The second you hire your first employee, your business changes. You’re now responsible for paying employees and submitting taxes. Zenefits helps you manage your human resources, from the initial onboarding process to performance reviews and vacation requests. This Zenefits review takes a look at the platform, including Zenefits pros and cons, features, and pricing.
pros
- Free trial available
- Comprehensive onboarding tools built in
- Per-user pricing makes it scalable
cons
- Minimum of five users required for pricing
- No 24/7 customer support
- No payroll option for contractors
When to Use Zenefits
- You’re a growing business: Zenefits is ideal for businesses with a few employees and plans to grow.
- You regularly onboard employees: The built-in onboarding tools are a big help with new talent.
- You post schedules or track time: Zenefits makes work scheduling and time tracking easy.
When to Use Something Else
- You have one or two employees: Zenefits bills you for five users even if you have fewer.
- You need 24/7 customer service: Support is limited to 5AM – 4PM PST Monday-Friday.
- You’re not a small business: Zenefits is designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized businesses.
Deciding Factors
Price | Plans start at $8 per month per user, with a five-user minimum. |
Ease of Use | 5/5 Both the web and app versions of Zenefits feature an attractive interface that’s both easy to learn and easy to set up. |
Support | 3/5 Customer complaints and limited support hours indicate this area could stand some improvement. You will get support via chat, phone, or email to help satisfy your communication preferences, though. |
Scalability | 4/5 The per-user pricing model means this solution scales with your business, although once your staffing reaches three figures or more, you might find you’re better off going with a solution that features flat-rate pricing. |
Number of Users | 2/5 For startups with only one or two employees, the pricing minimum of five means you’ll be spending more than necessary, especially if you have no plans to have at least five employees within the first year or two. |
Zenefits Pricing and Features
If you’re looking at Zenefits reviews, chances are you want to know how much does Zenefits cost? All the Zenefits pricing plans go by the number of users, but you’ll be charged for a minimum of five users. In other words, if you only have one or two employees, you’ll still pay the monthly price per user times five.
The lowest-tier plan costs $8 a month and includes:
- Automated onboarding: Here, you’ll find an offer template you can send with one click. You can also complete background checks through Checkr, invite new hires to self-onboard in the app, and have the employee fill out and sign all necessary paperwork.
- Time-off tracking: Manage employee time off with this feature, which also allows you to define your company’s vacation and sick leave policies.
- Employee Management: Your org chart is presented dynamically, complete with contact information, to help employees quickly identify who’s who.
- Scheduling: This feature works well for tracking employee time for billing purposes.
You’ll also get free analytics and access to the mobile app with the basic plan. But if you want to add features like performance management and employee engagement surveys, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher-tier plan. For most small businesses, the basic plan should suffice.
One of the best things about Zenefits is its benefits administration feature. As part of the onboarding process, you can have employees shop for and add the insurance products they need from the products available. Built-in reporting helps you see which benefits features your employees are using so that you can improve future offerings.
There are some add-on features that are available, including:
- Payroll: Use Zenefits to for payroll administration, integrating it with the above features. Zenefits Payroll pricing is $6 per month per user.
- Benefits Administration: For only $5 a month per user, you can connect to your own broker for benefits administration.
- Recruiting: Handle your recruiting and hiring through Zenefits for $35 extra each month.
- Services: Zenefits connects you with an expert to talk through your human resources (HR), payroll, and benefits challenges for an extra $8 per month per user.
Zenefits Advantages and Disadvantages
Pros | Cons |
Easy onboarding process | Billing starts at five users |
Interface is easy to learn and use | Limited customer support hours |
Includes employee-friendly mobile app | No dedicated support during initial setup |
Zenefits Customer Service
Customer service is an important feature of any Zenefits review. The Zenefits cost includes access to customer service via chat, phone, or email during Zenefits’ office hours, which are 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. PST Monday-Friday. You can also browse a library of articles and help center videos, accessible from your dashboard, once you’re logged into your account.
One negative with Zenefits customer service is that setup is self-service. You won’t be assigned a specialist to work with you as you set up the solution to fit your needs. Customers do report difficulty getting help once they’ve begun using the product, so keep that in mind as you’re comparing solutions.
Zenefits Integrations
Integrations are an important part of any Zenefits review, since an HR solution needs to be able to work with existing solutions. Zenefits works with a variety of popular apps, including:
- Office 365
- G Suite (Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc.)
- Slack
- Salesforce
- QuickBooks
Is Zenefits Worth It? The Final Verdict
This Zenefits review provided an overview of the features you can expect. You can do a free trial to make sure it’s the right fit for you. If you think you’ll take advantage of features like Zenefits Performance Review or employee engagement surveys, keep in mind you’ll have to upgrade to a higher-tier plan, which can up the cost substantially. Overall, though, for small businesses with more than a few employees but fewer than 50 or so, the per-user pricing can be a benefit.
Zenefits FAQs
Is Zenefits reliable?
Zenefits is a reliable cloud-based solution with access to customer service for technical issues. Its features are accessible through both a web browser and a mobile app.