PeopleStrong vs SmartRecruiters comparison

Read 15 SmartRecruiters reviews

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93% willing to recommend

PeopleStrong

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

SmartRecruiters and PeopleStrong compete in the HR technology space, specifically providing recruitment and core HR functions. SmartRecruiters seems to have the upper hand due to its sophisticated CRM functionalities and seamless collaboration tools, which cater to complex workflows and candidate management needs.

Features: SmartRecruiters offers robust CRM functionalities, allowing job posting on multiple platforms, and comprehensive reporting tools. It is recognized for quarterly updates and cost-saving features. PeopleStrong is valued for its flexibility and ease of mobile access, supporting core HR functions like leave and performance management, and offers a solid onboarding experience.

Room for Improvement: SmartRecruiters encounters integration and communication challenges, causing system update compatibility issues and complex reporting. There is a need for better global feature deployment and language support. PeopleStrong could improve its talent management, reporting, and integration capabilities. Users desire more flexibility in customization and API-based integration for process streamlining.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SmartRecruiters utilizes Public and Private Cloud solutions, though it experiences integration and ticketing support delays possibly due to time zone differences. Users acknowledge efficient initial issue response, but the explanation process is time-consuming. PeopleStrong offers Cloud and on-premises deployment, showing recent support responsiveness improvement but struggles with ticket management largely managed through Salesforce, highlighting a gap in real-time solutions.

Pricing and ROI: SmartRecruiters is considered a premium product with high costs justified by advanced features, supporting large-scale recruitment efficiency and cost reductions, with potential discounts for nonprofits. Its ROI is noted more in efficiency than immediate financial savings. PeopleStrong offers a cost-effective model, charging annually per employee, appreciated for its straightforward pricing and satisfactory ROI, especially for basic but widespread HR functionalities. The ROI from both products is recognized primarily in operational efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed PeopleStrong vs. SmartRecruiters Report (Updated: May 2025).

PeopleStrong vs. SmartRecruiters

May 2025

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Helped 859,129 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:

Categories and Ranking

PeopleStrong

Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software

6th

Ranking in Talent Acquisition

10th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Talent Management (15th), Cloud HCM (14th)

SmartRecruiters

Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software

1st

Ranking in Talent Acquisition

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of PeopleStrong is 1.4%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 7.2%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software

Featured Reviews

Vibha Mishra

Global L&D Lead at Tieto Sweden AB

Provide performance management and HR operations but lacks AI capabilities

Using PeopleStrong, uploading modules, and downloading reports was very easy. The process was hassle-free and user-friendly. We use PeopleStrong for performance management and HR operations, such as storing data and handling documentation when a new person joins the company. For learning and…

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Anudeep Kamuni

Global Lead - TA ops & Analytics | Strategy Growth & Leadership at a recreational facilities/services company with 10,001+ employees

Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability

There are a couple of areas of improvement. SmartRecruiter lacks certain features in terms of usability. For instance, we cannot move candidate profiles, interview feedback, notes, and activities related to one candidate when transitioning from one job to another. We have to manually copy and paste everything for that specific candidate. This is a significant drawback. Additionally, the filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager. This level of inaccuracy is unexpected for an application, especially for smaller organizations. It should have been corrected easily. Moreover, the CRM module lacks video reporting capabilities. These are some the biggest improvement I would like to see.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The mobile responsiveness is strong."

"PeopleStrong Alt is flexible because it allows customization and the user's experience is very good."

"The hiring process is good. It will create a process-oriented procedure in terms of hiring, promotion, the movement of people, and other related HR tasks."

"The UI and UX are fantastic."

"Some of the most valuable features are the onboarding experience of new employees, the employee service portal, and the entire performance management system."

"The product has valuable flexibility for customization, user interface, and search capabilities."

"It has the capability of reporting. We, as a business team, found it good. In fact, we migrated to PeopleStrong essentially because of its reporting feature."

"It is priced low."

"SmartRecruiters is a candidate management system or ATS system that we use for recruitment purposes."

"I found the core product quite useful. It is easy to use and quite user-friendly. They have also got other options, such as CRM and HRS. They have other versions such as smart distribute, which is an HRS type of system to analyze and get permissions needed from the applicants. In terms of pricing, SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors."

"The features that were most important for us to have were that it is user friendly and functional, which is definitely the case with SmartRecruiters. Our organization is located in developing countries where the bandwidth and internet stability are not the strongest and SmartRecruiters accommodates this challenge. It was a very big plus that we are able to use the system even in these locations."

"The most valuable feature is the way that they've set it up for collaboration."

"The candidate experience was better because the whole process was there."

"The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."

"What I really like about it is that it feels minimal, but is also dynamic. There aren't a lot of ways to get lost, which is good."

"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide. It is very easy to manage users and build your workflows. Overall, it works very well for the customization of the workflows for us. The recruitment team has generally found the whole platform useful. We were looking to kind of expand it by using the CRM functions that it has. However, with COVID and recruitment being on the freeze, we weren't really able to make the most of the tool. They are, however, finding it useful to actually build up their talent pools and client candidates to be able to contact them when we kind of have this freeze off."

More SmartRecruiters pros

Cons

"The global scalability and support could improve."

"They had challenges getting the performance management system up and integrated with our systems."

"They could improve talent management capabilities."

"The solution's workflow can improve by adding more customization at the organizational level."

"Sometimes, we feel that we should have an API-based integration aspect."

"They could include a sort of collaborative platform where employees are able to work together with a chat mechanism like WhatsApp and video chat."

"It would be helpful if you could work offline because sometimes, we have problems with internet connectivity."

"PeopleStrong could make it AI-friendly."

