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ADP Workforce Now vs Workday comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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
15th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
12
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
6.7
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of ADP Workforce Now is 2.2%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 8.6%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workday8.6%
ADP Workforce Now2.2%
Other89.2%
Cloud HCM
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user477510 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Chief Information Officer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jul 12, 2016
 

Featured Reviews

Vineeth John - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, People & Culture at a agriculture with 201-500 employees
Custom reporting tool with field grabber, easy modules for recruitment and provides numerous options for integration
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.
Eslam Abo Elnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 platform is on a private cloud that is fully secure with no way for hacker penetration."
"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."
"Payroll: It is very easy and user-friendly."
"It is hard to go wrong with choosing ADP as a solution for nearly any company."
"The most valuable features are the reporting and benefits piece."
"For small to mid-sized companies, Workforce Now is one of the better products on the market, clean with an easy interface that is simple to maneuver around, stable, and will continue to improve into the future."
"The most valuable feature to me is performance management because we just started using that."
"The solution is stable."
"Provides flexibility to integrate with the product. It has several tools, out-of-the-box, for integrations. It delivers pre-built interfaces for specific vendors, pre-built generic integrations to extract or push data into Workday through configuration."
"It is quite user-friendly, and we can store all the employee data information on it."
"Workday is a secure product."
"It is easy to use and straightforward."
"It was more efficient for the agents for their performance reviews, but when it came to HR and the recruitment team, it sometimes worked, and sometimes, it didn't work."
"Performance and good usability are the two most valuable features of this solution."
"The user interface is good and very easy to use."
 

Cons

"Their “new and improved” message center (where you get notifications and go to approve things like time off) is actually not as easy as it used to be."
"Its benefits portal could be user-friendly."
"Support leaves a lot to be desired."
"The workflow is a bit weak."
"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."
"ADP provides a quarterly Error Notification Report that allows you to check for compliance errors based on payments made to employees that quarter. The report only shows employees by their file #; however, the recent ADP upgrade has an "Archive" feature that makes it impossible to search for employees by file number so currently, there is no way to identify the employees listed on the report without calling ADP."
"The report functionality is not as good as competitive products."
"The Call Centre: The extension number takes too many digits to get through and the wait time is too long."
"The product must include payroll features."
"Reporting systems should be improved. If you want to report it on paper, if you want something more BI oriented, more high level predictive or more data-driven, it should be improved."
"Workday does not support many Korean language features. So, it will be great if they have some development on the Korean language side – then it will be really powerful in our market."
"It is very unique as compared to other tools in terms of the employee master data and how it is organized. That's why sometimes the information needs to sit in two different systems because, in Workday, it is organized differently. This issue is not related to benefits. It is more or so related to how you categorize employees. I don't think this is a problem that could be solved. Workday is aware of this. It is one of those kinds of situations that you just got to live with."
"The user interface could be modernized somehow."
"One area that could be improved with Workday is the analytics side."
"Workday could improve by adding other features, such as messaging to candidates and other recruiting capabilities that other new-age solutions have."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the pricing a seven out of ten."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is expensive."
"The solution is expensive and everyone complains about the price."
"The pricing is expensive and I would say it is below average for the value it provides based on the high cost."
"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."
"I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten."
"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."
"It's very, very expensive."
"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."
"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."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."
"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

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How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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!
Find out what your peers are saying about ADP Workforce Now vs. Workday and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.