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SmartRecruiters vs Zoho Recruit comparison

 

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

SmartRecruiters
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (7th)
Zoho Recruit
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Video Interviewing Software (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 7.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho Recruit is 3.8%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

Anudeep Kamuni - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently automates tasks but lacks certain features in terms of usability
There are a couple of areas of improvement. SmartRecruiter lacks certain features in terms of usability. For instance, we cannot move candidate profiles, interview feedback, notes, and activities related to one candidate when transitioning from one job to another. We have to manually copy and paste everything for that specific candidate. This is a significant drawback. Additionally, the filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager. This level of inaccuracy is unexpected for an application, especially for smaller organizations. It should have been corrected easily. Moreover, the CRM module lacks video reporting capabilities. These are some the biggest improvement I would like to see.
AdnanNasir - PeerSpot reviewer
An all-in-one Applicant Tracking System (ATS) with a useful mass customization feature and good customer service
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a neat functionality built in where it rates candidates. So, before you even look at the resume, you see a rating, and it is based on keywords. For example, it will tell you that an applicant is a frontend engineer and has used React, Angular, etc. It gives you a heads up so that you don't have to go through a hundred resumes on Monday morning eliminating applicants. It will tell you that this applicant's skills match 87%, which is pretty neat. You can skip the ones that are rated 25% or something."
"With just a click of a button, we can manage the process. Even generating offer letters and obtaining electronic signatures through DocSign are integrated into this application."
"I used the free version, which I found valuable."
"Job publishing and application tracking are the most valuable features. You can keep the flow of a candidate's application into one system. The whole collaboration can also be done within the system, which means that you can schedule interviews and add your feedback and ratings there. You can also communicate with the candidates. The analytics part of it is also very valuable. It is a useful feature that we use quite a lot. We don't really use other features such as recruitment marketing or CRM candidate relationship management in SmartRecruiters."
"The most valuable feature is the way that they've set it up for collaboration."
"The candidate experience was better because the whole process was there."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool."
"I found the core product quite useful. It is easy to use and quite user-friendly. They have also got other options, such as CRM and HRS. They have other versions such as smart distribute, which is an HRS type of system to analyze and get permissions needed from the applicants. In terms of pricing, SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors."
"The installation process isn't very complicated."
"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 provides the ability to integrate with other Zoho apps, allowing us to automate the hiring process."
"There are two features I love in Zoho Recruit. The first one is mass customization. I can customize the blueprint how I like, add some steps I want to include, and schedule a date and time to send the emails. I can also use a lot of templates. Secondly, the best thing about Zoho is the customer service. Whenever I have an issue or want to upgrade something, I text them through Zoho, and they respond within 40 seconds."
"The CV parsing feature is the most valuable. It can parse resumes for the database. It is easy to deploy, and it is also stable and scalable. Its support is also good."
"Good reporting feature."
"The pricing seems to be very reasonable."
"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

"Around 2015 and into '17, I worked at a federal contractor. I had to switch to a different applicant system as I didn't know if SmartRecruiters was OFCCP compliant, which is something that, as a US-based federal contractor, you have to ensure. They should work to appeal to the contractor industry and get the product OFCCP compliant."
"There were problems with integrations around other systems and each one had to be custom-built, which took a little while to get set up and running."
"I don't see the integration of SmartRecruiters with SAP happening quite seamlessly, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The solution's reporting feature could be improved because it is not very strong."
"SmartRecruiters' on-click application process could be better."
"We require greater flexibility for customization with our employer branding. Currently, it is very much driven by the SmartRecruiters design. We are using a SaaS solution, so we are powered by what is in the core product itself. A disadvantage of being a SaaS solution is that there aren't many customization options because you are literally buying it out of the box. You use whatever is offered to you in a box as much as you can, and that might be a problem sometimes because customizations are not achievable. They should definitely improve and provide more flexibility for customizations. For a large organization like ours, they can provide more flexibility on the authorization side of things. They could create a much more flexible way of access and separate the IT or help desk access when they need to go into the system and do some fixes. Currently, it is set up in a way that that you have access for everything or nothing, which is not useful in terms of the separation of duty that we have. There are also other things like matrix, where we can have a better and deeper kind of analysis."
"The filters are not accurate. The results are inaccurate when filtering multiple criteria, such as country and hiring manager."
"The solution needs to work on a single sign-on."
"Zoho Recruit could improve in the ease of use because you need to know how to do scripting or coding to receive some of the functionality in the back end. For example, AI and automation need scripting and coding."
"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."
"Zoho Recruit could benefit from increased flexibility and customization when creating and sending offer letters to new recruits."
"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."
"There's a bit of a learning curve."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There were implementation costs in the first year to get everything set up and running, and then they have various modules on top, which are optional and available at an extra charge."
"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."
"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."
"They are pretty competitive. As the product matures, it has much more functionality and different pricing models. It can relatively cost a lot more if you want to use additional features, but, in general, it is competitive in the industry. We work on a yearly license agreement based on the company size. There are the support costs, which are a part of the additional cost based on the percentage of the licensing fee. So, it has a license plus support cost. Then, of course, there are other add-on options that we can purchase and procure whenever we want to based on certain negotiated arrangements."
"Back in 2018, when I engaged with their sales, they wanted to charge around $10,000 for an annual subscription. Depending on your organization, that either could or couldn't be expensive. I personally think it's a fair price. However, I engaged them and negotiated a lower price with them. I think I got closer to $6,000. It came with a commitment of three years."
"I haven't been so involved with pricing, so I don't have all details, but I know that we are paying per head when it comes to different countries. There is an additional fee for new features that they release. If it is something that we would like to use, we need to pay some extra for it."
"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors. Considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market. Others may offer a similar price, but their services won't be that good or the user-friendliness won't be that great. The licensing works based on how many users are there in a company. If you are using other functionalities, like CRM and HRS, the price increases."
"It is in the middle price range. Everything is included in the price."
"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."
"The cost of each user depends on the size of our user base."
"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."
"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."
"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
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Computer Software Company
24%
Construction Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SmartRecruiters?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool.
What needs improvement with SmartRecruiters?
With SmartRecruiters, compatibility with other HRIS systems is an area with certain shortcomings that require improvement. SmartRecruiters is a tool that we use as an ATS platform in our company, b...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers
Manning Global, Hadfield Education, GEP, Scientific Games, International School of London - Qatar, IIM - Ahemadabad, Change.org
Find out what your peers are saying about SmartRecruiters vs. Zoho Recruit and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.