The 10 Best Applicant Tracking Systems for Small Businesses in 2024

The best applicant tracking systems help you boost the speed and efficacy of your hiring process by automatically screening employees, noting down their responses to key questions, setting up interviews, and posting open job roles on platforms where the most capable candidates will see them. It’s highly recommended that you make use of an ATS solution in your business to take the onus of hiring off the shoulders of the top management.

However, with so many options, it’s difficult to zero in on an ideal ATS solution, which is why we’ve compared and reviewed the top names in the industry and prepared this guide of the 10 best applicant tracking systems where we’ve reviewed them thoroughly. Read on to learn why providers like TeamTailor and ClearCompany are top of our list after we compared all the tools across parameters like pricing, degree of automation, and customer support.

The 10 Best Small Business Applicant Tracking Systems 

All 10 ATS solutions that we’ve picked bring something fresh and unique to the table, which will surely boost your company’s hiring process. Here’s a quick round-up before we dive deeper into their reviews:

1. Teamtailor – The best overall applicant tracking system for small businesses offering class-leading customer support and onboarding of an unlimited number of users. It also comes with Smart Triggers and built-in video calling.
2. ClearCompany – Popular ATS solution for creating effective job descriptions with the help of Artificial Intelligence. You’ll also be able to send out bulk text messages and emails with just a few clicks.
3. Monday.com – One of the most affordable applicant tracking systems with tons of onboarding templates, a centralized dashboard, and custom workflows. Also, it comes with a free forever plan with 200+ templates.
4. Zoho Recruit – A powerful combination of ATS and Recruitment CRM software with class-leading candidate sourcing and employee referrals. The ability to collaborate with your colleagues in real-time and in one place is a huge plus.
5. BreezyHR – One of the best free applicant tracking systems with access to 50+ job boards and unlimited user onboarding. It also offers touchless pre-screening, and its Incognito Apply will keep bias at bay.
6. Manatal – A powerhouse for integrations with support for over 360 applications. We love its automated resume formatting and support for multiple languages, which ensures that everyone feels welcome.
7. Recruitee – Recruiting software for small businesses to reach out to the maximum number of candidates, thanks to its access to over 2,900 free and paid job boards. The support for unlimited users & data and two-factor authentication are the cherry on top.
8. Workable – Applicant tracking system with top-of-the-line customer support, with dedicated account managers. It also comes with anonymized screening and AI-powered candidate sourcing.
9. BambooHR – An all-purpose solution for all your hiring and employee management and tracking needs. It comes with a dedicated mobile app for hiring and allows you to customize the onboarding experience for a candidate.
10. JazzHR – An affordable ATS solution with class-leading feedback loops for collaborative hiring. Additional features include video screening and the ability to comment directly on the candidate’s profile.

The Importance of ATS for Small Businesses 

An Applicant Tracking System is either locally stored or cloud-based software that works wonders for streamlining and automating the hiring process for employers. Let’s look at some of its benefits for small businesses:

• Save time: Small businesses are hungry for growth, and as such, they’d benefit tremendously from an ATS as it’ll give them more time to work on the more critical aspects of the business by automatically screening and short-listing potential employees.
• Compliance with labor laws: The government has put in place multiple labor laws, like Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) regulations, which employers must follow while hiring. Competent ATS solutions will ensure your company abides, as they come with these laws pre-loaded into their systems.
• Improved applicant experience: By swiftly carrying out tasks such as sending out follow-up emails and scheduling interviews, ATS solutions help you enhance a candidate’s experience with your company and, thereby, your brand image in the process.
• Faster filling of positions: With the help of an ATS, you’ll be able to quickly fill job roles, making sure there’s never a lull in productivity from a lack of staff. The efficiency of an all-human hiring party could never match that of an ATS.
• Reduced costs of hiring: ATS solutions are multiple times more affordable than hiring agencies, and as a small business, you’ll be able to save a valuable sum of money that would have otherwise gone into paying the commission and salaries of a staffing agency.

Key Features of the Best Small Business ATS Solutions

You can say that the ATS you’re looking at is worth your time and money if it comprises the following features:

• Candidate screening: The best ATS software for small businesses boasts lightning-fast screening abilities, allowing you to process more candidates and select from only the cream of the crop.
• Integrations: Excellent ATS solutions integrate with all sorts of software, including career sites, social media platforms, job boards, and other recruitment tools.
• Insights and reports: Your ATS should give you a peek into various steps of the hiring process, such as referrals, interviews, and screening, to allow you to find if there’s an issue and resolve it to strengthen your hiring process and stop bottlenecks from impacting your hiring process.
• Mobile apps: It’ll be super handy to have an app for your ATS, as it’ll allow you to access it on the go and carry out important steps of the hiring process even when you’re out of the office.
• Security: Needless to say, a good ATS is one that’s able to securely store all data of your company and the hundreds of candidates and keep it away from prying eyes. This factor becomes all the more important with cloud-based ATS solutions.

