When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn Rippling and Workday are two of the best human resource information systems (HRIS) available.
Rippling is perfect for medium to large companies looking to automate hiring, onboarding, and payroll processes.
On the other hand, Workday is ideal for large enterprises who need an all-in-one platform to handle every aspect of finance, HR, and workforce planning.
But if you ask us, we believe Rippling is a more complete HRIS solution than Workday.
To show you why, we compared Rippling vs Workday on five key criteria for selecting an HRIS software: its features, pricing, scalability, integrations, and ease of use.
Here’s a quick overview of our findings:
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Rippling vs Workday At a Glance
| Rippling | Workday | |
| Starting Price | $8/mo/user + Per feature cost | Custom pricing |
| Free Plan | ❌ | ❌ |
| Tax Filing | ✅ Files 941s, W-3s, new hire reports, and state-specific tax forms | ✅ Generates W-2s, W-4s, 1094, and 1095 forms |
| Employee Benefits Management | ✅ Offers plans from top benefits providers, including Aetna and Humana. | ✅ Create custom benefits packages for each employee type and designation. |
| Employee Portal | ✅ | ✅ |
| Integrations | ✅ 100+ integrations, including Zapier, QuickBooks, and Slack. Also has an API. | ✅ 600+ integrations including ADP & LinkedIn Learning. Also has an API. |
| General HR | ✅ Offers hiring, onboarding, talent management, and payroll. | ✅ Offers hiring, onboarding, talent management, and payroll. |
| Customer Support | Help center, live chat, and virtual call | Workday Community, phone, and email support |
| Read Review | Read our full Rippling review | Read our full Workday review |
Rippling vs Workday Pricing Compared
Rippling and Workday don’t share their pricing plans online. We did find some information during our research, which we’ve shared below:
| Rippling | Workday | |
| Free Version | ❌ | ❌ |
| Starting price | Starts at $8 per month per user. Increases depending on selected features. | Custom pricing depends on features. But some reports say it starts at $99 per month per user |
Rippling HR Cloud starts at $8 per month per user. You can customize your subscription by choosing from the available modules like hiring, payroll, time tracking, and so on. Each module has an associated cost which increases your overall subscription cost.
Read our full Rippling review.
Workday follows a bespoke pricing model. It keeps a tight lid on its pricing plans, but from our research, we were able to conclude that the platform costs around $50 to $100 per month per user—a significantly higher cost per user than Rippling. It also includes set-up costs, which are traditionally not seen in HR platforms.
Read our full Workday review.
It’s difficult to provide a concrete answer on who offers more value for money without really knowing their pricing plans. Our best advice is to reach out to the sales team to find a plan that suits you.
Rippling vs Workday Ease of Use
Rippling is easier to use than Workday because of its plug-and-play approach to building HR processes. You can drag-and-drop workflows into your process or choose from existing templates, and Rippling will take care of the rest.
It’s a great platform for automating mundane tasks like sending offer letters, tracking applications, planning benefits, and so on—all without writing a single line of code.
If you’re looking for a more advanced HRIS platform, we recommend Workday. But its industry-specific solutions need a dedicated team of Workday experts to set it up (which comes at an additional cost). Moreover, apart from the payroll system, new users will find its user interface difficult to navigate.
So, although Workday is a more feature-rich solution, we’d still go with RIppling because its streamlined setup and automation capabilities allow HR professionals to focus on more important tasks like improving work culture.
Rippling vs Workday Key Features
Both offer similar human resource management (HRM) features. But Rippling is a better HRM platform than Workday because it simplifies almost every aspect of the employee lifecycle.
We understood this while comparing Rippling vs Workday on five key features:
- Recruitment
- Learning management
- Employee feedback and analysis
- Benefits administration
- Reporting and analytics
Let’s look at each one in detail!
Recruitment
Workday offers more flexibility, but we found its workflows cumbersome.
It offers two ways for HR managers to find candidates:
- Internal portals where current employees can search and apply for openings or get matched with roles that fit their profile.
- Career pages where you can post about your role and company. External candidates can apply for jobs on the page, drop off their resumes, and sign up for alerts about future openings.
The Workday Skills Cloud simplifies this further by automatically matching candidates with the jobs that complement their skills. All recruiters need to do is search for the skills they need.
However, candidates need to set up a new account for every new company, which may discourage many from applying via Workday, especially if they’re applying to multiple companies.
On the other hand, Rippling simplifies the hiring process for both the candidate and the recruiter by removing manual steps from the hiring lifecycle.
You can choose from templates or create custom hiring workflows for each role or team. Its personalized dashboard lets everyone involved, from recruiters to managers and department heads, monitor application progress.
Learning management
Workday offers learning opportunities for both internal and external employees. Its centralized hub uses Workday Skills Cloud to automatically match employees and contractors with career development opportunities.
Employees can upskill for that promotion or raise, while contractors and vendors can access the necessary information to complete their work successfully. You can reinforce learning using quizzes with multiple-choice and open-response questions.
