BambooHR® vs. Paycor

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BambooHR®
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
BambooHR is an cloud-based human resources solution that provides onboarding, payroll, and benefits management. It also offers automated time-off management and employee self-service.
$10
per month per user
Paycor
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Paycor provides core HR functions scaled towards small and mid-sized businesses. Paycor offers an integrated benefits platform for interfacing directly with insurance carriers and an adaptable time management platform.N/A
Pricing
BambooHR®Paycor
Editions & Modules
Core
$10
per month per user
Pro
Contact Sales
per month
Elite
Contact Sales
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BambooHR®Paycor
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsPaycor's pricing for small, mid, and enterprise companies varies based on product bundle and company size. Because Paycor HR software is built to help businesses scale and grow, plans are based on the mix of HR products needed, and company size. Payroll is at the core of Paycor's offering, and their products are sold as a part of their payroll and HR platform.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BambooHR®Paycor
Considered Both Products
BambooHR®
Chose BambooHR®
I have never used any other BambooHR products that I am aware of at this time.
Chose BambooHR®
we haven't used any other products before
Chose BambooHR®
We've been using BambooHR for many years now, so I don't really remember what PeopleForce was like. But what I know for sure is that BambooHR is a much more refined product and provides more capabilities than PF overall.
Chose BambooHR®
I've used a few different tools for payroll and benefits. I used Rippling a while ago. I remember it was also pretty easy to use. Paylocity was also pretty easy to use, as far as I remember. Since I'm not the HR rep evaluating the tools for the benefits side, I don't have much …
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR was selected for being user friendly. This is critical as our workforce is not the most tech savvy. It needs to be easy to use.
Chose BambooHR®
It's better in some ways, but it lacks information on pay and retirement. Two different platforms, though.
Chose BambooHR®
These are the three that come to mind, and we use each program for different things. We stick to HR driven areas for Bamboo, as we haven't shifted to it for payroll or project management. I do find Bamboo to be the most user-friendly, with the smallest learning curve of all …
Chose BambooHR®
Bamboo is much nicer with its UI and much simpler to follow
Chose BambooHR®
As a company we are consolidating and streamling infrastrucure. Bamboo has been with us since the beginning and appears to growing with us.
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR felt like the better fit for our small to medium size company (100 employees around the world)
Chose BambooHR®
I liked using Paychex Flex. I think my company chose BambooHR for its competitive pricing.
Chose BambooHR®
Mavenlink is a much more expensive tool, but allowed a greater visibility into time tracking against projects and resource allocation all in one place.
Chose BambooHR®
In the past, I've used Paycor to handle all HR and pay info and things. Paycor was fine, but it felt clunkier and more like a chore to use. Logging into BambooHR is quicker and easier, and the user experience is more friendly. Things are easier to get to, and more info is …
Chose BambooHR®
I have used salesforce on several different occasions ranging from customer service to client management. This is a different situational occurrence however I will say that Bamboo is the much stronger system. The UI is much more pleasant and easy to navigate, and so far it …
Chose BambooHR®
better and more intuitive UI, Bamboo is better
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR® isnt as robust as Rippling but for smaller companies it really fits the bill
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR®'s user friendly system and customer support is top tier
Chose BambooHR®
Its so much easier and cero complicated to use. Info is right there if you need it. I find myself looking everywhere before I foind the info i need and Bamboo is just there.
Chose BambooHR®
I am not qualified to speak into this- I am an end user as a people manager, but our HR department were the ones who evaluated other platforms.
Chose BambooHR®
I don't know that I would say they are very similar as we use Trinet because of their PEO offerings. Trinet has everything built in and is a good platform for companies with 50+ employees. Trinet also is very legally sound given the type of reporting they do for multiple states …
Paycor
Chose Paycor
Paylocity seems to be an IT company and adds a lot of user feedback into their upgrades and developments.
Chose Paycor
UKG Ready, Employee Navigator and MIP Fund Accounting
Chose Paycor
Paycor is a decent rival at a much lower price point. It has a lot of the functionality of its competitors at a lower price. I believe its general customer service is one of the best that I have dealt with. We don't have personalized customer service reps or teams which can …
Chose Paycor
Paycor was used by my leader in a previous organization and at the time was overall successful.
