BambooHR® vs. Hire by Google (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BambooHR®
Score 8.5 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.
$250
per month
Hire by Google (discontinued)
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Hire, by Google, was a recruiting app for G suite customers. The product includes functionality for applicant tracking, candidate relationship management, and candidate sourcing. Google sunsetted the product in late 2020.N/A
Pricing
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Core
$250
per month
Pro
Contact Sales
per month
Elite
Contact Sales
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Considered Both Products
BambooHR®
Chose BambooHR®
None. We used our own self made folders and spreadsheets prior to Bamboo.
Chose BambooHR®
scalability is an issue with BambooHR (missing lot of competent), integration with other tools (EDI feed, compliance etc)
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR® is not in the same category as others that I have used. BambooHR is truly comprehensive and if you pay for all the extras, you wouldn't need anything else. The parts we use are great for us and the fact that we can add custom fields means that our unique needs are …
Chose BambooHR®
Lattice is much more oriented towards performance management. It includes many more advanced performance management features from building actual assessments to also performance development planning. BambooHR® for us was a place to centralize our data and build from within as …
Chose BambooHR®
In my experience, I prefer overall reporting and functionality of Rippling, Gusto, and Ease.
It is on par with Employee Navigator and Paycom (due to more user friendly design)
Prefer to Worklio, Paylocity, and ADP Workforce.
Chose BambooHR®
I used to use workday at a past company and BambooHR® is less extensive but very easy to use. Again, the features and functionality on the former were more fleshed out and readily available but the functions that I use most often are more easily accessible via BambooHR®.
Chose BambooHR®
Not as well as any of them. I am not a QBO Payroll fan either but they are better than BambooHR®.
Chose BambooHR®
We have tried other system, but they were less user friendly and they were doing so much other stuff that they were not fulfilling correctly our needs. BambooHR® is a really nice tool to use, user friendly, and just the functions we need from an HR tool. It's great for the …
Chose BambooHR®
Used them before and wanted to try something new, overall it was a much easier product to use and get a handle on.
Chose BambooHR®
Bamboo HR is so so much more user-friendly and easier to navigate on both the admin and employee side of things. This significantly helps reduce headaches and frustration when something needs correction. There is always something that will need to be fixed, so having a platform …
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR is the best, but unfortunately, it doesn't currently have an adequate payroll module for our needs.
Chose BambooHR®
We switch our clients from the other HRIS platforms to BambooHR, because they do everything better and have amazing customer support.
Chose BambooHR®
Less expensive than ADP and much more up to date and efficient than Heartland
Chose BambooHR®
At my previous employer, I evaluated over 20 HRIS platforms before choosing and implementing BambooHR® (in 2019). I love it! The continuous improvements are promising and I actually feel like product feedback is reviewed and, at times, implemented.

With BambooHR®, it truly …
Chose BambooHR®
BambooHR® was able to provide excellent value for money when compared to the other options we looked at when we carried out a review of them. A previous member of the team had also used BambooHR® at another company and rated them highly which influenced our decision greatly. …
Chose BambooHR®
Different companies and each proved to be beneficial for the particular company that had it implemented.
Chose BambooHR®
The platform for both employees and employer were way easier to use and navigate. Additionally, VensureHR generated many errors which we did not see with BambooHR.
Chose BambooHR®
We moved to BambooHR time tracking from Clicktime once BambooHR's functionality improved and we prefer to have all functions on the same platform.
