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.
Ratings
Ease of Use
Best For
Key Differentiator
Price
Free Trial
PROS
- Explore the platform for free, no need for a credit card or demo
- Great set of features for the price point
- Make your own rewards and even set up a points system with automated incentives
- You have the option to go with a month-to-month plan or a long-term contract. For the latter, you can reach out to their team for a custom deal if it’s a larger team. However, keep in mind that the minimum agreement is 12 months.
CONS
- Coins and points do expire, so sometimes they’ll expire by the end of the month before you can use them, although you get more the next period.
- SSO is only included with some plans. For others, it can be purchased as an add-on.
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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.
Assembly is such a fantastic platform for sharing gratitude with your colleagues, across the organization as a whole, as well as internally and externally between departments. It is straightforward, easy, and fun to use! This tool is especially good for nurturing culture across a remote team. The integration with Slack makes it seamless for the team to use and engage with, and Assembly engages senior leadership with ease.
Simple, fast platform. Easy set-up and free trial version prior to transition to paid version. Easy implementation and great reporting options and support.
In the age of remote, work-from-home, and hybrid models, and all of the inherent challenges it presents, Assembly has allowed us to continue to celebrate business culture and monetize the value of success within our organization. We are able to easily recognize team members and their accomplishments so that those ambiguous moments can become tangible for the entire company to see. Acknowledgements of birthdays, anniversaries, work anniversaries etc. are seamlessly built in, never to be forgotten or overlooked. Coins can be exchanged for gifts, donated to charity, traded in for company-branded gifts, or cashed in for rewards. Our engagement rate is over 90% on the Assembly platform and we are very excited to see how they can continue to evolve its value proposition.
Coins expire if not used in time. UX could be more user-friendly. Larger tiered allotments would be a great improvement.
When considering any employee recognition platform, functionality and reporting should always be heavily weighted in the final decision. Recognition platforms go hand-in-hand with engagement surveys; some platforms do not offer this feature or offer. Limited version of this feature. Mobility and accessibility are primary concerns, especially where remote and global teams exist. Also, goal/challenge creation, tracking and attainment features are wonderful enhancements to include.
There have been consistent upgrades to the platform and Assembly is very open to feedback and suggestions.
Assembly is ideal for small and mid-market organizations.
Assembly would not be a good fit for large/enterprise organizations.
Motivosity
Motivosity
Achievers
Achievers
Awardco
Awardco
Nectar
Nectar
C.A. Short Company
C.A. Short Company
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
- Curate rewards: HR can create rewards that align with your culture (team-building events, sleep-in days, choosing the day's office music, etc.).
- Automated recognition: You can let the product run on autopilot for birthdays and work anniversaries.
- Network recognition: Employees can react to and comment on recognition, as well as do peer-to-peer acknowledgments. It doesn’t stop at managers recognizing employees.
- Benchmarking analytics: These show how well your program is performing compared to peer companies.
- Assembly also features a points system, automated incentives, and 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 folks at Assembly have also focused more on hybrid workplaces.
From what we’ve tracked, Assembly’s recent updates continue to mature the platform across recognition rewards, engagement mechanics, and administrative control, with most changes aimed at making recognition more flexible while giving admins better oversight.
New features rolled out include:
- Customized rewards: Admins and managers can now send tailored rewards tied to specific life events or achievements (e.g., promotions, milestones, or personal celebrations). Rewards can be delivered as points, gift cards, or direct monetary payouts.
- Microsoft Teams notifications: Recognition and award alerts can now appear directly in Teams, improving visibility for companies already collaborating there.
- Custom groups: Admins can create their own employee segments beyond departments or locations, making it easier to target recognition campaigns or announcements.
- Point-swapping controls: Organizations can set limits on how many points two individuals can exchange during a given allowance period, reducing non-genuine recognition loops.
- Filtered home feed: Employees can filter activity by team, department, or office to focus on the recognition activity most relevant to them.
- User management audit log: Tracks profile edits and data updates, including whether they originated from admins or HRIS syncs, helping troubleshoot data inconsistencies.
Enhanced features include:
- Challenges revamp: The engagement challenge system has been redesigned with improved customization and management tools. Organizations can now more easily run culture-building, wellness, learning, or seasonal challenges that automatically reward participants with points.
- Recognition boosting improvements: Users can now quickly add extra reward points when replying to recognition posts, making it easier to amplify appreciation moments.
- Improved feed visibility and integrations: Updates to Teams notifications and feed filtering improve how recognition activity surfaces across the organization.
Upcoming improvements include:
- Bot enhancements: Assembly plans to update its automation bot system with greater customization and a more human-centric design, including improved feed posts and email notifications.
- Multi-HRIS connections: Future updates will allow multiple HRIS systems (or multiple connections to the same provider) to sync simultaneously, supporting organizations with complex HR stacks.
- Notification improvements: Planned redesigns of recognition emails and expanded Slack/Teams notifications aim to ensure employees never miss recognition activity involving them.
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.
Company HQ
Santa Monica, California
Number of Employees
11-50
Year Founded
2017
Amount Raised
4.500.000,00 US, backed by the likes of Homebrew and Wonder Ventures.
FAQ
- 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.
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