.jpeg)
"SSR is the best platform to discover top 1% HR tools. Their 10 years of HR Tech experience makes their reviews the best in the industry! Every time I speak about HR technology, SSR is my number one recommendation to for people pros."
"SSR is my go-to place when it comes to researching HR tools. Their product reviews are real time-savers and trustworthy, and the online community is fantastic for bouncing questions and ideas off of others in the Talent space!"
"I trust SSR's HR Tech Reviews because they talk to so many experts, know the right questions to ask and uncover during in-depth product demos to come up with their best picks"
We spend all day researching the best HR software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on experts to refine our recommendations. We may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page. Learn more
Not only does Manatal cover most of the features you’d expect from a budget-friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations. All of Manatal’s features can be trialed for free for up to 14 days, no credit card required.
You can use myInterview's free-forever plan to send interview links for one open position. You can start the hiring process without worrying about an expiration date.
Vultus is an affordable recruiting and workforce management solution that allows you to trial its offerings for free.
Calendly stands out from its competitors for its ease of use, slick design, and the amount of time it saves. It’s also one of the few scheduling tools with an indefinite free plan.
We love Zoho Recruit because as with all of Zoho's products, it is quite robust. It is also completely free when hiring for only one active job.
We love Freshteams because it 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.
Kruts takes the hassle and admin from candidate management while improving your recruitment experience with content-rich career sites, interview scheduling, automated onboarding portal, and more.
GoHire is an affordable recruiting solution that's also scalable; SMBs can derive value from its introductory plans, and upgrade as their operation grows.
We love SmartRecruiters because their 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.
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.
We love SeekOut because it packs a Sourcing Assistant that is incredibly powerful for a free tool. They put many variants of artificial intelligence within the context of a search engine for talent.
On top of being an affordable solution, Recooty has a lengthy 15-day free trial of its paid plans as well as a free forever plan.
Gem gathers data from tools that recruitment teams use on a day-to-day basis, such as LinkedIn InMail, ATS, and email, and combines it into a single talent management hub that automates candidate sourcing and engagement while providing detailed insights to support and optimize your recruiting strategy.
We love Indeed because of its massive database of candidates. Companies of any size can post jobs on it and access their talent pool - all for free.
We put in the effort to make this guide awesome
18
Hours Researched
.svg)
1
Experts Consulted
.svg)
26
Vendors Reviewed
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using 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 do our best to understand what users say when they experience this product. User input allows us to accomplish a more thorough due diligence of products, put new vendors on our radar, and generally make sure we are presenting the right products to our readers.
- Financial metrics: We are very much finance nerds and so use a product's retention rates, growth, profitability, and scale to understand whether or not it is truly best in class.
- Best for a use case: Sometimes the best solution is the cheapest, the best tool for international companies, or the best for startups. We try to include a diversity of solutions so that our readers can find the tool that is best for what they need.
Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
In this guide you'll find
Talent acquisition teams know that a good recruiting software solution makes their lives way easier while also invigorating their hiring process. From candidate sourcing and job posting to resume parsing and interview scheduling, the right recruiting tools mean more of the best talent in your pipeline and more efficient recruiting cycles.
Those tools can add up in cost over time. If you’re a large business with an extensive HR team, you might want to check out our Best Recruiting Software page for the best of different categories and all-in-one paid options.
However if you’re visiting this page, you are likely a startup or small business who can’t afford to spend money on enterprise-level software. As such, we have curated a list of the best free and inexpensive recruitment software choices, including some of the major players that have options for free trials. That way, it’s easier to find the right solution that fits your recruiting needs as well as your budget.
Featured in
Top Free Recruiting Software
We surveyed the landscape and came up with these free recruiting software solutions that your team should look into.
Why we love it
:
Not only does Manatal cover most of the features you’d expect from a budget-friendly ATS, the platform tops that off with AI-powered actions, such as candidate filtering and recommendations. All of Manatal’s features can be trialed for free for up to 14 days, no credit card required.
- 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 recruiting software 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, 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
:
We love Zoho Recruit because as with all of Zoho's products, it is quite robust. It is also completely free when hiring for only one active job.
