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In this Guide
- Top Free Employee Onboarding Software
- Intro and Our Criteria
- Our Reviews of the Top Vendors
- Use Cases for Free Employee Onboarding Software
- Pitfalls When Using Free Employee Onboarding Software
- What Features To Expect from Free Employee Onboarding Software
- Free Onboarding Tools FAQs
- Final Advice on Free Onboarding Software
Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
Almost 30% of job seekers say they have left a position within their first 90 days. Therefore, it is important to properly engage your workforce at the very beginning of their journey with your company to ensure a high retention rate. Onboarding tools prepare them for success in their new roles, empower them to set high expectations for themselves, and even encourage them to stick around longer.
Employee turnover is costly, especially if those costs come immediately after new employee hiring expenses. Despite that, many small businesses and startups still might not be able to fit an onboarding platform in their budget. As such, we put together a list of the best free onboarding solutions, including free trials and free forever options. Our aim is to help small businesses empower new hires and create high-growth teams while also saving money and valuable time.
This guide outlines the best free employee onboarding systems, either those that have free trials or are actually free depending on your company size. You can also check out our landscape on the top employee onboarding solutions.
Our Criteria: Here's how we chose who made the cut
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 Employee Onboarding Software Platforms — 2022
We track thousands of HR Tech solutions. Here are the best free employee onboarding software as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
Eloomi has a built-in employee onboarding platform that lets you create, track and manage the entire employee onboarding process. It also comes with a free onboarding ebook that helps new employees enjoy an effective onboarding process and get up to speed quickly.
- Eloomi is quite comprehensive, with modules for onboarding, training/learning, performance management, employee engagement, and recognition.
- The platform comes with a library of ready-to-use templates to help you create online training faster. It also has a mobile app for your employees to access training materials on the go.
- Their surveys are customizable and private, helping you get specific and honest feedback from employees.
- You can request other members of the organization to provide feedback on certain skills of employees.
- You can make use of Eloomi’s micro-sized online training content to prevent overwhelming onboarding experiences.
- Because of the sheer number of features Eloomi offers, there’s a steeper learning curve for the average user to get the hang of the platform and understand it to its fullest.
- A few users reported experiencing bugs and speed issues when generating reports, especially ones with a large volume of data, but have noted that Eloomi’s customer support team is quick to resolve such issues.
- The platform’s pricing isn’t transparent and free trials aren’t available at this time.
eloomi
Review:
With Eloomi’s employee onboarding solution, you can make your onboarding process reflective of your company’s culture. The entire training process can be broken into bite-sized pieces to make it easier for your new hires to grasp all of the new information you share with them about your company and their role in it. You can also track their progress through the onboarding and training phase in real time and have conversations with them around it. To learn more about how you can improve the experience of your new hires further, you may want to check out Eloomi’s onboard ebook, available to all customers for free.
eloomi
Customers:
Eloomi’s customer list includes BONUS Vorsorgekasse AG, Breakout Games, Carne Group, ElectricBrands, Nufarm, Domino’s, and more.
Eloomi’s customer list includes BONUS Vorsorgekasse AG, Breakout Games, Carne Group, ElectricBrands, Nufarm, Domino’s, and more.
eloomi
Pricing:
Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.
Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.
Best For
Eloomi is for HR leaders and managers of mid-sized and large businesses to make onboarding easier for employees, engage them through frequent feedback, and track the progress of their personal development.
Why we love it
:
Not only is Freshteam a complete HR suite that's highly thought of by all sorts of professionals, they're also the makers of a breadth of widely-acclaimed business solutions.
- 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, as we've confirmed via several user interviews.
Freshteam
Review:
Freshteam offers a 21-day free trial of their employee onboarding software solution. It allows you to put together and send an onboarding kit of documents, forms-to-fill, and handbooks to sign so it can all be taken care of before the first day. Whenever something is missed, the system sends out reminders. Some of the additional features Freshteam offers include task tracking, open API’s, and employee offboarding.