Hire by Google (discontinued)
Chose Hire by Google (discontinued)
I picked Google Hire after spending about 3 months on Bullhorn. I found Bullhorn to be terrible. It's WAY more customizable and theoretically powerful, but it's also a pain to set up and maintain. Even just getting your job page set up on your own site required tech support. …
Features
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Human Resource Management
Comparison of Human Resource Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.6
Ratings
3% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Employee demographic data8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Employment history7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Job profiles and administration7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Organizational charting6.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Organization and location management8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)7.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
6.6
Ratings
19% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Pay calculation7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for external payroll vendors5.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment6.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration5.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct deposit files7.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Reimbursement management6.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Leave and Attendance Management
Comparison of Leave and Attendance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.7
Ratings
8% above category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Approval workflow8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Balance details8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Annual carry-forward and encashment9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee Self Service
Comparison of Employee Self Service features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
View and generate pay and benefit information7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Update personal information8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
View company policy documentation8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Employee recognition7.20 Ratings00 Ratings
View job history8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset Management
Comparison of Asset Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
9.1
Ratings
12% above category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Tracking of all physical assets9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
HR Reporting
Comparison of HR Reporting features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
6.8
Ratings
10% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Report builder6.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-built reports6.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to combine HR data with external data6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Onboarding
Comparison of Onboarding features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.7
Ratings
3% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
New hire portal8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Manager tracking tools7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance and Goals
Comparison of Performance and Goals features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.5
Ratings
5% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Corporate goal setting6.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Individual goal setting7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Line-of sight-visibility9.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance tracking6.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance Management
Comparison of Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.5
Ratings
4% below category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Performance plans6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Performance improvement plans6.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Review status tracking8.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Review reminders8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple review frequency7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Succession Planning
Comparison of Succession Planning features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
9.1
Ratings
15% above category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Create succession plans/pools9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate ranking9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate search9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Candidate development9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Recruiting / ATS
Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Product A and Product B
BambooHR®
7.8
Ratings
1% above category average
Hire by Google (discontinued)
8.1
Ratings
1% above category average
Job Requisition Management7.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Company Website Posting7.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Publish to Social Media9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Job Search Site Posting7.20 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Duplicate Candidate Prevention7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Applicant Tracking8.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Notifications and Alerts8.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Customized Application Form00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Resume Management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Candidate Search00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Collaboration00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Email Templates00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Dayforce Powerpay
Dayforce Powerpay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Breezy HR
Breezy HR
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Paypro Workforce Management
Paypro Workforce Management
Score 9.7 out of 10
Breezy HR
Breezy HR
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
PeopleStrong
PeopleStrong
Score 9.9 out of 10
PeopleStrong
PeopleStrong
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BambooHR®Hire by Google (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
I think if you're a small organization and you're trying to get out of paper, this is a really good first step to doing that. I've heard from other people that are in larger organizations where they have thousands of employees that there may be better platforms, but for smaller organization it's awesome.
Read full review
Google Hire is very good at doing the basics well. I believe for most internal HR departments at small companies, this is all you need. It also works well for small to medium-sized staffing companies that just want something reliable and easy to use. What Google Hire doesn't do very well is be flexible. They don't have custom options, they don't have a ton of settings, and their development cycle is slow. As a result, it's pretty much what you see is what you get.
Read full review
Pros
  • BambooHR® allows you to preview as a user in a specific access level. This is VERY helpful for providing instructions to employees or double checking that information is secure.
  • BambooHR® customer support is unmatched. Any time I have a question, I can quickly get an answer as well as additional resources.
  • Employees are able to easily find their information without coming to HR for questions. This cuts down on the questions coming into HR departments, big and small.
Read full review
  • Google does search well so when I search through our database for candidates, I'm confident that I'm pulling up all the right people from what we have.
  • They have a modern and nice user interface - this is one of the biggest reasons to use it over other systems, as most ATS' are pretty ancient looking and not very pleasant to use.
  • Their support is very good at answering and addressing questions.
  • Their pricing is incredible. I'm sure at some point it will change, but for small companies paying 100+ per user for other ATS' - it's incredible to pay 100/month for the whole company.
Read full review
Cons
  • Notices for approving hours don't always coincide with pay periods well.
  • Payroll reports are by pay period without the ability to combine hours, etc. into a monthly report.
  • There is not an easy way to fix payroll errors. Must get it right the first time.
