8 Best HR software for Startups in 2025

In recent years, HR teams are increasingly moving towards technology and searching for the best HR software that allows them to put employee well-being first. HR professionals know how important it is to maintain a healthy and happy workforce since they are considered the most important resource of a company. That’s why it’s important to equip your HR team with the best HR software for startups so they can achieve their goals without sacrificing the employee experience.

The best HR software on the market helps companies digitize and adapt to the future (and the present), as well as offering greater control over employee attendance tracking and documentation management.

In this article, we will see step by step what makes a good HR management system and what the characteristics are to choose the most suitable one for your startup.

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What is HR software?

Let’s start with the basics: what is HR software?

Human resources professionals have to perform many repetitive tasks during their working days, such as signing contracts, screening candidates for a new position, checking working hours for each worker, managing employee vacations, terminations, onboarding…

Until recently, HR managers were buried under a pile of documents to manage. Nowadays many of these processes that took hours are now automated. HR management software is the single solution to tackle all the different needs of the HR team.

HR management software digitizes and automates the most complex tasks. In addition to saving time, it helps prevent human mistakes and ensure everything is accurate. The purpose of an HR solution is to ease the work of HR managers and allow them to dedicate more of their time to managing their people, not just paychecks or employee hours. Moreover, human resources software solutions facilitate communication and interaction between HR and the rest of the company. By implementing a digital HR solution, startups can reduce their admin workload and focus on growing their team and company.

Key Features of HR Software

When searching for the best HR software for startups, you’ll want to ensure the tool you’re choosing includes these essential features:

• Payroll processing: You’ll want a solution that automatically syncs your employee hours to payroll to ensure accurate payslips, as well as automates your tax filing.
• Time tracking: Simplifies and automates how you track employee hours whether that’s on site or for remote teams.
• Automates the entire employee lifecycle: From recruitment to offboarding, your platform streamlines how you manage HR tasks, including onboarding, monitoring their performance, and providing them with development opportunities.

Of course, keep in mind the user’s ability to navigate and the overall ease of use of the platform you’re considering. Make sure it is easy to adopt for your managers and employees, as they will be using the platform daily. Other notable features are reports and analytics capabilities to capture real-time data, the ability to conduct performance reviews, track business expenses, and manage time off. The right HR software will provide all the solutions needed to revolutionize your business.

8 Best HR Software for Startups for 2025

Popular HR software solutions provide a range of features, including employee onboarding, performance management tools, and finance tools. Check out the best solutions for your startup so you can start investing in your all-in-one HR software.

1. Factorial

As you may have noticed, human resources software plays a crucial role in any company. This all-in-one platform automates core HR processes and essential business operations. From attendance tracking and PTO management to monitoring employee engagement, Factorial has you covered. It even supports your remote teams, helping you stay connected through built-in chat and comments. It even helps enhance your team’s internal communication across the board.

Factorial is an innovative, high-performance, and easy-to-use software that allows you to quickly innovate your small or medium-sized business. It is not just a simple human resources software but much more. It helps you save time, improve performance and employee satisfaction rates, make data-based decisions, and manage everything related to the life of workers in the company. With Factorial, you therefore have a complete software that allows you to:

• Track attendance and employee leave
• Manage holidays and PTO requests
• Develop custom HR reports
• Optimize your expense management
• Monitor your team’s performance
• Improve onboarding processes
• Attract and hire top talent
• Keep track of employee hours with easy clock-in/out features
• Sync employee hours with payroll for accurate payslips
• And much more

👉 Request a free demo and discover all the features and advantages that a software like Factorial can bring to your company.

Key Features:

• HR Project management tools: Monitor your projects, track the employee hours dedicated to each one, and manage associated expenses from start to finish. Giving you full visibility into major projects and all essential information from one centralized platform.
• Conduct 360° performance reviews: Gather feedback from colleagues to gain a deeper understanding of your team’s performance and progress. This enables you to conduct more thorough performance reviews, provide meaningful insights, and create opportunities for growth and advancement.
• An all-in-one, centralized platform: Factorial is the best HR software for startups thanks to its robust features and all-in-one platform. You can automate HR tasks and payroll, generate in-depth reports to support smarter decision-making, and manage the entire employee lifecycle from a centralized location. Additionally, all your documents are securely stored while keeping everything organized and accessible for full visibility and transparency.

What users are saying:

• From Marta G. on G2: “We have been using Factorial for a year now and all I can say is that it highly improved our operations. Before Factorial we were using different tools to manage vacation, payroll, info and documents, it was still a very manual process. Now the employees have so much more independence and visibility on their information that they don’t even write me as much – so I get to get more stuff done.”
• From Alex L. on G2: “Feature heavy product for a very good price compared to others on the market – we have a full suit of features whereas other software would only give us base modules for the same price.”
• Javier R. from G2: “Factorial stands out for its intuitive interface and ease of use, making it accessible even for non-technical users. Features like employee time tracking, document management, and payroll integration save significant time and streamline HR processes. The centralized dashboard provides clear visibility into employee data, ensuring compliance and effective workforce management.”