It is typically packaged as a part of their greater HR software package, of which they offer a free-forever plan called. Unfortunately, onboarding functionality is not included in the free plan at this time.
Freshteam
Customers:
Daimler, Nissan, JCDecaux, SAP, University of Pennsylvania
Freshteam is one of the most widely used HR suites out there with over 7,000 customers including Monster, PharmEasy, Ocado, Reaktor, Nissan, SAP, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Freshteam
Pricing:
Freshteam is free for up to 50 employees. Their onboarding solution is offered with their Pro and Enterprise plans. The former starts at $2.40 per user per month plus a monthly $119 platform fee. That being said, you get two months free if you go for the annual plan.
Freshteam has 4 pricing plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Free: This plan is free of charge for up to 50 active employees and is limited to 3 published job postings.
- Growth: Costing $1 per employee per month + $59 platform fee per month, the Growth plan is ideal for small companies looking to handle their basic HR needs more effectively.
- Pro: For $2 per employee per month + $99 platform fee per month, the Pro plan comes with several added features to automate workflows and manage HR data.
- Enterprise: For $4 per employee per month + $169 platform fee per month, the Enterprise plan is Freshteam’s most premium offering, providing users with access to all features in previous plans with the addition of advanced customizations, reporting, and more.
Best For
Freshteam is a good bet for businesses large and small. However, those looking specifically for a free onboarding solution may not find a good fit here, as it offers so much more but onboarding is a part of the paid offering only.
Why we love it
:
BambooHR helps you save countless man hours in onboarding processes. It comes with built-in electronic signatures, onboarding templates, automatic sending of onboarding tasks to new employees, and customizable pre-boarding packages.
- Flexible packaging and custom pricing is the way they roll. You can pick out one or two packages and pick other modules as add-ons based on your needs.
- Very simple and straightforward tool, easy to use.
- Flexible packaging and custom pricing is the way they roll. You can pick out one or two packages and pick other modules as add-ons based on your needs.
- Very simple and straightforward tool, easy to use.
- Payroll is only available for US-based employees
- Customer support is only offered during US business hours.
- Some modules like time tracking, performance management, and surveys are only available as add-ons.
- Payroll is only available for US-based employees
- Customer support is only offered during US business hours.
- Some modules like time tracking, performance management, and surveys are only available as add-ons.
BambooHR
Review:
BambooHR's software spans across the entire employee lifecycle, as they also have recruiting and performance management in addition to the core HRMS functionality. Their onboarding and offboarding features, while available only for some of their custom plans, are easy to use and made for saving time and keeping employees engaged.
BambooHR
Customers:
Among the 20,000+ companies that use BambooHR, you’d find names like Quora, Universal Group, Reddit, Asana, Change.org, University of Maryland, Grammarly, Stance, Postmates, Wistia, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and ZipRecruiter.
Among the 20,000+ companies that use BambooHR, you’d find names like Quora, Universal Group, Reddit, Asana, Change.org, University of Maryland, Grammarly, Stance, Postmates, Wistia, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and ZipRecruiter.
BambooHR
Pricing:
Pricing is not disclosed upfront, but they do offer a free trial of their all-in-one software and then go out of their way to find a version that will suit you. Before they come up with a personalized quote that will align with your budget, however, they are also likely to extend your free trial upon request or even give you a free demo of the advanced features.
Pricing is not disclosed upfront, but they do offer a free trial of their all-in-one software and then go out of their way to find a version that will suit you. Before they come up with a personalized quote that will align with your budget, however, they are also likely to extend your free trial upon request or even give you a free demo of the advanced features.
Best For
BambooHR is a good fit for companies looking for a very customizable HR product, with pricing that reflects their needs. It’s also popular among teams that are partially or even fully remote.
Why we love it
:
Sentrifugo is one of the top open-source HRMSs out there. Whether you're a small business or a large organization, it can be configured to fit your exact needs.
