Rippling vs. SmartSearch ATS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Rippling
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Rippling’s platform for HR, IT, payroll, and spend management automates the entire employee lifecycle, ensures compliance, supports device management, and provides real-time financial visibility from a central dashboard.
$8
per month per user
SmartSearch ATS
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
SmartSearch is an enterprise-grade native recruitment platform that unifies applicant tracking, CRM, onboarding, and reporting. Purpose-built for staffing and talent acquisition teams, it automates workflows, improves visibility, and reduces reliance on disconnected recruiting tools.N/A
Pricing
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Editions & Modules
Recommended
$8.00
starting price per user, per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFor additional pricing details visit the Rippling pricing page.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Features
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Human Resource Management
Comparison of Human Resource Management features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.1
1103 Ratings
11% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Employee demographic data8.9784 Ratings00 Ratings
Employment history8.9810 Ratings00 Ratings
Job profiles and administration9.1922 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.9.2820 Ratings00 Ratings
Organizational charting9.2953 Ratings00 Ratings
Organization and location management9.2849 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)9.0653 Ratings00 Ratings
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.3
1150 Ratings
13% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Pay calculation9.31036 Ratings00 Ratings
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment9.0724 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration9.01006 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct deposit files9.51009 Ratings00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management9.4776 Ratings00 Ratings
Reimbursement management9.3681 Ratings00 Ratings
Leave and Attendance Management
Comparison of Leave and Attendance Management features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.3
1032 Ratings
13% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Approval workflow9.4996 Ratings00 Ratings
Balance details9.3948 Ratings00 Ratings
Annual carry-forward and encashment9.3704 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee Self Service
Comparison of Employee Self Service features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.2
1197 Ratings
12% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
View and generate pay and benefit information9.41133 Ratings00 Ratings
Update personal information9.51183 Ratings00 Ratings
View company policy documentation9.4984 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee recognition8.6659 Ratings00 Ratings
View job history9.0849 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset Management
Comparison of Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
8.9
511 Ratings
10% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Tracking of all physical assets8.9511 Ratings00 Ratings
HR Reporting
Comparison of HR Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.0
623 Ratings
18% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Report builder8.8603 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-built reports9.1569 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to combine HR data with external data9.2516 Ratings00 Ratings
Onboarding
Comparison of Onboarding features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.4
852 Ratings
16% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
New hire portal9.5828 Ratings00 Ratings
Manager tracking tools9.3648 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance and Goals
Comparison of Performance and Goals features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.0
505 Ratings
11% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Corporate goal setting9.1435 Ratings00 Ratings
Individual goal setting9.0464 Ratings00 Ratings
Line-of sight-visibility9.1430 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance tracking8.9460 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance Management
Comparison of Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.3
580 Ratings
17% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Performance plans9.2511 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance improvement plans9.2485 Ratings00 Ratings
Review status tracking9.2515 Ratings00 Ratings
Review reminders9.4545 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple review frequency9.3472 Ratings00 Ratings
Succession Planning
Comparison of Succession Planning features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.1
429 Ratings
15% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
-
Ratings
Create succession plans/pools9.1355 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate ranking9.2366 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate search9.2384 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate development9.0365 Ratings00 Ratings
Recruiting / ATS
Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Product A and Product B
Rippling
9.0
489 Ratings
15% above category average
SmartSearch ATS
3.4
17 Ratings
80% below category average
Job Requisition Management9.0388 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Company Website Posting9.0373 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Publish to Social Media9.2330 Ratings1.013 Ratings
Job Search Site Posting8.9341 Ratings1.017 Ratings
Duplicate Candidate Prevention9.1341 Ratings10.016 Ratings
Applicant Tracking8.9374 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Notifications and Alerts9.1459 Ratings5.513 Ratings
Customized Application Form00 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Resume Management00 Ratings1.017 Ratings
Candidate Search00 Ratings3.017 Ratings
Collaboration00 Ratings1.015 Ratings
Task Creation and Delegation00 Ratings1.014 Ratings
Email Templates00 Ratings1.016 Ratings
User Permissions00 Ratings1.016 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Best Alternatives
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Small Businesses
Dayforce Powerpay
Dayforce Powerpay
Score 9.3 out of 10
Breezy HR
Breezy HR
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.1 out of 10
Breezy HR
Breezy HR
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
PeopleStrong
PeopleStrong
