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Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is designed to improve the recruitment process by making hiring simpler and more efficient. Applicant Tracking Systems allow companies of all sizes to stay organized and productive throughout the hiring process by managing job postings, filtering resumes, organizing applicant information, contacting applicants, and scheduling interviews.
However, many of these systems can be very expensive. So, we wanted to curate a list of the best ATS's that have a free option for companies who are just getting started and need a basic option. We're also crowdsourcing data on ATS pricing through a survey that's anonymous and takes only two minutes. Anyone who helps out the community by filling it out will get access to the entire data set.
For large businesses with extensive HR departments, purchasing a new ATS may be the best option to fit all your HR needs. If you’re considering purchasing a new ATS, check out our complete guide to the Best ATS solutions.
If your business is small or has no budget, purchasing an expensive ATS may not be financially viable. However, there are many products that will offer the services you need for free. These free applicant tracking systems will help make the hiring process faster and simpler for you and your business.
Lastly, you may want to check out this service that will look at your requirements, and recommend an ATS tailored to you. It's free!
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Top Free Applicant Tracking Systems
We surveyed the landscape and came up with these free applicant tracking systems you should look into.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Manatal cover most of the feature’s you’d expect from a budget friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations.
- Manatal is quite affordable and offers a 15-day free trial for users to test it out before making commitments.
- Manatal is fairly easy to use. It features drag-and-drop enabled pipelines for candidate organization.
- Manatal’s AI-based recommendations feature can save hiring managers quite a bit of time. It’s able to scan job descriptions then search a users talent pool and bring up candidates most suited for the job.
- The AI recommendations feature works best with resumes that are in English, and doesn’t work as accurately with other languages according to several users’ feedback. Several users have also complained about Manatal’s interface only being available in English and that career pages cannot be published in languages other than English and Spanish.
- Manatal doesn’t offer a free plan. We mention this as a con as several SMB-geared ATSs do offer a free-forever verison, and that puts Manatal slightly behind competition.
- Manatal doesn’t offer prebuilt integration modules. They do have an open API that allows users to plug in third-party products and custom tools, but that required a bit more time and technical knowledge to accomplish. It’s also worth mentioning that only Custom plan customers can access Manatal’s API and Zapier integration. Customers on the Professional and Enterprise plan cannot.
- Users can search for candidates via Boolean Search or Advanced Search, but cannot combine the two search methods together. E.g users cannot use the Boolean search operators (AND, OR and NOT) within Manatal’s Advanced Search tab.
Manatal
Review:
Manatal is a budget-friendly applicant tracking system that helps HR teams find and hire the right people. Through it, you can create a custom-branded career page, post jobs to multiple job boards, and receive candidate applications. You can also upload candidate profiles and automatically enrich them with data derived from their social media accounts.
We like that Manatal features a customizable recruiting pipeline that’s drag-and-drop enabled. It also has an ai-powered recommendations engine that recommends suitable candidates based on your job descriptions, customizable analytics dashboards, a mobile app for on-the-go access, and a LinkedIn chrome extension, allowing you to quickly connect with and save the candidates who fit your job requirements.
Manatal
Customers:
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal is used in over 100 countries. Their customer list includes Unilever, Cocacola, Panasonic, Ogilvy, and Toyota.
Manatal
Stats:
Manatal
Pricing:
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Professional: This plan costs $15 per user per month for up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Customers on this plan can add unlimited guests.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $35 per user per month for unlimited jobs per account, as well as unlimited candidates and guests.
Note:
- “Users” refers to the individuals with full unrestricted access to Manatal’s platform and its features such as recruiters and HR professionals who actively use the software.
- “Guests” refers to individuals who are invited to collaborate on the platform through a dedicated portal such as hiring managers and decision-makers. These guests can access the platform free of charge and do not count towards the billable number of users.
Manatal has two plans with fixed pricing. When Billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Professional: This plan costs $15 per user per month for up to 15 jobs per account and 10,000 candidates. Customers on this plan can add unlimited guests.
- Enterprise: This plan costs $35 per user per month for unlimited jobs per account, as well as unlimited candidates and guests.
Note:
- “Users” refers to the individuals with full unrestricted access to Manatal’s platform and its features such as recruiters and HR professionals who actively use the software.
- “Guests” refers to individuals who are invited to collaborate on the platform through a dedicated portal such as hiring managers and decision-makers. Thes
Best For
Manatal is used by organizations of all sizes across different industries, but it’s worth noting that the ball-park of their customers are SMEs.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Teamtailor encompass everything you would expect from an ATS, it also has additional employer branding features that are built-in.
- Pro: Teamtailor’s ATS comes with a robust career site builder that’s also easy to use. It works with drag and drop - no coding knowledge necessary.
- Pro: Teamtailor backs several features that support diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), including anonymous hiring, equal employment opportunity (EEO) surveys, etc..
- Pro: Teamtailor is highly rated for their ease-of-use. It’s quite simple to post and promote jobs through their platform.
- Pro: There is really in-depth and intuitive help documentation for this solution
- Con: Teamtailor’s analytics are good, but enterprise clients need to use BI Connectors to build the reporting they need. Right now, you can’t sport data from the system. This is particularly important for companies with 500+ employees, or those who have many different locations or franchises.
- Con: Analytics doesn’t allow recruiters to see their cost per hire, which is a really impactful metric
- Con: While they offer integrations with HRIS, onboarding, etc - they have focused on just being a really good ATS now.
- Con: There are predefined user access levels, but you cannot define your own user access levels which is important, especially for the largest companies.