- 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 Recruit has a free plan that provides services for candidate management, email management, and interview scheduling. Zoho Recruit integrates easily with Google applications and supports 26 languages, allowing you to reach a large applicant pool. It also features simple resume search and 5 customized email templates.
Unfortunately, the free plan allows for only one active job opening. Overall, Zoho Recruit offers much more comprehensive solutions through their paid plans. However, you can start small and upgrade as you go, since they don’t require you to commit for a specific timeframe. Also, they have a 45-day money-back guarantee.
Zoho Recruit
Customers:
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
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.
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
:
On top of being an affordable solution, Recooty has a lengthy 15-day free trial of its paid plans as well as a free forever plan.
- 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.
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
:
You can use myInterview's free-forever plan to send interview links for one open position. You can start the hiring process without worrying about an expiration date.
- myInterview has a neat screening feature that can sift through thousands of video submissions and identify suitable candidates not only based on skills, but also personality.
- The platform provides analytics that help you understand how well your current application process is working, so that you can make improvements as needed.
- It lets you add instant candidate ratings so you’re able to compare candidates and make data-based decisions.
- myInterview lets you create a branded, customized interview process. You can choose from their library of pre-recorded questions, or create your own.
- myInterview ensures that all your interviewers have access to the same information about each candidate. This is so they’re all asking the same questions and given a fair chance at evaluating each candidate's answers.
- A few users have noted that myInterview doesn't offer many customization options. For example, you can't customize the email templates without contacting support.
- myInterview currently doesn’t have a mobile app neither for hiring managers or candidates.
- Though they do have a free forever plan, it is limited to only 1 active job post at a time.
MyInterview
Review:
myInterview is a free video interviewing platform to help you shortlist and hire the most suitable candidates for your job. With no trial period or expiration date, you can start using MyInterview for free when you're hiring for only one job. If you hire for more than one job, you'll have to upgrade to a paid plan – and you can always downgrade to the free offering whenever you like.
MyInterview
Customers:
myInterview customer list include prominent names like Ocado, Facebook, Six Flags, Chick-fil-A, and more.
MyInterview
Stats:
- The platform has received over 5,000,000 candidate videos to date.
- On average, myInterview users are able to speed up their time to hire by up to 70%.
- 71% of interviews are completed in under 15 minutes.
MyInterview
Pricing:
myInterview has with five pricing plans:
- Starter (Free forever): 1 active job, 2 user seats, 10 one-way interviews a month, 24/7 customer support, and other basic features.
- Growth ($59/month): 2 active jobs, 5 user seats, 360 one-way interviews a year, 24/7 customer support, and more.
- Team ($179/month): 5 active jobs, unlimited user seats, 1200 one-way interviews a year, 120 live interviews per year, templates, video questions, advanced analytics, 24/7 customer support, and more.
- Performance ($539/month): 20 active jobs, unlimited user seats, 6000 one-way interviews a year, 360 live interviews per year, all Team features, and more.
- Enterprise (Custom pricing): Unlimited active jobs, unlimited user seats, custom one-way interviews a year, custom live interviews per year, all Performance features, and more.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes can use myInterview and derive value while staying within their budgets.
Why we love it
:
We love Freshteams because it 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:
If your company is around 50 employees in size, Freshteam’s free offering might be ideal. This package helps you stay organized by presenting all recruiting and hiring operations on a single dashboard. It provides basic applicant tracking, interview scheduling, and integration with some Google services. However, the Free plan only allows for 3 active job postings at a time and has no resume parsing feature.
The paid plans all have a 21-day free trial as well, much longer than most competitors.
Freshteam
Customers:
Nissan, University of Pennsylvania, Daimler, SAP
Freshteam
Stats:
- Over 5,000 customers
Freshteam
Pricing:
Freshteam’s free plan lets you add up to 50 employees and is ideal for small companies to handle their basic HR needs. The paid plans start at $1.20 per employee/month, along with a $71 monthly platform fee. These prices are lowered if you choose to pay for a full year.
Best For:
Small, growing businesses.
