Looking for an ATS tool? Read on to discover the leading ATSs, along with pricing, notable integrations, and people metrics you can track — for small, mid-sized businesses, and enterprises.
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have been a crucial part of HR Tech stacks for a while now. Today, when companies are searching for talent independent of their geographical location, HRs are looking to use the best ATS to support their recruitment.
However, as the ATS market is growing by the day, it’s getting harder to choose.
In this article, we look at the best applicant tracking systems for small to mid-sized businesses and enterprises to help you choose the system that works best for your hiring.
This article is part of our series on creating an optimal HR tech stack. It will be part of our “People Ops Guide for CHROs”, an e-book in the works. Sign up to be the first to find out once the guide is out.
Why do you need an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
The benefits of Applicant Tracking Systems are numerous.
An ATS makes the recruitment process organized and streamlined, while making it much easier for recruiters to deliver exceptional candidate experience. It allows recruiters to find the best candidates for the job, act quickly, stay compliant with data privacy regulations, and build talent pools for future job openings.
In this post, we focus on some of the most popular vendors. If you want to read about the ATS selection criteria – check out our guide to choosing best ATS for your organization.
Best Applicant Systems for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses
Recruitee
Recruitee is collaborative hiring software that delivers a complete solution to help internal HR teams work with the rest of their organization and hire better together. Recruitee’s applicant tracking system can be used to find, interview, and hire the best talent. Users find the tool intuitive and easy to use, and it comes with robust features that they need to perform complex tasks.
- Best/unique features: 1,450+ job boards, sourcing, career site builder, mobile app, live chat support
- Notable customers: Livestorm, Hotjar, Spar, Taco Bell
- G2 rating: 4.5 | Capterra rating: 4.4
- Pricing starts at: $99 per month for 5 active job openings
- Notable integrations: Zoom, BambooHR, Gusto, Outlook, DocuSign, Orgnostic
Workable
Just like other Applicant Tracking Systems, Workable software includes branded career pages, sourcing, texting, automation features, and others. It’s easy to get started with Workable due to the many templates they offer — job descriptions, onboarding checklists, company policies, and more.
What makes Workable different is that they seem to be really good in all areas they cover. Their user reviews are extremely positive and some mention technological glitches from time to time.
- Best/unique features: templates, built-in assessments, custom reporting
- Notable customers: Sephora, RyanAir, Clippers, Forbes
- G2 rating: 4.6 | Capterra rating: 4.4
- Pricing starts at: $129 per job per month
- Notable integrations: Sapling, Personio, Glassdoor, Zoom, Orgnostic
Breezy HR
Breezy HR is one of the most popular Applicant Tracking Systems on the market. It enables users to streamline their entire hiring process and focuses on making recruitment and hiring more efficient.
Breezy HR doesn’t include flashy features and instead focuses on what’s most important to recruiters and TA teams. User reviews are mostly positive – the only common disadvantage customers mention is their pricing model which limits certain features for a smaller price.
- Best/unique features: 50+ job sites one-click posting, D&E hiring features
- Notable customers: Booster Box, Docebo, Elevation Church, Spark
- G2 rating: 4.5 | Capterra rating: 4.5
- Pricing starts at: 0$ for 1 active job opening
- Notable integrations: Checkr, Gusto, Indeed, BambooHR, Google Calendar
JobDiva
JobDiva is not your regular Applicant Tracking System. With features that include native text messaging with candidates and a talent management system, it goes beyond standard ATS features.
Customers love JobDiva for its unique features such as the ability to bring in candidates from job board sites. A few reviews mention that it can be a bit slow and clunky at times.
- Best/unique features: built-in texting feature, staffing software, back-office management for recruitment agencies
- Notable customers: ADEX Medical Staffing, Collins Consulting, eWings
- G2 rating: 4.6 | Capterra rating: 4.4
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: ADP, Facebook, Indeed, Office 365
TalentLyft
TalentLyft software incorporates not only an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), but also a recruitment marketing platform — you can easily build your career site. Besides, there is a possibility to create talent pools and manage GDPR compliance.
Customers praise TalentLyft’s customer support as well as the user-friendly design. It’s a great choice for TA teams that want strong core recruitment marketing and ATS functionalities.
