No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SmartRecruiters vs iCIMS Recruit 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

iCIMS Recruit
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartRecruiters
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of iCIMS Recruit is 1.4%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 2.6%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
iCIMS Recruit1.4%
SmartRecruiters2.6%
Other96.0%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

PP
Technical Recruiter at Electronic Arts Inc.
Manual screening has slowed high-volume hiring but navigation has supported basic candidate review
With the changing times and the new applicant tracking systems in the market, there is a lot more that can be added now. There is so much that can be done with iCIMS Recruit. iCIMS Recruit was easy to use, but it did not have all the features to shortlist candidates. For example, if I received 1,000 applications for a role, it was almost impossible for me to narrow it down to the candidates that were in a specific geographic location or had specific skills. Applicant screening was very difficult sometimes simply because there was absolutely no way to create filters or sorting or run keyword searches. I think this is a very basic feature that when you review an applicant in iCIMS Recruit, you should be able to run a filter on all the applicants that applied, and those were completely missing. As I mentioned, it was challenging to shortlist candidates based on what I saw on iCIMS Recruit. Eventually, the company moved away from iCIMS Recruit simply because it did not provide all the options to filter, keyword search, or navigate applicants. There were typically a lot of candidates that used to apply. It was painful for a recruiter to go through all the applicants one by one.
SUMANTA  GHOSH - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Recruitment Lead at IQ-EQ
A user-friendly tool that functions without any glitches
With SmartRecruiters, compatibility with other HRIS systems is an area with certain shortcomings that require improvement. SmartRecruiters is a tool that we use as an ATS platform in our company, but we manage the employee lifecycle with the help of SAP, and I don't see the integration of SmartRecruiters with SAP happening quite seamlessly, making it an area where improvements are required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Over time, I've seen them build on their platform, make improvements, enhance the user experience, and continue to gather feedback for improvement from end users."
"iCIMS Recruit has impacted the organization positively because it has provided us with additional support and consistency with every recruiting process that we handle in the company, and this provides great transparency and great candidate experience in order for us to hire the best talent for the business."
"The best feature that iCIMS Recruit offers is its customization."
"iCIMS Recruit is a user-friendly applicant tracking system overall."
"The solution offers good customization and good dashboards."
"iCIMS Recruit has positively impacted my experience as a job applicant by making it faster and less stressful."
"The good features of iCIMS Recruit were that it was very easy to use."
"iCIMS Recruit has impacted my organization positively because it is easier to use and more user-friendly than alternatives, helps us maintain better data governance without many issues, and processes are faster, which saves us time."
"It is a reliable system, and you can use it for the full cycle of recruitment, easily configuring and adapting it to your processes while everything is tracked in one place."
"The most valuable feature is the way that they've set it up for collaboration."
"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide. It is very easy to manage users and build your workflows. Overall, it works very well for the customization of the workflows for us. The recruitment team has generally found the whole platform useful. We were looking to kind of expand it by using the CRM functions that it has. However, with COVID and recruitment being on the freeze, we weren't really able to make the most of the tool. They are, however, finding it useful to actually build up their talent pools and client candidates to be able to contact them when we kind of have this freeze off."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool."
"With this solution, I was able to add diversity to my recruiting. I was able to source from multiple locations, and I could show where applicants came from. The reporting tools that are on offer, allowed us to expand our reach. We were able to add meaningful diversity into recruiting."
"It has a neat functionality built in where it rates candidates. So, before you even look at the resume, you see a rating, and it is based on keywords. For example, it will tell you that an applicant is a frontend engineer and has used React, Angular, etc. It gives you a heads up so that you don't have to go through a hundred resumes on Monday morning eliminating applicants. It will tell you that this applicant's skills match 87%, which is pretty neat. You can skip the ones that are rated 25% or something."
"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide."
"Once we implemented SmartRecruiters, it meant that we were able to have a consolidated global overview of all the recruitment activities."
 

