10 Best Free HR Software for SMBs on a Budget in 2023

Deel is a powerful HR software platform that’s perfect for small businesses on a budget. In fact, its HR features are completely free for businesses with fewer than 200 workers. With a range of essential features for effective HR management, it’s a perfect all-in-one tool to build and grow a startup.

Why I picked Deel: One of the key features of Deel is its comprehensive and accessible self-service platform. Employees and contractors can securely login to view their own information and make updates as needed. This is a convenient and time-saving feature that can help to streamline HR processes. You can make use of Deel’s integrations to automate many common HR workflows, from background checks to equipment management.

Deel Features & Integrations:

Features include comprehensive reporting and analytics tools so you can make quickly make informed decisions about your entire workforce. If you decide to run payroll with Deel’s in-house experts, Deel can take care of benefits and compliance administration for over 150 countries, so you can hire anywhere with confidence.

Overall, Deel is a great choice for small businesses looking for a reliable and cost-effective HR software solution. Its global support and comprehensive features make it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes. 

Integrations are available natively with Ashby, BambooHR, Expensify, Greenhouse, Hibob, Netsuite, Okta, OneLogin, Quickbooks, SCIM, Xero, Workday, and Workable.

What's Free: Their free plan is available to organizations with less than 200 employees. Included are onboarding and offboarding tools, payroll processing, benefits, a time-off tracker, expense management tools, a document management system, and government declarations.

If you need more features you can scale up to one of their flexible paid plans. Deel offers clear, simple per-user pricing with no hidden fees or extensive contracts. You can also request a free demo through their website.

Connecteam is a highly versatile, fully featured HR software for small to medium-sized businesses. It’s designed to provide an all-in-one solution for crucial HR functions, including time tracking, scheduling, and employee management. Users can customize various aspects of the software to suit their business's unique needs, like it's policy builder, which helps create custom HR policies from scratch to suit your business model and work culture.

Why I Picked Connecteam: Connecteam's time tracking feature allows employees to easily clock in and out of work using their mobile phones. The feature allows managers to see which employees are currently working, their location, and the task they are working on at any given time. Connecteam's communication tools allow managers to send employees messages, notifications, and alerts throughout the day. It offers a chat feature enabling team members to communicate easily, whether remote, at a job site, or in the office.

Connecteam’s training and onboarding module ensures new hires know the company's policies, procedures, and operations. It also provides a practical and convenient way to train employees in new skills, processes, and technologies. This feature enables organizations to deliver customized training to employees with varying skill levels and learning styles. Connecteam provides an extensive directory that allows managers to store employee data, including their contact details, work history, and performance reports. The software enables SMBs to create forms and checklists specific to their business needs, improving workflow and streamlining processes. These customizable forms and lists can be used for a wide range of tasks, such as tracking employee progress, tracking completed tasks, and logging incidents.

Connectam Standout Features & Integrations

Features include 2-factor authentication, 360-degree feedback, attendance tracking, contact management, data export/data import, data visualization, employee onboarding, expense tracking, feedback management, onboarding, notifications, project management, scheduling, timesheets, vacation & absence calendar, time management, employee engagement, and rewards & recognition.

Integrations include QuickBooks Online.

What's Free: Connecteam's free plan contains a little bit of everything from each module. You'll get all basic functionality, like 1 time clock, unliited projects, payroll integration, a shift schedule view, checklists and forms, task management, and 30 admin seats. Check out their pricing page for a complete list of what's included and what features are limited to paid plans. 

Built by Freshworks, this free applicant tracking solution covers all phases of the hiring process.

Why I picked Freshteam: Their ATS helps recruiters source, screen, interview, and hire candidates. They can also generate offer letters using email templates and send feedback reminders to hiring panel members. In addition, the suite offers leave management capabilities for existing employees.

Users can sync candidate conversations with the applicant tracking solution. The result is a consolidated view of conversations that senior hiring managers can view. In addition, HR managers can customize Freshteam by adding custom questions to the application forms.

Freshteam Features & Integrations:

Features include customizable career sites, integration with multiple free and premium job boards, and social media channels. The software also has the ability to listen to emails, making it easy for you to recognize emails from job boards or vendors to add them to your candidate base. Once the candidates are in, the recruiting team can collaborate with hiring managers to screen and interview them, share feedback and leave notes for each other, hire, and roll out offers to the best candidates.

Integrations are available with all sorts of tools such as assessment portals, video interviewing platforms, job boards, and productivity software.

What's Free: Freshteam offers a free forever plan for up to 50 employees. This includes 3 active jobs, a basic career site, a candidate pipeline, employee referrals, customizable hiring workflows, a shared recruitment team inbox, and team collaboration tools.

Zoho provides free HR software through two main applications: Zoho People and Zoho Recruit.

Why I picked Zoho: Zoho People features leave management, time tracking, attendance management, and form customization. There is also an employee self-service option, allowing workers to access, update and modify their own records.

Zoho Recruit offers an applicant tracking system covering resume parsing, automated job board posting, resume storage, and interview scheduling. The software can also build career pages that list job postings, then accept and process applications.

Zoho Features & Integrations:

Features include a database for your employee information, time off tracking tools, job postings, and basic recruiting tools like interview scheduling and candidate management.

Integrations are available with Zoho's extensive portfolio of business suites. This allows your HR team to scale their processes into larger automation solutions as your business needs grow and expand.

What's Free: Zoho offers a basic free forever plan with limited features for up to 5 users. For Zoho People, their free plan includes an employee database and time off management tools. For Zoho Recruit, their free plan supports one active job posting, free access to job boards, candidate management, integrated email, and interview scheduling. Both products also offer a 30-day free trial as well.

Apptivo is a suite of applications designed for managing small businesses.

Why I picked Apptivo: In addition to human resources, the suite includes everything from financial controls to supply chain management. The core of the HR management system is the Employees App, which allows you to create and maintain a list of employee profiles, grant employee access, or terminate employees and assign their roles to others.

Apptivo Features & Integrations:

Features include integrated apps, customizable workflows, custom dashboards, customizable fields for each app, and 24/7 customer support.

Integrations are available with Asterix, Dropbox, Google Suite, Microsoft Office 365, OneDrive, PayPal, RingCentral, Slack, Stripe, Quickbooks, Xero, and several others.

What's Free: Apptivo no longer offers a free forever plan. However, a 30-day free trial is available to test out their software.

OrangeHRM is a scalable HR solution for small to medium-sized businesses. The software manages the whole employment life cycle, from employee onboarding to termination or retirement.

Why I picked OrangeHRM: Their HRMS platform is available through cloud hosting or on-premise hosting, depending on your needs. The cloud version of their product called OrangeHRM Starter is available for free under an open-source license, making it an excellent choice for small businesses or startups.

Their performance management capabilities include 180° and 360° employee reviews, which give you a clear view of each team member's contribution. Review questions can be customized as required to suit a particular role. Goal-tracking features help to keep employees on track to succeed.

OrangeHRM Features & Integrations:

Features include core modules for managing employee information, a corporate directory, attendance & time management, PTO & leave management, candidate recruiting (including an applicant tracking system), performance reviews, benefits administration, and reporting & analytics. They also have a mobile app that supports PTO requests, employee attendance, and clocking in and out.

Integration details are not mentioned on their website. However, they do have an API that supports them.

What's Free: Their OrangeHRM Starter product is free to use through an open-source license, and includes the features described above. They also offer a free demo or a 30-day free trial through their website.

Bitrix24 is a web-based HR system for small businesses. If you are looking for an open-source HR software solution, Bitrix24 is likely to be top of your list. The software packs in plenty of features useful for companies without a large HR team.