Teamtailor
Review:
Teamtailor is a modern ATS that combines the best practices of employer branding with recruiting software that is great for teams who need a simple but powerful system. You can get setup in a few minutes and get right to recruiting with their 14 day free trial.
This ATS also comes with a full suite of APIs and other powerful features for down the line when your organization's needs grow. This is why over 2,500 companies from the smallest to the largest use Teamtailor to grow their organizations.
Teamtailor
Customers:
Goodbye Kansas, Vitamin Well, Veoneer
Teamtailor is used by over 4000 organizations, including Kry, Goodbye Kansas, Vitamin Well, Ponsse, and Daniel Wellington.
Teamtailor
Stats:
- Used by 2,500 companies
- Used by 100,000 recruiters
- 97% of customers reported seeing an increase in qualified candidates with Teamtailor
- 94% of customers reported that Teamtailor enabled them to collaborate better with their team
- 89% of customers reported that Teamtailor has helped them speed up their hiring process
Teamtailor
Pricing:
Teamtailor offers a 14-day free trial of their ATS. Pricing for their paid plans must be worked out with a sales rep.
Teamtailor’s pricing starts at £2750 for companies with 1-25 employees. This includes unlimited job postings, candidates and user access to the system. You can get in touch with Teamtailor’s sales team to get an estimate according to your business size and needs.
Best For
Companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
For a free product, Zoho Recruit is a decent offer. It’s a basic ATS & CRM, with the free version including free job boards, email management, interview scheduling, and 24/5 support.
- ATS + CRM in one platform
- Backed by a company like Zoho, notable for reliability and good customer service.
- 24/5 support
- Priced quite modestly after the free version
- Certain features like video interviews are available as optional add-ons.
- ATS + CRM in one platform
- Backed by a company like Zoho, notable for reliability and good customer service.
- 24/5 support
- Priced quite modestly after the free version
- Certain features like video interviews are available as optional add-ons.
- The free plan only allows 256MB of storage.
- Additional features, such as the client portal, mass email, workflow alerts, and API calls cost extra.
- Some users have complained about the quality of some of the integrations.
- The career site is not fully customizable until past a certain paid plan.
- The free plan only allows 256MB of storage.
- Additional features, such as the client portal, mass email, workflow alerts, and API calls cost extra.
- Some users have complained about the quality of some of the integrations.
- The career site is not fully customizable until past a certain paid plan.
Zoho Recruit
Review:
Zoho’s free plan provides services for candidate management, email management, and interview scheduling. It allows for simple resume search and provides 5 email templates. It's important to note that Zoho’s free plan allows for only one active job opening.
Although their free plan is relatively limited in terms of features compared its paid plans, they do offer a 45-day money-back guarantee. Also worth noting is that the paid plans are not that expensive compared to similar products, and some modules are available as separately-priced add-ons.
Zoho Recruit
Customers:
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
Zoho Recruit
Stats:
- Over 6,000 business customers globally
- Source from over 75 job boards
- 50+ products for growing businesses
- Zoho has 13,000+ employees spanning the globe
- Over 6,000 business customers globally
- Source from over 75 job boards
- 50+ products for growing businesses
- Zoho has 13,000+ employees spanning the globe
Zoho Recruit
Pricing:
Zoho Recruit has three paid plans on top of the free plan.
- Standard is $30 per user per month, with many more features compared to the Free version.
- Professional is $60 per user per month, with key features like assessments and social recruiting.
- Enterprise is $90 per user per month, and rounds out Zoho's entire feature set, except for the add-ons.
The client portal and video interview modules are what’s available as add-ons. Zoho Recruit also has a 15-day free trial, as well as a free-forever version. The free version has limited features and only 1 active job at a time.
Zoho Recruit has three paid plans on top of the free plan.
- Standard is $30 per user per month, with many more features compared to the Free version.
- Professional is $60 per user per month, with key features like assessments and social recruiting.
- Enterprise is $90 per user per month, and rounds out Zoho's entire feature set, except for the add-ons.
The client portal and video interview modules are what’s available as add-ons. Zoho Recruit also has a 15-day free trial, as well as a free-forever version. The free version has limited features and only 1 active job at a time.
Best For
Zoho Recruit is perfect for large and small companies of various industries that use premium and niche job boards to give them an edge over competitors. It is also worth considering for smaller recruiting firms, but also has tons of functionality that enterprise companies would value. Of course, any company wanting a free ATS that can integrate with the rest of their tech stack would be wise to consider them.
Why we love it
:
GoHire is an affordable recruiting solution that's also scalable; SMBs can derive value from its introductory plans, and upgrade to more features as their operation grows.
There are both pros and cons to using GoHire.io. Let's take a look at some of the most important ones:
- One user appreciated the in-app messaging and email saying “Great templating for messages and emails.” They further liked the fact that they were able to control the on-boarding process as well as display jobs on the website.
- The platform is easy to use and helps businesses keep track of their hiring process by providing them with tools to manage job postings, candidate screening, interview scheduling, and offer management.
- GoHire.io makes it possible to post jobs on multiple job boards giving the user a wide variety of applicants. Therefore, hiring managers and founders can manage the applicants from numerous job boards on one platform. One user stated that they used to receive three job applications for €12.8 when using LinkedIn Jobs paid advertisements, but are now receiving 50+ applicants every month for free while using GoHire.
- The HR team appreciates that GoHire.io has a responsive customer support team. One user even appreciated that they were happy that their feedback was taken seriously and implemented on the ATS.
- GoHire.io does not support sending SMS to the applicants.
- While GoHire.io has received a lot of positive feedback about its platform, a significant number of users who had bought lifetime deals via AppSummo felt let down when the company discontinued the plan despite stating that it was a lifetime deal.
