BambooHR® 2026 Overview: Pricing, Ratings & Details

Table of contents

• What is BambooHR?
• Is BambooHR right for your business?
• BambooHR plans and pricing
• BambooHR features
• BambooHR user reviews
• Other HR suites to consider
• How we evaluated BambooHR

 

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What is BambooHR?

BambooHR is a well-liked HR management system (HRMS). Although some of BambooHR's features are exclusive to higher price tiers or add-ons, the base software is still popular because it covers virtually every aspect of the employee life cycle, from recruitment to offboarding.

BambooHR includes the following modules to cover all of your bases:

• Recruitment.
• Onboarding.
• Employee self-service portals.
• Reporting and analytics.
• Time tracking.
• Payroll.
• Benefits administration.
• Performance management.
• Goal tracking.
• Wellbeing surveys.
• Training tracking.

For BambooHR to cover all these modules and remain affordable for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), there is a tradeoff: The depth of functionality in each of BambooHR's modules is relatively shallow, especially compared to standalone products or full-scale human capital management (HCM) systems.

However, businesses that require a centralized employee database only may appreciate BambooHR's straightforward implementation, prebuilt reports, and clean layout. These features stood out the most during our deep dive into BambooHR, solidifying it as one of the top HRMS solutions for SMBs on the market today.

Is BambooHR right for your business?

BambooHR advertises its target market as small to medium-sized businesses. However, when you look more closely at its range of features and capabilities, it becomes clear that this solution is suitable for some companies but not as effective for others.

Choose BambooHR if…

Your workforce is mostly salary-exempt: BambooHR does not have a native scheduling application, and its payroll and time tracking features are add-ons, making it best for companies where most employees are exempt from overtime.

You need an all-in-one HR suite for a small team: BambooHR can help HR departments consolidate their disparate HR software into one product, reducing the need to switch between platforms constantly.

You want a comprehensive mobile app: BambooHR's mobile app has almost equivalent capabilities to its desktop version, including onboarding, performance, and paid time off (PTO) management; this is especially beneficial for HR teams who travel or do most of their work away from their desks.

Do not choose BambooHR if…

You only need payroll and time tracking: BambooHR offers payroll and time tracking add-ons, but you must pay for one of its base tiers first. A payroll-focused provider may be a more affordable and efficient option if you only need core HR functions.

Your workforce is global: Although BambooHR's database can onboard employees from other countries, it does not offer global compliance support; likewise, its payroll and benefits administration add-ons only support U.S.-based employees.

You're focused on learning and development (L&D): BambooHR can track employee training, but you must either attach links to your required training or integrate with a third-party solution to create courses. BambooHR also limits training tracking through the lens of employee onboarding; HR staff or managers cannot assign training to employees for professional development.

BambooHR plans and pricing

BambooHR includes a mix of tier-based and modular pricing models, with two main product tiers and four add-on modules. Depending on your employee count, you might pay a flat monthly rate or a per-employee, per-month (PEPM) subscription fee.

New customers also have to pay a one-time implementation fee, but they can opt for BambooHR's QuickStart implementation for $299 if they have 20 or fewer employees. Either way, the initial setup for BambooHR can be expensive compared to vendors that do not charge extra for implementation.

In addition, critical HR modules, like payroll and time tracking, are paid add-ons on top of a base product tier. If you opt for these add-ons, expenses can accumulate rapidly compared to competitors that provide basic versions of these features at lower price tiers and expand upon their functions at higher levels.

However, BambooHR offers volume discounts after a particular employee threshold is reached in each tier or module. So, while prices in the table below may seem steep, you might save more with a higher employee count than you would with BambooHR's competitors.

* There is a one-time implementation fee for the Essential and Advantage plans as well as the Payroll add-on. If you have fewer than 20 employees, you can choose the QuickStart implementation for $299.

+ These modules can be added to either the Essential or Advantage plan. Please add the prices of these modules to your selected plan to determine the total cost for your package.

 

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Essential plan

BambooHR's Essential tier is its most bare-bones option. It is not much more than a centralized electronic employee database. You can accomplish the following tasks on the Essential plan:

• Upload, store, and share important company and employee documentation.
• Create, assign, track, request, and approve various PTO policies and requests.
• Access your employee records and make necessary changes, depending on access level.
• Access BambooHR's mobile app for employee directory and PTO management.