Chose Paycor
We selected Paycor due to price and the demo website was very user friendly. At the time, we did not realize that the demo site would not be an accurate reflection of what we were purchasing.
Chose Paycor
I have used Full Stack in the past, which isn't listed in the listings. And for the most part, it worked out well, however, it has its far share of issues. It was expensive, but also had some data tacking problems where all of our employees information was messed up.
Chose Paycor
We chose Paycor for its overall value and functionality. Paycor seems to have a clear future for innovations.
Chose Paycor
AS400, JIS, Quickbooks, Viventium
All these systems have their pros and cons. I do prefer Paycor but customer service gap and rising vendor cost is starting to affect loyalty.
Chose Paycor
We selected Paycor because of the user-friendly aspect and the fact that they are willing to work with us on what parts of the software we want to utilize. The price was also a big reason why we choose Paycor.
Chose Paycor
ADP API Central, Gusto and Bigin by Zoho CRM
Chose Paycor
We selected then primarily because of their 360° integration with our 401(k) provider. Additionally, they were reasonably priced.
Chose Paycor
We initially went with them because they were much less expensive. However, this was a case of you get what you pay for.
Chose Paycor
By far the easiest to use system. May not be able to dive into super deep details/advanced features, but easy to use
Chose Paycor
At the time Paycor was the best bang for our buck and was easier to operate than our previous platform.
Chose Paycor
Paycor seems to be the best for other systems integrations and reporting. The easy of set up and integrations into other platforms is great. While the report building is more robust than ADP with and easier approach to creating the reports. I would recommend Paycor over ADP as …
Chose Paycor
ADP was more expensive and we didn't utilize any of the modules because they were all an additional price.

Here we have way more features and it is a lot easier to navigate so it has been helpful to have these features and all in one place rather than using a bunch of other …
Chose Paycor
We are still exploring the differences between ADP and Paycor to determine whether addressing the pain points with a product switch is necessary.
Chose Paycor
The sales team was much better in terms of handling our needs, the products were overall better, and they have an extremely competitive price. We thought that Paycor was the best fit even though they were not the cheapest due to our needs and how they addressed them. It was a …
Chose Paycor
Paycor is what my company chose to use.
Chose Paycor
Paycor is nice from a user perspective. The employees have very easy navigation on their side.
Features
BambooHR®Paycor
Human Resource Management
Comparison of Human Resource Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.9
Ratings
3% below category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Employee demographic data8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Employment history8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Job profiles and administration8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Organizational charting7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Organization and location management8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.6
Ratings
7% below category average
Paycor
8.1
Ratings
2% below category average
Pay calculation8.10 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Support for external payroll vendors7.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment7.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration7.10 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Direct deposit files8.20 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management7.90 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Reimbursement management7.50 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Leave and Attendance Management
Comparison of Leave and Attendance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.8
Ratings
8% above category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Approval workflow8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Balance details8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Annual carry-forward and encashment9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee Self Service
Comparison of Employee Self Service features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.5
Ratings
4% above category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
View and generate pay and benefit information8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Update personal information8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
View company policy documentation8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee recognition7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
View job history8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset Management
Comparison of Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
9.1
Ratings
12% above category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Tracking of all physical assets9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
HR Reporting
Comparison of HR Reporting features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.2
Ratings
4% below category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Report builder7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-built reports7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to combine HR data with external data6.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Onboarding
Comparison of Onboarding features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.2
Ratings
3% above category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
New hire portal8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Manager tracking tools7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance and Goals
Comparison of Performance and Goals features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.9
Ratings
2% below category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Corporate goal setting7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Individual goal setting7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Line-of sight-visibility9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance tracking7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance Management
Comparison of Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.8
Ratings
1% below category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Performance plans7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance improvement plans7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Review status tracking8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Review reminders8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple review frequency7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Succession Planning
Comparison of Succession Planning features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
9.1
Ratings
15% above category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Create succession plans/pools8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate ranking9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate search9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate development9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Recruiting / ATS
Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.9
Ratings
1% above category average
Paycor
-
Ratings
Job Requisition Management7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Company Website Posting7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to Social Media9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Job Search Site Posting7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Duplicate Candidate Prevention7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Applicant Tracking8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications and Alerts8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BambooHR®Paycor
Small Businesses
Dayforce Powerpay
Dayforce Powerpay
Score 9.2 out of 10
Dayforce Powerpay
Dayforce Powerpay
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.1 out of 10
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
PeopleStrong
PeopleStrong
Score 10.0 out of 10
Infor Human Resources
Infor Human Resources
Score 7.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BambooHR®Paycor
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(0 ratings)
6.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.3
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.7
(0 ratings)
5.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
3.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.3
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
5.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.4
(0 ratings)
5.8
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.6
(0 ratings)
4.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(0 ratings)
3.3
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.9
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BambooHR®Paycor
Likelihood to Recommend
For companies with a "complex" PTO policy, it's one of the easier solutions to use I have seen. By complexity, I mean having different reasons for your time off and different amounts of time you can request on that end. If you need simple file sharing, it will work as well. For people who require more robust training material, it might not be the best fit.