2. Paycor

Paycor is a popular platform that automates and simplifies key HR functions, such as recruiting, talent management, employee development, and more. It primarily caters to SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses) to help alleviate their workload and streamline their administrative tasks for maximum efficiency.

Key features:

• Payroll: Automate your payroll processing and tax calculations. That way, you know you’re compliant and adhering to employment regulations while ensuring timely payments.
• Talent acquisition and onboarding: Utilize Paycor’s ATS to create job postings, interview candidates, and offer contracts to the best-matched candidates. Go straight from the recruitment process to onboarding your new hire to give them a proper welcome.
• Automated timesheets: Track employee hours with Paycor’s mobile app, desktop, or physical on-site time trackers. This ensures accurate timesheets for payroll and ensures your team is diligently taking their required breaks and meals.

What users are saying:

• From Josh P. on G2: “Good for the price. All in one solution for HRIS, LMS, ATS, etc. [However,] the user interface is a little dated and could use work.”
• From James H. on G2: “Paycor is easy to use and intuitive. The features make the users job easier and is an all inclusive system that supports large or small organizations.”
• From Dulcey S. on G2: “Paycor is very easy to navigate and it has a lot of options for not only TA teams but also the hiring managers as well. It is an All-in-one platform! [Also, we’ve experienced] a lag [in the platform] and [it can] take quite some time to load.”

3. HiBob

HiBob is a modern HR software that serves small to mid-size global companies. It is considered one of the best HR software for startups due to its user-friendly interface. It also provides a unified solution that helps HR professionals streamline their daily tasks, including managing international employees’ documents, onboarding new hires, and organizing performance management initiatives like performance reviews.

Key features:

• Employee self service portal: This portal allows employees to manage their own data, freeing up your HR team to focus on more strategic objectives that support business growth. Additionally, employees can view their benefits, PTO balance, and more straight from their dashboard.
• Custom automation: Automate your core administrative tasks by customizing your triggers and workflows based on your business needs. You can ensure your most tedious and manual-intensive work gets completed automatically, saving you time and effort.
• Onboarding tools: Simplify your onboarding process by creating onboarding checklists to ensure no critical steps are missed. You can also request documents from new hires in advance, so they can focus on settling in rather than getting bogged down in paperwork.

What users are saying:

• From Georgie W. on G2: “Our team has a deep appreciation for Bob; the platform has been incredibly well-received due to its intuitive and user-friendly design. [Also,] there is a pressing need for improvement in providing Customer Managers with greater flexibility in addressing questions during and after the implementation phase.”
• From Richard S. on G2: “As a system its fairly in depth and thorough in terms of what functionality it offers. I also appreciated its flexibility – for example our organisation requires PTO tracking but not approval, and HiBob offers that. Its also actually simple enough to use as a regular employee which I find most HR platforms do not really bother with. We now use it for payroll too which is very convenient to keep everything in one place.”

4. Oyster

With Oyster, you can manage payroll and HR functions from the same tool. You can automate payroll processing, optimize staff selection and recruitment, monitor company KPIs with custom dashboards, and digitize HR documents securely. In addition to being an HR platform, it is also an Employer of Record (EOR) that allows companies to hire employees and contractors from around the world, without needing to set up local entities.

Key features:

• Global payroll: Oyster streamlines compliance, payroll, employee benefits, and employment contracts so you can ensure you are adhering to local employment regulations.
• EOR: Oyster’s platform helps you quickly find top global talent, making it easier to expand your team and grow your business. They handle the complexities of local employment laws and ensure full compliance with all regulations.
• Onboarding and offboarding: Automate the end of your talent acquisition phase, onboarding, with Oyster. You can onboard new hires quickly so they can start making a meaningful impact with your team.

What users are saying:

• From Anne S. on G2: “Oyster makes it super easy to navigate through local / regional legal regulations when requesting new working contracts. It’s a step by step guidance which helps making informed decisions about new working agreement contents.”
• From Stefania L. on G2: “I love how everything is so easy to access. All my payslips, holiday requests, contracts in one platform. The only thing I would like is to be able to bulk download documents, clicking one by one can make it time consuming.”

5. Personio

Like Factorial, Personio is also a HR platform that responds to the different needs of HR managers. This software is ideal for SMBs with less than 5,000 employees. Although it is widely used in Europe, it has not seen much success with U.S.-based companies. Personio opened an office in New York City to serve North American clients more efficiently.

With Personio’s platform, you can automate processes such as vacation and leave management, speed up staff selection with an integrated ATS system, analyze HR data thanks to customized reports, and centralize personnel documents in a single secure space. It’s a great tool to simplify your HR processes.

Key features:

• Centralized document management: Store all employee data, company documents, and certificates in one centralized location. Your digital files will be securely stored in a GDPR-compliant system, ensuring easy access and a well-organized document management process.
• Talent management: From the recruitment stage to skill development, you can monitor your talent throughout their entire journey with your company. Ensure their growth aligns with your business objectives every step of the way.
• Employee engagement: Gain insights about your workforce through surveys. You can gain valuable insights into how your employees are feeling about their work and the company overall. This way, you can make actionable changes to build a positive workplace.

What users are saying:

• From Alexander R. on G2: “Everything is there. My documents, my certificates, the working hours, my vacation days. I do not have to log into different portals to find out what interests me, everything is in Personio.”
• From a verified user on G2: “Personio has some solid HR solutions, but its pricing can be a bit steep for smaller businesses or startups. Sometimes, users run into glitches or technical issues that can throw off their workflow, though the customer support team usually jumps in quickly to help out. Also, while the platform is pretty customizable, some folks might wish for even more options to tweak features to fit their needs.”

6. Rippling

Rippling allows you to manage HR, IT, and finance from the same platform. This allows businesses to streamline their employee management and automate payroll without switching tools. Additionally, you can automate and customize your workflows to maximize your team’s efficiency.

Key features:

• Payroll & localized compliance: Companies can run payroll in 185+ countries with automatic tax filing, multi-currency support, global minimum wage enforcement, and real-time compliance alerts. This ensures you are compensating your team fairly, accurately, and on time.
• Finance management: Gain complete visibility over your business spending. With Rippling, you can set spending policies to be automatically approved or denied to make sure you stay within your budget.
• Enhance IT security: Grant access and control permission settings to ensure maximum security with your digital tools. This allows you to centralize your systems and customize security clearance based on individuals, not teams.

What users are saying:

• From Muhammad A. on G2: “Rippling has been super easy to use from day one. I was able to set up my account without needing any help, which was a big plus. I really like how simple it is to update federal and state tax info, and checking PTO requests is straightforward too.”
• From Janice O. on G2: “[For] our team members who are not very computer-savvy, adapting to all the automations and integrations can sometimes be a bit difficult. With time and patience, though, it becomes much easier, and the overall benefits outweigh the initial learning curve.”

7. BambooHR

BambooHR is one of the best HR software solutions for startups because it operates in over 150 countries. It automates your HR tasks, including performance management, time tracking, and recruitment. This is a great platform for startups looking for reliable HR tools to integrate into their daily work lives.

Key features:

• Time tracking: Make it easy for your team to clock-in/out and request time off by BambooHR’s mobile app or with their desktop version. This streamlines the process for managers when it comes to approving time off requests and reviewing timesheets.
• HR reports & analytics: Generate custom reports to gain valuable insights into your workforce. You can understand your team’s performance, key metrics like turnover rates or time-to-hire, and general workforce trends.
• Payroll: Automate your payroll management with BambooHR and streamline the entire process. Your team can easily access and review their payslips through the employee portal. This automation reduces administrative workload and minimizes the risk of human error.

What users are saying:

• From Wendy D on G2: “The platform is very clear and very thorough for everything HR related. Any time I need to reach out to Customer Support with a question, they respond promptly and make sure that we reach the answer. I work in the BambooHR platform on a daily basis, for the majority of the day.”
• From Kenzie H. on G2: “BambooHR does a great job with its recruitment process. The system is easy to use and connects well with ZipRecruiter and Glassdoor. By allowing members on your team to view and share comments, it would be great. I wish it was able to tie into LinkedIn. [Additionally,] the customer support is lackluster.”

8. Gusto

Gusto is an all-in-one payroll and HR platform designed for small to mid-sized businesses. It simplifies complex people operations by automating payroll, managing employee benefits, and offering intuitive HR tools to help businesses stay compliant and focused on growth.

Key features:

• Talent management: Motivate your team and foster continuous growth by encouraging regular feedback loops. Use Gusto’s HR tools to customize performance review cycles and support your team in reaching their full potential.
• Finance tools: Use Gusto to view and manage your team’s payslips, allow employees to request a debit card, and help everyone budget more effectively. Additionally, Gusto automates your payroll processing so all financial documents and processes are centralized from one tool.
• Time and attendance software: Manage your hourly employees more efficiently by automating how they clock in and out and request time off. This streamlines scheduling, reduces manual errors, and ensures accurate payroll processing.

What users are saying:

• From Nolan W. on G2: “Gusto is easy and intuitive to use for both Employee and Employer and provides a mobile friendly employee portal for employees to review all their important tax, payroll and employment data. Setting up single or multi-state is incredibly easy to do, and gusto is a much lower cost alternative than many, many other Payroll/HCM providers out there.”
• From Kati S. on G2: “Gusto is very easy to use as a user or employee. The forms are simple and clear. It’s easy to get to pay stubs and information I need for payroll. [However,] as an employer, Gusto is very complicated. The settings are not intuitive, there are constantly adjustments to the accounts, syncing issues, and limited options for tracking purposes.”

What You Should Expect From the Best HR Software

Now that you have a clear idea of ​​what you want, you will be interested in knowing what a human resources software should include to be useful to you. Here are our tips for choosing the best human resources software .

Storing information in the cloud

Furthermore, the ability to store all information in the cloud has a security advantage, not just accessibility. And this brings us to the next point.

The best HR software guarantees security and privacy

Worker data is a sensitive subject; you know it more than anyone else. The program you choose will have to ensure their security and meet the most stringent standards to achieve this goal.

But not only that; It should also give you the ability to assign permissions to review certain data, so that each employee knows who has access to their information and who doesn’t, as well as having a place where only they can access it.

Intuitive employee portal

What good is a solution that can’t be implemented? If the employee portal program you choose is difficult for both you and your employees, and you spend more time learning how to use it than solving problems and optimizing processes…

The aim of this software is to facilitate work activities , and also to enable workers to perform signature or signing of documents, for example, faster.

Automatic synchronization

In a leave and leave management software, absence days should be updated automatically when an employee makes changes. Therefore, the information will always be up to date and it will be easier to work and schedule activities . In this case, the insertion of new employees or the sending of documents can be automated, saving many hours of work.

Additionally, the software must be integrated with any tools you use on a daily basis.

The best HR software is always adapted to current legislation

In addition to complying with data security regulations and GDPR , it will need to comply with any laws you have to work with in your workplace. For example, the Act on Control of Working Hours if you want to use the software to record employee hours.

Equally important is that the Software evolves and always keeps up with new laws; The software must always comply with the latest regulatory changes, to ensure that you do everything in the most correct way possible.

Benefits of Using HR Software

Not all HR software is created equal. If you are planning to start using it, we recommend that you carefully evaluate the benefits that the application you choose promises to bring to your company.

The best employee management software should facilitate, digitize, and automate multiple processes, starting from those with the greatest impact. After analyzing the needs of Italian and foreign SMEs, we came to the conclusion that all small and medium-sized organizations should opt for HR applications that allow them to:

• Save on business costs
• Bringing out the best talent in your company
• Making strategic decisions supported by data

These three are the main advantages guaranteed by a good quality human resources management software. An All-in-one software, however, as you will discover by continuing to read, ensures you additional advantages.

An HR management system is truly complete when it allows you to digitize:

• Document management and electronic signature
• Employee attendance tracking (including shift management and overtime calculation)
• Vacation and leave management and team calendar
• Recruiting and selection of new talents
• Performance or productivity evaluation
• Data collection and analysis

Advantages of HR software for Startups

The best HR software provides startups numerous benefits, including improved employee engagement, enhanced performance management, and better talent acquisition. It can help small businesses manage their HR tasks efficiently and provide real time data to make smarter decisions.

Specifically, by adopting one of the best HR software solutions on the market, you will ensure:

• Fewer errors in human resources management: Remember when we talked about human error? This does not only refer to an error in the working hours register. If all the information is clear and can be easily consulted, it is possible, for example, to organize the workers’ holidays without overlaps.
• Greater security: When data is stored in the cloud and encrypted, you can provide unique permissions so that each employee can only access their own documents.
• Transparency: both for the Human Resources department and for the workers, and a possible labor and social security inspection, it is important to have full control of all the information that is created. If it is an intuitive management system, it will also improve the experience that your employees will have, because they will be able to easily access all the information that concerns them.
• Always up-to-date: With just a few clicks you can send documents and ask your employees to sign, as well as make changes to the information you have entered into the program.
• Instant availability of any document: you will no longer have to spend an hour looking for a document that you do not know where it is located. 

And all this can be summed up in two concepts; saving time and efficiency . This inevitably leads to an improvement in productivity, starting with the Human Resources department and ending with the rest of the workers in general.

Choosing the Right HR Software

To get the most out of their HR software, startups and small businesses should establish clear objectives that they want to achieve with the help of automation tools. You should also consider key factors like scalability, user experience, and integration capabilities when choosing the right HR platform.

As we know, the right HR software can help your startup streamline your hiring process, reduce your HR team’s workload, and enhance your company’s overall efficiency. That’s why it is so important to consider what your team needs are and how HR software can solve those needs. By choosing a comprehensive hr platform with core features like payroll management, time tracking, and benefits administration, startups can set themselves up for success.

There’s a reason why the best HR software for startups is Factorial. Factorial offers a wide range of features to fit the needs of any company, while maintaining a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and implement. Transform your business with one powerful HR tool! See Factorial in action and get your free trial today.