Dayforce HCM vs UKG vs Workday comparison

Read 125 UKG reviews

5,643 Views
1,786 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Read 55 Workday reviews

8,379 Views
5,894 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Dayforce HCM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dayforce HCM, UKG, and Workday based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Workday, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud HCM Report (Updated: May 2025).

Download the complete report

Cloud HCM

May 2025

Helped 851,042 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Dayforce HCM is 2.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UKG is 5.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 18.8%, up from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud HCM

Featured Reviews

Thomas Noorkah

Director of Enterprise Financial Systems at City of Columbus

Greatly improved our efficiency with its integrated time and attendance module

Dayforce has given us near to real-time access to time sheets and clockings since it has an integrated time and attendance module. Within six minutes of someone clocking in, we can see them on the timesheets. Dayforce has enabled us to smooth out our payroll system so not everything is happening at the end of the payroll cycle. We can see the impacts during the week and make it a lot more manageable. It's also been helpful for benefits administration with employees being able to file life and work events online. They can access their pay stubs, request leave, change their address, update their direct deposit details, and other things. We've become much more efficient, and much less paper driven.

Read full review

Lonnie Fluck

Senior HR/ Talent Acquisition Leader at FitzDrake Search

Helps us establish system front-end and back-end connectivity, but the recruiting features need improvement

I used UKG to track applicants and create job descriptions. We built the electronic onboarding system to be used nationwide and created a path to integrate with the backend The product's most valuable feature is the ability to establish connectivity between the front and the back end,…

Read full review

Akash Nigam

Manager for enterprise Solution at PeopleTechGroup

User-friendly, well-organized, offering a structured step-by-step process for configuration

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. I think if Workday could enhance its timekeeping solution to match the functionality and flexibility of Dimensions, it would be a really good product. Another area for improvement is payroll. Workday payroll is not very extensively used in the North American market, but it is more widely used in Europe. There is a lot of complexity in payroll processing in North America, but I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in Workday. In the next release, I would like to see pre-built or predefined connectors for Dimensions and other applications. Currently, we have to use Boomi or another middleware application to integrate Workday with these systems. I think pre-built connectors would be very helpful, especially for Dimensions, which we do not currently have a connector for.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has a pretty clean look."

"It has created efficiencies in HR and Payroll by eliminating double entry into two systems, implementing a time clock feature for hourly employees, and by having a downloadable general ledger (G/L) constructing journal entering for payroll."

"We used the solution to do a lot of performance management during the review cycle and it helped us alleviate the administrative burden."

"The initial setup is easy."

"Great time and attendance payroll and benefits administration which has improved our efficiency."

"Ceridian Dayforce HCM is a stable product."

"The integrated time clock has provided efficiencies in payroll, as we no longer have to decipher handwritten time sheets and input them into the system."

"The tool has improved a lot in the area of its mobile application, especially considering its added security features, like single sign-on capabilities."

More Dayforce HCM pros

"The solution has improved our organization by helping us cut hours and lessen our labor force. It saved us probably over $100,000 in just the last couple of years."

"The product's most valuable feature is the ability to establish connectivity between the front and the back end, particularly the single point of data entry, to minimize mistakes."

"The solution's UI is good. Also, it is very easy to use."

"The employee self-service feature is most valuable. This is the restaurant industry, and they have a mobile app that allows employees to go in and manage their data. So, employees can manage direct deposit accounts, emergency contacts, and other things in the app. That's definitely the biggest benefit."

"UKG allows us to customize our home screen so that we can easily monitor important items on a daily basis."

"Overall, I would rate UKG nine out of ten."

"The fact that I can see the whole HR information in a single point is valuable. There is a unified view of everything, which is good. Previously, we had many different systems for each part of the information. Now, it is all centralized. It is very good."

"The pay policies and approvals are valuable features."

More UKG pros

"We have fewer systems, less manual data entry, and less processing."

"The platform itself is very robust and I generally like the reporting and analytics capability."

"It is easy to use and straightforward."

"Workday is highly intuitive from a customer experience perspective. It was effortless for us to understand what to do even though we didn't have any related training. It was easy to use without guidance."

"We like the fact that this solution is very user-friendly, with a straightforward user interface."

"It saves a lot of time for onboarding processes."

"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."

"It's actually a cloud-native solution and based on the community for development. It is a very good open architecture and able to interconnect with other systems. And it is very stable and very fast in terms of response."

More Workday pros

Cons

"I would also like to see some improvement in standard reports. A standard report should be available to pull the required information for Affirmative Action Plans. I do not think I should have to build or create one."

"The solution has a lot of glitches."

"An area for improvement could be a little more testing before implementing hotfixes to make sure they do not interfere with any active customized products."

"The solution's dashboards and geofencing could be improved."

"One area to be improved is the solution's reporting function, which can be cumbersome."

"I would like the solution to improve its customer service communication."

"I would like to continue to see improvements in the Recruiting module. I would like to see this module interact with Calendars, such as Outlook, etc."

"Dayforce has its gaps like every HR system, but nothing comes to mind at the moment."