Why we love it
:
We love Indeed because of its massive database of candidates. Companies of any size can post jobs on it and access their talent pool - all for free.
- Indeed has a massive reach and is free for both employers and job seekers to find one another.
- The platform’s UI is modern and quite easy to navigate. New users are able to create accounts and post their first jobs within 10 minutes or less.
- There is a candidate assessment tool built in and a mobile app is available, enabling you to see candidates’ profiles, and resumes, review applications, schedule virtual interviews and more on-the-go.
- The free job posts lose visibility if they don’t get sponsored, as thousands of jobs are posted every day.
- Indeed’s video interviewing tool could use some improvement, as one employer said, “The video interviewing tool is frustrating, sometimes it’s not available, and it only works 50% of the time.”
- There isn’t a Zapier integration at this time, though Indeed’s marketplace is full of prebuilt integrations, coving most tech stacks.
Indeed
Review:
Indeed is perhaps the biggest and most popular job posting platform available today. It allows companies to post jobs and apply skill assessments to those posted jobs to reach one of the largest talent pools on the internet, all for free. Once a candidate passes the assessment(s) and their credentials have been reviewed, companies can use Indeed’s built-in messaging system to reach out to candidates and schedule interviews. Though it is optional, companies can also sponsor job posts on Indeed to reach quality candidates faster.
Indeed
Customers:
Indeed is used by over 3,000,000 companies, including Nokia, Schwab, McDonald's, and the University of Oxford.
Indeed
Stats:
- 250 million people visit Indeed every month
- 225 million stored resumes
- 5 minutes to post a job for free
Indeed
Pricing:
It doesn't cost anything to post jobs to appear on Indeed's general search results. To reach more candidates however, you may want to try sponsoring your listing. The price for sponsoring a listing varies depending on the title, location and available job seekers for your posted job. After you define such criteria, Indeed will calculate and show you the price of sponsoring your listing so you’re able to decide if it’s within your budget before paying for it. To ensure you only pay for desired results, Indeed gives you 48 hours to reject unwanted applications before you’re charged.
Best For:
Businesses of all sizes looking to recruit for any position across hundreds of industries/service types.
Why we love it
:
We love SeekOut because it packs a Sourcing Assistant that is incredibly powerful for a free tool. They put many variants of artificial intelligence within the context of a search engine for talent.
- Sources from tons of external databases; over 780M candidate profiles and growing
- Can find talent also among your existing team.
- Truly tech-powered and search engine-like platform.
- Presents very complete candidate profiles, sometimes going through their code contributions, participation in conferences, academic papers, and more, in order to present top experts for certain skills or topics.
- Sources from tons of external databases; over 780M candidate profiles and growing
- Can find talent also among your existing team.
- Truly tech-powered and search engine-like platform.
- Presents very complete candidate profiles, sometimes going through their code contributions, participation in conferences, academic papers, and more, in order to present top experts for certain skills or topics.
- While they're always expanding their candidate list, they have been mainly oriented towards the US and Canada for years. Hence, companies outside those geographies might find that their searches are still somewhat limited when it comes to local talent. Such is the case of some users writing from Europe, for instance.
- Several users have complained about lags or glitches between the candidate’s info from the source and how/when it appears within the platform.
- While they're always expanding their candidate list, they have been mainly oriented towards the US and Canada for years. Hence, companies outside those geographies might find that their searches are still somewhat limited when it comes to local talent. Such is the case of some users writing from Europe, for instance.
- Several users have complained about lags or glitches between the candidate’s info from the source and how/when it appears within the platform.
Seekout
Review:
SeekOut is an AI-powered talent search engine designed to help your hiring team source and recruit candidates from social media sites. While most of their solutions cost money, they do offer a free Chrome extension. Called SeekOut Sourcing Assistant, the tool will extract rich information directly from LinkedIn, GitHub, and other sources, thus allowing you to organize, enrich and export candidate profiles.
Seekout
Customers:
SeekOut is used by enterprise customers such as VMware, Salesforce, Merck, UiPath, and Anaplan.