Read full review
The Open enrollment tool is excellent. They need to improve the reporting tool and speed up the use of AI. I've seen other system demos and their integration of AI seems sophisticated in comparision to Paycor's. Paycor has integrated some AI into analytics but it lacking in terms of what it can do
Read full review
Pros
  • Ease of use for established staff and admins, all the way down to brand new hires.
  • Integrations, especially for posting and managing jobs during the hiring process.
  • Making regularly occurring things like meetings and assessments easy to customize and to action easily.
  • Being able to assign out tasks for onboarding and offboarding.
Read full review
  • Onboarding works very well for us with a lot of Self-Service for employees it gives us time back and ensures data accuracy is in the employees control.
  • Recruiting works well because it links to specific jobs and automatically posts jobs when an employee is separated from service.
  • Tax filings work fairly well for us and have always been accurate.
Read full review
Cons
  • The biggest issue is on performance assessments. We are not able to customize the reminder dates so the automated reminder dates shown to people and on the email reminders is often misaligned with our actual internal deadlines. This causes a lot of confusion each review cycle.
  • Also on performance management, there is no way to push feedback to a supervisor for their direct report. The only way is if the manager requests the feedback from you. This limits the opportunity for people to give real time feedback throughout the half.
  • I wish we had a way to track notes from employee 1:1s in BambooHR® so when we do our performance reviews we can track. That may be a module we didn't purchase but it would facilitate more continuous and comprehensive evaluation of people at review time.
Read full review
  • Administrative/C-Suite level of canned reports and dashboards
  • Displaying company reminders or documents to sign that are urgent in a way that doesn’t allow an employee to clock out until they have completed the task.
  • More options to build an org chart
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
There's nothing wrong with this platform. I would recommend it to any business starting with more than 10 employees. I will continue to use the program for as long as I need to, hoping they continue being tremendous and finding other ways to incorporate more technology.
Read full review
The product is really good overall. The customer service is not the best and the benefits administration is kind of painful. However, the good outweighs the bad. We might get a different benefit admin system that can be integrated into Paycor. My controller doesn't want to switch anything for a [long] time.
Read full review
Usability
It is pretty intuitive and easy to use for most functions! This is helped by the clean and simple interface. The drop down filters and prompts are definitely strong points, and could be easily enhanced with more AI/automation features built in in future to make it even more efficient. I also like the playful icons, making it less dull as a HR tool :)
Read full review
Glitches. So many glitches. The customer service number provides basic troubleshooting, which doesn’t help; some issues take weeks to resolve, with no apparent reason why they occur. The system does not work on Safari. We have dealt with Payroll not working, which has caused a manual payroll to be run. Paycor representatives do not provide any assistance.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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.
Read full review
I feel like Paycor is always up and running! If they are planning downtime, they communicate it clearly. Every once in a while, I get something that says the system isn't working but it is usually back up within the hour. I typically find by the time that the employees complain about it, that it is resolved within the system.
Read full review
Performance
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.
Read full review
For the most part, everything moves super fast. There are a few sections (Expense Management) that sometimes take a bit to load correctly. Or if they are interesting, it takes a minute to talk to each other! But reports are quickly downloaded and available! Even data heavy reports run fairly fast!
Read full review
Support Rating
I have used their support team over a dozen times. They have chat agents available throughout the day. They have support ticket submissions. They have their own resources website with different programs to learn BambooHR®. They also have onboarding support.
