With high competition in the job market, hiring the right talent becomes all the more necessary for recruiters. From screening an overwhelming number of resumes and coordinating interviews to improving candidate experience, they need to balance a lot of tasks at once. An applicant tracking software solution can help enhance a recruiting team's efforts.
But, how do you identify the ideal ATS software for your business? To help you make the right choice, we have highlighted the seven best applicant tracking software for HR professionals, in alphabetical order, based on verified software reviews. Read more.
We’ve categorized these tools into two groups—stand-alone ATS and ATS as a part of an HR suite. Stand-alone ATS focuses solely on recruiting and hiring functions, while ATS as part of an HR suite offers a broader range of HR functionalities. Regardless of the type, common features across all ATS include job posting, candidate tracking, and candidate profile management.
1. ADP Workforce Now
ADP Workforce Now is an HR software suite with applicant tracking capabilities to help you manage the hiring process, from creating job postings to onboarding new employees. It allows you to create a customized career website that showcases employer brand and job openings and also provides a simplified application process for candidates.
Product features of interestSponsored job posting with ZipRecruiter: Use ZipRecruiter integration, a job search engine and online recruitment platform with smart matching technology, which helps HR teams create unlimited sponsored job postings, identify quality candidates, and invite them to apply.
Social media sharing: Create job postings for social media platforms from within the ATS and pre-populate relevant job details, such as job title, job description, company name, and location, into the post.
Reporting and analytics: Generate reports on recruitment expenses and the time taken to fill a position to identify areas of improvement and speed up the process.
Customer support options: Live chat, call, email, and help desk
Who should consider ADP Workforce Now?
Recruiters looking to improve candidate engagement and reduce confusion or miscommunication caused by different job requirement expectations or interpretations should consider ADP Workforce Now. The platform offers a video messaging feature that allows recruiters to communicate job requirements and company culture in an engaging way, while also consolidating all candidate communication into a single platform and facilitating timely communication.
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2. BambooHR
Similar to ADP Workforce Now, BambooHR is an HR suite that includes ATS functionality, enabling customizable job postings, resume tracking, workflow automation, and reporting. This tool enables HR teams to share job postings on various job boards and social media platforms while offering a centralized dashboard to track and manage candidate data.
Product features of interestCentralized candidate dashboard: Manage and track candidate resumes and applications in a centralized location, identify suitable candidates, and monitor their progress throughout the recruitment process.
Customizable reports: Track key recruitment metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and applicant sources, providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of the recruitment process, possible bottlenecks, and inconsistencies.
Pre-installed offer letter templates: Customize built-in offer letter templates and auto-populate candidate information for different positions, job types, and other requirements.
Customer support options: Call, email, and query form
Who should consider BambooHR ATS?
If you want an ATS that improves collaboration between hiring teams and stakeholders during the recruitment process, consider BambooHR’s ATS. Its collaborative hiring feature enables recruiters to add custom application access permissions for various stakeholders and team members, gather input at any stage, and standardize communication with built-in messaging.
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/ Pro tip
Focus on integrating your applicant tracking system with job-posting platforms, such as job boards, social media, and your careers page, to get more customization options for branding elements and relevant details, including job role, location, and compensation, to attract the most relevant applications.
3. ClearCompany
ClearCompany is a talent management suite with applicant tracking capabilities. The software creates structured hiring plans by integrating top performers' profiles into recruitment tools, enabling fair candidate evaluation and hiring the right talent. It has a text recruiting suite, featuring bulk texting, text-to-apply, and text recruiting templates, to help recruiters engage in two-way communication with candidates. The text-to-apply feature offers a unique keyword or short code that candidates can text to express interest in a job or initiate the application process, which improves response time.
Product features of interestBranded careers website: Create a customized, visually appealing careers page with job search tools, filters, and application forms, improving applicant experience.
AI-assisted recruiting workflow: Leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create job descriptions and job-specific recruiting workflows, coordinate interviews, and enable candidates to self-select interview times.
Video recruiting: Conduct remote job interviews via video conferencing and eliminate the need for in-person interviews, reduce travel costs, and save time. This feature also enables recruiters to screen more candidates in a shorter amount of time.
Customer support options: Live chat, email, and help center
Who should consider ClearCompany ATS?