- Best/unique features: powerful sourcing, Recruitment Marketing Platform, talent CRM, advanced analytics
- Notable customers: Nanobit, Decathlon, Addiko Bank
- G2 rating: 4.9 | Capterra rating: 4.7
- Pricing starts at $49 per month for 2 active job openings
- Notable integrations: Indeed, Facebook Jobs, TestDome, Google Tag Manager, Slack, Aircall, Orgnostic
Freshteam
Freshteam software contains three major modules: ATS, Onboarding and Offboarding, and Employee Information System.
Applicant Tracking System module covers job postings, sourcing features, resume screening, engaging with candidates, and assessments.
Users are mostly satisfied with Freshteam — they say it saves them a lot of time and resources.
However, they also recognize its limits in reporting and other enterprise features they might be used to in other systems.
- Best/unique features: Employee Information System, onboarding and offboarding modules, free usage for smaller teams
- Notable customers: Fiverr, Klarna, ITV, Pearson
- G2 rating: 4.6 | Capterra rating: 4.3
- Pricing starts at: $0 per month for 3 active job openings and companies with fewer than 50 employees
- Notable integrations: Codility, LinkedIn Recruiter, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, Google Meet
JazzHR
With a low starting price, JazzHR is an affordable recruiting and ATS software suited to smaller teams.
With intuitive software designed to help recruiters, this Applicant Tracking System boasts sourcing features, collaborative hiring, and texting.
Most user reviews are positive and mention how transformative it was for their teams to start using JazzHR. There are some complaints around the clarity of the reporting process and the free job board postings.
- Best/unique features: white-labeling, custom workflows
- Notable customers: TED, Speck, Clearly, Avian Inc.
- G2 rating: 4.3 | Capterra rating: 4.3
- Pricing starts at: $39.00 per month for 3 active job openings
- Notable integrations: Checkr, GSuite, Hibob, ADP, Zenefits
Jobvite
Apart from applicant tracking, Jobvite allows its users to onboard new hires.
Its AI-driven automation includes machine learning, natural language processing, intelligent algorithms, and sentiment analysis. These methods help HRs source, target, and engage candidates more easily, allowing them to cover the entire TA lifecycle.
On the down side, some users face difficulties in reporting and the speed of the system when integrations are running.
- Best/unique features: AI automation, text messaging, CRM
- Notable customers: Ingram Micro, Schneider Electric, Premise Health, Zappos.com
- G2 rating: 4.0 | Capterra rating: 4.1
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: BambooHR, DocuSign, Glassdoor, HackerRank, TalentMinded
Best Applicant Systems for Enterprise Businesses
Greenhouse
Greenhouse is a very popular Applicant Tracking System. Its popularity stems from its wide user base and fast onboarding process for new users. It has been described as a plug-and-play software that helps TA teams to onboard fast.
Greenhouse covers all the necessary steps of job posting, candidate selection, and onboarding. Users say that it is user-friendly and very useful to them, and a few mention that it’s a bit hard to build custom reports with it.
- Best/unique features: well-rounded features, easy to use
- Notable customers: MessageBird, TransferWise, Booking.com, Hubspot
- G2 rating: 4.3 | Capterra rating: 4.5
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: Calendly, Codility, DocuSign, Good Hire, Orgnostic
Lever
Lever swept the market and gained a wide customer base a few years ago. At the time, it was a state-of-the-art Applicant Tracking System with powerful recruitment marketing features.
Lever’s core functions are still strong, but user reviews reveal a couple of complaint areas like poor mobile app and user access profiles. Moreover, users complain about analytics and reporting in their reviews. There are fixed data points that cannot be customized, and most enterprise users want that.
- Best/unique features: Talent Relationship Management features (recruitment marketing)
- Notable customers: Netflix, KPMG, Deloitte, Mercedes-Benz
- G2 rating: 4.2 | Capterra rating: 4.5
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: LinkedIn Recruiter, ADP, Slack, BambooHR, Orgnostic
Manatal
Manatal is an AI-backed Applicant Tracking System that also features a CRM. Although not exclusive to it, it mostly serves the APAC region. It is also used by recruitment agencies, and the pricing model is especially favorable for them — it is user-based, unlike other ATS systems.