Sentrifugo
Review:
Sentrifugo is a free open-source HRMS, which includes an onboarding module in its feature set. If your company is looking for a little bit of everything on top of onboarding, Sentrifugo is a great option. However, because it’s open source you have to save all of your data on your own servers. For a small to medium sized business, that shouldn’t end up being an issue.
Sentrifugo
Customers:
Sentrifugo
Pricing:
Sentrifugo is completely free, but you need to take into consideration the cost of hosting it yourself.
Sentrifugo is completely free, but you need to take into consideration the cost of hosting it yourself.
Best For
Small and medium-sized companies that want to explore the open-source route.
Why we love it
:
Leapsome offers a modern approach to onboarding and other HR processes, all united by great UX and support.
- Leapsome is quite feature-rich; the platform packs modules for employee onboarding, learning management, engagement, performance management, goals tracking and much more.
- The majority of users find Leapsome’s UI to be friendly and easy to navigate.
- There are lots of third party integrations options to choose from, including Slack, which many users appreciate.
- The platform has transparent pricing, and you only pay for the modules you need.
- There is currently no way to post or upload an image or file into your feedback.
- Since Leapsome can do so many things, you may need some time to get used to it. The implementation process can also take some time.
- There currently isn’t a mobile app that users can download and access Leapsome quickly on-the-go.
- Free 14-day trials are available but you need to book a demo with the sales team first to sign up for one; you can’t do so on your own.
Leapsome
Review:
Employee engagement and performance management software company Leapsome offers a 14-day free trial of their product. It has a robust onboarding solution that lets you craft a step-by-step learning program and quiz your new hire on what they learned at each step.
Leapsome
Customers:
Leapsome is used by Babbel, Mercedes-Benz, Trivago, and Spotify, among others.
Leapsome is used by many well-known companies, including Spotify, +Babbel, Unity, PayFit, Learnerbly, Modus Create, Spryker, DCMN, and more.
Leapsome
Pricing:
Leapsome starts at a 14-day free trial. Once that is over, pricing will depend on the number of employees you'll have using the tool and the modules you'd like to use. Their modular pricing starts at 7 USD user/month if billed annually.
Leapsome’s pricing starts at $8 per user per month. You pay for the module(s) you want to use, which are:
- Perform: It includes features such as Performance Reviews, 360° Reviews, Skill Framework, Automations, Analytics, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Align: It includes features such as Goals & OKRs, Activity Feed, Goal Tree, Goal Analytics, OKR Check-ins, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Engage: It includes features such as Pulse & Engagement, Best Practice Library, Onboarding Surveys, Conversations, Benchmarks, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Learn: It includes features such as Onboarding Paths, Learning Paths, Content Library, Quizzes, Learning Analytics, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
- Reward: It includes features such as Compensation, Promotion, Proposal Approval, Set Rules, Track Progress, Feedback & Praise, and 1:1s & Team Meetings.
Best For
All sorts of company sizes could make good use of Leapsome.
Why we love it
:
WebHR is free if you have 5 employees or less in your organization. Its base module includes onboarding tools, which are designed for new hire self-service.
WebHR
Review:
With WebHR, employees can use any device to fill out paperwork, sign and upload documentation, choose benefits plans, and complete training modules. Even if you need to upgrade from the free plan, WebHR's options are pretty inexpensive; as little as $2/month per staff member. That makes it an ideal employee management system for small businesses.
WebHR
Customers:
Chevrolet, Nissan, Infiniti, WaterAid, GMC, and Budget.
According to their website, some of the companies that use WebHR include Nissan, WaterAid, zameen.com, and Budget.
WebHR
Pricing:
WebHR's pricing after the free version depends on the amount of modules you add. As mentioned above, it can be as little as $2 per user per month for all the base modules.
WebHR's pricing after the free version depends on the amount of modules you add. As mentioned above, it can be as little as $2 per user per month for all the base modules.
Best For
Small businesses looking for a simple solution with all the necessary features.
Why we love it
:
Zenefits offer top-notch product experience with a self-service ethos for most of their products. That has worked for thousands of companies because their products are so easy to use.
