Assembly Expert Review, Pricing, Alternatives - 2023

Built for SMBs that want to boost employee recognition, Assembly is one of the most cost-effective solutions in the rewards and recognition space. It’s free for up to five members per month, and very moderately-priced afterwards.

While best known for their rewards and recognition software, Assembly have expanded into offering more, making them a rather complete employee engagement suite. As of mid 2022, they have a communication productivity and automation tool. This is packed with features like team retrospective templates (and templates for other similar processes), employee surveys, and an intranet-like digital HQ.

As to their flagship product, Assembly's employee recognition and rewards software enables HR teams to build stronger cultures with more engaged employees through various forms of recognition. 

Specifically, employees use Assembly to recognize their co-workers for accomplishments large and small. In turn, these recognitions can be broadcasted to the rest of the company, who can in turn react to them like on a social media network. 

Of course, recognition aligns with company values which are set by you. Employees who are recognized typically are also given points by their peers which they can then turn into various rewards.

Furthermore, Assembly stood out to us among the dozens of companies we demoed in this space because of their customizable rewards. Apart from letting employees pick rewards from a curated catalog, you can also set up your own rewards, such as team building events, sleep-in days, choose office music for the day, etc, or other stuff you and your team can think of. 

Then, there’s the price point. Assembly offers a free tier for smaller companies, or small teams within an organization that want to give this a try before implementing it at large. Now, if you were to move to the paid version, it’s good to know that it’s rather moderately priced if we compare it to other solutions. Their monthly plan starts at $2.50 - $4.00 per employee per month. 

Among their clients, it’s typical for around 90% of the employees at each company to use it on a monthly basis. This is evidence that there is a self-sustaining feedback loop of employees being recognized, and giving recognition.

Small companies that have more than 10 employees but are still looking for a free product, or are wary about signing up for a year, might not be a good fit for Assembly. That being said, many companies do start by simply implementing the tool amongst a smaller team within, then expanding if the rewards and recognition program is a success at that smaller scale.

Coca Cola, Goodside Health, StubHub, Amazon, Keck School of Medicine, Quest Nutrition

Assembly also features: 

• Points system
• Automated incentives 
• Employee surveys

Assembly is Part of the BambooHR app Marketplace. It also integrates natively with Zenefits, the payroll software company.

Assembly offers a free version for up to 10 employees. Paying customers are charged $2.80 - $4.50 per employee per month depending on the features you're looking for and if you choose an annual vs monthly plan.

With a free plan if you have 5 employees or less, Assembly is arguably best for small teams. However, their pricing plans are just as reasonable as you go up the employee count scale. As of the pandemic, the guys at Assembly have also focused more on hybrid workplaces.

If you use software that they already integrate with (like Slack or Teams), then it's fairly simple to get setup.  Typically implementation takes less than a week.

All customers get access to 24/7 chat support, in addition to a dedicated account manager. Both their support team and customer success reps are known to go above and beyond to help the clients, sharing best practices and trying to help you truly make the most out of the platform. However, be advised that if you want custom onboarding support, this service starts at $5,000.

Further, the team at Assembly are also known to gather feedback from their users and use it to create new features, even taking time to let them know how they’ve incorporated said feedback. Arguably, this is something that the best vendors do in any software space.

Founded in 2017, Assembly have been rapidly making a name for themselves in the employee recognition space. From their headquarters in California, and with a modest team of under 50 employees, they’ve managed to become a key player in the rewards and recognition software category thanks to their comprehensive set of features offered at a very reasonable price, all built upon a bedrock of remarkably good (based on interviews and user reviews) customer service and support.

Fueled by this, they’ve managed to keep expanding, incorporate user feedback, and develop into a fuller employee engagement tool. Some remarkable aspects of their trajectory are the amounts they’ve raised in funding, their ever-growing client list, and perhaps more importantly to you, dear reader, their reputation among their customers.

• Do rewards within Assembly cost extra?
  Naturally, rewards like gift cards do present additional costs, but this is only paid at the time of redemption. This means, when employees exchange points for a paid reward. The good thing is that you pay exactly what the rewards costs. Let’s say it’s a $50 gift card; you pay $50. 
• Do I have to set up rewards to use Assembly?
  Not at all. Rewards are not required. You simply have access to their catalog if you need it, but you can use the tool without having to set up these rewards. Although they do recommend it as a best practice for high adoption, many companies choose to offer internal culture rewards only in order to keep the costs down. ‍
• Is peer-to-peer recognition a set feature with Assembly? Not either. While they do have that feature and recommend it to every customer, each company is free to set up the tool however they deem fit. You can limit who can give or receive recognition right from the admin panel and change it whenever you decide.