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You may have landed on this page, unsure of what to expect. After all, why would we, CharlieHR (software specialised in small businesses and startups) write a guide about Hibob and Personio?
The reason is pretty simple: we’ve done the research and thought it’d be a shame if we kept it all to ourselves.
That’s why we decided to make it public so people like you can decide which software is best for them. So what will it be between Hibob vs Personio? Let’s have a look together to find out.
Calling themselves the “People Operating System”, Personio is an excellent choice for scaling up your business.
With its wide range of advanced features as well as core HR features, Personio can fit the needs of many different companies – we’ve found, however, that many people who used to have Personio and then switched to Charlie realised one thing: it doesn’t work as much when it comes to small businesses and startups.
Looking at the type of companies that use Personio, it makes sense. Between Lush (400 employees), Emma (600 employees) or Premier Inn (600 employees), we’re far from businesses that have just started out. They’re all more established and need software that’s more sophisticated.
So perhaps this is something to remember when you make your choice, but we’ll come back to it later in this guide.
But first, let’s outline the main reasons why Personio can work for your business with the following core features:
These are all, of course, pretty standard when it comes to HR software. Every competitor we’ve researched, however, has got their edge.
For Personio, this edge can be found in the way they put an emphasis on the needs of scaling businesses, especially when it comes to recruitment and reporting.
This is what makes Personio stand out from Hibob:
These features can be a good opportunity for your business and its future, as they will help you save effort and hire high-performing team members in no time.
As we mentioned before, we don’t see Personio as the best fit for small businesses. This is because, and we’re not going to shy away from it, our client base is mainly made of small businesses and startups – and many have switched from Personio to Charlie because of this particular reason.
So, although we provide software that’s focused on small businesses and startups, we also have spoken to our customers to back it up.
The points below are not exclusive to small businesses and startups, of course, but are arguments that may be valid when you’re looking for an affordable all-in-one HR solution.
One of the main issues people have encountered with Personio is the fact that it’s not user-friendly.
So whilst this is a good experience for HR people, employees tend to struggle with understanding how to use the software and require a lot of assistance. This makes it difficult for people responsible for HR as they’re constantly pulled in different directions for help.
Many small businesses and startups look for software that’s straight out of the box and intuitive, so they won’t have to train their team or provide too much assistance. If that’s what you’re looking for, perhaps Personio is not the right choice for you.
Although people responsible for HR say it’s a great experience in terms of reporting facilities and streamlining a lot of their daily tasks, they also admit the setup can be pretty complicated and takes a long time.
Not only does it require assistance (and a set up fee for it), but it’s also a matter of training your team members to use it. You will need to set time aside for it that you don’t necessarily have and which could be detrimental to your business success.
Another aspect that keeps coming up when talking to our users about Personio is how expensive the solution can be if you fall under the lower end of the pricing brackets – for example, if you’re a 10–people company, you’ll end up paying the same as a 25-people company.
There is also an initial set up fee for whichever type of contract you choose to go for and depending on the size of your business. Bear in mind that all contracts do not offer the same features:
As their pricing stands, that means an essential package, for example, will cost a total of €99-179 per month. You can find out more about Personio pricing on this page.
If you need an enterprise package, you will, however, need to contact a sales representative for a quote.
As a “modern platform for HR”, Hibob has a lot of worthy arguments when wondering why you should pick them as an HR software for your business.
Not unlike Personio, Hibob also provides a range of core features such as:
Yes, Hibob’s got a lot going on for them, but one thing that’s worth mentioning is the emphasis they put on culture.
From top to bottom, Hibob focuses all of its features on building culture at your business. That may be alright for some, but it might not be the right focus for your business. Let’s have a look at a few examples of how they do this:
So if you’re looking for software that’s really into building culture and fostering a great environment to work in, Hibob may just be the right fit for you.
Like every other software, Hibob’s got a few shortcomings that we thought were worth mentioning. Similarly to their competitor Personio, we gathered this feedback from our own customers – small businesses and startups that didn’t find what they wanted in Hibob.