More Dayforce HCM cons

"The solution could improve by simplifying it even more core reports, such as more sample reports, more generic reports that you can edit and improve on yourself."

"UKG has complex clock-in and clock-out features. It changes things too often, and it feels like the tool is constantly changing things without testing before implementing changes in production. Additionally, it doesn't communicate these changes very well."

"Reporting is always a hurdle for any user just because it is so extensive. They provide a lot of out-of-the-box reports, but it is something that you always need to work on because you need more advanced writing of reports."

"The solution could use better reporting with standard reports. We use the Cognos platform in BI for a lot of our reporting. However, they need to have more robust standard reporting available to their user base."

"The system is slow sometimes."

"Certainly, the time and attendance and the payroll integration need a lot of work. They are disjointed pieces, and they don't work smoothly together. That's the main drawback."

"UKG could be a little more flexible in some areas."

"The tool needs improvement on the configuration side."

More UKG cons

"Workday could give us industry-specific or vertical-specific solutions."

"The solution has to work a lot on financial integrations, material management and CRM modules."

"Workday could improve by adding other features, such as messaging to candidates and other recruiting capabilities that other new-age solutions have."

"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."

"Workday does not support many Korean language features. So, it will be great if they have some development on the Korean language side – then it will be really powerful in our market."

"The navigation of Workday is good but could be better."

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"The solution can be improved by speeding up the load time when pulling up information."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of pricing, the product is expensive. However, it is crucial to take into account the manner in which the solution will be utilized and the availability of other alternatives."

"Negotiate for everything you want."

"We found the setup costs and pricing to be very reasonable."

"I rate the solution's pricing a seven on a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive."

"Ceridian continually enhances Dayforce HCM. Some of these enhancements they charge for and some are just straight enhancements with no extra charge."

"Earlier, the price of the product was reasonable. Under present circumstances, the price or cost of the product has been increased."

"We paid for the implementation costs in the first year with the money that we saved by switching to Dayforce HCM."

"The XOXO program associated with Dayforce allows you to earn credits towards registration and accommodations at their annual Insight Conferences, which can be a real savings to the company when sending employees to the conference."

"The pricing depends on the number of licenses we buy."

"I wasn't involved in the pricing part. I'm a user, and I believe it is based on the user count. One thing that is nice about Ultimate is that you can learn how to use the system without additional fees. The learning aspect is the life of a product, and the training was a huge reason why we went with Ultimate. We did have some integration costs. They were a part of the implementation because of the integrations to other systems that we included in our implementation."

"UKG's pricing and licensing model involves ongoing expenses based on the number of employees paid. The initial implementation cost is low when UKG implements it directly. However, when partners handle the implementation, it becomes more expensive since partners don't receive the monthly recurring fees."

"If you're going for the full suite, it can be fairly pricey."

"While I am unsure of the licensing cost itself, the total cost of implementation and licensing for a company with over 5000 employees would be around 6,00,000. So, there are additional costs beyond licensing."

"The platform is not affordable but also not the most expensive."

"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."

"The solution is flexible in terms of pricing."

"It's very, very expensive."

"I need to pay for a license. It is 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."

"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."

"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud HCM solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

851,042 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

45%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

85%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

27%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Ceridian Dayforce HCM?

The solution's payroll portion is very streamlined.

What needs improvement with Ceridian Dayforce HCM?

Customizing the home screen was difficult; I could not remove certain tabs that were irrelevant to our users. The sea...

What is your primary use case for Ceridian Dayforce HCM?

We have used Dayforce HCM for our HR functionalities and for the learning module over the last five years. We actuall...

What needs improvement with UKG?

UKG needs more publicity. It is a productive ERP ( /categories/erp ) application, but many people in the IT market ar...

What is your primary use case for UKG?

I worked for a healthcare organization and a university. Most organizations use UKG ( /products/ukg-reviews ) to trac...

What advice do you have for others considering UKG?

Publicity is very important for any software. If people aren't aware of UKG, despite its productivity, they won't use...

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 customizatio...

What do you like most about Workday?

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

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 m...

SAP SuccessFactors vs Dayforce HCM

Comparisons

Compared 20% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 14% of the time

PeopleSoft vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 5% of the time

Netsuite SuitePeople vs Dayforce HCM

Compared 5% of the time

More Dayforce HCM Competitors

SAP SuccessFactors vs UKG

Compared 17% of the time

SAP HCM vs UKG

Compared 12% of the time

PeopleSoft vs UKG

Compared 7% of the time

ADP GlobalView Payroll vs UKG

Compared 5% of the time

ADP Streamline vs UKG

Compared 4% of the time

More UKG Competitors

SAP SuccessFactors vs Workday

Compared 29% of the time

SAP HCM vs Workday

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Workday

Compared 11% of the time

PeopleSoft vs Workday

Compared 6% of the time

Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform vs Workday

Compared 3% of the time

More Workday Competitors

Product Reports

Download Dayforce HCM product report

Dayforce HCM

May 2025

Download UKG product report

April 2025

Download Workday product report

March 2025

Also Known As

Ceridian Dayforce HCM, Ascender Talent Management, Ceridian Ideal

UKG Pro, UKG Dimensons, UKG Ready

No data available

Overview

Dayforce HCM is a global, cloud-based human capital management (HCM) software platform for managing the complete employee lifecycle. This solution was designed to improve the employee experience by bringing together data from across the employment cycle to help managers make better decisions at all levels.

