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
Paychex Flex
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Paychex Flex, of Paychex' Online Payroll Services, is a cloud-based human resource management and payroll platform. Paychex offers core and specialized services, and scales to meet the needs of small businesses, SMBs, and large enterprises.
$59
per month/+$4 per employee
Pricing
BambooHR
Paychex Flex
Editions & Modules
Core
$250
per month
Pro
$250
per month
Paychex Go
$59
per month/+$4 per employee
Paychex Flex Service
Contact sales team
Paychex Flex Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BambooHR
Paychex Flex
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!
BambooHR was already in place when I started. BambooHR has much better intuitive navigation than any of the other systems but not as much customizability as something like Workday.
Verified User
Manager
Chose BambooHR
BambooHR is a very up-to-date system compared to Paychex. Their customer service compared to Paychex is out of this world!
We have moved away from our benefits administration, onboarding, time and attendance, and basically all non-payroll functionality away from Paychex Flex.
we just started using insperity to manage our payroll and benefits. haven't had enough experience with it in order to comment on the pros and cons against paychex flex.The only thing i have noticed so far is Paychex flex's platform is simpler and straight forward. i feel like …
From what I remember of ADP VirtualEdge, I think Paychex has more ease of use and has a cleaner interface. It's been a while though, so I'm not sure I'm comparing apples to apples. In terms of HRM/HRIS systems, I think Bamboo was a little more intuitive to use than Paychex and …
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.
In my experience, Paychex Flex is well suited for small to medium sized businesses. It has been helpful in streamlining the onboarding process and it is easy to update and maintain employee profiles and records. It has worked will in a non-profit environment where there is clergy pay and housing, which can get quite complicated. I cannot think of a scenario where it would be less appropriate.
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.
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.
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.
Overall I like the features that Paychex Flex offers. I am sure that there are other features that I am unaware of, so I am excited to see if there is more that Flex is capable of to make my job easier. The basic features are really user friendly and easy to access. If there ever is an issue customer service is great
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.
Some things could be streamlined. For example, we could do custom options for the "add items" tab which has so many options that we never use. "Medical Pay" could be something that the system remembers for the applicable employees. Salaried employees' salaries should definitely be auto-filled. Overall the system works well but I think it could be improved to be easier to use and read.
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.
We have not experienced any difficulties with unplanned outages. Notifications are always made for outages, and they do not effect normal business operations.
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.
Unless there is lag time within the internet, the Paychex Flex website loads exceptional fast, pages load quickly and reports that I need to print or download load quickly. If I need to create a specialized report, once I complete it I receive an e-mail telling me my report is ready to be downloaded. Changing between web pages is fast as well.
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.
Our dedicated representative is one of the main reasons we are sticking with Paychex Flex. If it were not for this person, other platforms could provide the same/similar functionality. It is the ability to speak with someone that understands our business and is willing to get questions answered in a timely fashion that keeps us with Paychex Flex.
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 easy to understand and follow along. I do like the informational videos that we can utilize before we opt to call in for customer service support. It has made a difference since sometimes that resolves the issue I may have had and saved myself a phone call to Paychex support.
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 very smooth. The most cumbersome task was entering the current employees into the system during initial set up, but Paychex staff handled most of that and verified against prior system reports as well as internal reports provided to ensure 100% accuracy.
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.
We still use QB Desktop Pro to maintain a Check Register / Overall Balance for the company, but once having tried QB Payroll Online for about 3 months prior to finding Paychex Flex I can tell you that there's just no comparison. QB online is VERY EXPENSIVE and not so user-friendly. I hated every minute of those 6 payrolls we ran through QB online.
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.
Employees can log in at home and get up to date information on their FSA balance and any medical bill reimbursements they may have uploaded. At renewal time they have the ability to make changes to their FSA or for new employees star the enrollment.
I do not believe we have saved anything additionally. The time we've had to spend to get things to hopefully work is sad. This is the reason we've had to turn off all extra "products" of Paychex Flex. Time and Attendance is horrible. Benefits management is horrible. The user experience is horrible.
One thing I do not understand is why are updates for states, cities, counties, school districts, etc. not automatically updated? Should we not get a big red flag if we have an employee living/working, being paid in CA, but they aren't set up for CA sick time? If it is required to be on the paycheck stub to show the balance of the sick time, why would we not be notified that we are out of compliance?
