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SAP SuccessFactors vs SmartRecruiters comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
SAP SuccessFactors improves processes, reduces costs, and enhances employee experience, with varied opinions on ROI timelines and financial gains.
Sentiment score
8.4
SmartRecruiters improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness, reducing hiring time and increasing user satisfaction with its intuitive design.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
SAP SuccessFactors support varies, with premium praised but regular criticized for slow responses and inconsistent technical expertise.
Sentiment score
6.7
SmartRecruiters' support is praised for efficiency but faces criticism for ticketing; phone support is suggested for improvement.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
SAP SuccessFactors offers scalable cloud architecture, integrating seamlessly but some modules have limitations compared to on-premise solutions.
Sentiment score
7.0
SmartRecruiters is scalable and flexible, supporting diverse organizations globally with tailored capabilities for recruitment and internal mobility.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
SAP SuccessFactors is widely stable and efficient, despite occasional integration issues and update-related downtime across regions.
Sentiment score
8.1
SmartRecruiters is a reliable ATS with occasional minor issues, praised for stability and consistent performance in recruitment.
I hardly ever encounter any stability issues, as SAP SuccessFactors is very good and stable.
 

Room For Improvement

SAP SuccessFactors struggles with integration, usability, customization, localization, pricing, updates, and user configuration preferences.
SmartRecruiters faces challenges in accessibility, integration, user experience, compliance, and requires improvements in tech support and feature robustness.
Advisories can only be placed at the bottom, which is less effective as employees may not scroll down to see them.
The change management process during the initial launch was not effectively handled, leading to a poor user experience.
 

Setup Cost

SAP SuccessFactors is costly but valued for functionality, with pricing flexible via user count, modules, and negotiation opportunities.
SmartRecruiters pricing starts at $10,000 annually, varies by size and features, but offers discounts for non-profits.
The licensing costs are quite high, which is a typical scenario for such solutions.
 

Valuable Features

SAP SuccessFactors offers comprehensive HR solutions with modular flexibility, robust onboarding, AI integration, and enhanced user interfaces.
SmartRecruiters provides an intuitive interface, effective sourcing, integration, and customization, making it adaptable and suitable for diverse organizations.
Employees can view their goals, performance, ratings, and employee information, which enhances the employee experience.
SAP SuccessFactors has advantages in providing AI-driven initiatives such as candidate screening and matching features within the recruitment module.
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Acquisition
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Talent Management (1st), Cloud HCM (1st), Global Payroll (2nd)
SmartRecruiters
Ranking in Talent Acquisition
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Talent Acquisition category, the mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 23.8%, up from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 1.8%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Acquisition
 

Featured Reviews

Marissa Schwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, stable, and scalable
SuccessFactors has a best practices model for HR across the board, but there are multiple industries. For example, the pharmaceutical, engineering, and professional services industries may have different processes based on their business requirements and operations. SAP and Workday have one approach across industries. As employee experience becomes increasingly important, the kind of employees appointed in an engineering environment, a pharmaceutical environment, and a professional service environment are very different, meaning their experience touchpoints may differ and require adjustments. SuccessFactors should consider building their best practices around critical industries to help companies become more differentiated in the markets they operate in. As a company, we have 118,000 followers on LinkedIn, and the unemployment rate in South Africa is quite high, at more than 30 percent. When we advertise a job, the number of CVs and applications we receive from people who want to work for us is overwhelming, we can get up to 600 CVs for a single vacancy. To make the process more efficient, we need to use artificial intelligence to identify the key elements of the job profile and match them to the CVs of the applicants. The pre-selection questions are helpful in reducing the number of applicants, but they don't measure the suitability of the CVs and profiles. This is something that needs to be built into the system, but it doesn't currently exist in the market. We have a good pre-selection program, but it doesn't take into account experience, qualifications, professional memberships, work experience, or critical performance indicators. We have enough information from CVs and LinkedIn profiles for the system to match the vacancy profile with the applicant's information and rank them from most suitable to least suitable.
Anudeep Kamuni - PeerSpot reviewer
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
48%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about SAP SuccessFactors?
The tool is easy to use for performance management. We haven't experienced any issues with SAP SuccessFactors for performance management, which is great. However, since we're still learning to use ...
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 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...
 

Also Known As

SuccessFactors
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP SuccessFactors vs. SmartRecruiters and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.