Rippling is an employee management platform for everything between onboarding and offboarding. They stand out for having a very appealing UI, with design that we find soothing to the eye. They also offer PEO services that you can keep track of through the platform.
Ratings
Ease of Use
Best For
Key Differentiator
Price
Free Trial
PROS
- All-in-one platform for employee management + PEO services offered, and even a suite of other IT products
- With 500 integrations, it’s very likely that they integrate with other key tools from your tech stack.
- Operates globally with any currency
- Workflow automation
- Analytics opportunities
- Provides a holistic view of company outflows—headcount costs included
CONS
- Total buy-in to Rippling is essential
- Very SMB-oriented, in case you’re a larger company.
- New features tend to be buggy in ways that tech teams are not accustomed to fixing
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Rippling is a relatively new player in the HR tools market, with a focus on helping SMBs manage HR and IT in one solution. They focus specifically on businesses with less than 2,000 employees.
An interesting thing about them is that they are very vocal about trying to make their software easy-to-use and intuitive not just for HR professionals and recruiters, but for the CEO, IT staff, and any team member that will interact with the product.
For example, recruiters are able to get into the tool and see all the necessary HR information related to their profile that they need to consult sometimes. For example, download their pay stubs, consult PTO, number of sick days, or even check out who’s off when.
Rippling started with offering core HR, payroll, and benefit management tools with a strong focus on automation. In 2022, however, they incorporated many new modules to their offering, like time and attendance, talent management, learning management, even licensed PEO services, and then a full global payroll suite by the end of the year.
Their global payroll offering, which includes many ways to manage an international payroll (including EOR), is one of the best products in the category. They handle all aspects of paying people overseas instead of aggregating outside services from third-party providers, which is new in the space, at least in 2023. Aside from a demo of this new part of the platform, we interviewed several users of the tool, and have found the experiences are overwhelmingly positive.
They now also have an IT cloud product, for app and device management. As with the HR side of it, it was always supposed to be a very self-service approach. Rippling’s products are meant to be something that you can sign up for and get cracking within a few minutes, with no long meetings or training sessions, at least after you’ve gotten a custom quote from their team.
As to the look and feel, it is exactly what you'd expect from a silicon valley-based startup, with a modern UI and eye-catching design that’s been interesting to watch evolve over the years since we first came across Rippling.
Notably, and finally, they also have over 500 integrations with everything from Slack to Github.
When I was using Rippling, I used it daily. Employees interacted with Rippling tools and features from their hiring date. From signing forms to background checks and benefit enrollment, Rippling handled multiple onboarding tasks.
When an employee was terminated, this also triggered specific actions in Rippling. A helpful feature was Rippling’s ability to assist with state-based tax rules. Leave management was also streamlined through Rippling.
Leave management and payroll functions made Rippling’s cost worthwhile. Hiring administrators for those functions would have been more expensive. I-9 and W-4 compliance became a much easier process and saved time and effort.
Rippling also offered background checking, training reminders, and anniversary reminders, which helped improve employee satisfaction.
My former company used Rippling for about three years, and I used it for one year. Rippling provided a solution for streamlining payroll and onboarding processes. The main attraction was that it replaced several software tools that were previously used.
The integration into the work cycle was easy and user-friendly. The automation and consolidation of systems eased the burden on different departments that needed to stay in constant communication.
Some of the workflows were not intuitive and were complex to set up. While the cost was reasonable at the time, it has been rising. Support tickets did not always receive fast responses.
Many departments could use Rippling. Most competitors only offer payroll or HR solutions.
Compare the cost of Rippling to the cost of hiring individuals to perform each function manually. Consider the organization’s overall goals. If the goal is to integrate departments and streamline processes, Rippling is a strong option.
Customization has improved and is helpful.
A large workplace. A small or midsized company may not find Rippling worth the cost.
A fully international company could struggle with using Rippling.
We use Rippling daily as our all-in-one solution for managing the entire employee journey. Our key workflows begin with job postings and automated recruiting processes that streamline candidate management and communication throughout the hiring pipeline.
