ADP Workforce Now vs Workday comparison

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ADP Workforce Now

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Workday and ADP Workforce Now are two leading solutions in the human resources management category. Workday appears to have the upper hand in comprehensive features and integration capabilities, while ADP Workforce Now is preferred for payroll and flexibility in pricing.

Features: Workday offers comprehensive HCM functionalities, ease of integration, and a user-friendly interface, making it suitable for automating benefits enrollment and ensuring compliance. It also features extensive reporting and a unified HR platform design. ADP Workforce Now excels in payroll management, performance monitoring, and offers customizable reports, though it lacks the same integration depth as Workday.

Room for Improvement: Workday can expand its analytic capabilities, improve mobile app support, and extend payroll functionalities globally. Users also face challenges with complex reporting and workflow configuration flexibility. ADP Workforce Now needs to enhance international payroll processing, improve custom reporting options, and simplify the user interface for smaller businesses, as complexity can be a hurdle for some users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Workday offers flexible deployment in public, private, and hybrid cloud settings, with robust community support, although response times can be delayed. ADP Workforce Now is typically deployed on public or private clouds and is praised for responsive technical support and helpful community resources, but may require more external support for customization.

Pricing and ROI: Workday is known for high pricing, similar to luxury products, based on headcount and module selection, but often provides substantial ROI through process efficiencies. ADP Workforce Now's pricing is premium, tiered by employee usage and capabilities; while it provides good functionality, users sometimes find the cost high without matching value in customer support or feature enhancements.

To learn more, read our detailed ADP Workforce Now vs. Workday Report (Updated: March 2026).

ADP Workforce Now vs. Workday

March 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

ADP Workforce Now

Ranking in Benefits Administration

7th

Ranking in Talent Management

17th

Ranking in Cloud HCM

11th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

HR Analytics Software (5th)

Workday

Ranking in Benefits Administration

1st

Ranking in Talent Management

2nd

Ranking in Cloud HCM

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Talent Acquisition (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of ADP Workforce Now is 2.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 10.5%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Workday	10.5%
ADP Workforce Now	2.1%
Other	87.4%

Cloud HCM

Q&A Highlights

it_user477510

VP, Chief Information Officer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 12, 2016

Compare ADP WFN vs Workday for Payroll Administration & Processing

https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/adp-workforce-now-2016-01-08-11-09-24 That's my guideline from; My Mentor Christopher Carey, HRIP

Custom reporting tool with field grabber, easy modules for recruitment and provides numerous options for integration

Featured Reviews

Vineeth John

Director, People & Culture at a agriculture with 201-500 employees

The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP because it has all the bells and whistles and all the key features you can possibly think of. If it isn't there, there's always a third-party vendor you can integrate that way. But the only issue is that because it's complex, there needs to be some sort of system, at least on the back end, for the admins to understand what leads to what. We expect AI to improve multiple things with HR processes. The most obvious and common one would be the self-service function for employees, like a chatbot to help with FAQs. We are also building an AI tool that can possibly help managers make better talent management decisions. This tool will pull from the performance management tool, the talent profile, and the reports that we generally have to score employees across all different dimensions.

Read full review

Eslam Abo Elnaga

Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo

Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support

There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features are the reporting and benefits piece."

"In my day-to-day work, attendance tracking would be most important. That's because I have a really diverse group of employees, and I have a subset of younger folks who are struggling with their attendance. So, that's the thing that I'm most involved with currently."

"The most interesting feature for me on ADP is the custom reporting tool. It's got something called a field grabber, which makes it so much easier to generate your own custom reports simply by pulling tabs from any feature."

"The platform is on a private cloud that is fully secure with no way for hacker penetration."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The most valuable feature to me is performance management because we just started using that."

"The way that ADP helped us improve our organization is by making the payroll process clean and efficient because if you make a mistake there, you're in big trouble."

"The interface of Workday is superior; it is easy and clear, everything is organized effectively, and I enjoy using Workday extensively."

"I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees."

"Workday's best features are planning and finance."

"There is a lot to like about it. I really enjoy the business process framework. It's something that's really seamless. It allows you to have people within the flow. They get assigned a task to complete something to approve, etc. That's a really good piece of functionality that Workday offers. Their out-of-the-box reporting framework is also really powerful in terms of what it provides. These would be two things that I would highlight."

"The most helpful Workday features for our HR processes were in HCM, particularly in areas like talent, compensation, benefits, and learning."

"It's actually a cloud-native solution and based on the community for development. It is a very good open architecture and able to interconnect with other systems. And it is very stable and very fast in terms of response."

"It is a one-stop solution for everything. You can look for information about other employees or you can track your information. There is a directory, so you can search for other employees. You can also see and track your personal details and salary details on the employee profile page."

"It is easy to use and straightforward."

More Workday pros

Cons

"The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP ."

"The ease of developing and creating reports could definitely use some improvement."

