If you work in HR at a mid-market company (50-500 employees), chances are you have received sales outreach from a variety of different HRIS providers.

It can be hard to distinguish one vendor from the next, especially when you already have a busy full-time job.

If you're looking for a comprehensive review of the market and recommendations on the best option for your business, reach out to OutSail and request a free vendor shortlist report.

Looking for hard-to-find HRIS pricing data? Get precise estimates with our app.

In this series of blog posts, we're going to provide head-to-head comparisons of leading options in the market. The first comparison we will review is comparing ADP vs Paycom, highlighting the differences in each company's pricing, user experience, integration capabilities and more.

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ADP

• Founded in 1949
• Headquarters in Roseland, NJ
• ~810,000 customers
• ~58,000 employees
  

Paycom

• Founded in 1998
• Headquarters in Oklahoma City, OK
• ~19,000 customers
• ~3,800 employees

Best Front-End Interface

Paycom. While neither company is on the cutting edge when it comes to their front-end user interfaces, the slight edge goes to Paycom for their mobile app which allows users to complete every task from their phone. (Most HRIS mobile apps have limited functionality and require certain tasks be done on a desktop)

Best for Managed Services

ADP. One of ADP's biggest differentiators in the marketplace is their ability to provide outsourced services to businesses that don't want to be trapped managing back office, lower value tasks. ADP's Comprehensive Services model provides outsourced payroll processing, benefits enrollment and compliance management options to businesses

Best for Integrations

ADP. ADP has put quite a bit of work into their integration marketplace over the last decade. They have pre-built API connections with many leading vendors, such as Greenhouse, Lattice and JazzHR. Even despite all of their efforts, the ADP integration experience still can be flawed due to their older product architecture. However, Paycom does not prioritize 3rd party integrations and is one of the lowest ranked options in the market for integrations.

Best for Customer Support

Paycom. Once they're live in the system, Paycom customers have a single point of contact throughout their customer experience. There are no ticketing systems and rarely does a customer get passed off to someone else. This is a stark difference from the ADP model which can involve many points of contact and long ticketing queues.

Best for Core HR

Tie. Both companies started off as payroll companies and have a strong historical strength there. Given their size and experience, ADP has incredible depth when it comes to payroll, tax filing and benefits carrier connections. However, Paycom's product evolution has relied on fewer third parties than ADP's, which leads to a more unified and integrated system with less need for manual data re-entry.

Most Cost-Effective

Tie. ADP and Paycom are often priced in the mid-to-high range of HRIS options. A full suite system can typically cost businesses anywhere from $20-28 PEPM. ADP can often get more aggressive on pricing. Both are relatively comparable on the implementation side. Additionally, both have frustratingly hard to understand invoices that can include higher fees.

Best for Global Companies

ADP. Both companies can serve as a global system of record. However, ADP owns their own payroll aggregator (Celergo) and has offices around the globe. Paycom's support for global companies typically is limited to storing international employees.

Best for Scalability

Tie. Both companies focus on serving the mid-market and the lion's share of their customers have between 50-500 employees. Both companies also can claim some large enterprises in their customer base. Each one offers some workflow builder tools that can allow business processes to scale up. ADP's payroll module can scale up much higher, but the all-in-one system from each vendor tops out around ~750 employees.