- One user complained that they were not able to upload multiple file formats for candidates. They were only able to upload PDF files.
GoHire
Review:
GoHire is a simple to use ATS that is perfect for smaller companies focused on growing their teams. Their software will distribute your roles to job boards, schedule interviews, record candidate feedback, and communicate with candidates. This is a great offering for budget conscious companies and they offer a two week free trial.
GoHire
Customers:
Snagajob, Promoter, Sweetberry, Swapcard, Voucher Cart
Snagajob, Promoter, Sweetberry, Swapcard, Voucher Cart.
GoHire
Stats:
- Over 2,000,000 applications processed in the year 2021 alone
- Over 2,500 customers served
- Over 100,000 monthly users
- The company processed over 2,000,000 applications in the year 2021
- Serves over 2,500 customers
- Have over 100,000 monthly users
GoHire
Pricing:
GoHire.io offers three pricing plans to meet the needs of businesses. The plans provide flexible schedules for both monthly and annual payments. The company also offers a cancel anytime policy that is helpful when a business is not hiring. For new users, the company offers a free 14-day trial. The plans are:
- Starter costs £58 per month (about $74) and includes baseline features, with 3 active job posts, 3 active talent pools, Interview Scheduler & Calendar Sync, Customizable Pipeline Stages, and unlimited team members.
- Growth costs £83 per month (about $125) and provides everything from Starter plus 10 Active Job Posts, Talent Pools, Application Form Editor, Bulk Actions, Team Inbox, and @Mention Team members.
- Pro costs £165 per month (about $241) and provides all Growth features Plus Unlimited Active Job Posts, Automated Stage Actions, Advanced Reporting, Selection Questionnaires, Interview Scorecards, Careers Page Editor, Slack Integration, Zapier Integration, Audit Log, and Priority Support.
GoHire.io offers three pricing plans to meet the needs of businesses. The plans provide flexible schedules for both monthly and annual payments. The company also offers a cancel anytime policy that is helpful when a business is not hiring. For new users, the company offers a free 14-day trial. The plans are:
- Starter costs £58 per month (about $74) and includes baseline features, with 3 active job posts, 3 active talent pools, Interview Scheduler & Calendar Sync, Customizable Pipeline Stages, and unlimited team members.
- Growth costs £83 per month (about $125) and provides everything from Starter plus 10 Active Job Posts, Talent Pools, Application Form Editor, Bulk Actions, Team Inbox, and @Mention Team members.
- Pro costs £165 per month (about $241) and provides all Growth features Plus Unlimited Active Job Posts, Automated Stage Actions, Advanced Reporting, Selection Questionnaires, Interview Scorecards, Careers Page Editor, Slack Integration, Zapier Integration, Audit Log, and Priority Support.
Best For
GoHire.io targets startups and small businesses looking for an affordable, efficient and effective way to manage their hiring process. The cost starts from £58 per month on the lowest plan and this can be scaled to fit the company needs and budget.
Why we love it
:
Jobsoid is a great choice for early stage startups. These companies can make use of Jobsoid's Beginner plan, which is free forever, then upgrade to Jobsoid's paid offerings as they grow.
Jobsoid
Review:
Designed for startups in their early stages, Jobsoid’s free Beginner package offers helpful services for organizing the recruitment and hiring process. For businesses interested in reaching potential applicants through social media, the free plan allows for integration with Facebook.
This ATS includes custom email templates and simple one-click posting to job boards. It also supports website career page integration and offers a branded careers portal. Jobsoid’s free Beginner package allows for one user and one job posting which may pose an issue for businesses looking to fill many positions. While the free version does offer online help, it’s overall support is limited and does not include phone, email, or setup support. To access more features, Jobsoid does offer paid plans.
Jobsoid
Customers:
- T-Mobile
- Cayan
- Sangoma
Jobsoid
Stats:
- 2,000 customers
Jobsoid
Pricing:
Jobsoid's Beginner plan is free forever. They offer a few paid plans:
- Lite is $49 per month, paid annually. It adds unlimited users, resume parsing, advanced reporting, and email support to the Beginner plan's feature set.
- Standard is $99 per month, paid annually. On top of Lite's features, it adds, video screening, reference check automation, questionaiires, filering, and reviews and scorecards.
- Pro is $249 per month, paid annually. On top of Standard's features, it adds lead management, campaigns, a recruiting CRM, custom integrations, and open API access.
Best For:
Best for startups looking an ATS at their early stages. The Lite paid plan is affordable as a good next step at only $49 per month.
Why we love it
:
As a self-serve recruitment intelligence platform, TurboHire can discover talent, conduct effective interviews, and run a data-driven, collaborative, and engaging recruitment process via Augmented Intelligence.
Turbohire
Review:
TurboHire is an AI-powered talent acquisition platform. The solution is packed with intelligent recruitment automation features like a LinkedIn chrome extension for smart sourcing, AI-based career pages for capturing relevant candidates, automatic interview scheduling, and much more.
The idea behind the tool is to help recruiters streamline each stage of the recruitment process. This is an excellent option for budget-conscious companies, as they have a free version and 14-day free trial for their paid Pro plan.
Turbohire
Customers:
- Accel partners
- Stella Apps
- Tavant
- Birla Soft
- Avanse
Turbohire
Stats:
- Used by 5000+ recruiters
- The payback period of TurboHire is 3 months
- TurboHire's tool has been known to help recruiters cut time-to-hire by up to 75%.
- Up to 2000% average ROI for some recruiters in 5 years.
- Organizations using TurboHire have been known to cut hiring costs. With reductions getting up to 65% in some cases.
