Rippling pricing in 2024: Is it worth the cost?
Updated 4:07 p.m. UTC April 17, 2024
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Rippling is our top choice for payroll software. However, it’s better suited for businesses looking for advanced and well-rounded payroll software and are prepared to pay the potentially high price, such as companies with large global teams and complex workforce and payroll management needs.
It’s difficult to assess how expensive Rippling is. It does not publicly list its pricing. You must contact Rippling’s sales team for a direct quote based on business size and needs. While this tailored approach is useful and demonstrates flexibility, it means that, in this Rippling pricing guide, we will delve closer into Rippling’s various suites of features as well as their Unified Workforce Management Platform to understand what it offers. However, you must request pricing information directly from Rippling’s sales team.
Rippling overview
Rippling offers three ‘clouds’ of software. Its HR, IT, and Finance software suites each have their own feature lists. For a fully integrated platform, Rippling combines all three using its Unity workplace platform. The price for this Unity platform starts at $8 a month per user. However, the base monthly price depends on your business needs. The following table lays out what’s included in each cloud.
HR | IT | FINANCE |
---|---|---|
Payroll: Rippling offers a full-service US and global payroll, with direct deposits; local, state, and federal tax filing; workers’ compensation; garnishments and time-off tracking
| Apps: Manage employee apps with single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, team password management, role-based access policies and activity reporting
| Expenses: Pay out reimbursements and automate receipt matching and re-duping for global workforces in over 100 countries. Sync reimbursement payments with payroll
|
Time and attendance: Time tracking integrated with Rippling’s payroll and PTO tracking, with overtime and break policies, approval chains, and time and jobs reporting
| Devices: Store, ship, set up, update and manage all employee devices even across the globe
| Cards: Manage branded corporate cards for all employees
|
Flex benefits: Commuter, FSA, and HSA benefits through a pre-tax debit card
| Inventory: With remote device retrieval, storage in an off-site warehouse, monitoring of device inventory and shipment tracking
| |
ACA and COBRA: Automate reporting for ACA as well as compliance work for COBRA
| ||
Recruiting: Automate the hiring process with a customized and connected recruiting dashboard
| ||
Learning management: Automate enrolment in pre-built compliance courses, with progress tracking and alerts
| ||
Pulse: Survey employees for feedback and trigger the actions based on responses
| ||
HR Help Desk: Contact HR professionals and real-time updates for compliance
| ||
PEO: Dedicated HR advisors, one-on-one healthcare guidance and access to Fortune-500-caliber employee benefits
| ||
Global employment: Streamlined hiring of employees around the world, with automated compliance and payments in local currencies
| ||
Headcount planning: Fully synchronized HR, finance and recruiting on a single-source-of-truth platform
| ||
Compensation bands: Manage compensation bands and automate policies and approvals to control spending and ensure fair pay
|
Ripping’s Workplace Unity platform offers four plan options, each with progressively more in the way of capabilities and allowances. However, it offers no pricing details. The features you’ll get in each plan include:
CORE | PRO | UNLIMITED | ENTERPRISE |
---|---|---|---|
Global employee graph for all workforce data
| Everything in the Core plan
| Everything in the Pro plan
| Everything in the Unlimited plan
|
Global organization chart for employees and their data
| Workflow studio for any employee event
| Unlimited custom, conditional workflows
| Rippling API to read and access company data
|
Global workforce analytics with intuitive reporting on every employee data point
| Up to 10 custom, conditional workflows
| Unlimited advanced reports
| |
Workflows and employee lifecycle automations for over 1,000 day-to-day workflows, such as onboarding
| Up to ten formula fields for use in customizing reports and workflows
| Unlimited formula fields for reports reports and workflows
| |
Role-based permission, approval and policy management based on attributes such as team, level or location
| Up to ten advanced reports to combine data from three or more sources
| Webhooks for 3rd party systems via open APIs
| |
Advanced document management, digitization and templatization
| |||
Advanced compliance management automations with notifications and remedies for potential issues
| |||
Compensation bands across the company with predefined salary and equity ranges
| |||
Vacation and leave management
| |||
Auto localization for over 150 countries
| |||
Workflow studio for onboarding event automations
|
Core
The Core plan gives you access to Rippling Unity’s basic features, offering the bulk of its employee data management services with the exception of formula fields and API access. Rippling also offers full employee lifecycle automation services in its Core plan, as well as full global workforce management, advanced document management, advanced policy management and advanced approvals and permissions.
