Employee onboarding helps businesses align their goals with performance expectations from hired employees by helping them:
- Understand the business and what their products or services achieve for their customers.
- Clarify their role in product/service delivery and how to achieve performance outcomes.
- Get started with their work, access resources, or seek support.
The above tasks usually require extensive documentation — and for small companies lacking resources, this may seem like ‘extra work’.
However, effective employee onboarding increases employee retention by 82% — which further translates to saving hiring costs and increases ROI on hired employees.
For startups and small businesses, such savings are key to scale growth.
Digital onboarding platforms help small businesses use automation to minimize the efforts and costs associated with delivering consistent employee onboarding experiences.
To help you take the first step in improving employee retention, we have curated a list of top onboarding software for small businesses. The list is created considering small business needs and highlights features, pros, cons, feedback, integrations, and pricing.
Why is employee onboarding software pivotal for small businesses?
Here’s what the hiring time range looks like across industries—it takes at least 10 days for a restaurant and 32 days for aerospace and defense companies to hire a new employee.
That’s a lot of time if you’re a startup or small business hungry to scale.
Now, this is what happens if your business uses manual processes to onboard and engage employees:
- More time is spent on paperwork to onboard an employee.
- Data entry errors or miscommunication lead to incorrect payroll information or missing training materials.
- Looking at the chaos while onboarding, the new employee may feel frustrated by the lack of support and clarity during their initial days.
So even if you manage to successfully hire, and if they do not retain, your company has to start this process all over again. This becomes a clear distraction from daily operations and a hindrance to improving business performance.
Using employee onboarding software, you automate such manual and repetitive tasks to ensure the hired employee aligns with the company’s expectations, can perform, and feels engaged. This helps improve employee retention to avoid spending resources and time on frequent hiring.
6 best onboarding software for small businesses in 2024
1. Softr — best no-code app builder to create custom employee onboarding software
Softr is a no-code app builder platform that enables small businesses to develop custom business apps like internal tools and portals — without writing a single line of code. This includes building an employee onboarding software, wherein you can launch a fully functional app at a fraction of the cost of investing in developers or third-party employee onboarding SaaS.
Many small businesses or startups heavily leverage spreadsheets or other databases to digitize operations. Instead of creating an app from scratch, Softr lets you build custom interfaces on top of existing databases like Google Sheets, Airtable, HubSpot, MySQL, Xano, SmartSheet, and more.
Thus, adopting Softr to build small business HR automation tools helps effectively transition to custom apps without affecting your existing operational workflows. This is important because it significantly reduces the learning curve that comes with custom-coded or third-party SaaS apps, and your company still delivers custom employee experience to your new joiners.
Get started for free — customize Softr’s employee onboarding template
Softr Key Features
- Knowledge management: Create a knowledge directory to centralize access to training resources, employee profiles, work policies, and other work-specific files. This includes user roles and permissions to control accessibility based on the employee profile.
- Employee self-service portal: Design employee portal and implement role-based employee onboarding workflows to capture employee submissions, set up onboarding checklists to start work, provide access to required files, and more.
- eSignatures: Build custom forms like contracts and speed up onboarding by allowing employees to eSign them using the ‘Signature’ input field.
- Task management: Simplify goal setting and track submissions, achievements, or completed tasks by employees.
- Support and feedback: Use custom forms to capture employee feedback and raise support ticket requests for resources or bug reports.
Softr Pros
- Softr’s free trial can run fully functional pilots by publishing 1 app with 10 users and a custom domain. Gradually increasing paid plans makes it easy to scale as your team grows.
- Affordable onboarding software + save investing in separate apps for document management, signing, performance tracking, support, and other new hire onboarding tools — replace all with Softr.
- Ready-to-use Softr templates like employee training management, team directory, employee feedback tracker, and many more.
- Customizable blocks and styling features with the flexibility to use custom code.
- Active community, training resources, and documentation for new and existing users to share experiences, learn Softr best practices, and seek professional development help.
- A responsive support team that actively listens to feedback and responds timely.
Softr Cons
- No native mobile apps, although you can convert the web app into a progressive web app to use across iOS or Android devices.
- May require using custom code for complex use cases.
Softr Pricing
- Free plan: Forever free plan helps perform rapid prototyping and publish 1 app with 10 app users, unlimited collaborators, 2 user groups, and a free custom domain.
- Paid plan: To add more users, implement enterprise-grade security, advanced blocks, eSignatures, custom code, and more — explore Sofrt’s paid plans starting at $49/month (paid yearly).