ClearCompany is worth considering for companies that want to track candidate demographics and understand recruiting funnel metrics (time-to-apply, number of resumes screened, and stakeholder feedback) to optimize their hiring strategy. It offers customizable reporting, powered by pre-built recruiting report templates, interactive dashboards, drill-downs, and data visualization capabilities, which can help you identify bottlenecks in your recruiting process and make data-driven decisions.
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Ready to hire a recruiting agency for your business needs? Browse our list of companies in the following areas:
4. Homebase
Homebase is not a typical stand-alone applicant tracking system or complete HR suite. It covers all the essential ATS features but with a unique focus on employee scheduling and time-tracking. It enables recruiters to post jobs, track applicants, and automate onboarding workflows. The software also includes a library of pre-written, customizable job descriptions to save time and ensure accuracy and compliance with equal employment opportunity (EEO) guidelines under labor laws. Homebase’s ATS also offers a collaborative hiring feature, allowing team managers to work together with their hiring team and leave feedback about candidates in real time.
Product features of interestCustomizable job board: Create a branded careers page that matches your website's look and feel. This feature simplifies job searches for candidates and allows businesses to post and manage job openings directly from their ATS.
Screening questions: Add custom screening questions to the application process, helping businesses screen applicants and filter out those who don't meet the required qualifications.
Candidate tracking dashboard: Track applicants and monitor their progress through the recruiting process. This dashboard also allows managers to view applicant feedback and review interview notes from one centralized location.
Customer support options: Live chat, email, and query forms
Who should consider Homebase ATS?
If you want to increase the visibility of your job posting on search engines (such as Indeed and ZipRecruiter) and have an extra budget to spend on sponsored hiring, Homebase’s paid boost feature can help you do that. While creating a job posting in Homebase, you can use this feature to place your postings higher in the search results and give them better exposure to job seekers.
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/ Pro tip
Look for an applicant tracking solution that offers built-in or integrated assessment management capabilities, allowing you to create, share, and manage candidate assessments in different formats, such as online tests, PDFs, and Word documents. This will not just enhance the recruitment process but also reduce the need for switching between applications.
5. Indeed
As a job board first, Indeed differs from traditional purpose-built applicant tracking solutions. However, it offers the most critical components of an ATS. Indeed helps recruiters organize and manage job applications, post job openings, track and review resumes, communicate with candidates, and schedule interviews, all from one centralized platform. A key differentiator of this software is AI resume search to analyze job descriptions and candidate resumes and identify the best matches based on skills, experience, education, and other factors. This saves time and helps hiring managers focus on the most qualified candidates.
Product features of interestSponsored job posting: Increase job posting visibility by promoting it to the top of search results and on the Indeed job board. Recruiters can target their job postings to specific audiences based on factors including location, job type, and industry.
Interview management: Schedule 1:1, panel, and multi-round interviews; preview resumes; record, share screen, take notes, and share details with the next interviewer.
Applicant skills testing: Leverage pre-built assessments and screening questions to test applicants’ skills and track their scores. Employers can view the scores of all candidates and filter the results to identify the best-suited applications.
Customer support options: Help center, FAQs, and query form
Who should consider Indeed ATS?
Indeed ATS is a good option for businesses of all sizes that particularly rely on job postings to source candidates and want to take advantage of Indeed's vast job seeker network. The recruiter extension directly transfers data from Indeed’s suite of products (including hosted jobs and Indeed Resume), saving time and reducing errors in the manual data entry process. If you're looking for an ATS that can help you automate candidate data entry and improve your recruiting efficiency, consider Indeed ATS.
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6. Lever
Lever is a stand-alone ATS solution that provides visual insights to give users a bird’s-eye view of their hiring process. It provides visual graphs and predictive analytics to track recruiting efforts, develop better strategies, and make informed hiring decisions. Furthermore, it includes interactive reports to track candidates' pipeline stages, job-posting engagement, and extended and accepted offers.
Product features of interestATS + CRM functionality: Combine ATS and candidate relationship management (CRM) functionality to help recruiters personalize communications with candidates and nurture talent pipelines; store candidate information, such as contact details, resumes, and application status, in one location; and track candidate communications to build stronger relationships.
Personalized outreach: Create personalized outreach for candidates using email templates, mail merge, and bulk email campaigns, helping recruiters tailor their communications to each candidate, increasing the likelihood of a positive response and engagement.
