Best Applicant Tracking Systems for Small Businesses: Top 10 Compared

The best applicant tracking systems for small businesses will save your company time by automating the recruitment process. They can help you streamline the hiring of new talent by collecting, sorting, and organizing resumes and placing applicants in a talent pool.

These systems can boost efficiency in the hiring process by automatically creating job posts and filtering resumes, allowing you to quickly identify the best applicants. To help you find the solution that best meets your needs, we’ve reviewed and compared the best applicant tracking systems for small businesses today.

The Top 10 Small Business ATS Systems Ranked

There are lots of ATS software products out there. To help, here’s a rundown of the market’s top 10 options for small businesses, ranked based on factors like price, ease of use, integrations, and their overall capabilities for streamlining recruitment processes:

1. TeamTailor — Overall, the best applicant tracking software system today thanks to its candidate career site, ease of use, customizable application forms, and effortless workflow management.
2. ClearCompany — A top-of-the-line ATS that streamlines talent acquisition with a user-friendly application process and tailored tools such as unique screening capabilities and video interviewing.
3. Monday.com — A popular all-in-one application that can manage your hiring process in addition to tracking projects and employee engagement for just $22/user/month.
4. Zoho Recruit — A highly customizable solution for recruitment teams that includes client and applicant portals and allows you to easily visualize the different stages of the hiring process.
5. BreezyHR — Top choice for small to mid-sized businesses, letting you use AI to enhance recruitment and set up a repeatable hiring process with over 400 built-in questions.
6. Manatal — Sophisticated and easy-to-use applicant tracking system that helps companies achieve digitalization and offers seamless integration with LinkedIn and other major job boards.
7. Rippling — Well-known workforce management solution for HR, IT, and finance for larger companies. Comes with a huge toolkit of human resource management solutions.
8. Workable — Easy-to-use talent acquisition software that helps small teams streamline hiring tasks by enabling the self-guided onboarding of candidates.
9. BambooHR — An award-winning complete HR software solution that simplifies hiring and is one of the few that assists with the process of employees leaving the organization.
10. Freshteam — Smart HR software for growing businesses that helps modernize HR by managing hiring, onboarding, time-off, employee data, and HR workflows in one place.

How Do ATS Systems Work?

Applicant Tracking Systems help to effectively manage every aspect of the recruitment process — including job posting, interviewing candidates, onboarding, and handling all communication through the recruitment process.

Why Use An Applicant Tracking System?

Besides making the process faster and easier, here are some additional reasons why using an applicant tracking system will benefit HR departments and recruitment agencies:

Streamline the Hiring Process

With a more efficient hiring process, you’ll save time and get access to more applicants, creating a wider talent pool. A wider selection of applicants means you’ll have a higher chance of finding the perfect fit for your business.

Enhance Brand Reputation

Believe it or not, applicants talk to each other. If a candidate finds out that your application process is cumbersome and time-consuming, there’s a big chance they won’t apply.

A no-fuss application process means more applicants, giving you more choice.

Automation

The best applicant tracking systems for small businesses can quickly identify relevant candidates with the specific qualifications you’re looking for and can do so without any kind of bias. This helps avoid wasting time on candidates who aren’t the right fit for the role.

Fill Positions Faster

Having an incomplete team can knock timelines off course and impact the morale of your employees. By being able to quickly fill a vacancy, you can ensure your projects remain on schedule and that your resources are used efficiently to avoid overworking employees.

Compliance

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has many requirements for employers to follow to ensure their company complies with the law. A good ATS has these requirements built-in, so you won’t have to spend too much time ensuring your company remains compliant.

How to Choose the Best Applicant Tracking System for Your Small Business

Choosing the best applicant tracking system for you can be a tough decision because of the sheer number of options out there. Here are a few factors you should look out for when considering an applicant tracker for your business:

Identify Recruitment Requirements

Consider the positions you need to hire for and the volume of applicants you’ll need to process. Identify the main pain points for your organization when it comes to hiring new applicants, from sourcing talent to onboarding, and the features you would like to have. Then, look into different systems and see if they have the features you need to ensure a smooth workflow.

Sometimes, you may find that the specific functionality you need is on a higher-tier plan. By defining your needs from the outset, you’ll ensure you get a tool that has everything you need at a price you’re willing to pay.

Integration

Once you’ve determined your requirements, it’s time to think about integrations. A number of applicant tracking systems offer the ability to integrate with other HR tools and systems you may be using.

You want to ensure that the tools your business and employees currently use can be integrated with the ATS to streamline tasks, automatically copy over records, and avoid the need for using separate apps where possible.

Pricing

Consider your budget when choosing an applicant tracker. If you’re a startup, it’s best to choose a low-priced tracker that’ll meet your needs until you’re ready to expand. That said, you also need to consider the cost of scaling with your chosen ATS.

Some tracking systems, such as BreezyHR and Zoho Recruit, can be used for free, but there will be limitations to what they offer without charge.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some systems charge per seat, so it’s important to know from the outset how many users you’ll be looking to onboard.

Ease of Use and Customer Support

Products that are intuitive and easy to use are ideal as they can be implemented quickly and without affecting the rest of your workload.

Having access to the best customer support is just as important, so you can get any technical difficulties addressed in a timely manner.

User reviews, free trials, and the company’s online documentation can all help you determine whether the support on offer is sufficient for your business.

Security and Compliance

Assess the measures taken by the applicant tracker software provider to ensure the data you capture is well and truly locked up behind encryption and that the organization is fully legally compliant.

Make sure the applicant tracker follows best practices when it comes to compliance regulations from organizations like the EEOC or OFCCP.

Reviews of the Best Applicant Tracker Software

Here we review the best applicant tracking systems on the market. We go over everything they have to offer, including features and pricing, and what they are best suited for to help you find the one that’s right for your business.

1. TeamTailor — Overall, the Best Applicant Tracking System for 2023

TeamTailor is an all-in-one solution that streamlines your recruitment process and makes hiring and onboarding simple. It’s straightforward and intuitive to use and can automate repetitive tasks, saving both time and money.

The product aims to increase employee and candidate satisfaction by offering a smooth and pain-free recruitment process. You can also connect all your company’s social media pages seamlessly, ensuring that you stand out and attract the best candidates.

Automated triggers are one of the top features on offer, allowing you to automate actions in the process. For example, an email can be automatically sent to the candidate, informing them of their progression when they are moved to the next level of the recruitment process.

To save time, TeamTailor lets you send bulk messages to inform candidates whether they’ll be moving forward. Plus, it comes with a Chrome extension that allows you to add a candidate to your talent pool from any website you’re on.

If you want to assess the likelihood of a candidate recommending your company, simply send them a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, which will give you an indication of how the candidate views your company. A higher score could lead to more referrals.

The platform also has a robust career site builder, which allows you to build a page from scratch or to choose from a selection of eye-catching templates.

In addition, TeamTailor provides features that enhance collaboration within the hiring team, such as scorecards, reviews, notes, and tags. In addition, it has a built-in messaging service, so you don’t need to use a separate tool.

TeamTailor is also GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant, which means that the company handles all the data it receives in accordance with the law.

Some downsides include difficulty viewing PDF documents – as they’re embedded in a window – and the fact that the analytics reporting could be simplified. Otherwise, updates are frequent, and the customer support is fantastic.

Pricing

TeamTailor provides a single plan that includes all its features and permits an unlimited number of users. Pricing starts at $200/month or $2,750 annually, but it can vary based on your specific requirements.

While this may seem like a significant expense, it grants you access to unlimited job postings, complete control for each user with access to the system, and comprehensive analytics for each potential candidate.

2. ClearCompany — A User-Friendly, Top-of-the-Line ATS for Streamlining Talent Acquisition

ClearCompany is an end-to-end talent management system that’s enabled thousands of companies to maximize their talent recruitment. It uses best practices based on data to enable the creation of content that effectively attracts qualified candidates to your company.

With custom software tools, you can easily manage every step of the recruiting process, from candidate sourcing to onboarding – and most of it can be automated, leaving you more time for other tasks.

You can manage and promote any job opening and post ads on hundreds of job boards. The platform also offers a comprehensive suite of performance management tools to help you manage current employees.

Recruiters are able to create templates for requisitions, create and send out offer letters and even communicate with candidates all from within ClearCompany. Plus, it comes equipped with smart forms that put an end to redundant data entry as it fills in previously entered information and validates the data for formatting and accuracy.

In addition, ClearCompany offers the ability to schedule appointments, send out texts, grade the quality of candidates, and conduct video interviews. These features drastically reduce the time to hire, freeing up time for other tasks.

ClearCompany also manages compliance and employment eligibility, giving your HR team some peace of mind knowing the recruitment process is within the bounds of the law. Plus, you can initiate background checks without having to leave the platform.

Overall, this ATS offers excellent customer service, and it’s intuitive, easy to use, and comes at a reasonable cost – though its pricing could be simpler and more transparent.

Pricing

ClearCompany is another firm that doesn’t publicize its pricing, instead preferring to quote to its customers’ needs. That being said, you can expect to pay around $7/employee/month. This can change depending on your requirements, so it’s best to contact them for a quote.

3. Monday.com — A Popular All-in-One Applicant Tracking and Project Management Solution

Monday.com is more than just an applicant tracking system – it also offers one of the top project management solutions out there, making it one of the best applicant management solutions available. Its drag-and-drop interface makes it intuitive, and it can adapt to businesses of all sizes.

With Monday.com, you can create a workspace dedicated to candidate recruitment, plus you can create customized and automated workflows to easily track the progress of your hiring process.

The customizable recruitment process makes it easy to track your applicant stream and ensures that nothing is overlooked, while the Form View allows you to collect job applications and pull the data automatically into your applicant tracking board. With this, recruiters can assess and communicate with candidates directly from the board.

With Monday, you can turn all your recruitment metrics into digestible data that gives you a clear overview of your recruitment pipeline for each department. Once a candidate has been found, you can track every step of the onboarding process by creating a customizable onboarding checklist to see exactly where the candidate is in the process.

The platform also makes it easy to implement training programs for new employees, ensuring that they’re up to date with your latest processes. Monday can integrate with tools like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, and Slack, and it comes with a fully-fledged mobile app.

Pricing

Monday.com offers monthly and annual pricing plans, all of which require a minimum of 3 users. Aside from the free plan that offers three work boards, unlimited documents, 200-plus templates, and mobile app access, the other plans include:

• Basic — $10/seat/month — Offers unlimited viewers and items, 5GB of file storage + free plan features.
• Standard — $12/seat/month — Includes a calendar view, guest access, and up to 250 task automations/month + Basic features.
• Pro — $20/seat/month — Includes private boards and documents, chart views, time tracking, and 25,000 task automations/month + Standard features.
• Enterprise — Quote-based — Includes enterprise security, enterprise-scale automations and integrations, advanced reporting, multilevel permissions, and premium support + Pro features.

4. Zoho Recruit — Powerful ATS and CRM in a Single, Highly Customizable Recruitment Platform

Zoho Recruit includes a CRM and has the ability to integrate with many other platforms – including Zoho’s range of business products. It’s been built to handle the hurdles faced by both in-house recruitment teams as well as staffing agencies.

The platform comes bundled with many customizable features that allow you to track every step of the recruitment process, from the receipt of applications to the onboarding of new hires. Every step can be optimized with advanced analytics to ensure you only progress the candidates who meet your requirements.

Additional features include client, applicant, and employee referral portals. These ensure resource accessibility, give you more control over your staff, and enhance the overall experience. You can also set up a dedicated resume inbox that enables applicants to submit their resumes directly through the portal, making applying for positions easy and hassle-free.

There’s video interviewing too, which is always a great bonus as this saves loads of time and offers you the chance to broaden your net for candidates by taking travel distance out of the question.

Besides all this, the robust AI features will enhance your screening processes and automatically ensure compliance while giving you access to the best candidates who fit your requirements.

Zoho Recruit can also extract and standardize applicant details while mapping them to relevant fields within the ATS, making it very easy to collect and review candidates’ details.

However, it’s important to note that while Zoho offers AI and automaton features, you’ll need a basic understanding of scripting and coding to set them up – something which could be simplified.

Pricing

Zoho Recruit offers a free-forever plan that allows one active job. It also offers candidate and email management, interview scheduling, and 8/5 support – and here are the paid plans you can upgrade to:

• Standard — $25/user/month billed annually — Up to 10 active jobs at a time + premium job boards, branded career site, and employee referrals + Free plan features.
• Enterprise — $50/user/month billed annually — Up to 20 active jobs, AI candidate matching, candidate and staffing portals, and advanced customization + Standard features.

5. BreezyHR — Top Recruitment Tool for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses With AI-Powered Automation

BreezyHR is a modern applicant tracking system that’s great for small to medium-sized businesses that want to streamline their hiring process and attract the best candidates.

It allows you to post job openings on over 50 free and premium job boards with a single click. You also have the ability to target niche and diversity-focused job sites so you can reach more qualified and diverse applicants.

You can use the power of AI to analyze resumes by matching the required qualifications to the desired vacancy. Once you’ve found the right candidate, you can set up an automated interview process with over 400 different tailored questions based on skills, jobs, or industry to elevate the interview conversation.

With BreezyHR, you can qualify candidates and make better hiring decisions by automating tedious tasks like applicant screening, sending emails, scheduling interviews, and collecting feedback. They offer custom scorecards, personality assessments, and even background checks. All of these features are designed to streamline the hiring process and save time.

You can create engaging and mobile-friendly career sites that showcase your brand and jobs. These can be customized as much as you want, or you can use a template. In addition, you can embed job vacancies on your own website using their widget or API.

Besides all this, you can keep all candidate information in one central place for easy access and integrate with popular tools and platforms like LinkedIn, and 1Password — one of the best password managers — Slack, Google Analytics, Twitter, and GoodHire.

It is on the more expensive side, but it comes with features that other solutions don’t, such as personality assessments, and candidates can even automatically schedule their own interviews, giving them more control.

Pricing

All the paid plans BreezyHR offers include unlimited users, candidates, and customer support. It also offers a free plan which gives you all the basics for one user. Other plans include:

• Startup — $157/month — Unlimited candidate pools, and background screening integrations + Free plan features.
• Growth — $ 273/month — Automated reference checking and customizable interview guides + Standard features.
• Business — $439/month — Includes advanced questionnaires for different industries, assessment integrations, and the ability to compare different candidates + Growth features.

The above prices are for the annual subscriptions, but there’s also a monthly billing option.

6. Manatal — Sophisticated and Easy-to-Use Applicant Tracking System With Great Integrations

Manatal is a leading AI recruitment ATS product that’s both easy to use and mobile-friendly. It’s been designed for recruitment agencies and in-house HR teams to streamline the recruitment process from sourcing candidates to onboarding and beyond.

It packs in everything you’d expect, from recruitment processing to drag-and-drop pipelines, compliance (GDPR, CCPA, PDPA) and collaboration tools, a user-friendly career page builder, plus powerful search functionality, and advanced resume parsing with AI recommendations.

If you aren’t happy with the data you get from candidate resumes, you can enrich it using information taken from LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Once you’ve found a good fit, you can score the candidate based on the job requirements to easily pinpoint the best options.

Manatal also offers a staffing tracker, which allows you to manage every new hire through their employment lifespan. Plus, you can make use of Kanban boards to track your employees, as with Monday. Beyond this, you can also keep track of your relationships with your clients by using the built-in CRM.

Overall, Manatal is an ATS and CRM bundled up in one, and as such, it boasts one of the best-priced packages for recruiters.

