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Dayforce HCM vs SAP SuccessFactors vs Workday HCM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Dayforce HCM is 2.5%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 8.8%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday HCM is 9.7%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workday9.7%
SAP SuccessFactors8.8%
Dayforce HCM2.5%
Other79.0%
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

TracyBritan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Learning & Development at Ampersand
Frustrating support and difficult customization prevent optimal use of learning system
Customizing the home screen was difficult; I could not remove certain tabs that were irrelevant to our users. The search functionality is poor as there's no way for administrators to tag keywords to training courses, making it hard for people to find content. Additionally, there is no way to send a direct link to training if someone asks about it. The reporting is subpar; you can only report by course and not by person unless you go into specific Dayforce reports, which do not match the fields in the learning module. The support is also terrible, with slow response times and a lack of useful knowledge-based articles.
SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
HR has gained clear analytics for attrition, goals, and appraisals and manages talent efficiently
SAP SuccessFactors has a low error rate. We had many ad hoc reports that we needed to generate, and it was very easy to do so in SAP SuccessFactors. We also created many in-house reports according to our specific requirements with the help of this tool, which was a really big game changer for us. We did not depend on advanced Excel in those cases. We generated a lot of detailed reports whenever we needed them during emergency cases or board meetings. A lot of usefulness and time were saved in those cases. I will also mention that we conducted a comparative study for some recruitment cases. We had a recruitment model where we were looking for a very niche profile. Since the job profile was really different and rare, we had to depend on analytics to understand and shortlist from a large pool of candidates that we already had in our database. Analytics was really helpful in this situation.
Eslam Abo Elnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo
Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support
There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The time capture from time cards to charging to projects has greatly improved because it is now all automated and flows into the GL very easily."
"The fact that the time and attendance system is built into the HRIS is very valuable because, in the past, we had to use two different systems."
"The implementation was through a team assigned to us by Ceridian. They were extremely knowledgeable and it made the implementation go very smoothly."
"We like being able to hire from the Dayforce recruiting module straight into Dayforce and having the file feeds go to our benefits vendor."
"Employees like being able to see what entitlements/balances that they have for their time away."
"We used the solution to do a lot of performance management during the review cycle and it helped us alleviate the administrative burden."
"Configuring your HR policies and rules is straightforward."
"We have been able to automate many of our manual processes."
"This solution is more scalable than other solutions because of the features that it offers."
"This solution has automatic linking and reporting features. Upgrades are hassle-free because you don't need to change everything from scratch, when compared to Meta4."
"We are partners with a company and we are responsible for using this software for our clients."
"This solution provides up with an easy way to on/off-board staff, as well as actioning internal transfers."
"Overall, it's excellent performance management."
"I think it's perfect that every requirement has flexibility in how it is handled, and that there are several workarounds for any problem we are looking to solve. Each problem has multiple solutions, so it gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of processes."
"There were no major technical issues or downtimes reported with SAP SuccessFactors."
"The features of the solution that I found valuable for my business are its ability to create a dashboard, pie charts, and reporting functions, as well as advanced reporting capabilities."
"The reporting feature is quite easy for a layman to use, and the look and feel of the application is good. Its security is robust. You will never find a use case that cannot be covered."
"I would highly recommend it to anyone."
"I found the analysis features to be very useful for our company. I also found the modules installed to be aligned with our company's KPIs. These were the two features that stood out."
"It stores everything for the employee. It has also been able to store the information that we use for our payroll demand."
"It's really stable, we use it globally and have 100,000 employees, and I know that there are no big issues with the stability of the tool."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of reporting."
"It helps the users to enroll for the benefits automatically and update their life events without the involvement of HR individuals or back-office staff. It enables a person to take action on their own. It reduces the administrative burden on HR and puts the ownership on the person that is going through the life event, whether it is having a child, taking a leave of absence, or something else. There are easy ways to integrate Workday with your common benefits. At least in the USA, it can be integrated with common benefits providers such as Fidelity, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc. It has got a connector that is able to connect with the vendor or the third party to which you are trying to send the eligibility file. It basically allows us to automate or set up the tool, and the integration with the provider is a lot quicker than competing tools. When it comes to reporting on just eligibility and SLSA, it is a lot more user-intuitive. Depending on the purpose of what you are doing, you can grant security rights or roles, for example, you can control whether someone is a benefits administrator doing an independent audit. Workday makes it very easy to do that. It significantly simplifies the reporting process."
"It's intuitive, a very usable tool and it's easy to find the data you're looking for."
 

Cons

"Management and reporting of the GL costing could be improved."
"I would like the solution to improve its customer service communication."
"I would like to continue to see improvements in the Recruiting module. I would like to see this module interact with Calendars, such as Outlook, etc."
"The solution's dashboards and geofencing could be improved."
"I would like to see more built-in forms, like government issued forms (T2200). This would save a lot of time during the year-end process."
"I would also like to see some improvement in standard reports. A standard report should be available to pull the required information for Affirmative Action Plans. I do not think I should have to build or create one."
"It would be nice if retro pay calculations were made automatically for salaried payroll, so a calculation and manual entry do not have to be done."
"One area to be improved is the solution's reporting function, which can be cumbersome."
"Pricing is a bit high and on the higher side."
"SAP SuccessFactors' pricing structure could be improved."
"There have been cases involving a lot of re-implementations and frustrations within clients where they have the workbook sessions, the workbook workshops and things like that. And I think that doesn't really go down well because the workbooks are very technical and, a lot of times, very confusing for the client."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"We had stability issues multiple times; sometimes disturbing and in a few cases, it caused blocks for business."
"We would like to see improvement in the initial launch of the product, as it is currently quite slow."
"I don't think SuccessFactors is quite fit for use as an employee database."
"Configuration transportation functionality is not available in SuccessFactor."
"It has missing functionalities. Specific countries, like Germany, didn't have the option to do payroll. Now we need to look for another product for HR."
"Workday does not support many Korean language features. So, it will be great if they have some development on the Korean language side – then it will be really powerful in our market."
"We would like to see improvement in the mobile app variant of this solution. The time sheet entry and approval, and the geo-tagging features all need to have their functionality updated, in order to be comparable with other products on the market."
"Analytical tools have needed improvement. Workday has just released Prism Analytics, to replace the current analytical tools, so it’s in the early stages."
"In a future release we could like to have access to asset, supply and treasury management functionalities."
"Analytical tools have needed improvement."
"Workday could improve its custom reporting for beginners."
"They don't offer any backend database access. This is one limitation that I found in this product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We found the setup costs and pricing to be very reasonable."
"We paid for the implementation costs in the first year with the money that we saved by switching to Dayforce HCM."
"In terms of pricing, the product is expensive. However, it is crucial to take into account the manner in which the solution will be utilized and the availability of other alternatives."
"The XOXO program associated with Dayforce allows you to earn credits towards registration and accommodations at their annual Insight Conferences, which can be a real savings to the company when sending employees to the conference."
"Ceridian continually enhances Dayforce HCM. Some of these enhancements they charge for and some are just straight enhancements with no extra charge."
"I rate the solution's pricing a seven on a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive."
"Negotiate for everything you want."
"Earlier, the price of the product was reasonable. Under present circumstances, the price or cost of the product has been increased."
"If you go by best practices and do it right from the outset, the setup won't be a costly endeavor. In terms of setup, there is a lot of flexibility compared to three years ago."
"We are on an annual subscription to use SAP SuccessFactors. The pricing model is something that they could restructure a bit better. If it was based differently on the type of usage it would help."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of modules that are being used, and the number of users."
"We don't utilize even half of the licenses because not everyone uses them. With SAP SuccessFactors, though, we're now conducting all our performance evaluations within the system, so I suppose we're making better use of those licenses. As for SAP for employee services and internal benefits processing, we do have licenses for those but don't utilize them."
"I have raised change requests for some modules within SuccessFactors. For example, when you're using Recruiting Management, there's a feature called Interview Central you can use to reach the candidates you're interviewing. I wanted to add a writing assessment when I select the competency on that platform. It varies from consultant to consultant, depending on what module they use."
"It is not cheap, but it is reasonable."
"For SAP, the product is pricey, both CAPEX and the OPEX. It's something that could be improved."
"I think the pricing is a little better than most solutions out there. There are reasonable prices when it comes to some of the modules such as the Payroll module, and for the remaining modules I believe the pricing is fair in comparison to the rest of the market."
"It's very, very expensive."
"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."
"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."
"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."
"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."
"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise70
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise50
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Ceridian Dayforce HCM?
Customizing the home screen was difficult; I could not remove certain tabs that were irrelevant to our users. The sea...
What is your primary use case for Ceridian Dayforce HCM?
We have used Dayforce HCM for our HR functionalities and for the learning module over the last five years. We actuall...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Ceridian Dayforce HCM?
The Learning Module add-on to Dayforce HCM was relatively inexpensive per user compared to other LMS’s.
What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?
Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customizatio...
What is better, SAP HCM or SAP SuccessFactors?
When it comes to user experience, SuccessFactors is unquestionably superior, as it provides end users with a new expe...
How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?
If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add m...
What needs improvement with Workday?
Workday can be improved in terms of reporting and customization. Sometimes it is difficult to create custom reports a...
What is your primary use case for Workday?
Workday is primarily used for HR operations such as employee data management, payroll processing, leave tracking, and...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Ceridian Dayforce HCM, Ascender Talent Management, Ceridian Ideal
SuccessFactors
Workday Human Capital Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACCO Brands
City of Cape Town, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., TransAlta Corporation, Keolis, PT XL Axiata Tbk, National Football League (NFL), Plan International, Yoh, A Day & Zimmermann Company, China Talent Group (CTG TMO), Umicore S.A., Butterfield Bank, Skril
AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!
Find out what your peers are saying about Workday, SAP, Deel and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: June 2026.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.