No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Kenexa vs PageUp People comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Talent Management
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (13th), Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (8th)
PageUp People
Ranking in Talent Management
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Talent Management category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PageUp People is 1.3%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Kenexa1.6%
PageUp People1.3%
Other97.1%
Talent Management
 

Featured Reviews

Karan Grover - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally
The deployment of the solution took between six to eight months. When we introduced BrassRing at my company, we encountered several challenges. First, moving data from our old system to BrassRing was tough because it needed reformatting. Second, connecting BrassRing with our HR data was tricky due to manual processes for roles and departments. Third, setting up the workflow in BrassRing was complex. Fourth, configuring user access and approval levels was a detailed task. We also had to manage the change process, including running both old and new systems in parallel, communicating changes, and training users. Lastly, monitoring and reporting were needed to ensure data accuracy and proper system usage once everything was in place. We had a team of six to eight people managing the project from our side during the BrassRing deployment. I'm not sure about the size of the BrassRing team, and we also had our own technical team, which had three to four members. The solution required maintenance, particularly from my side as the administrator. Maintenance responsibilities were divided into two parts: some tasks we, as end-users, could control, while others were the responsibility of the BrassRing team. Payment-related tasks were a regular part of our responsibilities. I wasn't the only person maintaining the solution. There were three power users from Infosys, each responsible for a specific geography. My counterpart managed it in the US, and I, along with my colleague in India, managed it for other geographies.
CG
Director at Edge HR
Has all-inclusive pricing and good talent acquisition and onboarding components, and is an excellent product for mid-sized to large organizations
They could probably add surveying, as in engagement surveys, to their product. That would be something that would be valued by their customers. For instance, Culture Amp is a product that does a lot of the engagement stuff. They're diversifying into other aspects of talent management. It is not yet at the same scale as PageUp People, but it is an excellent product as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would say the support that we get from the CSMs is the most valuable for me right now, because I'm still leaning on them pretty heavily to understand everything that I'm doing within the system."
"It is extremely user friendly. It is very flexible in managing recruitment, especially when you have thousands of applicants as we did. We easily had over 20,000 applicants within a year for some of our positions, so it made it very easy to manage a large application pool. It was very easy to customize by recruiter preference. When you open up someone's profile to see their experience, education, or other things, you can customize that for yourself. It was flexible in that, and each recruiter could set up their preferences. It didn't have to be set up so that everyone had to have the same landing platform, which was very helpful. As someone who trained other HR people on how to use the system, it was very easy to pick up and learn."
"I would definitely and highly recommend the applicant tracking system."
"The ability now to be able to take data, load it yourself, ask the business questions and get the answers on your own process with the business just made it a lot faster, and the cognitive solution gives us some insights for us to think about."
"For us in particular, I love how configurable the system is; I can use the same technology for different parts of my business."
"Great value and flexibility in an ATS, mainly through the automation and the configuration through Workbench you can do to manipulate the candidate experience to really be something that candidates like and allows them to apply to your site easily and put them in a pipeline for recruiters to access and move through a process and get somebody hired."
"The most valuable features are that we can upload documents and download them on demand."
"I like how we can copy a req as we have many duplicates, which saved a lot of time when opening reqs."
"If you are looking for a product with great support, recruitment functionality, ease-of-use, and reliability, this is a great product."
"PageUp has allowed us to integrate all HR systems and manage all processes associated with the employee lifecycle from recruitment through to managing performance, learning and development; also where applicable, departures from the organisation processes."
"It is a reliable, simple to use, end-to-end system for employee lifecycle management."
"I loved that function, as it made it SO much easier to work out the logistics of those days, and allowing candidates to book their own time slot was a lifesaver as it would have been a nightmare trying to do it for them."
"It provides a centralised repository of information for various HR functions."
"The talent acquisition and the onboarding components of the system are most valuable."
"Once automated through the system, the approval timeframe decreased to two days."
"PageUp has a different model from other organizations; as part of their pricing structure, they tend to work with you very closely and not charge you for the setup, so there is one price all inclusive of setup, and for that reason, they become an attractive provider to work with."
 

Cons

"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"My rating is not higher because of the support, honestly; the global service center model."
"2xO was created by brain-damaged monkeys in front of keyboards."
"I would say that it could likely be made slightly easier to consume and work with - less scientific or engineering oriented - but IBM Kenexa Talent Insights is about the most powerful and useful tool I've seen."
"Maybe there's some room for improvement in the functionality around the actual tools that we build with."
"Technical support was not always great. They tend to push you towards workbench admins or paid support."
"I get a real sense of frustration when you see the kind of customer insight teams and what they can do and then you look at the colleague insights teams, which I'm leading on as well, and seeing there's a gap and we need to close that gap."
"Being in a silo of my own world, my wish would be that everything that's available in their legacy views would be moved into their new Talent Suite products, so we could move over to that."
"They could probably add surveying, as in engagement surveys, to their product. That would be something that would be valued by their customers. For instance, Culture Amp is a product that does a lot of the engagement stuff. They're diversifying into other aspects of talent management. It is not yet at the same scale as PageUp People, but it is an excellent product as well."
"The automated removal of historical data would be great if the user could remove it on an ad-hoc basis when required."
"There are sometimes problems when loading the system; it can be very slow."
"Initially, we experienced issues with the stability of the learning management module as we migrated 50,000+ existing training records from our old system."
"It is probably not as scalable as SAP SuccessFactors or other talent management systems that are available in the global marketplace."
"In the Boolean search functions, I would like to be able to search CVs in regards to the skills using the AND/OR functions as well as keywords."
"The ability to pull reports was limited for us."
"The on-boarding process, with specific relation to the provisioning process, isn’t set up as well as other competitors, such as RedCarpet (SilkRoad)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kenexa was fairly priced. However, in 2019, before I left my previous organization, they significantly increased their pricing. It can be affordable, but their pricing is going up. It is not just licensing; it is how many applicants you have in your system on the database side."
"PageUp has a different model from other organizations. As part of their pricing structure, they tend to work with you very closely and not charge you for the setup. So, there is one price all inclusive of setup, and for that reason, they become an attractive provider to work with. Here in Australia, the education sector has gravitated very heavily towards PageUp."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Talent Management solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
25%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sweet Spot International (SSI), Leo Burnett Worldwide (LBW), Sika AG, Legacy Health, Apollo Group Inc., Regeneron, Transurban Group, National Health Service, New Zealand Police, Overland Footwear, Yealands, Johnson Controls, Allscripts, Kerry Foods, Masterpet, AMD, Balfour Beatty
MYER, Target, coles, Fujitsu, Michael Hill
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kenexa vs. PageUp People and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.