Softr Integration and Support
Softr integrates with 30+ apps like Zapier, YouTube, Google Workspace products, PayPal, Gumroad, and more. Includes access to Softr API for custom integrations.
Softr provides multiple support options — which include an active community of Softr experts, users, and enthusiasts with regular events and workshops. Explore Softr Academy to hone your skills with the no-code app builder and become a Softr-certified professional. You can also hire a Softr expert to help you build or troubleshoot your employee onboarding software app.
Softr Customer Feedback
"Back in the time, we used to keep a whole development team for implementing various web applications; now, with Softr, you can create 5 applications per hour with 0 experience in web development. We implemented several in-house applications and web forms, which we used to integrate with our SaaS platform, and saved months of development work on those. All kinds of internal admin panels, CRM integrations, employee onboarding flows, and landing pages are done with Softr."
— Ashot A., CEO, Verified Review on Softr at G2
2. Deel — best to onboard remote employees and contractors globally
Deel HR helps you onboard remote employees and contractors across 150+ countries while maintaining necessary compliance. You can design a self-serve onboarding portal that takes care of time off, expense management, access to documents, and much more.
Deel HR is suitable for remote–first startups or businesses that want to focus on compliance and payroll aspects of employee onboarding.
Deel Key Features
- Process automation: Create unique workflow automation to suit your company’s hiring policies and hierarchical structure.
- People’s directory: Make employee information and contact accessible as required. Includes features to save, organize, and sign documents.
- Expense management: Track and automate employee and contractor payouts via payroll and expense management tools.
Deel Pros
- Dedicated solutions that simplify global HR compliance, taxation, and unified payroll requirements.
- Supports scheduling of recurring payments for global contractors/employees.
- Simple and intuitive user interface
Deel Cons
- Slow and hierarchical support causes delays in resolution.
- The mobile app lacks features compared to Deel’s web app.
- Deel HR uses employee-based pricing, which means costs increase as your team grows. Additionally, other Deel products can be expensive for small businesses.
Deel Pricing
- Free plan: Forever free plan allows managing expenses, time-offs, organizational charts, and automation.
- Paid plan: To track employee performance, build training materials using LMS features, and design career paths, explore Deel Engage at $20/employee/month.
Deel Integration and Support
The Deel App Store provides 95+ integrations with major software across process automation, HR tools, legal, and more. You can implement custom integrations using Deel API.
Deel offers support via chat and access to its Help Center and documentation for DIY troubleshooting.
Deel Customer Feedback
“It streamlines the onboarding process and simplifies contract creation, saving time and resources. Additionally, its flexible payment solutions allow me to pay remote team members in their preferred currencies, enhancing employee satisfaction.
One aspect I dislike about Deel is the potential for high fees associated with some of its services, particularly when dealing with specific countries or payment methods. While the platform offers a range of functionalities, these fees can add up and impact the overall cost-effectiveness for businesses.”
— Kelli M, Lawyer, Verified Review on Deel at G2
3. Workable — best for integrating ATS and employee onboarding
Workable is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software that includes an employee onboarding portal solution for delivering a consistent employee experience. You can collect employee documents, get signatures, a dashboard to track employee engagement during onboarding, and more.
Workable is suitable for small businesses heavy into hiring but requires basic employee onboarding features without investing extra.
Workable Key Features
- Workflow automation: Design custom onboarding portal and workflows based on employee information like location or department.
- Templates: Create customizable templates for onboarding tasks and use dashboards to monitor progress and make sure employees complete all steps.
- Employee profiles: Centralize capture and storage of employee information, digital signatures, and documents into a detailed employee profile within the portal.
Workable Pros
- Comprehensive ATS features with candidate sourcing help streamline the overall hiring process.
- Creates organizational charts automatically as employees update their profiles.
- Provides native language options.
Workable Cons
- Limited features for employee engagement during onboarding.
- Requires using integrations for implementing advanced features like payroll or workforce management.
- Limited reporting capabilities.
- Expensive ATS and new hire onboarding tools pricing for small businesses.
Workable Pricing
- Free plan: Access and test the Workable Standard Plan for 15 days, which includes employee onboarding tools.
- Paid plan: Workable’s Starter Plan includes employee onboarding and core recruiting features at $189/month for up to 20 employees and 2 active jobs. Explore higher plans to post unlimited jobs and premium add-ons to use advanced features like assessments.
Workable Integration and Support
You can enhance Workable’s features using its 300+ integrations across payroll, background-checking software, job boards, and more.