Dynamic dashboards: Use dynamic dashboards to get real-time data and insights about the recruiting process. This feature allows recruiters to monitor talent pipelines and track key metrics, such as time-to-fill, source of hire, and candidate pipeline, and make data-driven decisions to improve their processes.
Customer support options: Live chat, call, email, and help center
Who should consider Lever?
If your current hiring strategies are focused on better candidate experience and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring, consider Lever. It lets you create and schedule customized surveys to measure DEI and gather actionable insights to improve your diversity hiring and gather insights on the scope of improvement. Lever also includes dedicated DEI dashboards that help review candidate diversity at the top of the recruiting funnel, eliminate unconscious biases, and break down compensation by ethnicity, race, and gender.
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/ Pro tip
Leverage the demo, trial, or free version of the platform to understand how it handles tasks such as posting job listings, tracking applicants, and managing candidate communications. This can also help you identify potential issues or limitations, such as complicated interfaces or lack of features that you may need for your business operations.
7. Rippling
In case you want a niche solution focused on interviewing, consider Rippling. It is an HR suite with core applicant tracking features that allow you to customize interview and approval stages based on specific department requirements. Recruiters can publish open opportunities on multiple platforms simultaneously, including Indeed and LinkedIn, and invite quality candidates to apply.
Product features of interestInterview scheduling: Automate interview scheduling by sending calendar invites and reminders to interviewers and candidates and tracking responses, saving time and eliminating manual scheduling.
Advanced resume parsing: Analyze and extract key information from resumes, such as work experience, education, and skills to auto-populate candidate profiles with relevant information, reducing the need for manual data entry.
Reporting and analytics: Build custom reports to analyze recruitment processes and track key metrics such as time-to-hire, source of hire, and candidate feedback. These reports help recruiters identify areas for improvement in the recruitment process and make data-driven decisions.
Customer support options: Live chat, email, and query form
Who should consider Rippling ATS?
If your company has multiple departments and unique hiring processes, Rippling ATS is a good option for a customizable applicant tracking system. Its custom hiring workflows allow you to tailor interview stages to meet specific departmental requirements, enhancing the recruitment process. With automated interview scheduling, recruiters can save time and reduce the risk of scheduling conflicts, such as a mismatch between the availability of the candidate, hiring manager, and interviewer.
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How much does applicant tracking software cost?
An applicant tracking software can cost as low as $15 per user, per month, or all the way up to $100+ per month, depending on various factors—features, number of users, infrastructure requirements, business size/type, training availability, deployment options, integrations, and offered storage. Most ATS typically offer the following pricing plans:
Free trial: No-cost trial plans ranging from 14 to 30 days, giving users access to either all or limited features of the software.
Free version: Free software plans offer basic features and limited premium feature access. These are ideal for small businesses or individuals with a limited budget.
Entry-level: Starts at $15 per month and offers limited features such as sponsored job posting and interview scheduling. This is a good option for small businesses or teams with basic hiring needs.
Mid-tier: Mid-range pricing for ATS ranges from $35 to $110 per month. It is ideal for midsize businesses with multiple software users looking for advanced features such as candidate tracking, CRM integration, bulk data import, and priority support.
High-end: Advanced plans offer unlimited jobs, workflow automation, custom domains, and multi-location support. These are ideal for large enterprises with cross-functional teams.
Hidden costs associated with applicant tracking software
Besides the software license itself, there may be additional costs associated with applicant tracking software, including data migration, training, hardware and IT, and maintenance/upgrades, which small businesses should budget for when considering a new tool.
Frequently asked questions when selecting applicant tracking software
Does the software solution automate interview scheduling?
ATS with built-in features for scheduling candidate interviews eliminates the need to switch between various websites or applications. Some applicant tracking systems provide a self-service portal for candidates to schedule interviews at their preferred time slot. The tool you choose should allow you to send interview invitations to candidates automatically.
How does the ATS manage collaboration between stakeholders?
Most applicant tracking tools include built-in chat, audio/video calls, link sharing, automated email notifications, and other tools to support collaboration between candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers. These tools also ensure that all stakeholders are promptly informed of the application status.
Does it offer custom email templates for personalized outreach?
Some applicant tracking solutions offer pre-installed email templates that can send updates and communications to candidates about their application status. These templates should be customizable, allowing you to include your brand logo, adjust the font style, and make other branding modifications.