Seekout
Stats:
- 300+ customers
- 780+ public profiles
- 40M+ GitHub profiles
- 70M+ expert profiles
Seekout
Pricing:
Seekout has a few different plans:
- Premium: Access to 441M+ candidates, diversity sourcing and hiring tools, people insights, contact info for 500 candidates per month and exporting of 5,000 profiles per month.
- Premium Tech: All of Premium, plus specific tools for sourcing tech talent. These include Coder Score rankings, GitHub search tool, direct access to candidate's code, and tailored insights.
- SeekOut Expert: Designed specifically for Engineering and Life Sciences hiring.
The actual pricing of SeekOut’s plans and services isn’t disclosed on their website. You would have to contact their sales team for a custom price quote.
Seekout also provides a free Chrome extension for sourcing, SeekOut Sourcing Assistant. It’s free to use but with a limit of getting verified social links and emails for 10 candidates per month.
Best For:
Seekout has segmented pricing plans for different industries. While there is a general plan for most businesses, Tech, Engineering, and Life Sciences hiring managers get the most functionality from Seekout. The tool can be used by companies with large in-house recruiting teams as well as small agencies looking for a user-friendly tool to reach a diverse pool of talent.
Why we love it
:
Kruts takes the hassle and admin from candidate management while improving your recruitment experience with content-rich career sites, interview scheduling, automated onboarding portal, and more.
- 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
:
Vultus is an affordable recruiting and workforce management solution that allows you to trial its offerings for free.
- On top of covering your recruiting needs, Vultus has a workforce management solution that allows for a smooth transition of your new hires to your team.
- The platform’s pricing is affordable and transparent. They also offer free trials that anyone can sign up for.
- The user interface is quite clean and easy to navigate.
- A few users reported experiencing glitches and lags with features such as the reports generation but have noted that Vultus’ support team is quick to resolve such issues.
- Out-of-the-box integration options are limited, though it is worth noting that Vultus has a Zapier integration, allowing users to plug-in various third-party tools.
Vultus
Review:
Vultus is a recruiting and workforce management SaaS company with free trials for both solutions. Their ATS option, called Vultus Recruit, can publish to job boards, schedule interviews, manage recruiting pipelines and even has Candidate Relationship Management capabilities. On top of their free trial, their subscription plans are extremely affordable, making it an ideal choice for a startup or small business looking for their first ATS.
Vultus
Customers:
Exa Data inc., CAT Technology Inc., Quadrant Resource, Collaborate, Intellect Inc.
Vultus
Stats:
Vultus
Pricing:
Vultus’s Recruit solution is offered over three plans that provide users with access to the same feature set; the only difference is the number of user seats purchased. Here’s how they break it down:
- 3-5 users: $15 per user per month billed annually
- 6-30 users: $11 per user per month billed annually
- 30+ users: $8 per user per month billed annually
Through the above plans, users can access the features of job posting, candidate sourcing, hotlist management, resume harvesting and parsing, candidate database management, account and contacts management, boolean search, mass mails, several integrations, custom reports and the Vultus mobile app.
Best For:
Vultus is best suited for small companies looking for an affordable recruiting solution that seamlessly integrates into a workforce management platform.
Why we love it
:
Gem gathers data from tools that recruitment teams use on a day-to-day basis, such as LinkedIn InMail, ATS, and email, and combines it into a single talent management hub that automates candidate sourcing and engagement while providing detailed insights to support and optimize your recruiting strategy.
- Gem helps you discover qualified candidates across multiple channels, send personalized messages, visualize your recruitment pipeline, and stay on top of crucial hiring metrics
- Gem's integration with LinkedIn and various ATS means that all candidate data is stored in a centralized location. Users find this feature extremely useful.
- According to users, one of Gem's finest features is the ability to create automated drip campaigns to engage with both active and passive candidates
- Gem helps you discover qualified candidates across multiple channels, send personalized messages, visualize your recruitment pipeline, and stay on top of crucial hiring metrics
- Gem's integration with LinkedIn and various ATS means that all candidate data is stored in a centralized location. Users find this feature extremely useful.