Users don’t dislike a lot when it comes to Manatal, they just wish it had more features that are standard for enterprise-grade software, like multi-language career pages, candidate texting, and similar.
- Best/unique features: AI recommendation engine, customizable ATS fields
- Notable customers: Panasonic, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Unilever
- G2 rating: 4.8 | Capterra rating: 4.7
- Pricing starts at: $15 per month per user
- Notable integrations: Mailchimp, Codility, Zapier, Google Calendar
SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters is one of the favorite enterprise-serving Applicant Tracking Systems. This is because it’s a user-friendly tool with powerful performance. Moreover, they are client-based when it comes to adding new features: customers can vote on features they’d like to see added to the software.
Another thing that makes it enterprise-friendly is an open marketplace for 3rd party recruitment services. A bunch of add-ons is what confuses some of the users, but the vast majority are happy with SmartRecruiters.
- Best/unique features: chatbot and AI recruiting, client-based upgrades, strong marketplace
- Notable customers: Visa, Skechers, LinkedIn, Equinox, McDonald’s
- G2 rating: 4.3 | Capterra rating: 4.2
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: Hibob, Indeed, LinkedIn Recruiter, Gem
iCIMS Talent Cloud
iCIMS has been operating since the early 2000s. They work with more than 4000 clients to deliver end-to-end hiring experience, from career site management to onboarding.
Since it has been serving clients for a while now, some reviews mention iCIMS is a tad outdated when it comes to UX. However, the majority of people still say it supports them in performing all their tasks and functions.
- Best/unique features: Video Studio for employer branding, offer management, text engagement
- Notable customers: Microsoft, Uber, Target, PwC
- G2 rating: 4.1 | Capterra rating: 4.3
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: Workday, Reflik, LinkedIn, Teamable
Bullhorn ATS & CRM
Just like iCIMS, Bullhorn has been in the ATS game for a long time, serving customers for over 20 years. Among its portfolio of customers, it’s noticeable that they serve a lot of recruitment agencies as well as those specialized in healthcare staffing.
User reviews mention drawbacks such as a poor mobile app and a lack of integrations. However, core functionalities are still performing strong, and they shouldn’t deter you from considering Bullhorn as your future Applicant Tracking System.
- Best/unique features: Customer Relationship Management for staffing agencies
- Notable customers: Loop Recruiting, Kaizen Resources, Allen Recruitment
- G2 rating: 4.0 | Capterra rating: 4.1
- Pricing starts at: Not provided
- Notable integrations: candidate.ly, Indeed, LinkedIn, SkillCheck
Applicant Tracking Systems for Employee Insights
ATS is a rich source of insights that lets you hire the best talent for the role and track the quality of employee experience.
With ATS analytics, you can solve the talent acquisition obstacles before they seriously affect your business beyond hiring.
For instance, you can see how long a candidate spends in each recruitment stage, whether a hiring source is inefficient, or at which point you’re losing candidates.
This lets you focus efforts on automating the repetitive or less efficient parts of the hiring process, look into different, more lucrative hiring sources, or find out how many qualified candidates per hire you need to have in the pipeline. As a result, you can build a data-informed hiring strategy that is aligned with wider business objectives.
For example, with Orgnostic, you can use your ATS to look into the entire hiring cycle and get meaningful insights — here’s how some of the tools above pair up with people analytics and the insights you can get:
And you can get all this information in just a couple of steps:
- Register on the Orgnostic Platform
- Connect your ATS to Orgnostic
- Once your data is ready, head over to Story
- There, head over to the Talent Acquisition chapter
- You can now find out answers to a range of hiring questions, e.g. the hiring journey across departments.
The best ATS? The one that works for you.
After reviewing this list, you could be left with the impression that there’s a lot of Applicant Tracking System providers on the market, and that they are all pretty good.
This is true — the nuances are very subtle.
However, your company size and your budget should be the first criteria to help you narrow down your potential ATS vendor list.
After that, focus on the features you believe are most important to you. These include:
- flexibility in adapting to your hiring processes
- automation capabilities
- region-specific features
- easy collaborative hiring
- recruitment marketing features
- integrations with other tools in your HR tech stack.