Once we identify suitable candidates, we use Rippling to extend offers, conduct I-9 verifications, and transition new hires through the onboarding process. For ongoing employee management, we rely on Rippling for semi-monthly payroll processing, annual open enrollment periods, and continuous management of benefit deductions.
When employees leave the company, we use Rippling's offboarding workflows to collect necessary information, ensure documentation is complete, and maintain compliance throughout the process.
- Rippling is an all-in-one platform that manages the entire employee journey, from interviewing to offboarding.
- It has direct integrations with Carta.
- It offers a seamless payroll process through its flexible benefits platform.
We adopted Rippling in 2021 as a small tech startup with fewer than 15 people, seeking a solution to manage essential HR functions without a dedicated HR or Finance team member. We needed software that could efficiently handle payroll, onboarding, and offboarding while ensuring compliance with local and federal laws and regulations.
Over the past three years, we have expanded our use of Rippling to include its recruiting platform and ASO services, which provide enhanced support for federal and state filings and reporting. Most recently, to integrate benefit deductions seamlessly into payroll, we appointed Rippling as our Broker of Record and began using its Flexible Benefits module.
- The support process can be overly complex and too dependent on AI.
- The Recruiting Module does not allow the exclusion of specific job boards, such as Indeed, which often results in a high-volume but low-quality applicant pool.
- Rippling’s step-by-step wizard makes it difficult to view entire processes, like employee offboarding, in one comprehensive view.
Rippling is a robust all-in-one platform that has consolidated services we previously outsourced. Before using Rippling, we managed separate vendors for applicant tracking and flexible benefits administration. Rippling has enabled us to bring all these functions together in a single, integrated system.
Companies should evaluate whether they prefer an all-in-one system or specialized tools that integrate throughout the employee lifecycle. It’s important to assess the team's capacity and willingness to learn and manage the platform. While Rippling is intuitive, it requires a time investment to fully leverage its features.
During our time with Rippling, we have seen enhancements to the recruiting platform, including improved resume screening and stronger communication automation.
Rippling has introduced customizable workflows and in-platform app customization options, allowing us to tailor the platform to our needs. Its expanded support and compliance features led us to adopt its ASO service in early 2025.
Rippling is ideal for companies seeking a strong, user-friendly, all-in-one HRIS solution. It provides value even for users without payroll or HR expertise due to its intuitive interface.
It suits small to mid-sized businesses and is especially beneficial for companies with remote teams or global employees, as it includes device management and global payroll features.
Rippling may not be well-suited for large companies or those needing extensive customization and support beyond what the platform offers. It is also not ideal for users who prefer to work with specialized vendors for different HR functions and are reluctant to adopt a bundled HRIS solution.
I use Rippling primarily for payroll and benefits administration for both U.S. and global employees. It serves as our core platform for managing payments across employment types, including employees and contractors.
The tool is used regularly for processing payroll cycles and ensuring compliance with benefit offerings. I also rely on Rippling to handle employee records and tax documentation. It has become central to our HR operations.
- It is excellent for handling EOR, contractor, and employee payrolls in a single system.
- The platform is relatively easy for employees to navigate.
- Customer service is responsive and helpful when issues arise.
I originally purchased Rippling to serve as an Employer of Record (EOR) for international employees. I later migrated our HRIS to Rippling for U.S.-based employees as well. I have used Rippling for EOR functions since 2023 and for U.S. employees since early 2024.
One of the key benefits is the ability to pay both international and domestic employees through a single system. This has simplified payroll operations and improved overall administrative efficiency.
- The integration process was lengthy and difficult; our rep moved to a different country during implementation, delaying the hiring of two international employees by two months.
- There was an attempt to increase our negotiated monthly cost, though they honored the original rate once I provided documentation.
- Benefit integration is more manual than expected unless an additional service is purchased, which we do not currently find cost-effective.
Rippling offers a broad range of features and services in one platform. While its coverage is impressive, I would prefer to see more included functionality without additional fees.
