Best Applicant Tracking System for Small Businesses 2024

• Video interviewing – While TeamTailor requires you to use external software to host video interviews, ClearCompany lets you do everything in app–which is great if you’re recruiting remote employees.
• Talent management – ClearCompany’s software doesn’t just help with the recruiting process. It also helps you manage broader HR processes–and at no extra cost. By contrast, providers like BambooHR also offer additional features, but for an extra fee.
• Automated texts – ClearCompany has a unique feature that enables you to automate the process of contacting candidates via text message to confirm interviews, making scheduling interviews easier.
• Smart forms and resume management – After uploading their CVs, candidates often find themselves having to re-enter their employment data. ClearCompany auto-populates forms to prevent this, while apps like Monday and Manatal don’t.
• Background checks – Another great feature of ClearCompany is its background check capability, which uses AI to screen top candidates autonomously. Saying that, Zoho and BreezyHR also offer this functionality.

ClearCompany distinguishes itself with two versatile plans: a comprehensive option that grants full access to the entire platform and a modular plan that allows users to select specific functionalities tailored to their needs. This flexibility enables you to choose the best fit for your recruitment strategy.

For both plans, ClearCompany maintains an opaque pricing structure, likely due to its scalability. The platform caters to a diverse range of companies, from small businesses to large enterprises, making a one-size-fits-all pricing model impractical.

ClearCompany is a solid option for small businesses looking for a reliable, easy-to-use ATS that can grow with their business.

• One-stop shop – Rippling offers a comprehensive solution for HR, IT, and finance operations, integrating every facet of employee management. However, compared to Monday.com and Manatal, Rippling is on the pricier end of the spectrum.
• Pipeline templates – Rippling’s arsenal of templates empowers users to tailor the candidate journey based on specific roles. Whether hiring for executive positions or entry-level roles, these templates offer flexibility to adapt recruitment processes accordingly.
• Effortless scheduling – While Monday.com requires you to schedule interviews separately, Rippling lets you effortlessly schedule interviews directly within the ATS interface with just a click.
• Unparalleled reporting – Rippling’s data and analytics dashboard was the most in-depth we saw, giving you access to detailed reports on recruiting vs headcount, pipeline by department and much more. That said, these reports are more fit for businesses with a global footprint than micro organizations.
• Retention risk identifier – Rippling allows you to conduct employee surveys to identify employees at risk of leaving and inform your recruitment pipeline and employee engagement strategy.

Rippling doesn’t list its pricing on its website, meaning you’ll need to request a custom quote to gauge an idea of the cost. The good news is that Rippling offers modular functionality, meaning you’ll only pay for what you use.

Rippling users deemed it a valuable software, considering its 93% 5-star rating that denotes overall users’ experience on Trustpilot. One of its users summed up their experience as “Great employee management software, pretty detailed and easy to use. Recommended!” The remaining negative reviews were about delayed responses after customers scheduled a call with the support team. I also saw a report of an unfulfilled gift card for scheduling the demo.

Rippling is one of the good applicant tracking systems options for fast-growing, global SMBs that want an end-to-end talent management solution.

• Complete business management suite – It’s one of the best automated project management solutions on the market. Monday’s drag-and-drop interface can be customized to fit your organization’s various business needs.
• Step-by-step workflows – I found it easy to track each stage of the recruitment process step-by-step, although it doesn’t post jobs to job boards like ClearCompany or Zoho.
• Solid data analytics – Monday visualizes data gathered from the recruitment process, like the number of applicants and referral sources. However, this data doesn’t go as deep as the likes of Rippling or TeamTailor.
• Automations – Like all providers on this list, Monday.com offers recruitment automations to save you time and money. These are exceptionally simple to use, although TeamTailor’s AI bot takes the overall win.
• Onboarding – You can design your recruitment dashboard to link to an onboarding dashboard for a truly end-to-end hiring experience at no extra cost.