- According to users, one of Gem's finest features is the ability to create automated drip campaigns to engage with both active and passive candidates
- Some users have experienced slow load times and lags while using the application
- In rare cases, the contact information, such as the email address or phone number of a sourced candidate, might be wrong
- While Gem currently integrates with LinkedIn, it does not provide the option to automate messages via LinkedIn InMail
- Some users have experienced slow load times and lags while using the application
- In rare cases, the contact information, such as the email address or phone number of a sourced candidate, might be wrong
- While Gem currently integrates with LinkedIn, it does not provide the option to automate messages via LinkedIn InMail
Gem
Review:
Gem has taken many of the best practices your sales team uses to engage leads and applied them to your recruiters’ workflows when engaging candidates. It is primarily a talent engagement platform with features to support talent sourcing, candidate outreach, and recruitment pipeline management. Hiring teams can use Gem to capture information about relevant candidates, engage with them through multistage drip campaigns, and see what's working and what's not through analytics. The best part about Gem is that it integrates with a range of ATS, LinkedIn and email.
While the software is not free, they do offer a free demo and trial so you can evaluate if it is a good fit for your business.
Gem
Customers:
Coinbase, Slack, Asana, Dropbox, Lyft, Indeed, Pinterest, and Doordash
Gem
Stats:
- Gem is used by over 1,200 recruitment teams worldwide
- Clients that use Gem experience a 2x increase in response rates and 5x faster talent sourcing
Gem
Pricing:
The cost of Gem's services is based on the size of your recruitment team, the number of hires, and other factors like custom ATS integrations. You can reach out to their sales team for a quote.
Best For:
Gem is best suited for large enterprises and staffing agencies that need to hire more employees in a short time period.
Why we love it
:
GoHire is an affordable recruiting solution that's also scalable; SMBs can derive value from its introductory plans, and upgrade 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
GoHire
Stats:
- Processed over 2,000,000 applications in the year 2021
- Serves over 2,500 customers
- Has 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.
Best For:
GoHire is best for small business that are scaling quickly but need an affordable ATS.
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
:
Calendly stands out from its competitors for its ease of use, slick design, and the amount of time it saves. It’s also one of the few scheduling tools with an indefinite free plan.
- Calendly’s simplicity is its biggest pro. It has an elegant user interface, it's very easy to navigate, it promptly gets the task done, and connects seamlessly with other applications.
- The reduction in back-and-forth emails. Your invitees can book a meeting slot, without reaching out to you multiple times. Calendly automatically sends them a confirmation and they can reschedule or cancel on their own. It’s even better for virtual meetings because once your invitees schedule a meeting with you, Calendly will automatically generate a meeting link based on your preferred video conferencing tool.
- The ability to set your own rules so that you can get complete control over your availability preferences. For example, you can decide how long a particular kind of meeting should be, buffer time between meetings, how many appointments can be booked per day, etc.
- Calendly seamlessly integrates with popular calendar and mailing tools. Meetings are automatically reflected on your personal calendar and video conferencing links with tools like Zoom or Google Meet are generated without any extra steps.
- Calendly’s simplicity is its biggest pro. It has an elegant user interface, it's very easy to navigate, it promptly gets the task done, and connects seamlessly with other applications.
- The reduction in back-and-forth emails. Your invitees can book a meeting slot, without reaching out to you multiple times. Calendly automatically sends them a confirmation and they can reschedule or cancel on their own. It’s even better for virtual meetings because once your invitees schedule a meeting with you, Calendly will automatically generate a meeting link based on your preferred video conferencing tool.
- The ability to set your own rules so that you can get complete control over your availability preferences. For example, you can decide how long a particular kind of meeting should be, buffer time between meetings, how many appointments can be booked per day, etc.
- Calendly seamlessly integrates with popular calendar and mailing tools. Meetings are automatically reflected on your personal calendar and video conferencing links with tools like Zoom or Google Meet are generated without any extra steps.
- Besides branding and the ability to choose different colors, Calendly does not offer a lot of options for customizations. This could be frustrating for users who want to embed Calendly in their website without making it seem like a completely different component.
- Calendly is not very mobile-friendly. You can’t perform all the functions on the mobile version.