If the goal is primarily payroll, Rippling is a strong option. If you need a fully comprehensive HRIS, there are other platforms that offer more robust features.
Rippling has added more countries to its EOR program and continues to expand device and IT services. The system has become more user-friendly, and its add-on services support the goal of an all-in-one solution, although these come at an additional cost.
Rippling is well-suited for small to mid-sized organizations with 10 to 150 employees.
It is not ideal for larger organizations, as its reporting tools and overall system capacity may fall short of their needs.
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Rippling has always been about catering to the SMB market, who value having easy to use tools in a single place where the whole team can access them. Enterprises looking for a more robust platform might find it too simple. We would also argue that, since larger companies are not really their niche, the CS team might not be very used to dealing with larger teams.
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- Manage devices: Among other things, Rippling lets you manage and protect the computers, phones, and tablets that your employees use for their work.
- App management: Another feature that's particular to Rippling is their mission control for work apps. In brief, you can manage users and their access for tools like Slack, Office, Google Workplace, and Dropbox.
Rippling also offers:
- Payroll
- Benefits
- Talent Management
- Time & Attendance
- Automated Onboarding & Offboarding
- PEO
When it comes to integrations, Rippling is one of the leaders in the HR tech space, being able to integrate with over 500 tools. Some of them are Lever, Greenhouse, and Quickbooks, for example.
Rippling starts at $8 per month per user, but the final fee you pay will vary depending on which modules you'd like to use (or if you want the whole platform) and for how many people.
Rippling is a good bet for SMBs that prioritize user experience and would appreciate having most of the HR tools in one platform. They’ve designed the product to be friendly for all the company to use and they have tried to incorporate all the HR tools a regular department would need.
Although they have always been geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, Rippling has consistently been adding new features and modules year on year. For example, their HR offering was basic at first, and now, in 2023, it features everything you’d expect from an ‘all-in-one’ HR platform, such as Benefits, Talent Management, Time & Attendance, and Payroll, making it a fully-fledged HRMS. This continual improvement means that the product is steadily catching on with companies of all sizes, even on the enterprise level.
Typically, Rippling takes around 2 weeks to implement, but times will vary depending on the scope of each project.
Rippling has a Customer Success department, a CSM toolkit, and a help center.
Rippling has an interesting origin story, in big part because they were founded by the former Zenefits CEO and one of its Co-Founders, Parker Conrad, after a somewhat dramatic exit. Conrad co-founded Zenefits in 2012. Part of what inspired him to help create the product was the launch of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and his experience as a cancer patient.
Zenefits became one of the quickest-growing tech startups of its era, getting valued at $4.5 billion within two years of its inception. Since then, it has remained a constant household name in the world of HR software for American SMBs. Even after some controversy.
In 2015, it was reported by Buzzfeed News that the startup had allowed salespeople to sell health insurance that they were unlicensed to sell, since in the US the law requires insurance brokers to be licensed. The company came under heavy scrutiny for failing to enforce these legal requirements, to the point that Conrad had to step down from his role as CEO.
From the ashes, Parker Conrad teamed up with Zenefits’ former director of engineering and founded Rippling. The driving idea was to create a platform that could simplify HR in general through automated workflows. The focus was on going beyond benefits and payroll and touching upon everything that HR is traditionally supposed to do.
Founded in 2016, the product caught on somewhat slower than Conrad’s former project, but they solidly built a name for themselves by orienting their product towards companies with less than 2000 employees.
Rippling secured $1.2B in funding across five rounds, with their latest funding raised on Mar 17, 2023, through a Series E round. The company is backed by 33 investors, with Greenoaks and Empede Capital being the most recent contributors.
To this day, they continue to grow consistently and are considered one of the top players in the HRMS space for SMBs. Also, they now hold their own licenses for insurance services, PEO, and payments. You can consult the exact info on those via their website.
Company HQ
San Francisco, CA
Number of Employees
1290+
Year Founded
2016
Amount Raised
Last raised $250M via series D funding.
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