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NEOGOV vs SmartRecruiters 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

NEOGOV
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
18th
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartRecruiters
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of NEOGOV is 1.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 3.4%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SmartRecruiters3.4%
NEOGOV1.8%
Other94.8%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1479855 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief HR Officer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Customizable and very centralized but quite expensive
I like the fact that you can adjust the views for who's using the system. I'm an administrator, so I have access to the entire solution, however, I can crop it down for my field staff to go in and do basic views on their own recruits, on their own recruitments, et cetera. It's customizable to the level of customer that's using it. That's probably the most valuable feature. I have all of our applicants in one place and then each department, depending on who's doing the recruiting for them, can go in on a department level. Everything's all in one place, however, so it's very central.
Anudeep Kamuni - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Lead - TA ops & Analytics | Strategy Growth & Leadership at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees
Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability
There are a couple of areas of improvement. SmartRecruiter lacks certain features in terms of usability. For instance, we cannot move candidate profiles, interview feedback, notes, and activities related to one candidate when transitioning from one job to another. We have to manually copy and paste everything for that specific candidate. This is a significant drawback. Additionally, the filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager. This level of inaccuracy is unexpected for an application, especially for smaller organizations. It should have been corrected easily. Moreover, the CRM module lacks video reporting capabilities. These are some the biggest improvement I would like to see.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's customizable to the level of customer that's using it. That's probably the most valuable feature."
"The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."
"With just a click of a button, we can manage the process. Even generating offer letters and obtaining electronic signatures through DocSign are integrated into this application."
"The candidate experience was better because the whole process was there."
"What I really like about it is that it feels minimal, but is also dynamic. There aren't a lot of ways to get lost, which is good."
"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."
"I found the core product quite useful. It is easy to use and quite user-friendly. They have also got other options, such as CRM and HRS. They have other versions such as smart distribute, which is an HRS type of system to analyze and get permissions needed from the applicants. In terms of pricing, SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors."
"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."
"The features that were most important for us to have were that it is user friendly and functional, which is definitely the case with SmartRecruiters. Our organization is located in developing countries where the bandwidth and internet stability are not the strongest and SmartRecruiters accommodates this challenge. It was a very big plus that we are able to use the system even in these locations."
 

Cons

"Having the feeds more easily developed and implemented would be ideal. I'd like them to be more plug and play so we can put them into our HCM, our human capital management system. For what it costs, that should just be part of the deal."
"The solution's reporting feature could be improved because it is not very strong."
"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."
"We require greater flexibility for customization with our employer branding. Currently, it is very much driven by the SmartRecruiters design. We are using a SaaS solution, so we are powered by what is in the core product itself. 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. You use whatever is offered to you in a box as much as you can, and that might be a problem sometimes because customizations are not achievable. They should definitely improve and provide more flexibility for customizations. For a large organization like ours, they can provide more flexibility on the authorization side of things. They could create a much more flexible way of access and separate the IT or help desk access when they need to go into the system and do some fixes. Currently, it is set up in a way that that you have access for everything or nothing, which is not useful in terms of the separation of duty that we have. There are also other things like matrix, where we can have a better and deeper kind of analysis."
"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."
"There were problems with integrations around other systems and each one had to be custom-built, which took a little while to get set up and running."
"SmartRecruiters' on-click application process could be better."
"The solution needs to work on a single sign-on."
 

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."
"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 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."
"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."
"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."
"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Baltimore, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, St. Louis County, Alabama State University, Eastern Michigan University, Carlsbad Unified School District, Seattle Public Schools, King County Superior Court, Superior Court of California, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, San Diego Unified Port District
Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers
Find out what your peers are saying about SmartRecruiters, Greenhouse, Zoho and others in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software. Updated: January 2026.
881,227 professionals have used our research since 2012.