Monday.com provides both monthly and annual pricing plans, with a minimum requirement of three users. Beyond the free plan, which includes three workboards, unlimited documents, over 200 templates, and mobile app access, their tiered offerings are as follows:

• Basic – $10 per seat/month: Features unlimited viewers and items, 5GB of file storage, along with all free plan features.
• Standard – $12 per seat/month: Adds calendar view, guest access, and up to 250 task automations per month, plus all Basic features.
• Pro – $20 per seat/month: Incorporates private boards and documents, chart views, time tracking, and 25,000 task automations per month, along with all Standard features.
• Enterprise – Price on request: Offers enterprise-level security, large-scale automations and integrations, advanced reporting, multilevel permissions, and premium support, including all Pro features.

Users’ experiences with Monday.com are mixed. While many users consider it a flexible system with helpful self-learning sessions and tutorials, others consider it fair, saying it lacks some needed features in their workflow, such as keyboard shortcuts and some automation tools.

Monday.com is best for small businesses looking for a straightforward, cost-effective ATS and business automation suite. Ideally, you’ll have some technical knowledge if you use Monday.com, as it takes a little time to set up all the automations and get to grips with the platform.

• AI-driven Screening – Zoho Recruit’s robust AI features screen candidates and boost the likelihood of you finding top-tier candidates who best fit the requirements. Saying that, Zoho’s AI features aren’t as easy to use as TeamTailor. You’ll need some scripting and coding knowledge to use the platform to its full potential.
• Video Interviewing – Like ClearCompany, Zoho’s video interviewing features help to streamline the hiring process.
• Wider system functionality – Zoho Recruit has expansive integration capabilities, encompassing a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and Zoho’s extensive suite of business products.
• Resume management – This nifty, unique feature allows applicants to submit their resumes to your company through a dedicated widget, meaning candidates can show their interest even if their resumes don’t match an exact job posting.
• Step-by-step oversight – The platform includes customizable features to track each step of recruitment, from receiving applications to onboarding new hires. Advanced analytics help optimize the process, ensuring only suitable candidates move forward.

Zoho Recruit offers a free-forever plan that allows one active job at a time. This may suit some small businesses. However, fast-growing organizations will likely want to post more jobs simultaneously, which is where the paid plans come in.

Zoho’s paid plans pack quite the punch for the price, especially if you only require one or two seats. Here’s a breakdown of what’s included:

• Standard — $25/user/month billed annually — The standard plan enables you to post 10 active jobs at any one time. You’ll also get access to plenty of job boards and can build a branded careers website.
• Enterprise — $50/user/month billed annually — This plan allows you to post up to 20 active jobs. You’ll also benefit from AI candidate matching.

Zoho Recruit has a great reputation with its users, considering its 4.2-star ratings on Trustpilot. Users applaud its usability, easy navigation, responsive customer support, and app suite, which make business management easy. However, some customers expressed the tedious process involved in canceling.

Zoho is a great choice for small businesses that already rely on the Zoho ecosystem. If you’re looking for a free ATS and only have limited recruitment needs, it could also be worth trying out the free plan.

• LinkedIn data enrichment – If you aren’t happy with the candidate data you get from the applicant information, you can refine your candidate profiles by tapping into LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
• Intuitive ATS – As with Monday, Manatal features a drag-and-drop recruitment pipeline that is super easy to use, and automated using AI.
• Candidate discovery – Instead of waiting for candidates to come to you, Manatal enables you to take a proactive stance in candidate sourcing by importing profiles directly from LinkedIn and LinkedIn Recruiter.
• Powerful AI assistant – Manatal’s AI assistant was excellent at finding desirable candidates. It analyzes job postings, cherrypicks the core skills and requirements, and cross-references this data with your talent pool to identify top talent.
• Staffing tracker – This provider comes with a built-in staffing tracker that enables you to oversee every stage of the employment lifecycle for new hires.

Manatal is a powerful and cost-effective platform, especially for hiring teams of only one or two people. Here’s a closer look at pricing.