- The payment collecting feature is not available in all currencies. Your invitees can only pay in the United States Dollar (USD), Australian Dollar (AUD), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Pound Sterling (GBP), and Euro (EUR).
- You’ll be severely limited in terms of features if you choose the free plan or the cheaper ones. According to Craig, a Customer Success Manager at a small business, “All advanced functionality is locked behind higher subscription levels – We have the Professional level so that we can set up a team, but they locked the most obvious and useful meeting type for teams behind yet another upgrade to the sub level.”
- Besides branding and the ability to choose different colors, Calendly does not offer a lot of options for customizations. This could be frustrating for users who want to embed Calendly in their website without making it seem like a completely different component.
- Calendly is not very mobile-friendly. You can’t perform all the functions on the mobile version.
- The payment collecting feature is not available in all currencies. Your invitees can only pay in the United States Dollar (USD), Australian Dollar (AUD), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Pound Sterling (GBP), and Euro (EUR).
- You’ll be severely limited in terms of features if you choose the free plan or the cheaper ones. According to Craig, a Customer Success Manager at a small business, “All advanced functionality is locked behind higher subscription levels – We have the Professional level so that we can set up a team, but they locked the most obvious and useful meeting type for teams behind yet another upgrade to the sub level.”
Calendly
Review:
Calendly is an appointment scheduling software that happens to have an indefinite free plan. Although not built for recruiting per se, HR managers can use it at the interviewing stage of recruiting.
It natively integrates with all the popular calendars and video conferencing tools. In the free version, you can create unlimited one-on-one events, send automated event notifications to your candidates, and customize your booking link. If you find the free plan limiting, you can always upgrade to the paid plans, which are still inexpensive compared to other scheduling tools. There’s also a free 14-day trial period for the paid plans.
Calendly
Customers:
Calendly has many big names in their customer base, such as eBay, Compass, Lyft, Dropbox, La-Z-Boy, Twilio, and Stack Overflow.
Calendly
Stats:
- 10 million user base spread across the world
- Used by 50,000 companies
- Over 100 partner integrations
- Ancestry, a genealogy company saw a 40% reduction in scheduling emails after using Calendly
- Cengage, an Ed-Tech company had a 30% increase in annual retention of employees after using Calendly
- AgriWebb, a company in the agriculture industry experienced a 75% reduction in time to schedule customer success calls because of Calendly
Calendly
Pricing:
Calendly is totally free for a single calendar per user. It costs $8 per user per month for 2 calendars and $12 per user per month for 6 calendars. The premium pricing plans offer more functionality as well.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes looking for an affordable and user-friendly scheduling solution. Sole business owners and small businesses might find Calendly particularly helpful since there’s a free plan as well.
Why we love it
:
We love SmartRecruiters because their 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:
SmartStart is the free version of SmartRecruiters talent acquisition service, specifically made for smaller businesses. You’ll have access to an unlimited number of users as well as a variety of services including multi-board job posting, scheduling management tools, candidate database management and one-click apply.
SmartStart’s unlimited user accessibility enables many hands to be a part of the hiring process, unlike many other free options. The service also offers one-click job postings on any of over 200 available job boards. Unfortunately SmartStart is limited to 10 active job postings at one time. If your team finds this is holding you back, there are different plans you can upgrade to.
SmartRecruiters
Customers:
Ikea, Visa, LinkedIn
SmartRecruiters
Stats:
SmartRecruiters
Pricing:
SmartStart is completely free for up to 10 active jobs at a time.
Best For:
Growing small businesses and startups.
Looking for HR Tech Advice? Join our community
Ask questions, share knowledge, find new job opportunities, network and more in our closed HR Tech Buyers Community
Final Advice
We hope this listing of free recruiting software was useful for your recruiting team. We also have a specific list of free Applicant Tracking Systems that could enhance your recruiting process too. 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 buy, we recommend checking out our page on the best recruiting software out there, complete with questions to ask on demos, ROI calculations, etc. Enjoy!
Best Free Recruiting Software
If you want to be the smartest in the room when it comes to People, sign up for our weekly newsletter
Join 20,000 HR Tech Nerds who get our weekly insights