Hibob’s pricing does not appear on their website, which can make it inconvenient when you’re trying to compare packages for different software – you don’t necessarily want to contact one of their sales representatives straight away.
Bear in mind, also, that not all of their features are included in their basic plan – their plans are customisable, which means you will have to figure out the price and what it includes directly on the phone, instead of working it out yourself and taking some time to think before subscribing.
From the feedback we got from our own customers, customisable plans often mean that Hibob ends up charging very different prices depending on the size of your company. Some of Hibob’s ex-customers revealed they used to pay around £10 per employee per month for less than 50 employees. It may be the case that companies with more than 200 employees, however, get higher discounts.
Although a lot of businesses will appreciate the focus that Hibob puts on culture, some might argue that it may deflect the core purpose of HR software.
Of course, building a great environment to work in is essential, but what makes it even better at a workplace is if its core HR is up to scratch.
Many small businesses have found that features focused on culture are not as useful as they thought they would initially be, and end up being a distraction. Hibob’s team may have a tendency to focus on building shiny new features instead of focusing on the improvement of their existing core features, which may be a problem for some customers.
The last piece of feedback we got from our own customers who had switched from Hibob to Charlie was how time-consuming the software was to set up – it required a lot of assistance to set up workflows from their customer service team and wasn’t ready to use straight away.
As we outlined in this guide, Hibob and Personio both have good and bad sides. Here are, however, a few key elements to remember:
The choice is now yours. One thing I can recommend, however, and if you haven’t checked it out yet is perhaps to have a look at our own tool.
With Charlie, you get exactly what you need to reduce the time you spend on HR admin, automate all your main tasks and reinvest that time in other areas of your business.
You may have landed on this page, unsure of what to expect. After all, why would we, CharlieHR (software specialised in small businesses and startups) write a guide about Hibob and Personio?
The reason is pretty simple: we’ve done the research and thought it’d be a shame if we kept it all to ourselves.
That’s why we decided to make it public so people like you can decide which software is best for them. So what will it be between Hibob vs Personio? Let’s have a look together to find out.
As an HR software ourselves, we understand what it takes to build a tool that will help businesses automate their most time-consuming HR tasks as effortlessly as possible.
Part of building CharlieHR meant researching our competitors and understanding where they fall short of expectations and where they exceed them – Personio and Hibob were among the many software we researched.
This research included looking at features, talking to current and past customers as well as understanding how well the product served them.
See something inaccurate? Let us know
See something inaccurate? Let us know
See something inaccurate? Let us know
See something inaccurate? Let us know
Calling themselves the “People Operating System”, Personio is an excellent choice for scaling up your business.
With its wide range of advanced features as well as core HR features, Personio can fit the needs of many different companies – we’ve found, however, that many people who used to have Personio and then switched to Charlie realised one thing: it doesn’t work as much when it comes to small businesses and startups.
Looking at the type of companies that use Personio, it makes sense. Between Lush (400 employees), Emma (600 employees) or Premier Inn (600 employees), we’re far from businesses that have just started out. They’re all more established and need software that’s more sophisticated.
So perhaps this is something to remember when you make your choice, but we’ll come back to it later in this guide.
But first, let’s outline the main reasons why Personio can work for your business with the following core features:
These are all, of course, pretty standard when it comes to HR software. Every competitor we’ve researched, however, has got their edge.
For Personio, this edge can be found in the way they put an emphasis on the needs of scaling businesses, especially when it comes to recruitment and reporting.
This is what makes Personio stand out from Hibob:
These features can be a good opportunity for your business and its future, as they will help you save effort and hire high-performing team members in no time.
As we mentioned before, we don’t see Personio as the best fit for small businesses. This is because, and we’re not going to shy away from it, our client base is mainly made of small businesses and startups – and many have switched from Personio to Charlie because of this particular reason.
So, although we provide software that’s focused on small businesses and startups, we also have spoken to our customers to back it up.
The points below are not exclusive to small businesses and startups, of course, but are arguments that may be valid when you’re looking for an affordable all-in-one HR solution.