Cons

"Eventually, the company moved away from iCIMS Recruit simply because it did not provide all the options to filter, keyword search, or navigate applicants."
"The only challenge is that it can be difficult to make managers aware that they need to follow positions in the platform and learn how to use it so we can work together."
"If reporting could be more robust, that would be phenomenal."
"iCIMS Recruit could be improved by adding a block to explain certain things."
"iCIMS Recruit can be improved from its user interface."
"iCIMS Recruit can be improved by adding additional features related to looking for attrition rate and seeing how many people actually stay within roles, especially for those high-volume roles that have high turnover."
"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, not in the time, but the company in Germany really dictated that. So we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to it."
"One of the areas that we would like them to improve is the self-scheduling feature. They have a self-scheduling feature that can be made a little bit more automated when it comes to scheduling. We are trying to use it, but it doesn't feel very user-friendly. This is something that could be improved. They have launched WhatsApp connections in the system, where instead of sending emails, you can WhatsApp candidates directly from the system, but currently, it mainly works in a few countries. Spain, where I'm based, is not one of them. If we use the system, the phone number for the candidates would be from the UK, and we don't think that would be the best. This feature is good for some countries, but not for all at the moment. It was first launched in the USA and then in a couple of countries in Europe. It is not yet launched fully in Europe. Reporting is always something that can be improved. Even though it is working well for us, its reporting can be better. Currently, it is a little bit complicated when it comes to reporting. It has a few pre-made reports that are easy to access, but if you want more details, you need to build your own reports. In order to do that, it is a bit tricky to learn and understand how it works. Even though you have help agents and support for help, it takes some time to learn, but it is not impossible. We have very recently made some integrations with Tableau. We are building dashboards in Tableau where we can get daily updated reports, and they are definitely helpful. That's something we would recommend. SmartRecruiters has recently implemented an inbox. You can have an inbox where you can see all your conversations, but currently, it is not filtering between the recruiters, so you see everyone's emails in there. They have already announced that they are working on the filtering feature for a specific inbox to make it more personalized per recruiter. This way the recruiters can have an overview of their own work."
"The first pain point for us is when we're scheduling interviews with candidates."
"Around 2015 and into '17, I worked at a federal contractor. I had to switch to a different applicant system as I didn't know if SmartRecruiters was OFCCP compliant, which is something that, as a US-based federal contractor, you have to ensure. They should work to appeal to the contractor industry and get the product OFCCP compliant."
"Some features are not as straightforward or user friendly to implement."
"The solution needs to work on a single sign-on."
"The major improvement area is how it integrates with other systems; that's where we've had some sort of pain points."
"A disadvantage of being a SaaS solution is that there aren't many customization options because you are literally buying it out of the box."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I haven't been so involved with pricing, so I don't have all details, but I know that we are paying per head when it comes to different countries. There is an additional fee for new features that they release. If it is something that we would like to use, we need to pay some extra for it."
"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."
"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors. Considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market. Others may offer a similar price, but their services won't be that good or the user-friendliness won't be that great. The licensing works based on how many users are there in a company. If you are using other functionalities, like CRM and HRS, the price increases."
"There were implementation costs in the first year to get everything set up and running, and then they have various modules on top, which are optional and available at an extra charge."
"Back in 2018, when I engaged with their sales, they wanted to charge around $10,000 for an annual subscription. Depending on your organization, that either could or couldn't be expensive. I personally think it's a fair price. However, I engaged them and negotiated a lower price with them. I think I got closer to $6,000. It came with a commitment of three years."
"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."
"They are pretty competitive. As the product matures, it has much more functionality and different pricing models. It can relatively cost a lot more if you want to use additional features, but, in general, it is competitive in the industry. We work on a yearly license agreement based on the company size. There are the support costs, which are a part of the additional cost based on the percentage of the licensing fee. So, it has a license plus support cost. Then, of course, there are other add-on options that we can purchase and procure whenever we want to based on certain negotiated arrangements."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software solutions are best for your needs.
910,005 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iCIMS Recruit?
iCIMS Recruit can be improved by adding additional features related to looking for attrition rate and seeing how many people actually stay within roles, especially for those high-volume roles that ...
What is your primary use case for iCIMS Recruit?
My main use case for iCIMS Recruit is as an applicant tracking system where I review candidates, disposition candidates, and set up candidate screening, which may be virtual or in person. I create ...
What advice do you have for others considering iCIMS Recruit?
The advice that I would give to others using iCIMS Recruit is that it is an ATS system that works well for applicant tracking and workflow process in general. It is easy to navigate, and I think it...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NorthStar Anesthesia, Southeastern Grocers, AmTrust Financial, RPM Pizza, Hackensack Meridian Health, Esurance, Peet’s Coffee, Regis Corporation, Cedar Fair
Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers
Find out what your peers are saying about SmartRecruiters vs. iCIMS Recruit and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
910,005 professionals have used our research since 2012.