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Paylocity vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Paylocity
Ranking in Talent Management
37th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (30th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Management
1st
Ranking in Cloud HCM
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (2nd), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Paylocity is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 8.4%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP SuccessFactors8.4%
Paylocity0.9%
Other90.7%
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

RP
HR Specialist with 201-500 employees
Has a comprehensive and intuitive knowledge base, and time saving payroll administration features
Paylocity is not great at communicating customer support related issues such as account manager changes. They claim to provide concierge level of support, but it has not been great. Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust. At present, I can't send attachments, add hyperlinks to videos, or embed questions in videos. Also, the number of notifications regarding benefits needs to be increased so that new employees get reminders more than once.
SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
HR has gained clear analytics for attrition, goals, and appraisals and manages talent efficiently
SAP SuccessFactors has a low error rate. We had many ad hoc reports that we needed to generate, and it was very easy to do so in SAP SuccessFactors. We also created many in-house reports according to our specific requirements with the help of this tool, which was a really big game changer for us. We did not depend on advanced Excel in those cases. We generated a lot of detailed reports whenever we needed them during emergency cases or board meetings. A lot of usefulness and time were saved in those cases. I will also mention that we conducted a comparative study for some recruitment cases. We had a recruitment model where we were looking for a very niche profile. Since the job profile was really different and rare, we had to depend on analytics to understand and shortlist from a large pool of candidates that we already had in our database. Analytics was really helpful in this situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My favorite feature is payroll administration, which has been awesome. You can import as many batches as you want to and run them synchronously or asynchronously. Since I work in a finance company with commissions, bonuses, and distribution, it's great to be able to do that. I can upload multiple things. Also, I can upload different sets of commission lists into the same payroll batch and upload the time card imports and overtime imports if I want to and separate them. I can create multiple batches around an individual or one one set of audit backing, and then I can approve them or leave them open. The way that Paylocity has set up their payroll system is really good and saves us a lot of time. It's very specific and helpful."
"Everything in the product is most valuable to us."
"The overall interface is easy and user-friendly."
"The role-based permissions functionality is beyond great (in my opinion) and is honestly more robust and flexible than any other security setup/process that we have with other business software that we use (and have the ability to maintain security roles with)."
"The self-service part is most valuable. Employees and managers can do a lot of things on their own, and they are not dependent on the HR organization."
"This solution support our HR Transformation strategy. Provide ESS and MSS functionalities to employees."
"What I like the most is the KPI management formula."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten...It is a stable solution."
"Considering the flexibility of the system and its ability to accommodate complex business processes, the product is ready to be used in multiple industries."
 

Cons

"Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust."
"They should improve the reports."
"The data management part can be improved in terms of how you can manage data from the HR admin's or HR team's perspective. It has some limitations in the reporting part in terms of how you can update the data and fetch the data. SAP HCM comparatively has a lot of capabilities in terms of backup loads, data management, data changes, etc. You can do these things easily, which is not the case with SAP SuccessFactors. Data management should be simplified in SAP SuccessFactors in terms of accessing the data, reporting, and then manipulating the data."
"The integration between the recruitment module and employee central is a big problem."
"We had stability issues multiple times; sometimes disturbing and in a few cases, it caused blocks for business."
"We would like to see improvement in the initial launch of the product, as it is currently quite slow."
"The single problem that needs to be solved is that once you submit a form it cannot be edited."
"Also, it would be helpful if they could improve its ability to localize the product to Nigeria."
"I don't think SuccessFactors is quite fit for use as an employee database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product is expensive. The product is worth the money you pay for it."
"We have a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"Due to the way in which we purchased SuccessFactors as a module along with other SAP modules, we were able to procure it at a slightly better price than usual. I would rate their pricing 5/5 stars."
"It could be cheaper."
"If you go by best practices and do it right from the outset, the setup won't be a costly endeavor. In terms of setup, there is a lot of flexibility compared to three years ago."
"I don't want to comment on the license cost, to be honest. It could be about $1,000 approximately per customer. However, it's very flexible in terms of the licensing costs depending on the volume and depending on the deal of installation."
"The solution is on the expensive side but is definitely worth the money."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of modules that are being used, and the number of users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise70
 

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...
What is better, SAP HCM or SAP SuccessFactors?
When it comes to user experience, SuccessFactors is unquestionably superior, as it provides end users with a new experience and an advanced user interface. Additionally, the entire concept of SF is...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

POLYWOOD, University Clinical Healthcare, New England Authentic Eats, Revere Plastics, Stonewall Kitchen, Circuit Transit, Powerhouse Retail, Mountainside Fitness, Crafton Tull, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, Gurley Leep Automotive, Taco Johns
City of Cape Town, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., TransAlta Corporation, Keolis, PT XL Axiata Tbk, National Football League (NFL), Plan International, Yoh, A Day & Zimmermann Company, China Talent Group (CTG TMO), Umicore S.A., Butterfield Bank, Skril
Find out what your peers are saying about Workday, SAP, Deel and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.