One of the main issues people have encountered with Personio is the fact that it’s not user-friendly.
So whilst this is a good experience for HR people, employees tend to struggle with understanding how to use the software and require a lot of assistance. This makes it difficult for people responsible for HR as they’re constantly pulled in different directions for help.
Many small businesses and startups look for software that’s straight out of the box and intuitive, so they won’t have to train their team or provide too much assistance. If that’s what you’re looking for, perhaps Personio is not the right choice for you.
Although people responsible for HR say it’s a great experience in terms of reporting facilities and streamlining a lot of their daily tasks, they also admit the setup can be pretty complicated and takes a long time.
Not only does it require assistance (and a set up fee for it), but it’s also a matter of training your team members to use it. You will need to set time aside for it that you don’t necessarily have and which could be detrimental to your business success.
Another aspect that keeps coming up when talking to our users about Personio is how expensive the solution can be if you fall under the lower end of the pricing brackets – for example, if you’re a 10–people company, you’ll end up paying the same as a 25-people company.
There is also an initial set up fee for whichever type of contract you choose to go for and depending on the size of your business. Bear in mind that all contracts do not offer the same features:
As their pricing stands, that means an essential package, for example, will cost a total of €99-179 per month. You can find out more about Personio pricing on this page.
If you need an enterprise package, you will, however, need to contact a sales representative for a quote.
As a “modern platform for HR”, Hibob has a lot of worthy arguments when wondering why you should pick them as an HR software for your business.
Not unlike Personio, Hibob also provides a range of core features such as:
Yes, Hibob’s got a lot going on for them, but one thing that’s worth mentioning is the emphasis they put on culture.
From top to bottom, Hibob focuses all of its features on building culture at your business. That may be alright for some, but it might not be the right focus for your business. Let’s have a look at a few examples of how they do this:
So if you’re looking for software that’s really into building culture and fostering a great environment to work in, Hibob may just be the right fit for you.
Like every other software, Hibob’s got a few shortcomings that we thought were worth mentioning. Similarly to their competitor Personio, we gathered this feedback from our own customers – small businesses and startups that didn’t find what they wanted in Hibob.
Hibob’s pricing does not appear on their website, which can make it inconvenient when you’re trying to compare packages for different software – you don’t necessarily want to contact one of their sales representatives straight away.
Bear in mind, also, that not all of their features are included in their basic plan – their plans are customisable, which means you will have to figure out the price and what it includes directly on the phone, instead of working it out yourself and taking some time to think before subscribing.
From the feedback we got from our own customers, customisable plans often mean that Hibob ends up charging very different prices depending on the size of your company. Some of Hibob’s ex-customers revealed they used to pay around £10 per employee per month for less than 50 employees. It may be the case that companies with more than 200 employees, however, get higher discounts.
Although a lot of businesses will appreciate the focus that Hibob puts on culture, some might argue that it may deflect the core purpose of HR software.
Of course, building a great environment to work in is essential, but what makes it even better at a workplace is if its core HR is up to scratch.
Many small businesses have found that features focused on culture are not as useful as they thought they would initially be, and end up being a distraction. Hibob’s team may have a tendency to focus on building shiny new features instead of focusing on the improvement of their existing core features, which may be a problem for some customers.
The last piece of feedback we got from our own customers who had switched from Hibob to Charlie was how time-consuming the software was to set up – it required a lot of assistance to set up workflows from their customer service team and wasn’t ready to use straight away.
As we outlined in this guide, Hibob and Personio both have good and bad sides. Here are, however, a few key elements to remember:
The choice is now yours. One thing I can recommend, however, and if you haven’t checked it out yet is perhaps to have a look at our own tool.
With Charlie, you get exactly what you need to reduce the time you spend on HR admin, automate all your main tasks and reinvest that time in other areas of your business.
With Charlie, you have everything you need to manage your team and craft your culture – no HR experience required.
✅ Free for 7 days
✅ No credit card needed
✅ Cancel any time