- It’s one of the top names in HR tech and payroll software for American small businesses.
- Their platform is one of the best-looking and easiest to figure out among the sector.
- Zenefits can grow with you. Its pricing plans allow you to pay and tweak as you go, add certain modules when you need them, or get rid of them if you don’t.
- As oriented to small businesses as the tool is, it doesn’t give you the chance to create a custom bundle of the services and/or modules you’d like to have. For instance, Zenefits does not offer a standalone ACA module. Therefore, you will need to purchase an entire HRIS plan if you want to access that offering.
- In addition, Zenefits focuses on small to mid sized companies. If you're an enterprise organization, you may want to consider another option.
- Zenefits is also rather focused on the US market at this point. So, if your team is mostly in another country and you need more of a local know-how, it might not be the best bet for certain modules like payroll and benefits.
Zenefits
Review:
Zenefits offers a two week free trial of their Hiring & Onboarding software. Zenefits Hiring & Onboarding software is entirely online and mobile friendly, and allows employees to self-onboard, saving your organization lots of time. The solution follows the entire onboarding process from making the offer to managing employees once they’re fully assimilated. It connects automatically to the rest of their HR suit as well, making it ideal if you’re already a Zenefits customer.
Zenefits
Customers:
Quora, Goals for Autism, Universal Group, Reddit, Asana
Since they focus on the small business sector, you likely won’t see huge brands among Zenefits’ customer list. You might see one of the local brands you interact with, however! Their “Customer Success Stories” page is frequently updated with profiles of their customers and how they’re making good use of the product. Rather than name drop several companies this time, we’d suggest checking that out.
Zenefits
Pricing:
After the free trial, Zenefits starts with the Essentials plan at $8 per month per employee.
Zenefits starts with the following plans:
- Essentials: This plan costs $8 per employee per month and packs all of Zenefits’ core HR features, employee time and scheduling tools, 3rd party integrations, as well as access to Zenefits’ mobile app.
- Growth: This plan costs $14 per employee per month and includes all of the features under the Essentials plan, plus compensation and performance management tools.
- Zen: This plan costs $21 per employee per month and includes all of the features under the Growth plan, plus tools and services for employee well-being tracking, employee engagement surveys, as well as access to Zenefits’ People Hub, where employees and admins can communicate and collaborate directly in their HR system of record.
In addition to the above, Zenefits offers the following add‑ons that can go on top of any of its base plans:
- Payroll: $6 per employee per month.
- Advisory services: $8 per employee per month.
- Benefits administration (with your own broker): $5 per employee per month.
The Essentials plan features ACA compliance. If you have 50 employees, the ACA minimum, it will cost $400 per month at its least expensive. However, if you use your own insurance broker, it's an extra $5 per employee per month. They offer a free two week trial before you have to buy.
Lastly, for larger businesses looking into Zenefits, Enterprise pricing is available upon request.
Best For
Smaller teams (<50) that want to save time by streamlining their HR services with an intuitive platform that lets them pay and tweak as they go.
Use Cases for Free Employee Onboarding Software
Every company wants to build a successful onboarding program to motivate and inspire new team members. After all, a motivated employee is a productive employee. But you might think that your human resources team can handle onboarding by themselves. If you’re unsure how software can streamline your onboarding process, here are some use cases that may convince you to try a solution out, especially if it’s free.
- Training: Much of the onboarding experience is training a new hire to understand how they fit into your company’s operations. There’s learning missions and values, products and services, customers, software systems, and much more. Employee onboarding software offers an easy solution to lots of learning. You can create streamlined training plans, provide skill assessments, and connections to mentorship opportunities with senior staff.
- Creating Culture: Learning about your company’s missions and values is incredibly important to ensure that new hires successfully assimilate. Employee onboarding software lets you intertwine that culture into every communication with a new hire. In addition, the software solutions offer “buddy” functionality to match new employees with someone similar in the company to guide them along the onboarding journey.