Turbohire
Pricing:
TurboHire offers 4 plans:
- Free Plan: The free plan offers only intelligent recruitment features.
- The Pro Plan: This plan offers a 14-days free trial, and provides both intelligent recruitment features and candidate discovery capabilities. It renews after 2 weeks at a custom cost.
- Premium and Enterprise Plans: The Premium and Enterprise plans are offered at a custom quote.
Best For:
TurboHire is a good bet for companies and recruitment agencies on a tight budget looking to automate their workflows.
Why we love it
:
Trusted by 181,000 users, Recruitee ATS is not only robust, but also affordable and scalable. Companies like M&S saw a 50% decrease in time-to-hire since implementing Recruitee. You can try the software for free for 18 days.
- Pro: Recruitee is highly rated by customers for its ease of use. The majority of them are able to implement and get on with the software without much hassle.
- Pro: Recruitee features a customizable, kanban-like recruiting pipeline. Companies can add as many stages as needed to the pipeline and move candidates easily as they progress through the stages.
- Pro: Recruitee incorporates some measures to reduce hiring bias. For example, you can adjust the permission level for your interviewers and prevent them from seeing the scores each of them are assigning to the same candidate. This way, they won’t be influenced by each other's evaluations.
- Con: Several functions that are advertised on Recruitee’s feature list, including skill assessments, onboarding, video interviewing, and e-signatures are not actually built into Recruitee and are only possible through integration with third-party tools, which can be misleading to potential users, especially if it’s their first ATS.
- Con: Several users noted that the Recruitee’s reporting function is limited and at times, doesn’t retrieve data accurately.
- Con: Several users have complained about Recruitee’s support team being slow in responding, and at times, not able to solve issues.
- Con: For a product that’s geared towards SMBs, it lacks a free plan that businesses who are just getting started with ATSs can use for as long as they need, without any time constraints. We list this as a con as several solutions in this space do offer free-forever plans and similar feature sets as Recruitee, which puts it slightly behind the competition to users.
Recruitee
Review:
Recruitee offers a robust ATS specifically designed for companies with <1,000 employees who want to build their employer brands, monitor the health of their recruiting function through data, and of course hire through the feature set you'd expect from a best in class applicant tracking system. Their product has an 18 day free trial so it's very easy to get started with their offering.
The last thing that really caught our eye is that a disproportionate amount of their engineering team is strictly focused on design which results in an intuitive and powerful product built to enable collaboration across recruiters and hiring managers alike. Some of their marquee customers include Vice, Breitling, and Hotjar.
They offer an 18 day free trial so that you can get a feel for the system and get started recruiting today. This trial comes with all of the features in their Scale plan.
Recruitee
Customers:
Recruitee
Stats:
Recruitee
Pricing:
Recruitee has three pricing tiers, all of which start with an 18-day free trial.
- Launch starts at $109 per month and features recruitment essentials.
- Scale starts at $399 per month and adds automation and optimization tools to Launch's feature set.
- Lead is offered on a custom pricing basis and adds additional services such as compliance to Scale's feature set.
Best For:
Companies with under 1,000 employees.
Why we love it
:
SmartRecruiters' SmartStart plan is designed with small businesses in mind. Besides it being free of charge, SmartStart allows for an unlimited number of users, a perk Free ATSs rarely provide.
- SmartRecruiters has a built-in candidate assessment and skill testing module that allows you to predict cultural fit, future performance and retention, without needing to integrate third-party solutions.
- SmartRecruiters provides features for offer management. You can create offer letter templates, share them with successful applicants, and collect their e-signatures from any device using SmartRecruiters’ DocuSign integration.
- Speaking of integrations, SmartRecruiters has pre-built integrations with over 500 HR solutions and job boards. You can also ask SmartRecruiters’ team to build additional integrations for you if it doesn’t integrate with products in your tech stack.
- SmartRecruiters’ pricing isn’t transparent. Interested users have to go through the sales team to receive a quote. Users are also not able to create trial accounts on their own.
- Users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes time to get used to. Some users have also reported that the system can be slow and glitches at times.
- The reporting feature doesn’t always retrieve data accurately. Some users have also complained that report customizations and KPI tracking capabilities are limited.
- Candidate filtering is quite limited. As it stands, only basic options such as degree, location, gender etc are provided.
SmartRecruiters
Review:
Designed specifically for smaller businesses, SmartStart is the free version of SmartRecruiters talent acquisition service. It allows for an unlimited number of users as well as a variety of services including multi-board job posting, one-click apply, scheduling management tools, and candidate database management.
While the number of users is often restricted for free ATS, SmartStart’s unlimited user accessibility enables many people throughout a company to take part in the hiring process. SmartStart also has a high focus on collaboration and offers one-click job postings on any of over 200 available job boards. Cons: SmartStart is limited to 10 active job postings at one time, but SmartRecruiters also offers paid upgrades for higher functionality.
SmartRecruiters
Customers:
- Visa
- Ikea
SmartRecruiters
Stats:
SmartRecruiters
Pricing:
SmartStart is completely free for up to 10 active jobs at a time.
Best For:
Small businesses will get the most benefit out of SmartStart.
Why we love it
:
Recruiteze offers a free 15-day trial of their applicant tracking system software that helps with applicant sourcing, interviewing, streamlining the recruitment process, and reducing recruitment costs. The free trial version also includes ATS software that provides unlimited access to job boards and job postings.
- Software that is user-friendly and easy to install and manage. Access to numerous job boards with a one-click publishing feature.
- Software that comes with a 15-day free trial period with no credit card required. Affordable paid membership packages that start as low as $49 a month and can be canceled at any time.
- Customizable workflows that allow you efficiently move each candidate through the various stages of the hiring process.