Dayforce HCM is an HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management, and talent management platform. The scalable software uses a single, flexible rules engine, as well as real-time updates and calculations, to help you meet complicated regulatory requirements.

Dayforce reduces the burden of disconnected applications by delivering a single application for all of your human capital management needs. All transactions made anywhere within the application flow seamlessly across all functional areas in real time, eliminating the need for repeated data entry, manual workarounds, and batch operations. This is thanks to a single employee record and a single rule engine. Organizations can achieve shorter training time, faster user adoption, and a faster return on investment.

With Dayforce HCM, users can view all HR data in real time in one place.

Here are some key tasks companies can do with the solution:

Hire the right people
Design work/life balance plans
Manage employee development
Handle payments
Administer benefits
Track compliance throughout the employee lifecycle

Dayforce HCM Features

Dayforce HCM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Continuous payroll for staff: Dayforce HCM aids in paying staff accurately and on schedule. Give your payroll staff the ability to access and audit data at any time during the pay cycle.

Personnel management: Empower and engage your frontline employees while keeping labor expenses and compliance under control. Make proactive, data-driven decisions that can help you run your business more efficiently.

Optimized staff benefits: Assist employees in selecting the best benefit plans while streamlining administrative tasks. With the help of analytics, you can maximize the value of your benefits investments and gain a better understanding of your costs.

Streamlined human resources: With a single consolidated, real-time solution, you can eliminate HR information silos. Improve HR productivity by streamlining administrative tasks and gaining access to key HR analytics.

Dayforce HCM Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Dayforce HCM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Dayforce HCM aids in planning, hiring, retaining, and building your team, whether they be full-time employees or hourly workers. Insights based on data can help you see around corners and predict the future.

Dayforce HCM helps you keep track of compliance everywhere in order to reduce risk. Simplify compliance in a global workplace. Keep up with complicated payroll and tax requirements from different regions and countries, as well as internal policies and processes. Dayforce can help you reduce the risk – and the cost – of noncompliance.

Dayforce HCM empowers your workforce by improving your employee experience with always-on technologies like Dayforce Wallet. Transform pay, enable self-service, and assist your employees in developing future skills, no matter where they are or what device they are using.

Dayforce

At UKG, our purpose is people — real people with real challenges, and a simple request. Help me keep my employees productive, connected, and happy. So that’s what we did.

We’ve created an unmatched suite of HR and workforce management solutions, backed by our people who care about yours. Our solutions deliver global workforce experiences that truly reflect the connection between life and work today. That means insights are deeper. Work is easier. And interactions are more meaningful.

Workday is a cloud-based software solution that specializes in developing applications for capital and finance management applications. The system is built to work in global workforces and is adaptable. The global system ensures that users are up to date and can manage internal career-related information, and everyday business problems like timesheets, payrolls, and time off.

“A Pioneer in Software-as-a-Service”

Workday Human Capital Management tool is designed to simplify and streamline your work. It leverages machine learning to adapt capital management to a changing environment.

The Workday model is based on delivering a single system that uses a single source of data and a single security model to deliver a unique user experience. The system is user-friendly and ensures that employees and management can use it from any and all devices. Workday HCM integrates into a central system that includes financial management, payroll, recruiting, learning, and planning. Managers and employees can provide feedback to one another, too.

Workday’s features include:

Flexible framework that lets you organize your staff according to different criteria. You can group employees by function, hierarchy, or department.
Personalized career guidance: Knowledge management and career guidance that can be easily customized for each staff member and also done at scale.
Augmented reporting and analytics: Configure, change, update, and publish reports, scorecards, and dashboards. The system centralizes the transactional and analytical data so you can act on the data from anywhere.
Compensation tools: Compensatio, payroll, and time tracking are automated and simplified.
Workforce planning allows you to uncover and address talent gaps and get visibility of your staff.
Mobile-first ensign approach: Users can access all resources from any device, and they are always in sync.
Machine learning capabilities enable personalized enterprise experiences and faster business processes.

Workday smart platform consists of the following modules:

Human resource management
Business process management
Reporting and analytics
Benefits administration
Compensation management
Talent management
Survey framework
Employee and management self-service

Reviews from Real Users

Many organizations choose Workday because it provides an all-in-one modular solution for human capital and finance management. Our users say they like the ease of use for time-off requests, career and development segments, and overall HR management. The records and reporting capabilities are another popular feature.

"The solution was very good at reconfiguration and customization of their software. It helped us to meet federal regulations," said one user. Another said that the best feature is the optimization of the work day experience with a unified platform that can be applied across different business units. “You will never find a use case that cannot be covered," said a third.