Manatal comes with a 14-day free trial, so you can get to grips with the platform before purchasing. Here’s a look at what you get:

• Professional — $15/user/month — Post up to 15 jobs per month, and receive access to up to 10,000 candidates.
• Enterprise — $35/user/month — Post an unlimited number of job postings and access unlimited candidates.

Although Manatal has a poor TrustScore on Trustpilot, especially based on customer support, many users still consider it useful for their recruitment processes. Here’s one of the users’ comments: “Makes creating and distributing job listings faster and easier for me. On top of that convenience, you can collaborate with other recruiters or clients during the hiring process. We can use it to keep track of all the many projects we’re working on while we look for the best people.”

Manatal is a great option for small businesses that typically rely on LinkedIn for the hiring process but want to make use of automation to make applicant tracking more seamless and low-touch.

• Effortless job postings – This feature simplifies the hiring process by allowing job openings across more than 50 free and premium job boards with just a single click. Moreover, it empowers users to target niche and diversity-focused job sites, broadening the reach to a wider pool of qualified and diverse applicants.
• Intuitive AI-infused process – Leveraging the power of AI, you can analyze resumes at scale by aligning required qualifications with the vacant position. Once you’ve narrowed down your candidates, you can lean on the AI feature to initiate an automated interview process, offering a selection of over 400 tailored questions based on skills, roles, or industry specifics.
• Career site builder – Similar to Zoho and TeamTailor, users can create an engaging and mobile-friendly career site that effectively showcases the brand and available job opportunities. These sites are highly customizable or can be built from templates. Notably, it offers the unique feature of embedding job listings directly onto the company’s website through its widget or API.
• Detailed applicant process – Offering exclusive features uncommon among other ATS providers, BreezyHR allows users to implement custom scorecards, candidate assessment, and background checks–all of which help you find the right candidate faster. It’s also one of the only providers that allows applicants to schedule their own interviews.
• Broader HR capabilities – Like ClearCompany and Zoho, BreezyHR extends beyond traditional ATS capabilities to serve as a comprehensive HR and employee management solution.

BreezyHR offers a free plan with limited features like the ability to create a career website and post to job boards. However, you’ll be limited in the number of job postings you can implement. Then, there are the paid plans, which are as follows:

Each of BreezyHR’s paid plans comes with unlimited users, candidates, and customer support. Here’s a breakdown of what’s included:

• Startup Plan – $157/month: Offers unlimited candidate pools, along with background screening integrations, in addition to Free plan features.
• Growth Plan – $273/month: Includes automated reference checking and customizable interview guides, alongside Standard features.
• Business Plan – $439/month: Incorporates advanced questionnaires tailored for various industries, assessment integrations, and the capability to compare different candidates, building upon the features of the Growth plan.

BreezyHR only has a few user reviews on Trustpilot, with 56% 5-star ratings, awarding it an average score. Users applauded its versatility, easy usage, and great features, making hiring easy and fast. Some customers are unhappy with its customer support, clunky interface, and limited customization.

BreezyHR is a great choice for hiring managers in small businesses with industry-specific requirements or who want to take their recruitment process to the next level with features like personality tests and scorecards.

• Excellent templates and widgets – Workable’s range of features make hiring a breeze. For example, you can use built-in templates to craft precise job descriptions and establish a structured hiring workflow. While these features aren’t as intuitive as those of Rippling and TeamTailor, Workable is still great to use.
• Global job board access – Besides Rippling, Workable boasts access to the most extensive array of global job boards among its peers. With just a few clicks, users can post job listings to over 200 boards worldwide.
• Local language recruitment – While platforms like TeamTailor and ClearCompany are confined to English-language recruitment, Workable breaks barriers by enabling job postings in the native language of the target country.
• Find passive candidates – Workable interfaces with numerous job boards to identify passive candidates aligning with specific requirements. The software can even reach out to them on your behalf once you approve their selection.
• Careers page – Like TeamTailor, Workable allows you to create an SEO-optimized career page to attract top talent to your company website.

Workable is a great tool, but it’s also expensive when compared to providers like Manatal and ClearCompany.

Workable offers three plans. The starter plan requires a monthly payment, while the higher-tier plans must be paid annually.

Starter — $149/month — For organizations with less than 50 employees. This plan allows you to post two active jobs at any one time. You can also use its AI sourcing tool to view up to 200 profiles, which runs out pretty quickly!

Standard — $360/month (monthly) or $299/month (annual) — This plan allows for unlimited active jobs along with 1,000 AI sourcing profile views per month.

Premier — $599/month — With this plan, you can get up to 20,000 AI sourcing profile views a year, along with a dedicated account manager and single sign-on support.

Workable only has 96 reviews on Trustpilot, with 56% being 5-star, showing good customer experience. The summary of its positive reviews is flexibility, user-friendliness, customer service, and robust features. Many users had issues with its free trial as it didn’t offer them the flexibility they needed, which led to their account being disabled.

Workable is suitable for small, growing businesses that want to run a remote, global organization.

• Self-scheduled interviews – Instead of relying on you to schedule interviews, TeamTailor empowers candidates to to their own interview scheduling by booking their own interviews based on your availability. This is a pretty rare feature only offered by TeamTailor and BreezyHR.
• Strategic analytics – The platform equips you with insights about your recruitment funnel, helping you to identify potential areas for improvement. While this feature isn’t as robust as Rippling’s data-driven offering, it’s still impressive.
• Career site builder – TeamTailor’s career site builder was, hands down, the best we tried. With drag-and-drop widgets and super simple navigation, it took us just minutes to create an attractive career website.
• Mobile app – TeamTailor is amongst the minority of ATS providers that have invested in building a mobile app for on-the-go recruitment. Not only is this handy, but TeamTailor’s mobile app is exceptionally easy to use.
• AI assistant – TeamTailor’s platform is embedded with an AI assistant, which can help with SEO-optimization for job ads, replying to candidates, video meeting summaries and much more. While this feature isn’t unique amongst the top ATS providers, TeamTailor’s AI assistant was the easiest to use in our view.

TeamTailor’s pricing plan used to start at $200 per month. However, since we last reviewed the software, its pricing structure has become opaque. You’ll now need to request a custom quote to gauge how much the software will cost your organization, with prices varying based on the size of your business.

TeamTailor’s users applaud its templates and automation, which make recruiters’ job posts look professional. Its customer service is also great, making its customers happy. Its overall TrustScore is 3.0, which is an average rating.

TeamTailor applicant tracking system is best for small businesses with ambitious hiring plans that require a unique career website and an always-on approach to recruitment.

• HR suite – BambooHR is a comprehensive Human Resources Information System (HRIS), bundling together an array of features including an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), time tracking, payroll processing, and tools for employee engagement and satisfaction.
• Complete employee lifecycle management – BambooHR facilitates seamless management of the entire employee lifecycle, encompassing hiring, onboarding, and even employee departures. This feature sets it apart from recruiting ATS solutions like Workable and Manatal.
• Retention tools – BambooHR comes with an employee mobile app that covers everything from annual leave to goal performance setting.
• Great candidate experience – This provider puts the emphasis on making a great first impression, using automation to ensure timely communication with applicants throughout the recruitment process, which can help your business standout from competitors.
• Offer letters made easy – BambooHR simplifies the process of creating offer letters with customizable templates that automatically populate candidate information for various positions, job types, and other requirements. This feature sets it apart from other ATS providers, which don’t have this feature.

Like Rippling, Bamboo HR’s pricing is opaque. You’ll need to request a custom quote to gauge an idea of the cost for your organization.

BambooHR has an excellent TrustScore of 4.3 on Trustpilot, based on its above-average number of 5-star reviews. Overall, users praise BambooHR’s accessibility, easy usage, exceptional UX, and customer service, which one user qualified as A++. One complaint that I found common with BambooHR is its sudden price increase.

BamooHR is a solid choice for small businesses that want an end-to-end talent acquisition, management, and HR software solution.