- Software that is user-friendly and easy to install and manage. Access to numerous job boards with a one-click publishing feature.
- Software that comes with a 15-day free trial period with no credit card required. Affordable paid membership packages that start as low as $49 a month and can be canceled at any time.
- Customizable workflows that allow you efficiently move each candidate through the various stages of the hiring process.
- Users are unable to post job ads directly to social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.
- Users are unable to pre-screen candidates.
- Customers have reported that the formatting options are limited and errors can arise when putting resumes through the system.
- It can be a bit difficult to find the product tutorials.
- Users are unable to post job ads directly to social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.
- Users are unable to pre-screen candidates.
- Customers have reported that the formatting options are limited and errors can arise when putting resumes through the system.
- It can be a bit difficult to find the product tutorials.
RecruitEze
Review:
One of the main benefits of RecruitEze is that there is no contract and so you can upgrade or downgrade at any time. There is also no fee for setup. Recruiteze’s ATS is specifically targeted toward small businesses. Even its most elaborate package is limited in terms of the number of users who can access it and the free version only permits one user. The free version also does not include a custom careers page, candidate workflow, or bulk resume upload features. It also is limited to 500 total applications.
RecruitEze
Customers:
Recruiteze is used around the world. Their customer list includes ClientMind Recruiting, the Augustine Institute, the Viking International School, and Integrity Talent Source.
RecruitEze
Stats:
- Recruiteze software comes with 46 features compared to an average of 29 in the ATS industry.
RecruitEze
Pricing:
Recruiteze offers a 15-day free trial of their software, and has 3 different paid plan options.
- 15-Day Free Trial: You can request a free trial of the Startup or Business paid plans. The free trial is no risk, no obligation, and comes with full customer support. It is limited to a single user and one active job posting. The features include the ones offered in either of the paid plans.
- Startup: This plan costs $59 per month on a month-to-month basis, or $49 per month if billed annually. The main features include publishing job offers on major job boards, a career portal, email integration and email templates, activity reports and task management, CRM, and a candidate database. The Startup plan allows for 3 active job postings.
- Business: This plan costs $119 per month on a month-to-month basis, or $99 per month if billed annually. It includes all of the features in the Startup plan plus bulk resume uploading, CSV export, and allows for up to 10 active job postings.
- Enterprise: This is a customizable plan and the price varies based on the customer’s needs. It includes all of the main features offered in the Business plan plus unlimited active job postings, unlimited users, more bulk email and resume upload capabilities, and a dedicated account manager.
Best For:
While companies of all sizes can benefit from using Recruiteze, the software is best suited for small to medium-sized businesses and startups.
Why we love it
:
If you are a small business that only requires one ATS user seat, Recooty is worth checking out. It is completely free for a single user and provides several features for a recruiter to keep track of applicants.
- One user liked the usability of the software, stating that it is 'easy and self-explanatory.'
- The ability to post a job on multiple platforms makes it efficient, as per one user who labels Recooty a 'one-click job posting solution.'
- The company offers a cheap subscription, making it affordable for small businesses.
- One user liked the usability of the software, stating that it is 'easy and self-explanatory.'
- The ability to post a job on multiple platforms makes it efficient, as per one user who labels Recooty a 'one-click job posting solution.'
- The company offers a cheap subscription, making it affordable for small businesses.
- The company does not have a mobile application, as stated by many software users.
- Recooty has limited features i.e., unlike its competitors, it doesn’t support employee referrals and one-on-one interviews.
- Recooty offers only two integrations from their dashboard; for Slack and LinkedIn.
- Recooty is more suitable for small and medium businesses and may not be ideal for large enterprises with more job postings and locations.
- The company does not have a mobile application, as stated by many software users.
- Recooty has limited features i.e., unlike its competitors, it doesn’t support employee referrals and one-on-one interviews.
- Recooty offers only two integrations from their dashboard; for Slack and LinkedIn.
- Recooty is more suitable for small and medium businesses and may not be ideal for large enterprises with more job postings and locations.
Recooty
Review:
Recooty's free applicant tracking system (ATS) enough functionality for small businesses to attract and hire the right people. Their free plan allows for one active job post at a time, job widget integration, the creation of branded careers page and social network sharing. They also offer a 15 day trial of their paid plans so you can test out some of their more advanced features before committing.
Recooty
Customers:
Recooty serves over 5000 companies, including Sendlane, Airtable, Uber, Rack Bank, American Hospital, and Trello.
Recooty
Stats:
Over 15000 jobs have been posted and over 500,000 applications received through Recooty.
Recooty
Pricing:
The company offers four pricing plans:
- Free plan - Limited to one active job slot, one user, and one location.
- Pro Plan - the plan goes for $49/month with 10 Active job slots, 10 slots, and 3 locations.
- Ultra Plan - goes for $ 99/month with 25 active job slots, 50 users, 10 locations, and all features under the Pro plan.
- Max Plan- goes for $ 199/month while offering 75 active job slots, 100 users, and 20 locations and all features under the Ultra plan.
All the plans come with a 14-day trial period in which you can test the service without providing your credit card details. After the trial period ends, you will need to update your card to continue using the services.
You'll appreciate Recooty's flexible and affordable pricing options if you're a small business. If you're starting, the free tier gives you access to one job posting, which is more than adequate for most small firms that only require one or two people at any given time.
Best For:
Recruitee's free solution is perfect for a small company with only one person doing the recruiting.
Why we love it
:
Freshteams is a robust and user-friendly ATS. Their free plan serves companies with up to 50 users quite well, eliminating the need to supplement their offering with additional tools.