Pricing

Manatal comes with a 14-day free trial on all its paid plans, and here are your options:

• Professional — $15/user/month — Gives you the ability to post up to 15 jobs and gives you access to up to 10,000 candidates.
• Enterprise — $35/user/month — Allows you to post an unlimited number of job postings and gives you access to unlimited candidates.

There is also a custom plan, but the only difference is single sign-on authentication and prioritized phone support.

7. Rippling — Well-Known Workforce Management Solution for HR, IT, and Finance for Fast Growing Companies

Rippling boasts that it’s the best workforce management solution for HR, IT, and finance, and they’re the only platform that unifies every part of your employee management. That said, when compared to other HR solutions, Rippling can be on the expensive side.

Nevertheless, you can easily integrate with platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Greenhouse, Upwork, Slack, and so much more. In addition, it has powerful automation and analytics, so you can rest assured knowing your recruitment process is on the right track.

Rippling is a great option for remote teams as it gives you the option to manage your devices and inventory on the go, and its user-friendly design makes it easy to navigate. Plus, as something that’s often overlooked, Rippling’s customer support is refreshing, especially for small businesses that may need help getting set up.

Rippling also helps with tedious tasks like onboarding new hires, updating employee information, and syncing data across multiple applications. The onboarding can be done online, and there’s the option to track applicants through the recruitment process.

The sheer number of features, such as its robust analytics and reporting, can make it challenging to get started, and the platform comes with a steep learning curve. Once you have a handle on it, though, you’ll unlock a lot of power with your dashboard. Unfortunately, there’s no free trial, but you’ll have the option to view a demo before you make a purchase.

Pricing

They have the Unity plan that’s great for small companies that only need to manage their payroll. If you have many employees and need other services like benefits administration or an ATS for recruiters, you’ll have to contact them and ask for a custom quote.

Depending on what you need, the price may vary, but you can expect to pay around $8/user/month plus a $35 platform fee.

8. Workable — Intuitive Talent Acquisition System for Small Teams, With Powerful Automation

Workable is a cloud-based ATS for recruitment that provides scalable solutions and an AI-powered tool to assist in the hiring process. You can create a careers page within minutes, and with just a few clicks, you can post jobs to over 200 boards around the world.

As a talent acquisition platform, Workable helps businesses hire faster and smarter. You can use the built-in template to generate effective job descriptions, design a well-structured hiring process, and optimize your candidate experience. There are also 70+ apps and tools to automate your hiring tasks and get more done in less time.

Onboarding can be self-guided, and offer letters can be automatically sent to candidates once they’ve passed the initial recruitment phase. The software complies with EEOC and CCPA requirements and automates GDPR compliance.

Unfortunately, it only gives you access to 15 free job boards. If you need more, you’ll have to opt for a third-party integration. That being said, it can integrate with a number of different platforms, from Gmail to Outlook and even Zoom, for video interviews.

Some limitations include the search function to find candidates and the overall onboarding process, which isn’t as customizable or as dynamic as some competitors.

Pricing

There are three plans on offer with Workable. The starter plan requires a monthly payment, whereas the premier plan requires an annual fee. Here are your options:

• Starter — $149/month — Up to 50 employees and includes two active jobs in addition to 200 AI sourcing profile views/month.
• Standard — $360/month (monthly) or $299/month (annual) — Includes unlimited active jobs, 1,000 AI sourcing profile views/month, and assisted account onboarding.
• Premier — $599/month — Up to 20 employees plus 20,000 AI sourcing profile views a year, a hiring plan with requisition approvals, a dedicated account manager, and single sign-on support.

It’s important to note you’ll have to ask for a custom quote if you have more than 20 employees and want to use the standard or premier plans.

9. BambooHR — An Award-Winning Complete HR Solution for Simplified Hiring

BambooHR is an HRIS or Human Resources Information System that’s bundled with features such as an ATS, time tracking, payroll processing, and employee engagement and satisfaction tools. It’s great for small to medium businesses looking to enhance their administration processes.

