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Choosing the right HR software is a decision that will have an impact on virtually every member of your organization, even on potential ones. Whether it’s for onboarding, payroll management, benefits management, or time-off requests, your next Human Resources software will become an integral part of your company’s day to day operation.
But what if you’re on a budget and can’t flesh out a high fee for every user just yet? Thinking of companies in this scenario, we decided to put together a list of 11 HR software solutions that have a completely operational free version. These are mostly not free trials, but free software options that you can use for unlimited time and for a wide variety of HR purposes. They’re also tools that we would use ourselves and have a strong reputation with HR managers in several industries.
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. Most of the vendors featured on our site have no commercial relationship with us, we want to feature the best software for our readers regardless. Learn more
We track thousands of HR Tech solutions, here are the best free HR software platforms as of August 2020
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Freshteam
Review
This product from Freshworks, a business software developer from California, is an all-encompassing HR management solution specifically targeted for growing businesses. Freshteam can handle your human resources experience from job postings and applicant tracking all the way to features like an employee directory and time off management. Their Sprout version is completely free for up to 50 employees and includes:
Also included in the free plan are:
Freshteam is trusted by businesses such as SAP, Nissan, Daimler, and JCDecaux.
Freshteam
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Freshteam
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Homebase
Review
This is a comprehensive HR tool that specializes in hourly work. While their time tracking tools are quite refined, their free version also offers team messaging, an app for employees, a hiring tool, and integrations with POS & payroll software. Their basic plan is free for unlimited employees, as long as the team is limited to one location. Let’s take a look at some of the use cases:
Also included in the free plan are:
Homebase is used by a wide array of small businesses in several industries, from restaurants and bars to retail, health, and hospitality.
Homebase
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Homebase
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This all-in-one HR solution comes in several forms, Lite, Cloud, and self-hosted. The Lite version is stunningly free for unlimited employees and also offers a 45-day free trial with all the features from the IceHrm Cloud version, with the option to upgrade at any time after that. While the Lite version lacks certain potentially key features from the Cloud variant like recruitment, leave/vacation, payroll, and learning management, it does include the following:
The lite version of IceHrm also includes:
As a final note, while the folks at IceHrm don’t seem to list some of their clients, it’s remarkable that they have a presence in hundreds of countries. This is because they’ve made an effort to make sure their software adheres to the practices of each country.
IceHRM
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IceHRM
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Nevertheless, the free plan also adds countless other features from the other Bitrix products. While not HR-focused, Bitrix24 is used by more than 7,000,000 organizations all over the world. While more of a collaboration SaaS platform with a massive variety of tools like CRM, project management, and even a website builder, Bitrix24 also offers a highly reliable and intuitive HR information system. As of 2020, it includes over 25 HR tools. From those, several such as company structure, employee directory, and company knowledge base are included in the free version for unlimited users. Some key features we’d like to highlight are:
The main problem with Bitrix24 as free HR software is that you don’t get certain tools that could be key, such as leave management and work time tracking and reports, unless you get the most expensive version.
Bitrix
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Bitrix
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This vendor decided to focus on creating a solid platform for leave management, work schedules, and employee files. What’s great is that you can choose from either of those modules or get them all in a single place. The default module, leave management, is free for less than 5 employees. After that, it can be as low as 10.50 USD per month and it subtly goes up as you add users or other modules. Here’s a glance at the two main ones:
The full HRnest platform also includes:
HRnest is used by companies like Virgin, Red Bull, and AitonCaldwell.
HRnest
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HRnest
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This is one of the most trusted and more established names in human resource management software. They offer all the necessary features to run an HR department in the modern era, except for payroll management. Their open-source version is completely free and quite scalable, but it does require you to manage your own servers. Some of their notable use cases include:
Also included in the free version are:
Thousands of companies use one version or another of OrangeHRM. Some remarkable names include Johnny Rockets, Duke University, and RedHat.
Orange HR
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Orange HR
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While not the prettiest-looking software out there, WebHR is a good solution for SMEs that need a social tool and would like to be able to add or delete modules as they go. WebHR is free if you have less than 5 employees and, depending on the modules added, it can be as little as $1 a month per staff member. The base modules that it bundles together are enough for most HR departments and include a built-in messenger and discussion forum. Other modules such as Payroll and Recruitment can be added for meager fees that don’t exceed $2 per employee per month. The base modules include:
The other base modules are:
According to their website, some of the companies that use WebHR include Nissan, WaterAid, zameen.com, and Budget.
WebHR
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WebHR
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To close off our list, we had to include one of the top names in human resources software. Unlike all the previous contenders, BambooHR doesn’t have a free version that you can use for unlimited time. However, they’re worth mentioning because they 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 fit 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. Some of those include:
The basic BambooHR free trial includes:
Among the 18,000+ companies that use BambooHR, you’d find names like Quora, Universal Group, Reddit, and Asana.
BambooHR
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BambooHR
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Zoho is a software company that makes everything from CRM to bookkeeping tools. Naturally, they also offer a cloud-based HRMS that’s bound to check most boxes in any HR manager’s requirement list. However, their free plan has a 5-user cap and includes only the basic HR functions such as:
Also included in the free plan are:
Some of the companies that use Zoho people are ZPE Systems, Cloudfronts Technologies, and Foresight CFO.
Zoho
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Zoho
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This is another option if your company would like to pursue the open-source route, but this HRMS is more clearly aimed at small-to-medium-sized businesses. It’s completely free, except for the fact that, since it’s open-source, you have to maintain your own servers. That being said, the Sentrifugo platform is easy to configure and extremely customizable. The main features include:
Other Sentrifugo features include:
Sentrifugo
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Sentrifugo
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Among cloud-based applications for HR, SnapHRM is one of the hottest names right now. Their sleek design is quite easy to figure out and they get complimented a lot for the quality of their support. They offer a “Startup” version that’s completely free for up to 5 employees. After that, it’s still among the most modestly priced HR SaaS options, but their free version still gets you access to all the SnapHRM modules. These modules include:
Also included in the Startup plan are:
Some of the companies that use SnapHRM are HarkHark, SmartDev, WDI, and NullObject.
SnapHRM
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SnapHRM
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The interesting thing about Odoo is that they divide nearly all their feature offerings into stand-alone applications. Any of these is free for unlimited users and unlimited time until you either need more space or add another application. This is an excellent choice if you only need, say, time off tracking or a payroll app, and can be quite cost-friendly if you require only a few additional applications. It’s also comforting to know that, with Odoo, you only pay for what you use. Among their HR apps/features, you can find:
Other available apps are:
Odoo is used by companies like Southern Wine Group, BizTech College, and XB Press Buyer
Odoo
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Odoo
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Buying HR Tech is really hard, here's some tactical advice to help you save money and buy the right solution:
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If you’ve made it this far, then it’s likely that you already have a couple of options in mind but aren’t quite sure which free software to settle on yet. The best advice we can offer here is to set up an account with them and try the tool for yourself. You really can’t tell if some of the features and user experience will work exactly as you’d like them to until you start using them.
Fortunately, these are all free and take minutes to set up, so don’t feel bad or awkward about creating an account with several vendors, even talking to some of their sales representatives, and then sticking to one choice. In the end, this decision will probably shape a good part of every day of the following years for your HR department, so it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Lastly, remember to check with each of your internal stakeholders, making sure that their questions are addressed as well, and even demoing the product with them. The decision will be much wiser if it's enriched by the input of the whole team.
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