However, with the Core plan, you’ll miss out on custom workflows entirely and only get custom workflow triggers for onboarding events. However, it does have two custom workflow actions, including sending emails and creating and assigning tasks.
Finally, with regards to global workforce analytics, the Core plan only allows custom report building and visualizing, access to the report recipe library (pre-built reports and templates) and report drill-downs into data points (such as clicking on the total number of new hires to see information on individual hires). You won’t get scheduled reports, advanced reports or reporting formulas (for deriving new data points from your existing data).
Pro
The Pro plan includes everything mentioned in the Core plan, but adds ten formula fields for employee data management, as well as ten custom workflows and custom workflow triggers for any employee event. Custom workflow actions include sending Slack messages, Teams messages, calendar invites and scheduled reports. You’ll also get up to ten advanced reports, but it still does not provide access to the Rippling API.
Unlimited
Being true to its name, as well as providing everything in the Pro plan, the Unlimited plan includes unlimited formula fields, custom workflows and advanced reports.
Enterprise
The Enterprise plan includes all of the Unlimited features, as well as finally granting access to the Rippling API, which allows you to build integrations with internal systems and applications.
Rippling drawbacks
Rippling offers a complete package with flexibility to allow you to build your own custom software suite to meet your business needs. Its service is powerful, advanced and likely worth the relatively premium price tag you’ll get once going through the quote process.
While it might be worth getting a quote for a better idea of how much it’ll cost, in our opinion, it’s likely not the best option for smaller businesses with limited requirements for advanced HR and finance tools or global workforce management needs. And, it likely won’t be suitable for companies on a budget.
If you’re looking for a similar range of features, you might consider Gusto or Homebase as more affordable alternatives; although they do not offer the flexibility and power of Rippling.
If your main requirement is payroll software, Patriot offers a basic payroll plan at $17 a month plus $4 per employee that meets most small-business payroll needs and a $37 per month plan for full service payroll that includes tax filing.
Rippling alternatives
While Rippling is our number one pick for payroll software, we can recommend some excellent alternatives that are potentially friendlier to the budget sheet.
Patriot
Patriot is our choice for brands on a budget, offering a full-service payroll with plenty of features at an affordable price of $37 a month plus $4 per employee. You’ll get unlimited payroll with free setup, direct deposits, various pay frequencies and excellent customer service, with both HR and time and attendance add-ons available each at $6 a month plus $2 per employee.
Homebase
Homebase is primarily a scheduling tool, making it a fantastic choice for managing hourly workers. Its free basic plan offers a fairly robust set of features, including the ability to add up to 20 employees; scheduling, time tracking and employee management tools; point-of-sale integration; and payroll as an add-on for $39 a month plus $6 per employee.
Gusto
Gusto’s automation is particularly helpful and efficient, but the software is on the more expensive side. Its pricing starts at $40 per month, which gets you unlimited payrolls, bonus payments, off-cycle and multi-state payrolls, automated tax filings for W-2 and 1099 workers, an employee self-serve portal, health and financial benefits, two- or four-day direct deposits and payroll and time-off reporting.
Learn more about Gusto and how it compares to Rippling in our Gusto vs. Rippling comparison guide.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
While Rippling is our pick for the best payroll software provider, we’d particularly recommend the software for small- to medium-sized businesses looking to scale up, potentially even to a global level. It offers a wide and customizable suite of features that will cater to all HR, finance and information technology management needs, and the opportunity to create a bespoke plan is ideal for those willing to spend a little extra for a more robust software.
Rippling has excellent reviews on Trustpilot (with a 4.9 out of five-star rating), G2 (with a 4.8 out of five-star rating) and Capterra (also with a 4.9 out of five-star rating). It is particularly praised for its tailored approach to customer support, how easy its new hire onboarding process is and how intuitive it is to use the software. However, some users criticize the software for its slow response times and software feature glitches.
Some of the world’s biggest businesses use Rippling, including Starbucks, Standard Chartered Bank, Pizza Hut, Intel Corporation, Citigroup, Inc. and Motorola.
Blueprint is an independent publisher and comparison service, not an investment advisor. The information provided is for educational purposes only and we encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding specific financial decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Blueprint has an advertiser disclosure policy. The opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the Blueprint editorial staff alone. Blueprint adheres to strict editorial integrity standards. The information is accurate as of the publish date, but always check the provider’s website for the most current information.
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