Read full review
  • Despite many many months of requests, Google still hasn't implemented ANY custom fields. This makes it tough for an external recruiting firm to track what they want (most importantly: desired salary).
  • The job board integration is not great for external recruiters, mostly at the fault of Indeed. Indeed flagged us as a recruiting firm and so none of our jobs actually go live. While I know this is an Indeed problem (we had the same problem when using Bullhorn), Breezy ATS never has that problem for us so I don't know what they're doing differently.
  • Their development cycles are quite frankly very slow. I've requested some features, and while support is great about telling me it's coming or in the pipeline, I honestly don't really see a difference in the product since we started using it. It's still great to use, and we still love the software, but there haven't been too many visible improvements that make any difference to our work.
  • Being Google, it can sometimes be frustrating that one arm doesn't talk to the other. For example, they announced a Gmail for Works App/Extension integration, but for some reason when they launched it, admins of a domain couldn't install it. Google Hire pointed to the Google for Works team, and it took literally months to fix. Not the end of the world, but just very silly considering they're the same company.
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
No answers on this topic
Usability
BambooHR® is helpful, but I still handle some tasks manually due to missing features relevant to my needs. Certain processes require additional functionality, limiting full automation. While it streamlines HR operations, gaps in usability mean I must supplement workflows with manual efforts to ensure efficiency and meet specific business demands.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The support can be slow as they are a US based company and therefore we often have to wait for them to be online before we can speak to somebody and they are not particularly responsive to emails. The service itself has always been helpful and in most cases, the issue was resolved.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
I needed a system that was easy to use from an admin level as well as employee level. We run a pretty simple operation as we do not have shift diffs or multiple approval levels. Some of the systems reviewed were too much for us and, as a result, too expensive. BambooHR® fit our needs and budget accordingly.
Read full review
I picked Google Hire after spending about 3 months on Bullhorn. I found Bullhorn to be terrible. It's WAY more customizable and theoretically powerful, but it's also a pain to set up and maintain. Even just getting your job page set up on your own site required tech support. Getting it eventually to what you want could be a great benefit, but Google Hire does great right out of the box and is a lot cheaper. Breezy HR is a great system. It's a bit more expensive than Google Hire for multiple job postings, but their system is equally easy to use and straight forward. However, we are all in on Google Products, so it was just a no brainer to go with Hire for a better price and most likely a better search function.
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
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • HR team members have been saved thousands of hours over the 3.5 years we've had BambooHR®. It saved me personally several hours a day once BambooHR® was set up. Specifically, onboarding, offboarding, and a formal Hiring system are the major time savers.
  • Employee Information is much easier to access and is all centralized. Employees are empowered to update their information when applicable, and we have designed custom access levels for different positions and managers to ensure every individual is seeing the appropriate types of information about employees.
  • We saved significant money by switching from Lattice to BambooHR®'s Performance Management solution. This solution is less advanced, but the simplicity meets our needs perfectly fine, and it even saves time for managers and employees by BambooHR®'s standard questions, carefully designed to get to the heart of performance and improvement.
Read full review
  • Google Hire makes, unfortunately, a very little impact on our ROI, but I think in the ATS world that's a good thing. It simply acts as a record that we can put everything in and easily reference, and the fact that it works overall makes it a positive software product in the long run.
  • While the search works great, I don't know that I've ever specifically found a candidate and placed them due to it. That could be a result of our job reqs though.
  • The biggest most obvious impact is really just the price. We needed a tool that does what Google Hire does, reliably. Most other companies charge at least 150 or so for 2 people, whereas Google Hire is 100/month for many users. It gives us flexibility for the future and helps minimize what could be a big expense. That definitely helps our bottom line.
Read full review
ScreenShots

BambooHR® Screenshots

Screenshot of Job Info TabScreenshot of Onboarding TasksScreenshot of New Hire PacketScreenshot of Employee Performance ReportScreenshot of Employee Satisfaction (eNPS®)Screenshot of Open Enrollment