With BambooHR, you can manage all aspects of an employee’s lifecycle, from hiring to onboarding and even employee departures. Not many recruiting ATS solutions offer this, making it a fairly unique feature for managing employees who choose to leave as well as those who are let go.

The platform is easy to use, comes with built-in templates, and provides visually appealing workflows. In addition, it uses automation to create powerful reports so you can see why employees might be leaving, for example. Having information like this at your disposal is a powerful way of ensuring your workforce remains happy.

BambooHR also has a mobile app where employees can request time off, call in sick, find co-workers’ contact information, request coverage from colleagues, document performance milestones, and keep connected while on the go. This is great for remote workers or those working away from the office.

Some downsides to this small business recruiting software package include the lack of video interviewing capabilities and the fact that you have no access to the ATS on the basic plan. So if you plan on streamlining your recruitment process, you’ll have to opt for the advantage plan straight off the bat.

Pricing

BambooHR doesn’t advertise its pricing on its website, but they do show what the plans feature:

• Essentials plan — Includes employee records, standard reporting, and analytics, time-off management, mobile app, employee self-service, and email support
• Advantage plan — Onboarding, offboarding, Applicant Tracking System, E-signatures, employee well-being surveys, training tracking, customizable reports, phone and chat support, and an open API + Essential plan features

10. Freshteam — Smart HR Software for Growing Businesses

Freshteam is designed to modernize HR, and as it’s part of the Freshworks family, you can easily integrate with the firm’s various business solutions. It’s also easy to use and includes a branded career site that’s fully customizable.

This recruitment software for small businesses lets you post to multiple job boards with a simple click, plus a host of other features like candidate screening, applicant interviewing, team collaboration, and sending off offer letters. You can also customize your hiring workflows and automate follow-ups.

It provides smart candidate sourcing that can help in the recruitment process by going through multiple channels such as job boards, emails, career portals, employee referrals, and social media channels to look for top talent.

The software integrates with all major job boards, including Indeed, ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor. It also includes over 100 built-in job description templates, automatic resume analysis, and prep kits to help interviewers prepare for the interview.

The software helps reduce workload by automating tasks like candidate rejections, advancing candidates who meet the criteria, sending emails to stakeholders when candidates reach the interview stage, and archiving unselected candidates.

Pricing

Freshteam offers a feature-rich free-forever plan that’s perfect for small companies of up to 50 people. It includes up to three job postings at any time, a primary career site, email integration, Kanban boards, candidate application via email, employee referral, and an employee directory. The other plans include:

• Growth — $1/employee/month + $59 platform fee/month — Free plan features + 20 job postings, a customized career site, a customizable applicant form, and custom interview scorecards.
• Pro — $2/employee/month + $99 platform fee/month — Growth features + 100 job postings, advanced career site customization, social recruiting, and talent pool management.
• Enterprise — $4/employee/month + $169 platform fee/month — Intended to streamline the HR needs of large companies

Comparison of the Best Small Business Recruitment Software for Applicant Tracking

The comparison table below presents the key features from the best applicant tracking systems so you can easily identify the perfect fit for your organization.

Conclusion — What’s the Best Applicant Tracking System for Small Businesses in 2023?

After spending a lot of time reviewing applicant-tracking systems, we’ve determined that TeamTailor is the best applicant-tracking software for small businesses, thanks to its ability to automate repetitive tasks and generate in-depth candidate data from a host of different sources.

Its automated triggers make it easy to progress candidates through the recruitment process, enhancing the productivity of your recruitment team. TeamTailor also offers a 14-day obligation-free trial, so try it today and start recruiting the best candidates for your business.

Applicant Tracking Software FAQs

Justin Van Gent

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Justin Van Gent

As an experienced freelance writer for Techopedia.com, Justin strives to provide accurate, informative comparisons and reviews on both B2B and B2C tech solutions — ranging from product reviews to CRMs, security software, and beyond.

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