For support, they provide a ‘Help Center’ to access documentation, chat or email support, and FAQs.
Workable Customer Feedback
“Very efficient in tracking the candidate throughout the process especially now that we are working remotely. It would be nice if it integrated with our payroll software. We are also a smaller organization so it is a bit too robust for our needs right now.”
— Marissa G., Director of Accounting, Verified Review on Workable at G2
4. BambooHR — best for overall centralized HR management
BambooHR provides HR management solutions across hiring, payroll, engagement – and employee onboarding too. It includes customizable onboarding templates using which you can design onboarding tasks and organize introductions to engage newly hired employees.
BambooHR is suitable for businesses looking to streamline employee hiring, onboarding, and engagement using a single software without too many custom requirements.
BambooHR Key Features
- Onboarding templates: Use ‘New Hire Packet’ templates to design custom onboarding experiences.
- Onboarding tasks: Assign tasks to employees to improve time-to-productivity.
- Collaboration: Engage employees by making introductions and running an employee community.
BambooHR Pros
- Includes employee offboarding features.
- Mobile app for managing new and existing employees.
- Consistent and simple user interface.
BambooHR Cons
- Pricing plans with multiple add-ons make it steep and complicated for small businesses that may not require so many features.
- Inadequate design customization features.
- Limited features to implement automated approval workflows.
- Limited and complex reporting features.
BambooHR Pricing
You need to request pricing with BambooHR’s sales team.
They offer flat monthly pricing for teams under 25 employees and a monthly per-employee model for larger teams.
To access employee onboarding solutions, you can choose their Core Plan.
BambooHR Integration and Support
Integrate BambooHR with 125+ software integrations across LMS, time-tracking, payroll, and more. You can request custom integrations.
Their support includes a Help Center portal with documentation and guides with phone numbers, chat, and email address access.
BambooHR Customer Feedback
“The platform has significantly streamlined our HR processes, from onboarding to time-off tracking, making everything more efficient and easy to manage. While BambooHR offers a solid range of features, I feel it lacks customization options for reports, workflows, or dashboards. More flexibility in tailoring the platform to fit unique organizational needs would be beneficial.”
— Michelle C., HR Coordinator, Verified Review on BambooHR at G2
5. Lattice — best for employee onboarding and engagement
Lattice is an employee engagement platform that you can use to design personalized employee onboarding experiences. You can integrate performance management strategies like OKRs or one-on-one feedback loops to optimize employee performance from the start.
Lattice is suitable for businesses that want to equip their employee onboarding with engagement and performance-tracking features.
Lattice Key Features
- Onboarding templates: Customize templates across emails and workflows to personally welcome and onboard new employees.
- Task management: Implement task lists with deadlines and tracking to ensure employees follow structured timelines.
- Onboarding feedback: Implement a continuous feedback strategy to optimize employee onboarding flows to gain insights on improvement.
Lattice Pros
- Comprehensive surveying tools to gauge employee engagement, performance, and satisfaction.
- User-friendly with intuitive interface design
- Direct integration with performance management helps streamline expectations.
Lattice Cons
- Complex reporting workflows
- Limited integrations
- Limited employee onboarding features — you may need to explore add-ons or integrations to enhance functionality
- While the per-seat pricing is cheap, Lattice requires a minimum annual contract that may deter small businesses and startups with budget constraints.
Lattice Pricing
Lattice provides annual contracts, with a minimum annual spend of $4000. There are no free plans — however, you can request a demo
For employee onboarding use case, choose their ‘Talent Management’ plan starting at $11/seat/month with the ‘Engagement’ and ‘Grow’ add-on priced each at $4/seat/month.
Lattice Integration and Support
Lattice provides 25+ integrations with other HR management tools like Slack, BambooHR, Jira, and more. You can request custom integrations.
Lattice provides a Help Center with guides, FAQs, Lattice University to learn the software, and chat + email support.
Lattice Customer Feedback
“Lattice's features of tracking information, creating 1-1 agendas, setting up goals, and reviewing growth areas are helping me a lot. I haven't seen a lot of "self-onboarding" material while using the platform. As an onboarder, I believe this is valuable to the customers because they can learn how to use the system at their own pace, and also help them clarify some topics they might need help with.”
— Rainer F., Verified Review on Lattice at G2
6. Connecteam — best for onboarding in the field service industry
Connecteam is specifically designed to manage non-desk employees or contractors like remote or field workers. It handles their documentation, provides real-time access to resources, and connects with relevant teams to help them immediately get started with their jobs.
Connecteam is suitable for field service businesses that onboard talent in industries like construction, retail, manufacturing, and more.