Rippling’s cloud-based learning management system (LMS) comes with 24 pre-built courses covering topics like cyber security to workplace harassment training. You can also upload courses teaching industry- or company-specific skills and measure employee understanding with quizzes.
However, Rippling focuses more on ensuring your employees comply with state requirements than actual career development—even blocking time tracking until they complete the mandatory training. But they do offer course certifications, which can come in handy in the long run.
Employee feedback and analysis
Workday‘s Employee Voice feature lets you collect anonymous feedback from your team. It processes the data using artificial intelligence and natural language processing to identify recurring themes, create accurate comparisons, and build workforce analytics models.
The results are shared on personalized dashboards offering role-specific insights. You can also set benchmarks for managers to create healthier and more productive work environments.
Rippling also offers a feedback system similar to Workday called Pulse, with templates for exit surveys, device setup surveys, etc. You can also create your own from scratch.
You can set it up so surveys are automatically sent out when an employee completes an action. For example, if an employee accepts your offer, you can send them a hiring experience survey.
To ensure the right people receive the feedback, Rippling uses response triggers to notify the concerned team leads and managers.
Let’s say an employee says they’re leaving because of low compensation, then the employee compensation team is sent a notification immediately.
In a way, Rippling offers a human touch compared to Workday’s data-driven one.
Benefits administration
Workday lets you create custom benefits packages for each employee type. Employees can use the self-service platform to select benefits, update dependents, and change beneficiaries. Offering more control to employees lets you focus on creating benefit packages that actually aid employees.
Meanwhile, Rippling‘s self-service platform lets employees choose from over 4,000 plans from leading carriers like Aetna, Humana, and Blue Cross. They can also connect you with their existing brokers via Rippling. All you’ll need to do is add the desired workflow to your onboarding or benefits management process.
Reporting and analytics
Rippling offers basic reporting and analytics features. Its workforce analytics platform compiles data from HR, IT, Finance, and other third-party systems to provide data-driven insights about your organization. Something that did stand out is Rippling supports formulas as well as filters, allowing users to compare data using Excel-like formulas.
Meanwhile, Workday reports seem easier to use than Rippling. It offers 5000+ reports and 175+ dashboards that combine data from other functions to provide decision-makers with powerful insights into their workforce. Using its drag-and-drop ad hoc analysis feature, you can build discovery dashboards to visualize data in an easily digestible format.
Rippling vs Workday Integrations
Workday offers 600+ native integrations, while Rippling supports only 100+ integrations. Apart from this, nothing really sets the two apart since both offer useful native integrations and APIs to connect almost any app with the platform.
So, before choosing a platform, find out which one supports integrations that seamlessly connect your existing applications and workflows.
Rippling vs Workday Scalability
Both are complex, feature-rich software, but Rippling is more scalable than Workday. Its plug-and-play workflows allow you to quickly build and update your processes to meet your needs.
Workday does offer more functions than Rippling. Like vendor management, supply chain management, and so on. But considering how difficult Workday is to use, you'll need to hire more people to manage the additional functionalities.
Rippling vs Workday Payroll Customer Reviews
Workday has some great reviews online. Customers are happy with its user interface, features, flexibility, and reporting capabilities. However, there are a few who wish the platform was easier to set up and use, especially for a platform on the higher end of the price spectrum.
Meanwhile, Rippling users have a better experience with the platform, highlighting its ease of use and versatility as its main advantages. It's worth noting there are some concerns about delays in canceling certain services and customer support's slow response times.
Conclusion - Rippling vs Workday: Which One Wins?
From our research, it's clear that Rippling is a better HRIS platform than Workday.
It offers access to very similar features but takes it a step further with predefined workflows, automation capabilities, and customization options that simplify HR tasks for both beginners and experts.
To understand its full strength, check out our detailed Rippling review!
How We Test HRIS Software
- Pricing — We compared how both platforms price their products and the value for the money they offer.
- Features — We thoroughly checked the user documentation and signed up for free trials (if available) to understand how each platform works.
- Integrations — We scanned the list of integrations to see if they offer useful tools that you're likely to use.
- Automation — We checked what kind of automation features are available and their accuracy.
- Ease of use — We analyzed how easy it is to use each platform from both a new and experienced user's perspective.
- Third-Party Reviews — We went through user reviews from reputed sites like G2 and Capterra to understand the overall user sentiment in the market.
How to Choose the Best HRIS Software
When it comes to choosing the best HRIS software, your choices aren't limited to just these two platforms. Here are a few common considerations when choosing the best HRIS Software:
- Budget — Check whether the platform falls within your budget and includes essential features for running your business.
- Ease of Use — Test the platform using free trials or demos to check if it actually simplifies your HR processes.
- Compatibility — Ensure the platform integrates with existing software so business continues smoothly without much disruption.
- Key Features — Determine if the features provided solve your business's HR needs. For example, does it offer applicant tracking systems?
- Scalability — Understand how easy it is to upgrade (or downgrade) your plan to meet your changing business requirements.
- Customer Support — HRIS systems are complex. So check whether customer support is responsive and helpful in answering queries.
