Deel Expert Review, Pricing, Alternatives - 2023

Deel’s main advantage is that they offer a full range of global operations services rolled into one user-friendly platform. Their tool covers compliance, insurance, payroll, and taxes. As a start-up having spent the last three years in hypergrowth, it offers a technology-driven approach to operations.

We first came across Deel in early 2021, relatively shortly after their foundation in 2019, in the midst of the pandemic. Back then, they were amongst a small-but-growing group of exciting new companies spearheading the category of Global Payroll Software.

While researching those companies and testing their products, Deel immediately stood out for their crisp and sleek design, ease of use, intuitive workflows, and highly attentive customer support and sales team.

Years later, it’s great to still see them among the now ‘usual suspects’ when it comes to international payroll software. That being said, they’ve also expanded and are currently among the top companies developing HR software specific to remote teams.

We last tested their tool in 2023, and it was immediately clear that it had grown quite a bit since the last demo. While initially focused on hiring and payroll, the platform has expanded its functionality to include a wider range of capabilities, such as Core HR tools, equity management, flexible workspaces, benefits, and other perks like discounts from brands.

The main modules, like hiring, have also acquired a new level of sophistication. The product's core now includes immigration support, background checks, and a module called “Shield”, which provides further advice on the best way to avoid fees when hiring team members and freelancers overseas.

Deel is notable for having a good balance of EOR and contractor focus. This flexibility is part of what we find great about the international payroll platform. For instance, we know of small businesses that started their Deel journey using it only to hire contractors globally. After a while, if their business is ready, they can use the same tool to hire people locally via the EOR offering.

For EOR customers, their international team helps with navigating local labor laws, compliance documents, essentially hiring the employee on your behalf and acting as the legal entity. One thing to note is that, depending on the country, the legal entity might not be Deel itself but one of their partners.

Lastly, the previously-mentioned “Shield” module is worth a closer look. It’s basically an extension of their contractor hiring workflow that includes an expert assessment for individual workers to determine whether, given the particular set of factors, the worker and employer would be better served by the individual working as a contractor, or as an employee. At the same time, engaging people this way means that Deel will absorb all the liability should there be any compliance issues.

Between this flexibility and their transparent pricing, we’ve always been happy to include Deel among our selection of the best Global Payroll, EOR, PEO software, and other software categories related to human resources software.

Deel might be a bit pricey for companies who want to use their Employer of Record services, which start at $599.

Deel serves over 10,000 customers, including big names like Nike, Shopify, Dropbox, Notion, Reddit, and Airtable. Their client roster also has a strong contingent of SMBs and start-ups.

• Onboarding & Offboarding: Deel claims that you can “onboard or offboard anyone in minutes” with its platform. Collect and send documents, background checks, and other necessary documents to maintain compliance.‍
• Global Payroll: Operate payroll for contractors and full-time employees alike in over 90 countries. Deel has entities in 90+ countries with in-house payroll experts who can provide direct, country-specific support. Deel also provides tax services to make paying taxes a breeze. It almost goes without saying, but you can pay international employees in their currencies of choice.‍
• Employer of Record: For countries where your company does not have a local entity, Deel offers EOR services and can hire employees on your behalf.‍
• Global HR Management: Deel HR combines onboarding, time off, expenses, documents, compensation changes, and more in their user-friendly self-serve platform. Additionally, they also offer org charts and searchable personnel directories.‍
• In-house Open API: Deel can help leverage your existing tech stack to automate tedious and time-consuming HR operations like contract creation, timesheet syncing, and more.

Deel offers pre-built integrations with 15+ HRIS, accounting, and ATS platforms like Quickbooks, Bamboo, Greenhouse, and more. According to their website, an integration with Lever is coming soon. The Deel API allows HR managers to build custom integrations to automate across their tech setups.

Deel is priced at around $599 per employee per month when it’s a full-time arrangement. For contractors, it’s $49 per month plus the $5 per payout.

Deel’s infrastructure can support businesses at any size, from one to 10,000+ employees. They even offer some free services for companies under 200 employees. While their current focus is SMBs that are growing and want to explore different global markets and talent pools, there is also a large market for mid-market and enterprise companies.

As a new product, Deel has changed a lot since its inception. Its newest offering, DeelHR, allows companies to complete most of their HR operations tasks in Deel.

Deel is quite quick to implement if you choose to hire people solely as contractors. It’s somewhat of a self-service process if you go at it like this, but we do recommend getting a demo and emailing their support team as much as you need, especially if it’s your first time setting up a global payroll solution for a remote team.

You’d start by signing up, inviting team members to join, and having them onboard themselves by signing a contract, validating their ID, and choosing a fund withdrawal method. We found the process to be quite straightforward. One notable thing is how strong the platform is with GDPR compliance and security. For instance, they send a verification code each time you sign in, right to your email, which is far more convenient than having to use a separate app for it.

For the EOR part, implementation is more complex, but you certainly get more hand-holding from the Deel team in the process. So, you’d get an estimated timeline upon beginning.

Deel has a fairly comprehensive searchable FAQ section accessible to current and prospective customers. For current clients, they offer 24/7 in-app support. Additionally, they have a large database of video tutorials explaining how to utilize their software.

Deel was founded in 2019 by Shuo Wang and Alex Bouaziz. After they graduated from MIT in 2014, the pair began to notice a common occurrence among their friends; they would get rejected from high-skilled jobs that they were great fits for only because of visa and immigration hurdles.

Years later, as the trend continued to hold true, they decided to create an EOR and couple it with the right tech that could let people hire an employee overseas in a few minutes. As they say around the Bay Area, where the company was founded, they ate their own dog food, using Deel to hire people wherever they needed.

The product continued to expand with the vision of becoming a global HR platform. Once the pandemic struck and remote work became even more commonplace across all kinds of industries, Deel was one of the companies best positioned to ride that wave. The result? They closed off 2022 reaching $295 in ARR, which implies an outstanding 417.5% growth from the previous year. As of this writing, they are valued at $12 billion.