Because of the relatively limited capabilities available in the Essential plan, it is best for businesses that only need an employee directory or PTO management features. Even then, substitutes like Gusto Simple are cheaper if you have less than 11 employees; many of these alternatives offer equivalent features to the BambooHR Essential plan with additional payroll and onboarding functionality.

Meanwhile, other solutions, like Zoho People, even include free plans for an employee record system and time off management. Therefore, the Essential plan may not be worth the cost when considering the number of features you receive.

Advantage plan

The Advantage plan gives you access to a more robust feature set. You can create and customize reports for insights based on the HR metrics that are most important to you, such as asset reports for your IT team or training history for your managers.

Additionally, Advantage comes with the following features:

• Onboarding and offboarding.
• Applicant tracking system.
• Fillable form creation and e-signatures.
• eNPS and employee wellbeing surveys.
• Training tracking.
• Open application programming interface (API).
• Access to BambooHR’s integration marketplace.

In particular, Advantage's added e-signature functionality can help you collect legally recognized documents electronically and ditch your paper processes. Likewise, you can recruit, hire, onboard, and offboard employees in one system, facilitating employee data flow and minimizing record errors.

Advantage still doesn't compare to payroll-first competitors that include basic HRIS, payroll, and benefits features in their lowest tier. However, if you outsource your payroll processes or have an in-house CPA, then BambooHR's Advantage plan can help you integrate your third-party tools so you can go 100% digital.

Jump to pricing analysis for the payroll, benefits administration, time tracking, and performance management add-ons.

BambooHR features

We evaluated BambooHR on features that are essential to effective all-in-one HR software, including:

• User interface.
• Core HR.
• Workforce management.
• Talent acquisition.
• Learning and development.
• Employee relations.

User interface

BambooHR's tab system is an intuitive way for users to access its main modules:

• Home: The BambooHR homepage.
• My Info: Your employee profile.
• People: Your company's employee directory and organizational chart.
• Hiring: Applicant tracking and other recruitment features.
• Reports: A list of standard and custom reports (only available with the Advantage plan).
• Files: Your company's document database that includes handbooks, policies, and other essential HR files.

Clicking on each tab opens up those modules, with some — like the My Info, People, and Hiring tabs — including submenus to access other features in those modules. For example, your company's organizational chart is in the menu under the People tab.

The tabs function much like folders and subfolders on a desktop computer, so understanding and finding the information you need doesn't require much effort. You can even customize your homepage with various widgets, like your company turnover report, so you can get the valuable information you're looking for at a glance.

The only unintuitive aspect of BambooHR's interface relates to customizing different modules to your needs. To customize anything, you must go to BambooHR's Settings instead of making changes directly within a tab or module. For instance, if you want to add new recruitment email templates, you cannot do so within the Hiring tab; instead, you must add a new email template under Hiring in Settings.

Additionally, you can only access BambooHR's open API or integration marketplace if you purchase the Advantage plan. This limitation can hurt small businesses that want to integrate their more affordable payroll solution into BambooHR's interface. Nevertheless, BambooHR's interface impressed us overall, especially when compared to other all-in-one suites like Paylocity or UKG Ready.

Get a look behind the scenes with a quick overview of BambooHR’s homepage:

Core HR

We evaluated BambooHR on two subcriteria in core HR: its HRIS and reporting and analytics. While BambooHR's central employee database is one of its strongest features, its reporting is rather weak in comparison.

HRIS

Employees and managers can access their company's entire directory within BambooHR. They can also see where they are in relationship to their coworkers via the organizational chart, making it easy to see who to contact for cross-departmental projects. Using BambooHR's mobile app also allows employees to save their coworker's information so they can email, text, or chat with them on the go.

BambooHR's self-service features free your HR department from focusing on repetitive administrative work, like updating employee demographic information. Instead, employees can update their addresses, request time off, complete benefits enrollment, or access their pay information, without contacting HR at all.

Access controls are also completely customizable, so system administrators are able to control what each employee can see or do in the platform, depending on their role. If you don't want employees making edits to their information, you do not have to give them access.

The one drawback is that some of these capabilities require subscriptions to BambooHR's Advantage plan or add-ons. As a result, it may be too expensive for small teams that only need employee recordkeeping.

Reporting and analytics

Users frequently laud BambooHR for its reporting and analytics, with most praising its huge list of prebuilt reports:

• Audit trail.
• Change history.
• Benefit summary.
• Birthdays.
• EEO-1.
• Additions and terminations.
• Candidate sources.
• Candidate funnel (time in recruitment stage).
• Direct deposit report.
• Federal withholding.
• Pay info checkup.
• Payroll deductions summary
• Payroll update summary.
• State withholding.
• Unemployment insurance report.

Many of these reports come with graphs to quickly visualize your information, such as employee headcount, turnover, or performance management. You can also mark reports as favorites in your Reports tab, making it easier to grab this information without searching for it.

If your team does not require anything outside of standard reporting, then BambooHR may be all you need. However, more advanced teams might need more customization, even with full access to BambooHR’s Advantage plan.

For example, when building a custom report in BambooHR, you can choose what data you want to see and the order in which you would like to see it. However, once you hit save and your report is populated, you can no longer edit it dynamically in real time. Report columns remain fixed with only the ability to sort columns in ascending or descending order.

Finally, you can't create your own analytics or visualizations outside the ones that come standard with BambooHR, nor can you send reports automatically to internal or external stakeholders regularly. If your business depends on this customization for more strategic company planning and initiatives, BambooHR is not a good fit.

Workforce management

Payroll

For U.S.-based employees, you can complete payroll in BambooHR in a few steps:

1. Import your time-tracking data.
2. Check and approve hours.
3. If applicable, add extra pay codes for things like bonuses or reimbursements.
4. Review taxes and deductions. 

Meanwhile, BambooHR will automatically calculate overtime rates and file federal, state, and local taxes on your behalf.

However, some of BambooHR's competitors offer more in-app compliance features, like automated notifications about minimum wage changes or pay stubs that document paid sick leave accrual. This might be a turnoff for businesses that are processing payroll for the first time and need additional support.

Additionally, the lack of payroll support for international employees may be a non-starter for global businesses.

See BambooHR’s payroll overview in the video below:

Payroll add-on pricing

While BambooHR indicates the starting price for the payroll add-on is $150 monthly for one to 20 U.S.-based employees, factors like the number of FEINs and the states you need payroll features for can affect this price. The module also comes with a one-time implementation fee based on your company's payroll complexity, such as your unique combination of hourly and salary employees and payroll schedules. 

Although you can run payroll more than once or twice a month, off-cycle payroll runs cost extra to process unless you issue manual checks. This means you will have to pay extra to run payroll outside your regular payroll schedules, even if you’re correcting a payroll error or issuing an employee's last paycheck.

True, BambooHR's payroll supports contingent worker payroll, automatically files appropriate payroll taxes in all 50 states, and provides a dedicated payroll support team. However, without considering implementation costs, a substitute like Gusto Simple can be up to 82% cheaper than a BambooHR Essential plan with the payroll add-on.

As a result of implementation costs in particular, very small businesses might find the payroll add-on to be too expensive a solution for their needs. Nevertheless, using BambooHR's native payroll solution can save medium-sized businesses from double data entry and be more cost-effective than larger-scale payroll solutions like Rippling or Paycor.

Benefits administration

With BambooHR, you can easily add your different benefit plans and offer them automatically to new employees after completing the necessary waiting periods. You can even create separate plans or offer cadences based on various factors, such as job titles.

However, as is the case with payroll features, BambooHR's benefits compliance is relatively weak. For example, you have to turn on Affordable Care Act (ACA) tracking manually. Even then, the ball is mostly in your and your broker's court to ensure plans meet minimum ACA requirements. BambooHR also does not automatically update you if an employee is ACA-eligible, which means your team will need to spend more time and effort reviewing this information each month.

Benefits administration add-on pricing

The benefits administration add-on in BambooHR is only for U.S.-based employees, like its payroll add-on. However, its price remains fixed at $5.25 PEPM, no matter your employee count.

BambooHR has recently expanded the functionality of its benefits administration module, mainly through the inclusion of electronic data interchange (EDI) carrier feeds. This speeds up carrier notifications of changes, new enrollments, or terminations since you do not have to manually send election or change forms. Instead, this data automatically syncs with your carrier.

It’s important to note that this solution is still relatively expensive compared to similar competitors. For example, TriNet Zenefits' lowest base plan, Essentials, includes similar features to BambooHR Advantage plan’s capabilities, such as onboarding and employee management. It also adds Zenefits-brokered benefits all for $8 PEPM.

For 10 employees, you would have to pay $160.50 per month for BambooHR's Essential plan with the Benefits Administration add-on. In contrast, you only have to pay $80 per month for a Zenefits Essentials plan, which is a lower cost by approximately 50%. Savings increase to 65% if you compare BambooHR's Advantage plan with the benefits administration add-on to the more affordable Zenefits plan option.

Time tracking

BambooHR's native time tracking add-on provides the following capabilities:

• Desktop and mobile time clock.
• Automatic sync with the payroll add-on for easier overtime calculations and PTO tracking.
• Project and task tracking.
• Automatic timesheet approval reminders.

You can also create various approval workflows for vacation, sick, or bereavement paid leave policies. Employees can request PTO from their homepage, and BambooHR automatically notifies relevant stakeholders via email and in-app notifications for approval.

However, despite its range of time-tracking features, more advanced teams might find BambooHR's time tracking rather rudimentary. For example, BambooHR can record the geolocation data of your employees when they clock in and out on their mobile phones, but it lacks geofencing capabilities to remind employees to clock in and out when stepping in or out of their work zones.

Additionally, BambooHR doesn't support the customizations needed for more complicated PTO cadences. For example, employees cannot accrue PTO based on hours worked in a week, which is frequently the basis of sick leave policies in states such as Michigan.

BambooHR also lacks a native scheduling module outside of a company calendar. Therefore, if you employ mostly hourly workers in healthcare, restaurants, hospitality, or retail, BambooHR may fall short in workforce management capabilities. If creating employee schedules is a complex process for your team, you might find more success integrating with one of BambooHR's partners, like Deputy.

Time tracking on BambooHR’s mobile application is easy for both employees and managers — check out our overview of BambooHR’s mobile app in the video below:

Time tracking add-on pricing

The time tracking add-on costs $3 PEPM regardless of your employee count, with a volume discount kicking in at 30 employees or more.

Talent acquisition

With BambooHR, you can create new job openings and post them to your BambooHR-hosted career page and online job boards like Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter. When candidates enter the hiring funnel, you can review their applications, résumés, and screening questions to disqualify or advance candidates through your recruitment stages.

You can also sync your email provider with BambooHR and automatically send follow-up emails to candidates from prebuilt templates within the app. All hiring team members can view each candidate's pipeline stage and chat internally inside the notes portion of the candidate's profile.

Despite these helpful features, BambooHR's ATS is fairly limited and is better for companies with infrequent or relatively low-volume hiring needs. It particularly lacks some of the automations found in standalone recruitment software, like automatic stage progression, interview scheduling, and email drip campaigns.

However, because BambooHR's ATS is included with its Advantage plan, it may be a more cost-effective solution than full-scale recruitment or candidate relationship management software. Plus, its simple interface means it's accessible to hiring team members who aren't focused on recruitment full-time.

Learning and development

With BambooHR's performance management add-on, you gain access to customizable performance review cycles and goal tracking. People managers can also facilitate 360-degree reviews by sending quick, two-question feedback requests to their direct reports' peers.

Additionally, users can customize onboarding task lists and new hire documentation from the settings menu. Beyond assigning preboarding paperwork to new hires to complete, you can also create tasks for other stakeholders, such as IT, managers, or HR teams. Once you enter a new hire into the system, BambooHR will notify stakeholders of their tasks and due dates to ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Unfortunately, BambooHR does not support advanced L&D functions like:

• Cascading individual goals, such as child priorities. 
• One-on-one meetings with managers or mentors.
• Training course creation.
• Career pathing.
• Skills gap analysis.
• Gamification.

For many small businesses, lacking these capabilities is not necessarily a dealbreaker since they aren't critical functions like payroll. But, companies wanting to upskill or grow their current talent base may need to integrate with a third-party platform to accomplish their learning and development goals.

Performance management add-on pricing

BambooHR's performance management add-on is $5.25 PEPM, with a volume discount applied after you reach 30 employees. By itself, its price is on par with other performance management software, like PerformYard. However, it is still more expensive than most standalone options because you need to purchase one of BambooHR's base tiers first.

Like the other add-ons, BambooHR's performance management tools are easy to use but lack advanced customization, especially for goal tracking. Instead, BambooHR customizations are primarily focused on the performance review cadence. For example, you can craft separate performance review schedules based on role, department, or location and add your own review questions.

Still, you only have the option to make performance review rating questions on a Likert scale, as opposed to other scoring systems like BARS. Options to facilitate one-on-one meetings between employees and managers are also nonexistent. If you want to optimize your current performance management strategy, BambooHR's add-on can help you make the review process more efficient with simple workflows and performance data insights.

Employee relations

BambooHR offers surveys to gauge employee wellbeing every 30, 60, or 90 days. The surveys pose the same four questions on employee happiness, personal motivators, company motivators, and relationships every time to ensure employee completion and easy tracking.

Coupled with BambooHR's bi-annual employee net promoter score (eNPS) survey, these well-being surveys allow you to monitor employee satisfaction over time and pinpoint areas of concern. Armed with this data, you can create initiatives to improve employee happiness and inclusion, such as employee resource groups.

BambooHR does not include other employee engagement software features, such as customizable surveys, public recognition, or employee rewards. And, even though BambooHR's homepage highlights employee birthdays, work anniversaries, and company announcements, it does not support direct messaging among coworkers.

Without these features, employees may only interact with BambooHR's self-service capabilities, like accessing paystubs or enrolling in benefits. This may not be an issue for onsite employees, but it may cause remote workers to feel more disconnected or isolated from their peers. As a result, you will have to integrate with third-party solutions for these features if they are a priority for your company.

BambooHR user reviews

At the time of publication for this product guide, BambooHR users have given consistently high ratings across the most popular review sites:

• TechnologyAdvice: 4.1 out of 5 stars (based on 20 reviews).
• Capterra: 4.6 out of 5 stars (based on more than 2,500 reviews).
• G2: 4.4 out of 5 stars (based on more than 1,500 reviews).
• Gartner: 4.3 out of 5 stars (based on 292 reviews).

What users like

Mobile company announcements: Offsite employees can see company announcements on the homepage of their mobile app, allowing them to stay updated even if they are not in the office.

Ease of use: BambooHR's full-scale implementation walks new users through the program, but users also note the platform is easy to navigate even without the training.

Responsive to feedback: BambooHR encourages feature and improvement requests from users to make the system more user-friendly for SMBs.

What users dislike

Limited customization: Users note that some of BambooHR's out-the-box configurations are too simple for their needs; users also report having to submit customer support tickets for customized report fields. 

Lack of accounting integrations: BambooHR does not integrate with popular SMB accounting platforms like QuickBooks or Xero, resulting in manual workarounds to transfer payroll data into your general ledger.

Not for scaling businesses: Users note that BambooHR is costly for small businesses and that tasks in the system become tedious for HR departments as their employee headcount grows.

Other HR suites to consider

BambooHR is an excellent option if you're looking for minimal coverage in almost all areas of HR and an easy-to-use interface. But, if you're an SMB looking for more depth in particular areas, like payroll, benefits administration, workforce management, or internal communication, check out an overview of the top BambooHR alternatives in our chart below:

How we evaluated BambooHR

We evaluated BambooHR based on the following factors and criteria:

• User reviews.
• Pricing.
• Platform/interface.
• Core HR features.
• Workforce management features.
• Talent acquisition features.
• Learning and development features.
• Employee relations features.

We used demos, user reviews, and knowledge bases to form the basis of our analysis. Then, we tested the software first-hand using the Advantage free trial with the performance management add-on.

Our methodology rubric provides more details about each category's subcriteria and score: