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ADP Workforce Now vs Workday comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

ADP Workforce Now
Ranking in Benefits Administration
10th
Ranking in Talent Management
25th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
HR Analytics Software (5th)
Workday
Ranking in Benefits Administration
1st
Ranking in Talent Management
2nd
Ranking in Cloud HCM
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of ADP Workforce Now is 2.3%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 8.7%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workday8.7%
ADP Workforce Now2.3%
Other89.0%
Cloud HCM
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user477510 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Chief Information Officer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 12, 2016
 

Featured Reviews

Vineeth John - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, People & Culture at a agriculture with 201-500 employees
Custom reporting tool with field grabber, easy modules for recruitment and provides numerous options for integration
The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP because it has all the bells and whistles and all the key features you can possibly think of. If it isn't there, there's always a third-party vendor you can integrate that way. But the only issue is that because it's complex, there needs to be some sort of system, at least on the back end, for the admins to understand what leads to what. We expect AI to improve multiple things with HR processes. The most obvious and common one would be the self-service function for employees, like a chatbot to help with FAQs. We are also building an AI tool that can possibly help managers make better talent management decisions. This tool will pull from the performance management tool, the talent profile, and the reports that we generally have to score employees across all different dimensions.
Eslam Abo Elnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo
Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support
There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."
"I love the integration of HR, payroll, tax filing, benefits, time and attendance, GL, ACA, employee/manager self-service, reporting and analytics."
"For small to mid-sized companies, Workforce Now is one of the better products on the market, clean with an easy interface that is simple to maneuver around, stable, and will continue to improve into the future."
"It is hard to go wrong with choosing ADP as a solution for nearly any company."
"The platform is on a private cloud that is fully secure with no way for hacker penetration."
"The most valuable features are the reporting and benefits piece."
"The most interesting feature for me on ADP is the custom reporting tool. It's got something called a field grabber, which makes it so much easier to generate your own custom reports simply by pulling tabs from any feature."
"In my day-to-day work, attendance tracking would be most important. That's because I have a really diverse group of employees, and I have a subset of younger folks who are struggling with their attendance. So, that's the thing that I'm most involved with currently."
"It's intuitive, a very usable tool and it's easy to find the data you're looking for."
"This is a reliable solution."
"It is a leading talent management tool, and it has got the largest market share."
"It's really stable, we use it globally and have 100,000 employees, and I know that there are no big issues with the stability of the tool."
"The solution is stable."
"There is a lot to like about it. I really enjoy the business process framework. It's something that's really seamless. It allows you to have people within the flow. They get assigned a task to complete something to approve, etc. That's a really good piece of functionality that Workday offers. Their out-of-the-box reporting framework is also really powerful in terms of what it provides. These would be two things that I would highlight."
"There is a lot of scope for customization with this solution"
"The most valuable feature of Workday is the ease of navigation to browse the application. The solution can hold information about the company and people with accounts can be discovered by others in the whole company."
 

Cons

"The workflow is a bit weak."
"Its benefits portal could be user-friendly."
"When I'm not working with the implementation team and I'm just talking to customer service or something, they're just not a lot of help. They don't understand how it works. They'll tell you to do something that I know would affect something else. So, it's less about the software and more about just training their folks to a higher level."
"The ease of developing and creating reports could definitely use some improvement."
"Support leaves a lot to be desired."
"I would like to see the payroll side improved and there are a few kinks that need to be worked out."
"The report functionality is not as good as competitive products."
"The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP ."
"They don't have worker payroll in the product. We have to solve our payroll. I hope one day they will be able to have their own localized standard payrolls for all countries."
"There are other enhancements that go untended that have been languishing for years."
"One area that could be improved with Workday is the analytics side."
"I would really like to see a more robust timekeeping solution in Workday. Currently, most organizations are using Kronos for timekeeping and Workday for HR data. They then integrate Workday with Dimensions to manage time-related activities and payroll processing."
"It has missing functionalities. Specific countries, like Germany, didn't have the option to do payroll. Now we need to look for another product for HR."
"Payroll integration is terrible. It has a lot of limitations."
"There is so much information floating around Workday that it becomes overwhelming to digest all of it."
"It does not integrate with some of the career management softwares, like LinkedIn."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I know some of what we're currently paying. Most customers would say it's too high, but I don't have a comparison to know that."
"It is expensive."
"I give the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing is expensive and I would say it is below average for the value it provides based on the high cost."
"The solution is expensive and everyone complains about the price."
"The solution is flexible in terms of pricing."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"You have the license fee per module, and then you have a kind of annual training fee, which is a kind of add-on. I wouldn't say it is exhaustive; it is minor. Licensing is pretty transparent for most of the part."
"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."
"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."
"It's very, very expensive."
"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."
"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

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How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?
If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lawrence and Schiller, The Children's Center, The Kansas City Royals
AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!
Find out what your peers are saying about ADP Workforce Now vs. Workday and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.