Comparison of the Best Applicant Tracking Software 

Here’s a table highlighting the main differences between the best applicant tracking systems. It’ll allow you to quickly compare the solutions across core aspects such that you’re able to pinpoint the best one for your needs:

The Top 10 Recruiting ATS Solutions Reviewed 

We’ll now discuss each of the best ATS solutions in detail, including their best features, pricing, pros, and cons. Read on to find the one that perfectly fits your needs and budget.

1. Teamtailor – Best Overall ATS for Small Businesses

Teamtailor offers the best recruitment software on the market and is easily one of the most powerful all-in-one recruitment tools to simplify and streamline your hiring efforts. It does everything you’d expect from a top-quality ATS.

This includes allowing you to post unlimited job openings, customize your recruitment funnel, and provide a pleasant experience to your candidates. However, the feature that impressed us the most was not only the onboarding but its uncapped offering of unlimited users.

What’s even more impressive is that every single user will enjoy class-leading customer support. As our company uses Teamtailor, we know from experience that they’re super responsive, and you can reach out to them via live chat and email.

We love Teamtailor’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) feature that’ll boost the ranking of your job ads in SERP results. This will help you find enough exposure online and is able to captivate top-class candidates and get them to apply.

You’ll also be able to publish jobs with minimal effort, thanks to Teamtailor’s pre-built templates. Plus, while we certainly appreciate other ATS solutions on our list and their ability to integrate with video conferencing software, Teamtailor’s built-in video call function is a runaway winner in this aspect.

We tried it first-hand, and the ability to conduct meetings directly from a candidate’s profile is certainly a game-changer for those who like to keep things simple. There’s no dearth of automation features, either.

Teamtailor’s Smart Triggers functionality automatically moves candidates to the next step, schedules interviews, adds comments, to-dos or tags, and so much more to take the burden off your shoulders.

Speaking of interviews, it’ll send out booking forms to candidates that’ll show them the time slots you’re available in, meaning maximum convenience across the board for everyone.

Pricing

Teamtailor hasn’t made its pricing public, meaning you’ll have to reach out to its support team for a custom quote. This can be beneficial in that you’ll be able to fine-tune a plan as per your needs and pay for only what you need.

2. ClearCompany – Small Business ATS Solution for Creating Effective Job Descriptions

ClearCompany has, since 2004, helped over 3,000 organizations in their recruitment efforts. Powered by AI, it’ll help you create the most effective job descriptions and send out personalized texts and emails in bulk within just a few seconds.

It’ll also help you create branded career sites, thereby providing your candidates with a seamless, fun, and interactive hiring experience. An important part of the recruitment process is to manage, post, and promote your requisitions on multiple job boards.

All of this can be achieved with ClearCompany in virtually no time at all.

What’s more, the provider also integrates with every major video conference provider, such as Zoom and Google Meet, so that you can carry out professional video interviews.

The best part is that you can add a video interview link directly to the interview confirmation you’ll be sending out to a candidate, and that, too, with just a simple click. Another standout feature of ClearCompany is that it coordinates with the candidates you’ve selected for the interview round.

It finalizes interview schedules by allowing the candidates to select a time suitable for them, plus, it’ll also automatically send reminders to the candidates just before their scheduled interview so that everything is carried out smoothly.

Pricing

Like Teamtailor, ClearCompany doesn’t reveal its pricing online and offers custom quotes depending on your specific needs and preferences. Reach out to its team to curate a plan tailored to your needs.

3. Monday.com – One of the Most Affordable Small Business ATS Systems with Lots of Onboarding Templates

Monday.com‘s out-and-out project management software doubles up as a fantastic ATS solution as well. Beyond Teamtailor, our team also uses Monday daily, and what’s great is that it offers a free forever plan and incredibly affordable, scalable plans.

We know from experience with the tool that it’s incredibly easy to create an entire workspace dedicated to recruitment. We also think it’s worth noting that the Form View will allow you to pull candidate data into your applicant tracking board.

This will then give you the option to assess, interact, and communicate with your potential employees directly from the board. You can also create boards for new employees and populate them with the first few sets of tasks that they should complete.

This can include going through training manuals or meeting managers as part of their onboarding process. Given that Monday.com offers over 30 column types, you’ll have enough liberty to design workflows the way you want.