"Around 2015 and into '17, I worked at a federal contractor. I had to switch to a different applicant system as I didn't know if SmartRecruiters was OFCCP compliant, which is something that, as a US-based federal contractor, you have to ensure. They should work to appeal to the contractor industry and get the product OFCCP compliant."

"We require greater flexibility for customization with our employer branding. Currently, it is very much driven by the SmartRecruiters design. We are using a SaaS solution, so we are powered by what is in the core product itself. A disadvantage of being a SaaS solution is that there aren't many customization options because you are literally buying it out of the box. You use whatever is offered to you in a box as much as you can, and that might be a problem sometimes because customizations are not achievable. They should definitely improve and provide more flexibility for customizations. For a large organization like ours, they can provide more flexibility on the authorization side of things. They could create a much more flexible way of access and separate the IT or help desk access when they need to go into the system and do some fixes. Currently, it is set up in a way that that you have access for everything or nothing, which is not useful in terms of the separation of duty that we have. There are also other things like matrix, where we can have a better and deeper kind of analysis."

"One thing that has been a bit of a struggle is getting tech support. It is a little more difficult to get support from SmartRecruiters. They want you to have your own in-house person to help you with any issues, whereas with both Lever and Greenhouse, you can just click a button at the bottom of the screen and chat with someone almost instantly."

"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, not in the time, but the company in Germany really dictated that. So we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to it."

"The major improvement area is how it integrates with other systems. That's where we've had some sort of pain points. They've done a lot of work with their development team in setting up integrations with other types of software like SuccessFactors, which we use, but we have found some glitches there. This is probably where they need to do some work. Sometimes, when it refreshes or there is any sort of update in SmartRecruiters, it has a direct impact on the integrations that we have with other tools. We are not always notified when that takes place. We have had HR say to us, "We've just hired this guy. He is not there in our end board at all. What's going on?" That's when we realized that the integration is actually broken. When we have other solutions like SuccessFactors, it would be very helpful to have knowledge articles for such integrations. We have found some of the templates that we want to use and some of the customizations that we do around the offer letters and the contract letters to be a little bit more difficult, which hasn't made this process any more efficient than it was. We still have to do a bit of manual intervention there. I don't know if it is just our company, but we need to have different clauses and things in place. We have stopped using DocuSign as well, and we are trying to look at other ways of doing that. They are aware of this."

"We ran into some serious issues related to language barriers."

"The solution's reporting feature could be improved because it is not very strong."

"The solution needs to work on a single sign-on."

More SmartRecruiters cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has reasonable pricing."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"It's very reasonably priced. It is paid per employee."

"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."

"There were implementation costs in the first year to get everything set up and running, and then they have various modules on top, which are optional and available at an extra charge."

"I haven't been so involved with pricing, so I don't have all details, but I know that we are paying per head when it comes to different countries. There is an additional fee for new features that they release. If it is something that we would like to use, we need to pay some extra for it."

"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."

"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors. Considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market. Others may offer a similar price, but their services won't be that good or the user-friendliness won't be that great. The licensing works based on how many users are there in a company. If you are using other functionalities, like CRM and HRS, the price increases."

"Back in 2018, when I engaged with their sales, they wanted to charge around $10,000 for an annual subscription. Depending on your organization, that either could or couldn't be expensive. I personally think it's a fair price. However, I engaged them and negotiated a lower price with them. I think I got closer to $6,000. It came with a commitment of three years."

"They are pretty competitive. As the product matures, it has much more functionality and different pricing models. It can relatively cost a lot more if you want to use additional features, but, in general, it is competitive in the industry. We work on a yearly license agreement based on the company size. There are the support costs, which are a part of the additional cost based on the percentage of the licensing fee. So, it has a license plus support cost. Then, of course, there are other add-on options that we can purchase and procure whenever we want to based on certain negotiated arrangements."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Healthcare Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PeopleStrong Alt?

It has the capability of reporting. We, as a business team, found it good. In fact, we migrated to PeopleStrong essentially because of its reporting feature.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PeopleStrong Alt?

It is priced low. I rate the product’s pricing a three out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

What is your primary use case for PeopleStrong Alt?

What do you like most about SmartRecruiters?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SmartRecruiters?

SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution.

What needs improvement with SmartRecruiters?

With SmartRecruiters, compatibility with other HRIS systems is an area with certain shortcomings that require improvement. SmartRecruiters is a tool that we use as an ATS platform in our company, b...

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Product Reports

Download PeopleStrong product report

Cloud HCM

June 2025

Download SmartRecruiters product report

May 2025

Also Known As

PeopleStrong Alt

No data available

Overview

PeopleStrong is Asia Pacific’s leading, and the most comprehensive Human Capital Management SaaS platform. Our technology focuses on delivering a unique employee experience, drives data-driven decisions and agility for businesses.

We have simplified work life for over 500+ large enterprises across the emerging economies of Asia Pacific. Today, PeopleStrong empowers the lives of 2M+ employees with a mobile-first, AI and ML-powered talent operating system. Our tech capabilities span across the lifecycle from hire to exit, including Human Capital Management, Payroll, Talent Acquisition & Management, and Collaboration.

We are rated among the Top 5 in the Asia Pacific at Gartner’s Peer Insights and voted as Customer's Choice of HR Tech in Gartner Voice of Customers Report for 1000+ employee enterprises.

PeopleStrong

SmartRecruiters social recruiting platform combines awesome free recruiting software with the best on-demand services to make hiring social, collaborative, and enjoyable. Social and mobile recruiting enablement platform that supports 1-click application submissions.

Sample Customers

Hyundai, Amara Raja, Air Asia, Tata Motors, Aviva, Schneider Electric, JLL Business Services, Schindler, Tata AIG, novo nordisk, Cipla

Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers