How Much Does ADP Workforce Now Cost?

Explore ADP Workforce Now costs and modules with OutSail: Ideal for mid-market companies, offering full-suite HR tools from $18-27 PEPM, plus additional service options.

Brett Ungashick
OutSail HRIS Advisor
July 4, 2023
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ADP

How Much Does ADP Cost?

Note: ADP offers numerous software platforms, but their flagship solution is ADP Workforce Now. That is the system that is being referred to throughout this article.

ADP charges companies on a per employee per month basis. A typical ADP Workforce Now subscription can cost anywhere from $18-27 PEPM, depending on the size of your company and the modules included in your scope.

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ADP also offers outsourced compliance, payroll and benefits services, called Comprehensive Services. When those costs are included, the total can range from $30-50 PEPM.

In addition to the software fees, ADP will typically charge a one-time implementation fee. ADP's implementation fees are typically about 10-20% of the annual software fees (i.e., $10-20K implementation fee on a $100K annual purchase)

What Modules Are Included with ADP Workforce Now?
  • Payroll & Tax
  • Benefits Administration
  • HR / Employee Files
  • Time & Attendance
  • Onboarding
  • Recruiting / ATS
  • Performance
  • Compensation
  • Learning

ADP Workforce Now can serve as a full-suite, one-stop-shop for most businesses offering a broad set of tools covering both Core HR (payroll, benefits admin, time & attendance, HRIS) and Talent Management (recruiting, performance, comp, learning). In addition to their software offerings, ADP can also provide managed services that allow companies to outsource back office tasks like payroll processing, benefits management and compliance tracking.

Who is ADP?

ADP often doesn't need an introduction. They are the world's largest payroll provider. Nearly 1 in every 6 Americans has their payroll processed by ADP and the US government uses ADP's data to determine the unemployment rate.

While ADP has a well-known specialization in payroll, they have continued to invest and grow their HR management capabilities. Workforce Now is their flagship HRIS platform and is used by companies as small as 30 employees and as large as 300,000.

One of the unique things about ADP is the breadth of ancillary services that they can provide, compared to their HRIS peers. ADP's offers a full PEO offering and outsourced services - called Comp Services.

See How ADP Stacks Up: Interested in how ADP compares to the competition on cost, features, and more? Visit the HRIS Marketplace for a side-by-side comparison.

What Sized Companies Fit ADP Best?

ADP Workforce Now is considered a Mid-Market HRIS, which means the system works best for companies with between 75 and 750 employees. Mid-Market solutions are designed to be an all-in-one HRIS for companies with fairly standard HR requirements.

Mid-Market solutions typically take about 3 months to implement and do not require external consultants to successfully implement and manage the solutions. Mid-Market solutions can be limited in how scalable they are, due to a lack of custom workflow tools and limited rules engines.

Pros & Cons of ADP Workforce Now
Strengths of ADP
  • ADP has a strong Core HR offering (Payroll, Time, Benefits) that is used by some of the world’s largest companies
  • Their payroll & tax services have some of the industry’s best domain expertise
  • ADP offers outsourced services that can fully manage payroll, benefits and compliance, allowing HR teams to move towards more strategic work. This is often a big selling point for companies leaving PEOs
  • Due to their large customer base, WorkforceNow’s reporting can benchmark users against peers in their industry and size
  • ADP recently revamped their mobile app which delivers a much better employee experience and increases employee self-service
  • ADP has recently opened up their API’s and offers pre-built integrations with leading ATS’s, LMS’s and performance tools
Concerns with ADP Workforce Now
  • ADP’s customer support can leave something to be desired in terms of resolutions and timeliness, due to how large the company is and their numerous support divisions. This concern is less for companies that use ADP’s outsourced services
  • Although ADP offers quite a bit of functionality, the platform can be rigid and hard to customize for some users, leading customers to have to adopt processes to fit ADP’s way of working.
  • ADP’s pricing is not always transparent and it can be hard to understand the monthly invoice and their variable costs
  • ADP offers four different HRIS platforms, which can lead to slower innovation cycles as development resources aren’t focused on a singular product
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Meet the Author

Brett Ungashick
OutSail HRIS Advisor
Brett Ungashick, the friendly face behind OutSail, started his career at LinkedIn, selling HR software. This experience sparked an idea, leading him to create OutSail in 2018. Based in Denver, OutSail simplifies the HR software selection process, and Brett's hands-on approach has already helped over 1,000 companies, including SalesLoft, Hudl and DoorDash. He's a go-to guy for all things HR Tech, supporting companies in every industry and across 20+ countries. When he's not demystifying HR tech, you'll find Brett enjoying a round of golf or skiing down Colorado's slopes, always happy to chat about work or play.

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