Why I picked Bitrix24: Their HR platform includes many human resources tools, plus a wide range of additional CRM and project management features. One of my favorite features is the self-service HR portal. Employees can use this to access basic HR functions without needing to speak to someone from HR. For example, you set up workflows for vacation requests and business trip permissions.

Their HR platform also includes everything you need to collaborate and communicate across your HR team. Each team member can access all company messages, documents, and calendars. You can also set permissions for specific content to ensure each team member only sees what they need to see.

You’ll get the most out of Bitrix24 with some additional tech/coding knowledge on your side, as the public source code access allows for near limitless customization and integration.

Bitrix24 Features & Integrations:

Features include core HR functions such as an employee directory, company structure, a company knowledge base, document management, and time & attendance features, which are included in the free version. An unlimited number of users can use these. However, some essential functions such as leave management and time tracking are only available with a paid subscription.

Integrations with numerous apps are available through their App Marketplace, or by taking advantage of their REST API.

What's Free: You can use Bitrix24’s core features for free, which may be all that small businesses need. If you need additional HR features, you can scale up to one of their paid plans easily.

WebHR helps HR departments manage the employee lifecycle, from the initial hiring process through to retirement. Their all-in-one HR software includes XXX and is available in 30 languages.

Why I picked WebHR: Mobile apps are available for both iOS and Android devices so that employees can quickly log time worked with geo-tracking. Managers can monitor employee hours using the time and attendance features. In addition, the software integrates with biometric devices such as card readers and finger scanners.

WebHR Features & Integrations:

Features include personnel tracking, payroll, benefits administration, an applicant tracking system (ATS), a learning management system (LMS), employee performance, goal management, onboarding, forms & surveys, background checking tools, and asset tracking tools.

Integrations are available with 24+ popular HR tools, including Asana, Bonusly, FreshBooks, Indeed, LinkedIn, Slack, Xero, Quickbooks, Zapier, Zip Recruiter, and others.

What's Free: Teams with less than 5 employees can use WebHR's software for free. For larger teams, they offer very affordable module-based pricing starting at $3/employee/month.

HRLocker is an integrated HRIS database that covers core human resources functionalities so companies can concentrate on strategic decisions and productivity.

Why I picked HRLocker: Their HR platform includes a digital document management system where you can publish an unlimited number of HR documents to create an easily accessible repository for your employees. Within that module, HR teams can also request digital signatures on training documents, as needed, and send out reminders to anyone who hasn't read or signed off on required documentation.

HRLocker Features & Integrations:

Features include modules for holiday and absence management, timesheets, training development, employee data, remote and dual working, performance reviews, and recruitment and onboarding. The HRLocker database also allows users to record employee training courses and upload certificates of completion. Tasks can be assigned to employees or departments, while managers can use the applicant tracking system for recruitment, candidate search, social referral, job boards, and screening.

Integrations are available with 20+ other software systems, including CareerJet, Glassdoor, Google Calendar, Indeed, LinkedIn, Microsoft Office 365, Sage, SimplyHired, Trovit,

What's Free: HRLocker is free to use for 6 months for up to 4 employees. Their free plan includes all the features mentioned above. If you scale up to their first-level paid plan, you can also access customer support and a dedicated account manager.

Sentrifugo is a cloud-based, open-source HR software system that offers performance appraisal, leave management, and time-tracking features.

Why I picked Sentrifugo: Managers can track employees' personal information and manage hiring decisions. The background check function helps improve the hiring process, allowing managers to review the status of background checks as they move through the system.

Sentrifugo includes an employee self-service portal where staff can log in to access and update their details. They can also view policy documents, such as employee handbooks. Employees can also add self-appraisals and comments for managers.

Sentrifugo Features & Integrations:

Features include analytics, employee self-service, background checks, performance appraisals, interview scheduling, expense management, asset management, HR service requests, and talent acquisition tools.

Integrations are available with numerous email service providers.

What's Free: Sentrifugo is open-source and completely free to use forever.