- Freshteam is very user-friendly, with an intuitive UI that’s easy to navigate. It features a customizable, Kanban-style view of the full hiring process from initial contact to offer sending. Drag and drop mechanism makes it easy to move candidates around as they progress through the different stages.
- Freshteam is affordable for SMBs to use while still having a comparable feature set to more expensive solutions.
- Freshteam is quite scalable. With four plans to choose from, customers can start out with the free plan, then upgrade to more features as their business grows.
- While Freshteam has a free-forever plan that small companies can use, the plan is limited in features and allows for only 3 published job postings. That said, Freshteam’s paid plans are quite affordable, and can be used by small businesses - should they need to - without breaking the bank.
- Freshteam might not be suitable for enterprises and agencies that do volume hiring and are in need of advanced applicant tracking, candidate sourcing, and relationship management capabilities.
Freshteam
Review:
Freshteam is user-friendly HR suite with features for applicant tracking, candidate screening, hiring, onboarding, time-off management, employee information management, and more on a single platform.
With a customizable career site, integration with multiple job boards, and social media channels, Freshteam enables you to attract top talent for your open positions. Once candidate applications are received, your recruiting team can proceed with screening their resumes, scheduling interviews, and sharing feedback with all relevant parties. All of this activity can easily be tracked through Freshteam’s recruiting funnel that you can customize to reflect all the stages in your hiring process.
Freshteam
Customers:
University of Pennsylvania, Daimler, SAP, Nissan, JCDecaux
Freshteam
Stats:
- 3,000+ customers
Freshteam
Pricing:
Freshteam is free for up to 50 employees, it then starts at $1.20 per employee plus a $71 platform fee, billed monthly. All paid plans come with a 21-day free trial and you get two months for free if you go with the annual plan.
Best For:
Any company searching for a free ATS.
Why we love it
:
Best suited for SMBs, iKrut brings almost everything you need to attract, source, and manage candidates the way you want it with minimal training.
- No payment info is required to start a 28-day free trial. After the trial, users can still use the free version for as long as they want.
- Users benefit from unlimited job posts, users, and application access with the free plan.
- They have transparent pricing which means you won't need to go through their sales team to find out how much it'll cost you.
- You can improve candidate experience and how you communicate your branding with features built into iKrut such as branded careers site and customized candidate workflow.
- You can manage users and their access to iKrut with the adjustable user access levels functionality.
- The platform can save you considerable time with automation tools like bulk rejection systems, interview scheduler, and automated messages.
- Unlimited 1-1 live training is offered for paid accounts.
- No payment info is required to start a 28-day free trial. After the trial, users can still use the free version for as long as they want.
- Users benefit from unlimited job posts, users, and application access with the free plan.
- They have transparent pricing which means you won't need to go through their sales team to find out how much it'll cost you.
- You can improve candidate experience and how you communicate your branding with features built into iKrut such as branded careers site and customized candidate workflow.
- You can manage users and their access to iKrut with the adjustable user access levels functionality.
- The platform can save you considerable time with automation tools like bulk rejection systems, interview scheduler, and automated messages.
- Unlimited 1-1 live training is offered for paid accounts.
- Phone and email support are available for both free and paid accounts. The platform doesn’t provide live chat support (yet).
- iKrut doesn’t offer a mobile app.
- No AI-powered actions are found on the platform.
- The software is not available in languages other than English.
- Phone and email support are available for both free and paid accounts. The platform doesn’t provide live chat support (yet).
- iKrut doesn’t offer a mobile app.
- No AI-powered actions are found on the platform.
- The software is not available in languages other than English.
iKrut
Review:
iKrut
Customers:
Over 55 companies use iKrut as their applicant tracking tool. Most of them have under 50 employees and are located in English-speaking countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
iKrut
Stats:
iKrut
Pricing:
iKrut offers a free plan that allows you to post unlimited jobs, create unlimited users, and access an editable iKrut-powered career site and all applications. The software also has two paid options: Premium and Premium+.
- Premium has a fixed price. Regardless of your company’s size, the Premium plan charges you £300 ($340) per month or £3,000 ($3,400) per year. It gives you access to substantially more functionality, including posting up to 50 job vacancies in the next 12 months, customizing candidate workflow in your way, and providing basic reports.
- Premium+ price depends on the size of your company. The bigger your team is, the more you have to pay. It starts from £400 ($450) per month or £4,500 ($5,100) per year. It has everything from the Premium package plus other advanced hiring tools, such as background checking, compliance, and onboarding.
On top of that, you will get up to a 20% reduction off iKrut’s standard pricing for a multi-year deal. There is also a reduction for paying monthly upfront, yet you need to contact their team to get the details.
Best For:
iKrut budget-friendly offering is best suited for SMEs hiring fewer than 50 candidates a year.
Why we love it
:
Unlike other free products that are often limited in functionality, MightyRecruiter is a robust ATS that allows for unlimited job posting across various job boards. It also comes with a comprehensive resume database, employee referral features, a reporting dashboard and a branded career website at no additional cost.
- MightyRecruiter allows you to post unlimited jobs to 29+ job boards for free and access a resume database of over 21 million candidates.
- The platform has a clean and intuitive interface that allows you to create job postings, filter, screen, and rate candidates easily.
- The built-in reporting dashboard provides a comprehensive view of how your job postings are performing on various job boards and channels through metrics like number of views, applications, and conversions.
- MightyRecruiter allows you to post unlimited jobs to 29+ job boards for free and access a resume database of over 21 million candidates.
- The platform has a clean and intuitive interface that allows you to create job postings, filter, screen, and rate candidates easily.
- The built-in reporting dashboard provides a comprehensive view of how your job postings are performing on various job boards and channels through metrics like number of views, applications, and conversions.
