BambooHR is an on-line human resources solution that provides onboarding, payroll, and benefits management. It also offers automated time-off management and employee self-service.
$250
per month
Namely
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Namely offers a cloud-based HR platform for integrated core and specialized HR services, including time and employee performance management and onboarding processes.
$9
per month
Pricing
BambooHR
Namely
Editions & Modules
Core
$250
per month
Pro
$250
per month
Namely Now
$9
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BambooHR
Namely
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Required
Additional Details
No matter what HR looks like at your company, we have the perfect plan for you!
Namely Now offers small-businesses an HCM including payroll and HR at a budget conscious price. For growing companies we have Namely Plus which includes payroll and HR, talent, time, and other tools to engage and enrich their employees. For companies looking to free up more time internally for strategy, Namely offers Namely Plus People, including managed Payroll and Benefits. And for the business who wants to expand while minimizing risk and liability, our white-glove comprehensive PEO solution is Namely Complete.
BambooHR has eNPS, which is pretty helpful and allows us to send pulse surveys to employees to get an understanding of how they are doing. Namely doesn't have anything like that.
Namely provided certain features that we were looking for that the other vendors did not, specifically the social feed. We do not have a company intranet so we needed a place to communicate and store resources in addition to managing HR and Benefits. Namely provided that …
I did not choose Namely, the previous head of HR selected it. I do not find Namely to be better in any area than the tools Ive used in the past. Specifically the user interface - some of my employees have limited experience with technology and this system is not intuitive.
Had more user-friendly functionality than the others, and goals and performance reviews had all the features I was looking for whereas others were lacking in those areas.
Namely was simply the best value considering how robust the features are. Nothing is perfect but Namely continually strives to be and we appreciate that! They've taken a dozen or more feature requests from me and I'm optimistic that they'll come through :)
Simply put, Namely met the most needs from our list for the right price. The team was great (we miss Regina) during presentation and implementation. TribeHR didn't have the review process according to anniversary dates, which we need. Proliant didn't have the right API …
Verified User
Manager
Chose Namely
That is the only product that truly combines HRIS with Payroll
We chose Namely because it has the option to expand all of our services under them. Due to having so much confusion with many different vendors for everything and never knowing who the point of contact was, and employees having to remember and keep up with a bunch of different …
I think BambooHR is meant for companies that have more than 200 employees, because it is not cheap, but for what they are offering, it is a nice software with some easy UI to understand for everyone at a company. I think for a small company, it is way too big of a software and it is not that worth the price.
Namely is aesthetically very pleasing and navigates like other social media platforms which can be appealing to potentially a remote workforce who interacts more online than in person. Unfortunately, it did not serve our population well as we are primarily manufacturing where people are not as interested in utilizing the HRIS for interactions when they would rather connect in person.
Customer Service - The customer service is consistent and the team is always eager to help. They are polite, patient, and there are never terrible interactions.
Communication - BambooHR communication channels are simple. There are many different ways to communicate with the team. I prefer e-mail because it helps me keep track of the conversations and they respond within the appropriate time. Also, the e-mail reminders or notifications help tremendously and it's not overbearing.
Namely has helped with our COVID sick leave response. It has made a major difference both with the weekly payroll and the 941 tax filing
Keeping track of our multiple PTO plans. Thank goodness for Namely, I have shredded my old PTO spreadsheets.
Employees like the convenience of the cell phone app. As a payroll administrator, I like the Geo Tracking tool where I can see where some are when the clock is in or out.
The flexibility inside of the payroll system both as you are finalizing an employee profile and when you are processing payroll is a major advantage.
The reports I get out of Namely in Excel format work well for me.
Reporting - I wish that you could choose a timeframe for all reports. There are times when I need to run a report for information at a point in time, but there is no functionality to complete this (maybe this is an add-on, but seems like it should be a basic function.)
ATS - Customizable notifications and making it easier to figure out how to change notification/email settings. I figured it out, but it was difficult to find. I wish you could choose to notify managers of candidates 1/week instead of every time someone applies.
Custom Holidays - being able to set up 2 different Holiday policies for different working groups. Some of our team gets a floating holiday, but we can't set that up without doing it for the entire company.
Being able to intercept a form that was signed by an employee but not the 2nd signer. We can't access onboarding forms that new hires signed after the 2nd signer left the company. Now we have to have our team resign all their onboarding forms because we cannot access the one with their signature.