Score 10.0 out of 10
PeopleStrong
PeopleStrong
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(1162 ratings)
6.0
(31 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(20 ratings)
3.0
(18 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(1161 ratings)
8.2
(10 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(877 ratings)
7.4
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.8
(9 ratings)
6.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
6.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
RipplingSmartSearch ATS
Likelihood to Recommend
Rippling
Rippling is extremely user friendly an allows our employees to help themselves in a lot of areas that previously required HR team assistance. Three areas I feel are not well suited for our organization is the inability to reset passwords manually, allocation of hours, and the software's inability to spot a rehire with a new application. We have several associates who moonlight/pick up shifts at other locations. This is infrequent so it woudn't make sense to allocate a percentage of their time to the properties where they're moonlighting. When we manually allocate those hours to the receiving property, the allocations do not take effect on the back end for our accounting department. It's creating a lot of journal entries and back-end corrections in our Accounting software. When it comes to applications, we have a new Director of Talent Acquisition who is not familiar with every previously-hired associate. This has caused duplication of profiles when we rehire an associate. If the DoTA isn't familiar with the associate and hires them in the "talent" portion of the website, it creates a new profile for them rather than recognizing their duplicated information (such as SSN or passport number). This has caused us to end up with dupliate profiles for several rehires. The system is very tech-y it should allow us to either merge the profiles or cause a notification/error to alert the hiring person that this associate/new hire is a rehire. Our previous software (UKG) was able to do this.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
I think our environment has stretched SmS and their capabilities (positively) but we have grown together and developed an enormously capable system together that is now very well integrated into our business. For doing applicant tracking, requisition management and offer management that has really been strong. I think we can partner together and build some better analytics and reporting capabilities that would be better suited for our business.
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Pros
Rippling
  • Keeping track of and entering time off and watching time of approvals
  • Providing fast links to access accounts for health/retirement benefits
  • Extremely convenient access to see how much money is left in my flexible savings account and reordering a new card if I need one
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
  • The search functions are outstanding. It is the reason we originally went with SmartSearch many years ago. The ability to do very simple or complex searches gives the recruiting staff great flexibility in how they look for and narrow down candidates.
  • The hire and onboarding traks allow us to create very specific processes we want our staff to follow to insure a consistent and repeatable result. I can create traks that can be very general or traks that literally provide emails and reminders to all of the players (recruiters, managers, candidates, etc...) every step of the way. This is particularly helpful where we have customers who have extremely stringent contractual guidelines that must be followed.
  • Support. Their customer support is second to none. We always joke that they are our favorite vendor to deal with.... Anytime we have an issue or question. They are there to walk us through it. The training is on target and the staff has always been friendly and more than eager to help make us successful with the tool.
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Cons
Rippling
  • The overall look and feel of Rippling is dated; it looks like it's straight out of the 00's.
  • The could be more functionality in the LMS, expanded features, more options, it works, and it's basic, but it could be really great with a few added features.
  • The shift from using people's personal email to log in to their work email, not everyone wants to use their personal information to log into a work system.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
  • SmartSearch has a steep learning curve if you want to extensively use the features like automated tasks and the report writer
  • Technical support is spotty and sometimes very frustrating, they don't respond for weeks at a time.
  • SmartSearch user interface is old and has far less ability to customize the interface than other tracking systems
  • SmartSearch has virtually no ability to connect directly with other software and allows now other software to connect in - so no Microsoft Flow, no Zapier, no mail parser, etc. and since Smart Search capabilities are limited, not being able to integrate it with other platforms easily is unfortunate.
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Likelihood to Renew
Rippling
The AI assistant has always been able to direct me to the correct solution to any question i have about Rippling. Payroll is so easy, it takes about 10 minutes to go through the process.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
I believe over the past 30 or so pages (or so it seems), you have every reason for my business to continue as a SmartSearch ATS client and user. The support is off the charts great the few times I need them (generally not even once per year). My business has been a client since 2004. That should say it all.
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Usability
Rippling
Very intuitive, user-friendly, and modern interface that doesn't make you cringe when you have to access it for anything. The admin navigation is easier compared to our previous system, and doesn't feel like a maze of complicated jargon. On the user side, the benefits enrollment process was a breeze, and felt so much more informative and efficient. Accessing the benefits post-enrollment is also very straightforward.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
There are so many facets of SmartSearch, that to know everything about it is nearly impossible. While it is mainly straight forward, there is a lot. After using the program for a while, you become pretty comfortable with the basics and can start adding some of the other features.
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Reliability and Availability
Rippling
I like that the availability in using Rippling at any given time is useful to me. Getting on the site freely when I need gives me security of knowing that I can be in control of viewing health insurance and hours information. I have yet to get any errors in using the Rippling app.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
My license for SmartSearch goes back to 2004. It has always been available for me - don't remember a single time it was not available in all of those years.
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Performance
Rippling
Rippling's performance has been great, no errors or glitches yet so far. I am confident that Going from one page to the next and all its complexity usage does not lag or times out, it works effectively and efficiently. While using Rippling and other apps it does not tend to slow it down, works great. No complaints.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Rippling
The highlight of my customer support experience was my first interaction with them: I had a small issue with my birthdate, and it was fixed very quickly—on the same day. It's pretty incredible to have things like that sorted out in the same day, which is a rare thing to see lately.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
Once you get the 1 person on the phone they are very knowledgeable and tend to solve the problem. The issue is there are not enough resources to handle all the clients. Their primary clients are "recruiting firms" and I think that is where most of the their support resources go
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In-Person Training
Rippling
The trainer went slow and and answered our questions.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Rippling
It's really easy to implement in comparison to other tools or applications. Different key points are easily configured and implemented as per need, having different configurations in systems. Implementation is something which binds the different parameters of an organization in a single row. Implementation of rippling is much easier, quicker, and error free than any other software. I recommend it strongly!
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
Using the basic functions of SmartSearch is an easy implementation. But consider carefully what your organization needs to really drive placements. Because we only did a basic implementation first, we were caught off guard when later trying to implement more functions and realizing that the capabilities were limited or were difficult to learn and implement and realizing that tech support was not going to be consistent.
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Alternatives Considered
Rippling
We chose Rippling primarily based on cost and feature set available. As a small organization, budget is a high priority. Rippling gave us enterprise-level features at an affordable cost for an early stage start up. We appreciate that we have the opportunity to expand our feature set within Rippling as our business and workforce grow.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
Functionally, SmartSearch is not on the same page as ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as a platform is much more geared toward helping applicants and is essentially a glorified resume database. SmartSearch offers so much more in terms of features and abilities, that would not really be appropriate to try and compare the two. Similarly, the overall use of SmartSearch is an apples and oranges comparison to LinkedIn Talent. LinkedIn is great for sourcing and attracting talent, but in terms of tracking candidates all the way through a hiring process and tracking a heavy volume of job orders across a variety of states and locations, the two just don't really compare.
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Scalability
Rippling
I can go on here and see all my hours and pto plus health benefits. I like to have the work handbook handy to refer to legal things. How to work my role within it's limits. Being able to put in my hours and view when they are approved is a huge benefit for me.
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Rippling
  • Our HR team used to spend almost three days doing payroll calculations before Rippling. This platform has cut that time down by 75%! Now they can devote the time they would've spent on payroll to other important tasks.
  • Rippling saves employees time by making time-tracking less of a headache.
  • Rippling has so many so many services that it's essentially a one-stop-shop for centralized HR solutions!
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Advanced Personnel Systems (SmartSearch)
  • That's easy - they have helped us grown and make more money. The core element of their technology (e.g. the ability to search for, identify and contact candidates is excellent).
  • They are a business partner and do their very best to help us succeed.
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ScreenShots

Rippling Screenshots

Screenshot of the Rippling Dashboard: Employees' home for their payroll, benefits, documents, devices, expenses, and apps.Screenshot of Rippling Payroll: Runs payroll in 90 seconds. Pays employees and contractors around the world. Automatic tax filing.Screenshot of Rippling Benefits Administration: For the management of employees' Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K, FSA, HSA, and commuter benefits.Screenshot of Rippling Single Sign-On: Employees can access all of their SaaS apps in one click from their Rippling dashboard.Screenshot of Rippling’s Time & Attendance platform. This integrates with the rest of the product suite so that when employees clock in, their approved hours automatically synced with payroll and accounting systems.Screenshot of Rippling Mobile Device Management: To manage employees' computers and devices 100% remotely.