- Once created, job postings can take anywhere between 24-48 hours to be approved by MightyRecruiter's team and made live.
- MightyRecruiter does not offer advanced ATS features like integrated assessments, interview scheduling, workflow management, and collaborative hiring for end-to-end recruitment
- While MightyRecruiter is primarily free to use, viewing the full resumes of candidates on their resume database costs extra.
- Once created, job postings can take anywhere between 24-48 hours to be approved by MightyRecruiter's team and made live.
- MightyRecruiter does not offer advanced ATS features like integrated assessments, interview scheduling, workflow management, and collaborative hiring for end-to-end recruitment
- While MightyRecruiter is primarily free to use, viewing the full resumes of candidates on their resume database costs extra.
MightyRecruiter
Review:
Ideal for small and medium-sized businesses, MightyRecruiter is a free recruitment software that helps companies streamline their talent-sourcing process. The tool allows you to attract candidates through a custom-branded career page, post unlimited job openings across 29+ job boards, access a resume database of over 21 million candidates, rank and filter candidates. To speed up your sourcing efforts further, the platform packs over 200 ready-to-use job description templates and suggests suitable candidates for your job posts based on defined criteria.
MightyRecruiter
Customers:
ThinkGlink Media, DocuSign, OpExpert, GTM Pros, Small World Recruiting
MightyRecruiter
Stats:
- MightyRecruiter allows you to post job openings on 29+ job boards for free and access their resume database for over 21 million candidates.
- GTM Pros reduced their average time-to-fill open positions by 40% using MightyRecruiter.
MightyRecruiter
Pricing:
MightyRecruiter is free to use. However, viewing the full resumes of candidates on their resume database costs extra.
Best For:
MightyRecruiter is best suited for SMBs. It is a free ATS that packs a decent range of features to streamline recruitment for companies hiring under 50 candidates a year.
Why we love it
:
For small businesses looking for an affordable ATS with basic features, JobScore’s free version is great option. It offers Job SEO Optimization and analytics reports that can be easily exported to Excel.
JobScore
Review:
Featuring interview scheduling with calendar integration, JobScore helps businesses stay organized through the recruiting process. The free version also allows employers to design unique job application forms where candidates can create profiles and submit a resume. If your business is on the medium side or is growing rapidly, the free version may not provide the services you need. Designed for small businesses hiring less than 5 people at a time, JobScore’s free system only allows for one active job posting.
JobScore
Customers:
- Dialpad
- Lytics
- imvu
JobScore
Stats:
- 1,000+ active employers
- 15M+ job applications
JobScore
Pricing:
JobScore offers a free plan with one active job. They also have three other pricing plans for those looking to upgrade:
- Start costs $99/month, has basic features, and offers 5 open jobs.
- Scale costs $299.month, has most features, and offers 10 open jobs.
- Enterprise is custom priced but comes with all features, and is designed for companies with up to 10,000 employees.
Each paid plan also has a 30-day free trial available.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes can make use of JobScore's offerings.
Why we love it
:
CandidATS is a free, open-source ATS. It has so far been used by thousands of businesses in over 130 countries to track and manage applicants.
CandidATS
Review:
Created by Aueio, CandidATS is a free open source ATS. Its features include a centralized candidate management tool, an easy to search database for resumes, email templates, and interview scheduling capabilities.
CandidATS
Customers:
CandidATS
Stats:
- Downloaded over 11,000 times
- Used in 137 countries
CandidATS
Pricing:
CandidATS is completely free to download. However, customization services cost $25/hour.
Best For:
CandidATS is best for companies needing a free solution in a pinch.
Why we love it
:
OpenCats because is a completely free open-source ATS that packs all the basic features a small business would need to keep track of applicants.
OpenCATS
Review:
OpenCATS is a completely free open source ATS. Designed for recruiters, OpenCATS provides basic ATS services such as candidate tracking, resume parsing, and job requisition and posting.
OpenCATS
Customers:
OpenCATS
Stats:
Best For:
OpenCATS is best for companies needing a free ATS in a pinch.
Why we love it
:
Apart from their basic job posting services, VanHack offers a free, full-scale applicant tracking system (ATS) that supports unlimited jobs and users. Their platform lets you schedule interviews in as little as three clicks, post jobs, and track candidate progress.
- VanHack offers a free ATS that supports unlimited jobs and users.
- You can filter your list of potential candidates according to skills, years of experience, or custom keywords fairly easily.
- Many of VanHack’s job seekers are willing to relocate to pursue the right opportunity.
- Employers can work with a dedicated team of talent acquisition experts to find potential candidates.
- The platform’s salary guide helps job seekers and employers get a better idea of average salaries for roles.
- Because of the general focus on tech-related jobs, it’s difficult to find jobs in other industries.
- Despite their best efforts, some spam messages and emails do slip through the cracks.
- Virtual hiring events don’t provide enough time to meet many potential candidates.
- VanHack doesn’t currently offer a mobile app for hiring managers and recruiters to use on the go.
VanHack
Review:
VanHack offers a free ATS platform for all employers. Their platform supports unlimited users and jobs, and it doesn’t even require a credit card to get started. This makes it a great option for small businesses, startup entrepreneurs, and those who just want to test the waters and see what they have to offer.
Their ATS includes a Kanban pipeline for all jobs, making it a breeze to manage potential candidates, and you can schedule an interview in as little as three clicks. Users can also post jobs directly from their ATS platform.
VanHack
Customers:
Some of VanHack’s customers include Deloitte, Brex, Booking.com, Zalando, Rogers, and SkipTheDishes.
