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IBM Kenexa vs Zoho Recruit comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (12th), Talent Management (17th)
Zoho Recruit
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Video Interviewing Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho Recruit is 2.0%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zoho Recruit2.0%
IBM Kenexa2.1%
Other95.9%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

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.
NaveenKumar S - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Maximus
Automation has streamlined high-volume hiring while advanced analytics and parsing still need work
Zoho Recruit is an end-to-end ATS that covers requisitions, multi job postings, resume parsing, screening interviews, offers, and many other tools. It has strong automation features, including custom workflows, blueprints, assignments tools, scheduler, and macros to reduce manual efforts. It caters to higher volume roles, and it has a deep Zoho ecosystem where we can connect with native Zoho platforms like Zoho CRM, Zoho People, Zoho SignFlow, Analytics, Books, and Desk. The AI feature, Zia, is added for candidate matching, recommendations, and smart research that speeds up sourcing and shortlisting. The flexible customization includes career site and portal building that allows us to create branded career pages and employee referral portals, plus candidate self-service to reduce workflow. The API, webhook, and Deluge options are available to integrate with any applications using REST API calls and extend these functionalities to connect with external systems and automate custom logic, fitting my Deluge skills. I integrate Zoho Recruit with Dynamics 360 and the Microsoft platform. For my company, we integrate with 360 for the data migration from Dynamics 360 to Zoho Recruit.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Kenexa is fairly stable, and we don't have any downtime."
"We felt like Kenexa was robust enough and dynamic enough that it met our needs, so it didn't make sense for us to disrupt 700 locations and reteach them something."
"Without this solution, we would have more administrative functions and would need to hire more HR employees."
"Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product and is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools."
"We use the Viewpoint and that is an absolutely powerful tool; it is extremely helpful to get more insights, and to start a conversation with our employees to grow and improve."
"The ease of scaling is one of BrassRing's biggest strengths, making it a trusted choice for large companies."
"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."
"Of all the current talent analytics offerings on the market today, IBM Kenexa Talent Insights is the most comprehensive end-to-end, data-agnostic analytics tool."
"The installation process isn't very complicated."
"Apart from the UI being very friendly, the workflow and the integrations are excellent."
"Simple to use, and a comprehensive enough recruitment management tool, easy to acquire and cost-effective to use, and can cover multiple teams, regions, and skills."
"The pricing seems to be very reasonable."
"One of the features that I really like is that it's very administratively user-friendly. It is easy to add new managers into the system. It's very easy to switch and add regional capability, for instance. Zoho has put a lot of time into the administrative side to make it functional, which was a huge highlight for me and my team. Zoho's reporting functionality is good. It is easy to run lists in Excel, including dashboard reports, to determine if we are hiring accurately. We were able to tweak and improve our recruitment and hiring functions."
"The solution is secure and also very user friendly."
"The solution is very user-friendly and it's really easy to work with even when you don't have technical skills."
"The most valuable feature of Zoho Recruit is I can compete with the larger vendors in the business. I am constantly changing the configuration and the solution adapts to my needs."
 

Cons

"The downside of Kenexa is that they're constantly reinventing, so they have constant releases with new features and upgrades. The downside of that is that they do experience fairly regular issues with stability that they're not always as quick to respond to as we'd like them to."
"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."
"The price can always be better. Right now, we can only do part of that, but not as much as I want to."
"The user interface could do with an overhaul."
"The reason I’m not rating it with five stars is because of its sheer size."
"It needs to update its reporting and analytics tools."
"IBM Kenexa has a lot of room for improvement. The solution is not advancing anymore in terms of the user experience and in the workflows."
"The reporting feature currently is our biggest struggle point; getting the data we need and in the fashion that we need it is a current struggle point for us."
"Its automation is currently complicated, and it could be better. The biggest problem is that their instructions, videos, and documentation are terrible. These should be improved. I would like to see an email tracking feature and an option to find email addresses and leads."
"It lacks the functionality for finalizing the process when a successful placement is made. There is no invoicing. It is missing the functionality for setting the placement and a start date. I do permanent placements as well as contractors, but it is not really geared towards contractors. So, I have to have a separate solution to manage contractors, timesheets, and things like that. It is just a bit of a pain. It is not as simple as some of the competitors, but it is far more able. There is a lot more to it, and it does a lot more than what any of the competitors currently do, which makes it a little bit more complicated to use, but it is easy enough. None of my staff have any issues. In all such solutions, you have to feed more than what they give you. It is a database at the end of the day, and I would like it to give me things. I would like to load a lead or get someone to just load leads all day, and I would like it to come back to me and say, "There's this position that you've loaded, and these candidates match. Can I send it?" I'd like it to be a little bit more proactive and feed me as much information as I feed it."
"There is a limit to the number of lines you can extract, I think it's about 600 lines."
"It lacks the functionality for finalizing the process when a successful placement is made. There is no invoicing."
"I do not rely on the technical support because they do not always fully understand the issue and they also rely on their Deluge developer."
"Candidate filtering is a little cumbersome. I would love to see all the design and effort Zoho put in to the administrative user experience also be applied to the manager experience side. Quite a bit of filtering has to be done to get to what you want. Also, you can't get through many candidates because Zoho Recruit has a cap on how many candidates you can view at a time. If you've got hundreds of candidates per job, you may have to scroll through 10 pages."
"I would like them to improve their UX and UI. The front screen or the home page is dull. The tools in the marketplace have flashy home pages and a very funky style. I think that's one area that they can improve. In the future, I would like an option to integrate Zoho by default with other tools, specifically the HR tools. I would love it if I could convert the candidates directly from Zoho. That would be a huge help. They have a paid extension, but it doesn't work well during the trial period."
"Zoho Recruit could benefit from increased flexibility and customization when creating and sending offer letters to new recruits."
 

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."
"Zoho Recruit is an affordable solution in comparison to BambooHR and costs relatively the same as Greenhouse implementation wise. It costs less than $100 per user. Large organizations will be able to get enterprise pricing, and Zoho is transparent with their pricing."
"The more you scale the solution the more it will cost. If you want the vendor to do the implementation or migration there are extra fees."
"It is in the middle price range. Everything is included in the price."
"In terms of cost, Zoho is by far the most reasonable for what you're getting. You get the option of monthly or yearly price. It is one cost per person for a license, and it is reasonable. My solutions are $50 per person per month."
"The cost of each user depends on the size of our user base."
"I think it costs about $40 per month for a recruiter account. It comes with ten free accounts. It's well worth the money we are paying."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
University
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Zoho Recruit?
The cons of Zoho Recruit include the admin learning curve and the time needed to design and govern advanced workflows and blueprints correctly. Some key features, including advanced automations and...
What is your primary use case for Zoho Recruit?
I have been working with Zoho Recruit for the last two years. In the previous platform, I worked with many platforms, but within the last 12 months, I have only been working with Zoho Creator, Zoho...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho Recruit?
I find Zoho Recruit to be a little expensive compared to other platforms. They have two editions: the Standard Edition, which is affordable, and the Enterprise Edition, which is a bit pricey.
 

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
Manning Global, Hadfield Education, GEP, Scientific Games, International School of London - Qatar, IIM - Ahemadabad, Change.org
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kenexa vs. Zoho Recruit and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.