Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Paylocity vs Workday comparison

 

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 Benefits Administration
26th
Ranking in Talent Management
48th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Workday
Ranking in Benefits Administration
1st
Ranking in Talent Management
1st
Ranking in Cloud HCM
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Paylocity is 0.4%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 17.9%, up from 17.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

RP
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.
Sarvesh Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and provides great flexibility and security
Implementing the solution is generally not easy because it depends on our client's landscape. In the last one and a half years, Workday has started a new implementation approach called launch implementation. This approach allows you, as a client organization, to implement Workday in a shorter amount of time, given that you fulfill certain criteria. It depends on the number of subsidiaries and employees you have and their compensation structure. If it's not too complex, Workday provides its clients with this new approach called launch, where they can quickly onboard with the Workday without many complex requirements. The general implementation for Fortune 500 companies is always complex.

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."
"It is easy to use and straightforward."
"It was more efficient for the agents for their performance reviews, but when it came to HR and the recruitment team, it sometimes worked, and sometimes, it didn't work."
"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."
"Provides flexibility to integrate with the product. It has several tools, out-of-the-box, for integrations. It delivers pre-built interfaces for specific vendors, pre-built generic integrations to extract or push data into Workday through configuration."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"It stores everything for the employee. It has also been able to store the information that we use for our payroll demand."
"It's a fully consolidated system. All the transactions and configuration are co-located in one fully in-memory system, so there is no need to go to different data sources (multiple DBs) to pull data; it’s all in one place."
"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."
 

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."
"This solution could be made easier to use by continuing to release new improvements."
"The security console should be made less complex."
"The implementation could have gone a little smoother."
"There were a lot of issues. There were consistency or accuracy issues with the data we had, and every time we had to pull reports in Workday, it was difficult."
"The solution can be improved by speeding up the load time when pulling up information."
"The user interface can be enhanced."
"They could improve the product areas such as enhancing the interview scheduling module to support more flexible online assessments within the platform."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."
"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"It's very, very expensive."
"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."
"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."
"It is on a yearly basis."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud HCM solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 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 more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...
 

Comparisons

 

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
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 Workday, SAP, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.