VanHack
Stats:
- More than 1,600 VanHack candidates have been successfully hired.
- 95% of job offers made on the VanHack platform are accepted by the candidate.
- More than 600 companies have used VanHack since 2016.
- VanHack maintains a global community of 400,000+ potential candidates.
- More than 8,000 of VanHack’s candidates are women in tech.
- Companies using VanHack have an average of 41 days from initial contact to hiring.
- VanHack has played a role in hiring candidates from 14 countries to date.
VanHack
Pricing:
VanHack is completely free for job seekers. For employers, VanHack charges a fee per hire that amounts to 20% of the candidate’s annual salary. Job posts, interviews, and candidate searching are all free.
Best For:
VanHack is best for organizations that are looking for potential candidates within the IT industry, especially in on-demand roles. It’s also useful when trying to hire one-off tech roles for your company – regardless of your industry.
Benefits of using a Free Applicant Tracking System
ATS's are great for recruiting teams that are looking to grow their organization's headcount, and want to stay organized. Even with a free option, companies can expect to gain benefits including:
- Recruiting automation: let's face it, recruiting is a series of many tasks which can take up a considerable amount of time. An applicant tracking system can go a long way towards automating some of these tasks so that you spend less time scheduling, wading through resumes, collecting interview feedback, etc.
- Compliance: EEOC audits and other forms of equitable recruiting compliance are an important function for applicant tracking systems. Your ATS should keep you compliant with the relevant rules and regulations in your country.
- Candidate experience: An applicant tracking system is a much better candidate experience than simply emailing a resume, or worse yet trying to figure out how to apply in the first place. You can usually also add in employer branding elements to your careers site like a jobs page complete with employee testimonials.
- Recruiter experience: Anyone on your team that does recruiting will be grateful for an ATS. Say goodbye to disparate spreadsheets, dropbox folders, or the random google doc.
- Staying organized: Now you can keep all of your candidate workflows in one place. This means you can focus on the tasks that matter, and grow your company.
Pitfalls when buying a free ATS
One of the key benefits of buying a free ATS is that you get to try out a system before you have to pay for it. While some of these systems do have forever free tiers, the main pitfall to remember here is that you will most likely eventually pay for the system you are using (businesses have to make money after all!).
This means it's really important for your team to choose the right solution, and then make sure you are vetting it as a long term play. Don't let a paid tier sneak up on your unprepared!
Features of Free Applicant Tracking Systems
Even for free (and cheap) versions of software, you can still expect to get many of the basics that you'd find in any ATS:
- Job Site: Most solutions come with a career site built in so that you can have a dedicated place on your website for job seekers to see openings and learn about working at your company.
- Application Submissions: Of course, an ATS will allow you to accept and organized applications from job seekers.
- Interview feedback: Look for solutions that are easy to collect and organize feedback from, especially since most of the people adding feedback are not full time recruiters.
- Job distribution: Many times even free ATS's will distribute your jobs to various free job boards. They may also have the ability to distribute them to paid job boards. Of course, this will cost money.
- Scheduling: Look for an ATS that helps to schedule job seekers for interviews and integrates with your calendar system. This can save a lot of time!
Free Applicant Tracking System FAQs
What is an applicant tracking system?
An applicant tracking system is a software application designed to help HR teams organize recruitment and hiring data.
Why do you need an applicant tracking system?
You need an applicant tracking system to easily manage large volumes of applicants and candidates, streamlining the recruitment process.
What kind of free ATS options are available?
When looking into a free applicant tracking system, you might come across a few different options:
- Free trials of fully-functional paid software that let you try out a system for a week up to thirty days depending on the company.
- Basic subscriptions that offer limited functionality but are completely free to use forever.
Who should look into getting a free applicant tracking system?
Small businesses and startups in particular who aren’t looking to do a ton of hiring at once should look into a free applicant tracking system. An ATS will streamline their hiring process while saving them the cost of buying enterprise software.
However, larger companies may find value in free trials, as it allows them to vet different vendors to find the right solution before buying.
Why is an ATS used in recruitment?
An ATS is used in recruitment to make the end-to-end process of hiring easier. Applicant tracking systems were originally made for large corporations that deal with thousands of job applications every week. Therefore having a software system automatically sort applicant information into a database and analyze the best candidates saves HR teams hours of work.
However, an ATS will still provide value to a small business looking to automate their hiring process.
How do applicant tracking systems work?
Applicant tracking systems work by acting as a liaison between an employer and an applicant. Once an application is submitted, the ATS stores the candidate’s work experience, education, contact information and other details into a database. HR teams use the database to review applications, communicate with applicants, schedule interviews and sometimes administer skills tests.
What features do free applicant tracking systems offer?
A free applicant tracking system won’t have all the features of a paid software, but they can offer a selection of the following:
- Career site
- Job board integration
- Application sorting
- Resume parsing
- Interview schedule
- Candidate messaging
- Chatbots
- Company profile
- Reporting and analytics
- Cloud storage
- Internal candidate portal
- Employee referral tool
- Search functionality
- Team collaboration
- Import/Export capabilities
We hope this listing of free applicant tracking systems was useful for your recruiting team as they look to bring on a new ATS. If you have any additions, please send us a note, or leave a comment, and we’ll be happy to update the list!
Lastly, if you have the budget to use a paid ATS, we recommend checking out our page on the best applicant tracking systems, complete with questions to ask on demos, ROI calculations, etc. Enjoy!
Guides and Blogs on ATS:
What is an ATS? / Benefits of an ATS / How to Calculate ATS ROI / Guide on ATS Pricing / ATS Buyer Guide / Questions to Ask ATS Vendors on Demos
Best Free Applicant Tracking Systems
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