Read full review
I feel like support will transfer you back and forth between departments and put you on hold forever. I believe it is very difficult to see the status of an open ticket. During my experience, it feels like the client has to push all communication and request updates from support regularly.
Read full review
In-Person Training
I didn't have in-person training besides teaching my managers how to use the program. However, I couldn't omit this question (maybe a system glitch).
Read full review
The training was helpful and covered the basic functionality of the system, but it did not stand out as exceptional. The presenter was knowledgeable and answered questions appropriately, but much of the content felt focused on standard product features rather than our specific business processes and use cases. I would have liked to see more hands-on exercises, deeper workflow examples, and practical demonstrations tied to real-world scenarios. Overall, the training was good and provided value, but there is opportunity to make it more engaging, more customized to our organization, and more impactful for long-term user adoption.
Read full review
Online Training
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!
Read full review
The online training was adequate and covered the core functionality of the platform, but it felt similar to many standard software training libraries available today. The content was easy to access and generally well organized, but it lacked the depth, interactivity, and real-world application needed to make it particularly memorable or impactful. I would have liked to see more role-based learning paths, practical business scenarios, hands-on exercises, and guidance tailored to different user groups. Overall, the training met basic expectations and provided useful information, but it did not differentiate itself from typical web-based training programs offered by most HCM providers.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
We implemented bambooHR in Fall, 2023 then implemented Payroll 1/1/24. A vital piece of information was not known or missed in that we are exempt from State Unemployment Tax and have a Reimbursement Set-up, so bambooHR did not send Payroll Reports to the State. Those reports need to be sent regardless if we are exempt or not.
Read full review
I've been through a payroll software implementation multiple times in my career, ranging from upgrades to an existing platform to complete replacement of providers. This implementation was the easiest from the standpoint of confidence in my implementation personnel. The implementation consultants at Paycor were AMAZINGLY knowledgeable about the software and offered us advice at every step of the way. We never had any concerns that they didn't know what we wanted or needed.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
These are the three that come to mind, and we use each program for different things. We stick to HR driven areas for Bamboo, as we haven't shifted to it for payroll or project management. I do find Bamboo to be the most user-friendly, with the smallest learning curve of all the other programs, though.
Read full review
The sales team was much better in terms of handling our needs, the products were overall better, and they have an extremely competitive price. We thought that Paycor was the best fit even though they were not the cheapest due to our needs and how they addressed them. It was a tossup between Paylocity and Paycor
Read full review
Scalability
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.
Read full review
I gave it a 10 because we only use it across one organization. However, it has allowed us to break it into multiple departments and layers of management. It is also easy for us to utilize across different locations but still under one master company. They have always provided us support when we decide to change something on an organizational level
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • improved onboarding- adding documents and due dates to tasks
  • time expenditure- we had printed documents initially. BambooHR® has saved me so much time with the electronic documents that automatically save in the employee record
  • streamlined processes- key features such as the signature documents, onboarding/offboarding tasks have streamlined my processes also allowing for increased time savings
Read full review
  • By streamlining job postings and candidate tracking Paycor Recruiting has helped shorten the average time to fill for our job postings from an average of 45 days days to 32 days (for certain job postings). This is due to the efficiency of the system when moving candidates through the pipeline.
  • Recruiting costs have lowered due to the systems ability to post openings to multiple job board from one central location. This takes a lot of the administrative burden off recruiters and saves us time on manual follow ups and agency fees.
  • Higher quality candidates! The tools Paycor Recruiting offers has provided the recruiters with a more effective form of evaluation. This leads to more informed decisions which results in better quality hires. When people stay longer this reduces turnover related costs.
Read full review
ScreenShots

BambooHR® Screenshots

Screenshot of the Job Info tabScreenshot of Onboarding TasksScreenshot of a New Hire PacketScreenshot of an Employee Performance ReportScreenshot of Employee Satisfaction (eNPS®)Screenshot of Open Enrollment

Paycor Screenshots

Screenshot of the real-time data insights that support critical business decisions.Screenshot of Paycor's expense reportingScreenshot of the recruiting processes streamlined in PaycorScreenshot of workforce scheduling in PaycorScreenshot of Paycor's mobile app, that allows employees to punch in and out from their phonesScreenshot of the Paycor Home Screen