Delegation for approvals - being able to delegate this when someone is on leave or time away so that Admins don't have to manage.
No direct feed for Ohio Workers Comp (now a manual process on our end)
No option to place an employee on Leave of Absence and exclude them from payroll while they are "inactive"
No option to suppress certain deductions for certain pay types (i.e. allow 401K for commissions but block remaining deductions - also now a manual process to uncheck the suppress box for 401K for each commission check)
Overall we have not had any reason to discontinue our use of BambooHR. We have not found a better solution, and there is no pressing reason that we would want to move away from the product. If they should fail to continue to improve their features over time, I could see this changing down the road, but for now I would say we are very satisfied with them. We would definitely like to see continued growth of their product however.
Administrators and employees love Namely. It is very easy to use and streamlined. Employees stay engaged with news feed updates and enjoy all the self service options. The time cards are very easy to access and clocking in and out for non-exempt employees is a breeze. Namely is part of our family.
Is very easy to navigate. All processes once explained, you can actually create an implement process associated to your HR goals. It is like a digital file of your employees, with functionalities that let you be on track on onboarding, performance, information, among others process. Time off approvals are easy to navigate.
It is very simple to use for myself, the HR team, and our employees. I find the payroll process very user-friendly. Reporting is simple to navigate and produce the required information requested. I know our employees enjoy the self-service feature and use it on a regular basis, which saves me time.
Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.
I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.
I have used the help chat function several times and that is easy and great to use. There are also many articles, FAQs sections and an entire learning platform to learn on your own. I believe that is great. I also have used ChatGPT to ask how to do certain functions as well, which were accurately reported.
Unfortunately, in more recent years we've had a lot of difficulty with Namely as they've undergone a lot of internal changes. It took 4 returned emails saying the person no longer worked at Namely to find someone to help me (I finally called payroll) and it took a while to get connected with a direct source of help. Namely now has set up their "pod" feature of communication which works well for the most part, but is different. I felt spoiled when we first started with Namely, but now it feels very much like working with most large companies' help centers. There is a system to go through and you do have the option to click "urgent". In general the help is efficient, but it still takes a few days and it's hard to speak with someone directly. It is all done via online communications and is difficult to actually speak to someone on the phone. This works well for most cases, but I do feel frustrated more often than I'd like to with this type of communication. (2019/2020)
As far as I can recall, everything went well with doing it online and got questions answered. Was thankful to work with a dummy file to get used to some practices prior to getting our own domain within bamboo to then place our personnel information in the system, this helped a lot!
It was some work involved in moving all of our documents from a drive over to the correct folders and creating the system of what folders were needed and what got placed where
Implementation was a bit complicated and our company had to carry most of the weight. It often felt like our implementation manager was giving us extra work that she did not want to do herself. It also took much longer than expected - I believe almost 2 months. I believe our company carried a bit too much of the weight.
Although there are many products in the marketplace, there is no perfect system. BambooHR is the most economical HRIS for a small business, start-up, or business that has never had HR software. BambooHR was selected for its affordable functionality. However, if they continue to ingore the lack of functionality the pretty package will no longer have any value.
Namely has a robust suite of offerings, and fallows for a la carte selection of add-ons (rather than a single bundled option). This has allowed our company to save money by not purchasing options / functionalities that we dont need, but may drive up the cost for other companies who need more a la carte selections. In all, the size of the company, the size & capabilities of the internal HR team, and considerations like managed payroll and benefits should be key drivers in selection.
Since my organization has dropped with employees, I always find ways to reduce costs. I thought there would be a cheaper option, but I was glad that my package included a lot for the price, and downgrading would cost more. The rep could have let me downgraded and taken me to a higher package. I am thankful that didn't happen.
There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.
When we were over 100, it provided a huge benefit to us due to the accuracy of payroll, benefits integration and management, and org chart and performance tracking. Having all of that in one place was a huge improvement from the former disjointed user experience.
When we dropped below 100 due to covid, our insurance rates went up 93% to offer comparable plans, and we had to move over to a PEO for benefits which meant we also had to move payroll. It was hugely disruptive, and now our employees have a bad experience when trying to manage their HR lives in multiple places. It is confusing and, again, disjointed.
