate it costs $4.95/employee per month
Or read our complete review of BambooHR
Zenefits: The Best All-in-One Cloud-Based Onboarding Software
Zenefits is often regarded as the best employee management software, thanks to its cloud data centralization. This fact also makes it an excellent choice for all-in-one onboarding procedures. Zenefits even argues that if you switch to its onboarding system, you'll save up to 50% on-time taken welcoming new hires.
To successfully manage new employees, set up onboarding tasks, and allow new hires to onboard themselves by accessing synced payroll features and benefits. For instance, Zenefits automatically tailors and benefits plans that you can use to make compensation and update on the payroll system.
During onboarding, you can also add employee accounts to workforce platforms like Slack, and Microsoft 365, for quick acquittance to various projects.
Zenefits' features and benefits:
- Offer letters
- Background checks
- Self-onboarding
- Account provisioning
- Real-time data syncing
- Business intelligence
- Time-off tracking
- Digital W-4s and I-9's
- Digital signatures
What we like:
- Very affordable plans
- A truly integrated onboarding software
- Onboarding on the go
- Compensation and benefits
- Offer letters
- Can collect electronic signatures
What's missing:
- Nothing noteworthy
Zenefits' pricing
- Essentials: $10/ month per employee
- Growth: $18/ month per employee
- Zen: $27/ month per employee
Zenefits offers discounted rates when you pay annually.
Or read our complete review of Zenefits
Bottom Line: Best hiring and onboarding software apps
Gusto takes the gold star as the best hiring and onboarding software. It backs its lead with affordability, unique-advanced features, and benefits. Gusto is also an excellent choice for beginners trying digital employee management tools like hiring and onboarding. Gusto is the perfect choice to streamline your company's HR services and welcome new hires hassle-free.
Thankfully, however, we have also listed four other onboarding systems that you can try. We have researched all five systems and are determined to be the best in the industry. And because we've decided for you, getting started on hiring and digital, automated onboarding has never been easier.
Best HR software
- 1 month free trial
- Trusted by over 200,000 businesses
- All-in-one payroll and HR solution
- Best for small businesses
- “Autopilot” runs payroll itself
- 3 months FREE with signup
- Trusted by 700,000 companies
- Over 45 years of experience
- All-in-one platform
- 6 months free with signup
- Trusted by 850,000+ businesses
- Dedicated customer service
- Also offer HR and benefits management
- 14 day free trial
- Entirely paperless platform
- Supports multiple schedules and pay rates