- Managing Paperwork: Paperwork is one of the big headaches in new employee onboarding. Employee onboarding software makes the process way less time consuming and completely paperless. Offer letters, background checks, W2s, NDAs, employee handbooks, benefits and payroll forms and more can be automatically sent to new hires, where they can complete them on their own. Mobile functionality makes it user-friendly for new employees to provide e-signatures to such documents.
- Better Organization: Employee onboarding management software provides customizable checklists and workflows so it’s easy to recognize what’s done and what needs to be done. Built-in notification systems alert your HR team when something isn’t done.
- Automation: Automated onboarding tasks means less time spent collecting and manually processing information.
Pitfalls When Using Free Employee Onboarding Software
Free software typically does not offer all of the benefits a paid software does. It’s important to keep that in mind as you go forward with your research. However, you can get a pretty good offering that will help automate HR processes, especially as a small business who can’t afford the pricing of enterprise SaaS solutions.
As for free trials, they are exactly that -- trials. They are great solutions for a couple weeks. You can sometimes even request a trial extension and most times vendors will be accommodating. But once your time is up, it’s either pay the fees or lose the service. If the trial requires you to put a credit card down before trying, make sure you cancel the subscription in time to avoid getting auto-charged!
What Features To Expect from Free Employee Onboarding Software
At the very least, the best employee onboarding software optimizes the first steps of an employee’s lifecycle with your company. Most free software solutions offer the basic needs of automating paperwork, streamlining the training process, and organizing HR workflows. But the key benefit from an employee onboarding solution should be a great new employee experience that translates into a long fruitful career within your organization.
Here are some additional features that our listed free vendors offer that we think are useful.
- Email & Text Capabilities: Streamlining communications with new employees by automating emails and texts. Email templates and calendar syncing allow you to efficiently take care of administrative work.
- Training: You can create training materials and even facilitate training sessions so new hires can learn everything they need to know about your company, from mission and values to their work function and key clients. There are often test and quiz capabilities as well for increased accountability.
- Performance Management: Some employee onboarding systems offer performance management features that let you set team and company goals to track progress. This can be incredibly useful for new hires as well, as they can immediately get tuned into how they can immediately impact your company.
- 30/60/90 days: Hiring managers should have a measurable plan for the first 30, 60, and 90 days of a new employee's time with their company. Onboarding software usually comes with templates to help keep track of those metrics.
- ATS & Recruiting: Some employee onboarding software has applicant tracking components that help streamline your hiring process even further. If you’re curious about ATS’s, check out our landscape of free applicant tracking systems.
It’s important to note that free software offerings might not have every feature on the above list. Figure out what’s most important to your organization and seek out vendors based on your preferences.
Free Onboarding Tools FAQs
What is employee onboarding?
Employee onboarding is the process of adding a new employee into the organization. This involves introducing a new hire with the company culture, filling out documentation such as payroll and benefits information, distributing handbooks and tools, and connecting them with other employees.
What are free employee onboarding tools?
Employee onboarding tools are software solutions designed to streamline the onboarding process.
What features do free onboarding tools have?
Onboarding tools have many useful features, including automated workflows, email and text capabilities, legal documentation and other paperwork, training modules, performance management functions, ATS components, employer branding, background checks, and offer letter management.
What benefits do free onboarding tools provide?
Some benefits of onboarding tools include better retention, heightened employee engagement, and more streamlined HR processes.
What considerations should I think about when getting a free employee onboarding software?
When considering purchasing employee onboarding software, make sure that the solution you get is going to enhance your current procedure. Don’t end up paying for extra features that you aren’t going to use.
Final Advice on Free Onboarding Software
When looking for a free software, you’re not going to be able to get everything on your list. Narrow down the list of features you want into “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves” and pursue the offering that fits as much of the must-haves as possible.
As your company grows, you’ll be able to branch out to the full version of these vendors, or even seek out a different one. We have an entire landscape dedicated to the best employee onboarding software when you’re ready to make the jump. In the meantime, use this page to find the best possible solution.
Top Free Employee Onboarding Software
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