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BambooHR vs Paylocity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

BambooHR
Ranking in Benefits Administration
9th
Ranking in Talent Management
11th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Paylocity
Ranking in Benefits Administration
14th
Ranking in Talent Management
20th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of BambooHR is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Paylocity is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

Vineeth John - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a certain level of simplicity with the whole package and intutive
We used Payworks. Payworks is designed strictly for payroll. It's not really meant to be an HRIS tool because it doesn't allow for an employee profile, for example. You can't manage a lot of employee information, track training, recruitment, or any of that stuff. They've added an applicant tracking module, but it's still very basic. So adding BambooHR was very complementary to having it covered. The only problem was the two systems didn't talk to each other. It was a bit of a hassle for us to maintain the two systems, going back and forth and making sure the data was centralized when we made changes.
RP
Has a comprehensive and intuitive knowledge base, and time saving payroll administration features
Paylocity is not great at communicating customer support related issues such as account manager changes. They claim to provide concierge level of support, but it has not been great. Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust. At present, I can't send attachments, add hyperlinks to videos, or embed questions in videos. Also, the number of notifications regarding benefits needs to be increased so that new employees get reminders more than once.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's very user-friendly and easy to train someone new. It was easy to implement and get someone onboarded on the system."
"Leave management is the most valuable as they all started with leave management and then progressed to performance management. Of course, employee profiles are central to everything. It is also very easy to use. Customers get on board with it very quickly. One of the selling points for BambooHR is that they have a very wide partner network. There are lots of other partners that have integrations with BambooHR. They have an open API. This is one of the things that is driving its growth because lots of people and companies are literally just building integrations of BambooHR to ride the wave. If you have an integration with BambooHR, you get sales. People are more likely to choose your product because they've already chosen BambooHR. That's how it is happening. It is a cloud deployment, so there is only one version. They do the updates every month, and because of this, you are encouraged to send them feedback all the time. You never know. Your feature may be included in the next release."
"The product is user-friendly."
"I like the fact that the annual days are calculated automatically and that if annual leave is taken in the future, those days are put on hold. You know at every point how many days of annual leave are you left with and how many are on hold."
"The scalability of BambooHR is good."
"The HR metrics that this solution provides has been most useful. We also really like the fact that employees have the ability to be self sufficient and manage their own information."
"I can easily go to BambooHR to search for any staff member in the company."
"This is a scalable solution. We have not experienced any issues."
"My favorite feature is payroll administration, which has been awesome. You can import as many batches as you want to and run them synchronously or asynchronously. Since I work in a finance company with commissions, bonuses, and distribution, it's great to be able to do that. I can upload multiple things. Also, I can upload different sets of commission lists into the same payroll batch and upload the time card imports and overtime imports if I want to and separate them. I can create multiple batches around an individual or one one set of audit backing, and then I can approve them or leave them open. The way that Paylocity has set up their payroll system is really good and saves us a lot of time. It's very specific and helpful."
 

Cons

"In the BambooHR performance management annual evaluations we have some limits to the questions. We can only add four extra questions, and they already have three basic questions, this is not easy for us. We would like to have more flexibility with the questions."
"There are some issues with the job tab under my info where you add the salary."
"The UI needs improvement because it needs to be more user-friendly."
"It would be good to include more options for approvals and workflows. They are deliberately not the most sophisticated version of anything that they do, but it is like 80/20. They hit the vast majority of all the needs, but I have started to run up against the limits of their functionality. It has forced me to start paying attention to the marketplace or sending feedback to BambooHR. Clients are still happy though. Timesheets is a new area in which they're slowly expanding. It is currently very limited, but it meets the needs of standard nine-to-five salary employees who just want to be able to key in their time, have it approved, and then pushed off to payroll. It does not have any of the bells and whistles that an hourly employee or hourly worker might need. That is one area that is currently limited, but they have integrations with some of the best companies that do that."
"If you are dealing with two or more businesses under one company name, it is not possible to transfer employees between companies if they have a separate bamboo set up."
"I would like to be able to export some documents into PDFs a little easier. Right now, only HR can update the training record and as you scale your company, managing the system can be manual and time consuming."
"It would be useful to have the possibility to assign a task to the different users within the software."
"BambooHR could be improved by managing leave in a way that transfers remaining days at the end of the annual year to the following year."
"Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was definitely cheaper than some of the larger systems."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We pay a monthly subscription to use the solution. The subscript model is based on how many employees we have active."
"Price-wise, the solution is in the middle compared to other tools offering similar functionalities."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering BambooHR?
Organizations of all sizes, especially those that are experiencing rapid growth, want to have a way to effectively manage their HR operations. Our organization feels that BambooHR is an HR manageme...
What do you like most about BambooHR?
The tool's most valuable features are the recruitment module, performance module, and document storage.
What needs improvement with BambooHR?
BambooHR's reporting tools were not the best I've used, but they're good. There are some limitations in terms of customized reports, as opposed to ADP, for example. The only thing that could have b...
What do you like most about Paylocity?
My favorite feature is payroll administration, which has been awesome. You can import as many batches as you want to and run them synchronously or asynchronously. Since I work in a finance company ...
What needs improvement with Paylocity?
Paylocity is not great at communicating customer support related issues such as account manager changes. They claim to provide concierge level of support, but it has not been great. Some of the Pay...
What is your primary use case for Paylocity?
We run almost everything that we can out of Paylocity. We run payroll, employee performance reviews, recruitment, onboarding, and all benefits administration and enrollment through it. We use the c...
 

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