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ADP Workforce Now vs Workday HCM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 21, 2026

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 HCM
Ranking in Benefits Administration
1st
Ranking in Talent Management
2nd
Ranking in Cloud HCM
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
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 HCM 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

"The most valuable features are the reporting and benefits piece."
"The platform is on a private cloud that is fully secure with no way for hacker penetration."
"It is hard to go wrong with choosing ADP as a solution for nearly any company."
"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."
"The product allows for accurate, consistent payrolls."
"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."
"The way that ADP helped us improve our organization is by making the payroll process clean and efficient because if you make a mistake there, you're in big trouble."
"The most valuable feature to me is performance management because we just started using that."
"Overall, it delivers a really seamless solution that allows for operational efficiencies and operational excellence."
"Workday beats them all; in my opinion, they are leaps and bounds above the competition, and part of the reason is that it is built with modern technology and has no legacy coding in it at all."
"Workday is highly intuitive from a customer experience perspective, and it was effortless for us to understand what to do even though we didn't have any related training, making it easy to use without guidance."
"I would highly recommend it to anyone."
"The business process framework is excellent."
"We use Workday for HR services and found the software to be very user-friendly compared to the previous software."
"In the process of obtaining representative sites in NaviNet, it assists us in facilitating decision-making and taking action."
"The product is a complete solution for security."
 

Cons

"Their “new and improved” message center (where you get notifications and go to approve things like time off) is actually not as easy as it used to be."
"The ease of developing and creating reports could definitely use some improvement."
"The report functionality is not as good as competitive products."
"The Call Centre: The extension number takes too many digits to get through and the wait time is too long."
"The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP ."
"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."
"ADP provides a quarterly Error Notification Report that allows you to check for compliance errors based on payments made to employees that quarter. The report only shows employees by their file #; however, the recent ADP upgrade has an "Archive" feature that makes it impossible to search for employees by file number so currently, there is no way to identify the employees listed on the report without calling ADP."
"Support leaves a lot to be desired."
"There are other enhancements that go untended that have been languishing for years."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"It is good that much of the development is based on community input but often that can lead to details being ignored and small, nagging issues are ignored."
"The security console should be made less complex."
"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."
"In addition to the lost data, the solution is slow to pull up information and I am not sure if this is due to the botched implementation or if it is the solution itself."
"The compensation module is not dynamic enough or flexible enough to accommodate the complexities in our salary structure."
"My opinion is that this solution can improve the overall integrations and add more automation. I think anything that could be on a self-serve basis would work quite well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is expensive and I would say it is below average for the value it provides based on the high cost."
"I give the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is expensive and everyone complains about the price."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"It's very, very expensive."
"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."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."
"Each module comes with an additional cost. It operates on a mid-price model. So, there is an additional payment for each module needed. The solution might be costlier for smaller companies, making it more suitable for mid to large-sized enterprises."
"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."
"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
University
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 Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise50
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?
Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...
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

 

Also Known As

No data available
Workday Human Capital Management
 

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 HCM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
905,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.