"I would like to see the payroll side improved and there are a few kinks that need to be worked out."

"When I'm not working with the implementation team and I'm just talking to customer service or something, they're just not a lot of help. They don't understand how it works. They'll tell you to do something that I know would affect something else. So, it's less about the software and more about just training their folks to a higher level."

"Its benefits portal could be user-friendly."

"The report functionality is not as good as competitive products."

"I would really like to see a more robust timekeeping solution in Workday. Currently, most organizations are using Kronos for timekeeping and Workday for HR data. They then integrate Workday with Dimensions to manage time-related activities and payroll processing."

"For time management, it does not have a calendar generator. For example, if you want to have a shift calendar for an entire year, you need to push the entire year's calendar into the system instead of being able to generate it using a time management pattern."

"The UI, UX (user experience) is very bad. It is not very interactive."

"My only suggestion might be to include a brief description of any new fields we introduce, making it easier for people to use them. Perhaps this is something they can consider implementing."

"The user interface can be enhanced."

"There could be a web-based application for making payments to the employees."

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"The security console should be made less complex."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"I give the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The solution is expensive and everyone complains about the price."

"I know some of what we're currently paying. Most customers would say it's too high, but I don't have a comparison to know that."

"It is expensive."

"The pricing is expensive and I would say it is below average for the value it provides based on the high cost."

"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."

"You have the license fee per module, and then you have a kind of annual training fee, which is a kind of add-on. I wouldn't say it is exhaustive; it is minor. Licensing is pretty transparent for most of the part."

"It is on a yearly basis."

"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."

"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."

"I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten."

"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."

"Workday is an expensive solution."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	42

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ADP Workforce Now?

The licensing is on the pricer side, given that there aren't a lot of other tools out there that are applicable, we just decided to go ahead with ADP anyway. I would definitely recommend ADP to oth...

What needs improvement with ADP Workforce Now?

What advice do you have for others considering ADP Workforce Now?

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It's got a lot of features. The reason I'm not giving it a full score is largely due to the complexity and the customer service.

What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?

Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...

What do you like most about Workday?

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?

If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...

ADP GlobalView Payroll vs ADP Workforce Now

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Compared 23% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Workday

Compared 8% of the time

UKG vs Workday

Compared 8% of the time

SAP HCM vs Workday

Compared 7% of the time

Dayforce HCM vs Workday

Compared 5% of the time

More Workday Competitors

Product Reports

Download ADP Workforce Now product report

ADP Workforce Now

March 2026

Download Workday product report

February 2026

Overview

ADP Workforce Now is a web-based, complete HR suite that integrates the essential payroll and human resource management procedures into a single database-driven platform. This safe and simple solution gives you everything you need to maximize your workforce and communicate with your staff.

ADP Workforce Now is designed specifically for your company's needs. As a result, the menus and menu selections you see will differ depending on your function and the services your firm uses. As a portal administrator, you customize the site and control what employees can view and do. You can design your site's theme, set approval and notification processes, and manage security groups.

ADP Workforce Now includes these useful capabilities:

Payroll computation and tax filing
Performance regulation
Compensation handling
Talent acquisition
Time and labor logistics
Benefits governance
Analytics
Total management of human resources

ADP Workforce Now Features

ADP Workforce Now has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Single dashboard, single database: Manage your whole workforce from a single dashboard, which is powered by a single database, ensuring that the relevant data is always available when you need it.
- Get a complete HR suite that includes payroll, time, HR, talent, and benefits all in one place.
- Enter data once and it will function across all workflows
- With proactive error detection and can't-miss alerts, you can cut down on mistakes.
- Protect your business with enterprise-grade data security privacy procedures and extensive compliance experience.

Powerful analytics and reporting: With a single database that connects your entire firm, you can access all of your data in one location.
- Create better reports in less time, without ever leaving the page you're on.
- Make use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to help you make confident decisions based on personalized information.

Robust management of HR: Spend less time on paperwork and more time on managing and improving your employees.
- Workflows can be customized, and documents can be stored online.
- Self-service functionalities enable employees and supervisors to be more productive and collaborative.
Customized service and implementation: ADP Workforce Now offers community and chat support and a dedicated implementation team.

In-house implementation by a team of professionals who understand how to optimize the solution for your industry.
For all your questions, ADP Workforce Now offers quick response support, training, and in-product resources.
Client-service specialists with years of experience offer deep knowledge and skills to assist, secure, and support your business.
Flexible service choices can assist your company in navigating strategic and tactical changes, as well as continual system optimization.

ADP

The Workday Platform is an AI-powered platform that unifies HR, financial, and operational data, enabling seamless planning, execution, and analysis. It improves decision-making, streamlines cross-team processes, and leverages Workday Illuminate™ for advanced AI insights from vast HR and finance datasets. Workday empowers organizations of all sizes to innovate and optimize performance.

Sample Customers

Lawrence and Schiller, The Children's Center, The Kansas City Royals

AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!