Connecteam Key Features
- Training app: Create custom bite-sized micro training material and centralize it for on-demand access.
- Instant messaging: Add new hires to relevant and segmented chat groups to streamline communication.
- Employee timeline: Provide a transparent milestone-based timeline to incentivize workers and reduce time-to-productivity.
Connecteam Pros
- Pay what you use ‘feature hubs’ based pricing plan makes it suitable for small businesses with specific needs.
- User-friendly and easy to set up.
- Both web and mobile apps are tailored to field service requirements.
Connecteam Cons
- Limited integration options
- No per-employee pricing — a small business pays the same price for 10 to 30 employees.
- Limited reporting capabilities.
Connecteam Pricing
Connecteam offers 3 feature ‘hubs’ for operations, communication, and HR management. For employee onboarding use case, choose the HR plan:
- Free plan: Forever free plan for small businesses allows access for up to 10 users.
- Paid plan: To launch courses, use time-off, or search/filter insights, explore HR hub’s paid plan starting at $29/month for up to 30 users ($0.5/month for additional users).
It is compulsory to explore Connecteam’s 14-day free trial which gives unrestricted access to all features.
Connecteam Integrations and Support
Connecteam provides only 5 integrations with Xero, Gusto, QuickBooks, Paychex, and Zapier.
For support, it provides video resources, a help center for guides, a community forum, and access to chat support.
Connecteam Customer Feedback
“It makes the onboarding process easy for new employees. A new employee can take 15 minutes once downloading the app and if set up properly they can not only have a solid idea of the functions but also don’t have to worry about tracking down and getting the contact information for other employees. Downsides would include the amount of features that are locked behind an additional pay option in which you may only need one or two of the features but not the entire package to make the additional price jump worth it.”
— Verified Review on Lattice at G2
Checklist: what to look for in onboarding software for your small business?
When choosing an employee onboarding solution for small businesses, use below checklist:
- User-friendly and intuitive software to make sure new employees do not feel overwhelmed or challenged while navigating the onboarding.
- Scalable pricing plans help avoid shocks like steep rises in prices as your headcount grows.
- Workflow automation is critical to remove manual and repetitive tasks to onboard the new employee.
- Customizable features and templates help deliver personalized onboarding without too much effort.
- Integrations help with a smooth transition by saving time and costs on data migration or syncing.
- Feedback tools help optimize your employee onboarding process.
- Task automation features help with timely document collection, scheduling training sessions, sending reminders, and more.
- Active user community and support help with successful software adoption.
5 benefits of using onboarding software for small businesses
Adopting employee onboarding software for startups and small businesses helps your HR teams focus efforts on making the most of hired employees as soon as possible due to the below benefits:
- Communicate effectively about your company’s work culture. This helps the new hires connect with their co-workers.
- Engage to create a good and professional first impression about your company with a consistent onboarding format. This helps establish trust and nurtures confidence in new hires that they will grow with the company.
- Automate and digitize the employee onboarding documentation process. For example, employee onboarding software will send necessary documents on time and remind new joiners about submissions to ensure they start work on time.
- Stay compliant with local labor laws by placing relevant workflows during onboarding that track employee productivity. For example, if you’re hiring contract workers in the construction industry, you must provide safety training and track time to determine compensation. Employee onboarding software with training and time-tracking features helps automate and track such workflows.
- Save time by automating repetitive tasks like signatures, welcome emails, password access, etc using employee onboarding software. This helps reduce time-to-productivity so that employees start contributing to the business operations as soon as possible.
FAQs about onboarding software for small businesses
1. How to create an onboarding plan?
For an effective employee onboarding plan, fix goals that ensure retention — the employee must at least understand the company’s culture, work, and expectations. Design tasks that equip them to complete compliance and start work in the shortest time. Finally, implement feedback loops to continuously improve the onboarding experience based on new hire input and performance metrics.
2. What is the minimum time for onboarding?
It usually takes at least 2 weeks to onboard a new employee by completing tasks related to compliance and equipping them with resources to settle into the workspace. However, effective onboarding takes at least a year as it takes time for a new employee to truly understand their place in the company, get trained, adjust to culture, or network with colleagues.
3. What is the HRIS onboarding system?
HRIS, or the Human Resources Information System, helps centralize, access, and manage employee data so that it acts as an effective input for the rest of the HR management workflows. For example, an HRIS onboarding system captures employee information and distributes it to other workflows like payroll, time-tracking, performance management, and more.
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Harshala Chavan
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