In our Monday.com review, we took an incredibly deep dive into the tool. It’s one of few services to offer a free forever plan, and impressively, it allows you to create up to 3 boards, offers over 200 templates, and makes it possible to work on the go with access to Monday.com’s iOS and Android apps.

While this is a perfect starting point for small businesses to get a risk-free taste of what the platform offers, it lacks the ability to automate workflows, which is why we recommend switching to a paid plan. All Monday.com plans are super affordable and offer tons of praiseworthy features, including priority customer support.

Pricing

The free plan will serve as a great starting point for individuals and small businesses. Also, all the plans come with shareable forms and coloration features, and even the Pro plan is more affordable than some of the most basic plans of other providers:

4. Zoho Recruit – Powerful Combination of ATS and Recruitment CRM Software with Class-leading Candidate Sourcing

Zoho Recruit‘s standout feature is its proprietary candidate sourcing system known as Source Boosters. It’s able to massively reduce the time and effort needed to dig out ideal candidates for the available positions in your company.

All you have to do is enter your job requirements, skim through the results Zoho Recruit generates, and when you happen to land on a profile you like, just click on it to add it to your Zoho Recruit database.

It’s also superb when it comes to keeping everyone who’s involved in the hiring process in the loop. You’ll be able to swiftly reach out to your colleagues by @mentions and comments, all of which will allow you to hire candidates faster.

Data analysis is a huge part of Zoho Recruit’s ATS solution. It gives employers data on key performance indicators like source of hire, time-to-hire, and the cost involved so that they’re well-equipped to focus on deliverables and make data-driven decisions.

We also love Zoho’s recruitment CRM software that massively reduces time-to-hire by eliminating manual data entry and generating interactive hiring pipelines that will engage your candidates.

Besides a free forever plan that comes with the ability to list one job at a time, candidate management, and interview scheduling, the provider also comes with a class-leading 45-day money-back guarantee (on top of a 15-day free trial), so you’ll have ample time to test the service before putting any money on the line.

Pricing

While the free plan is superb, you’ll have to sign up for one of the two super affordable paid plans if you want to benefit from Zoho Recruit’s integrations:

5. BreezyHR – Free Recruitment Tracking & Hiring Software for Small Businesses with Access to 50+ Job Boards

BreezyHR will advertise your open job roles on 50+ top-of-the-line job sites, including Indeed, LinkedIn, Google, ZipRecruiter, and more, and that too, automatically and for free.

Like Monday.com, BreezyHR comes with a free forever plan, and although it allows unlimited users and candidate access for applicants added in the last 30 days, on-the-go usage via iOS and Android apps is reserved for paid plans, which isn’t the case with Monday.com.

What’s more, BreezyHR’s Touchless Pre-screening takes the burden off your shoulders by automatically selecting/disqualifying candidates based on their answers to the questions in the questionnaires designed by you.

In our testing, one of the standout features of BreezyHR is Incognito Apply, which removes information such as gender, ethnicity, and age from applicant profiles, leaving no room for unconscious bias in your hiring process. This is great to ensure that candidates are given a fair chance and are looked at through the same lens.

If you’re in a rush and want to quickly zero in on the best fits for your open job roles, use BreezyHR’s Candidate Match Score. It’ll present you with an ordered list of candidates, wherein the top positions will be occupied by those best suited for the open role in question.

Pricing

The free version is loaded with all essential features such as multi-language support, access to job boards, and unlimited users, but it’s the paid plans (Startup plan will give you the best bang for your buck) with maximum power under the hood, thanks to background screening, customizable pipeline stages, and self-scheduling.

6. Manatal – A Powerhouse for Integrations with Support for Over 360 Applications

Manatal is the best applicant tracking system for integrations, courtesy of its ability to integrate with over 360 applications, including BambooHR, Zapier, LinkedIn, and Talent.com.

It also integrates with MailChimp, by which you’re able to export candidate information directly to MailChimp and then use that to run recruitment campaigns. On testing it hands-on, we found Manatal to be a haven for simplicity – you’ll find customizable pipelines that are easy to add and subtract elements from.

This is all thanks to the simple drag-and-drop interface. Like Monday.com, there are also Kanban boards that’ll give you an overview of the various steps of your recruitment progress in one single-board view.

As far as attracting the right candidates is concerned, you’ll be glad to know that Manatal will post your jobs on over 2,500 channels and 20+ social media platforms, including specialized job platforms such as Indeed, LinkedIn, and JobStreet. This number is huge when compared to the other options on our list.

We also liked Manatal’s staffing tracker, which will allow you to manage your hired candidates for as long as they’re with your company. Plus, you won’t have to rely on the information provided by the candidates.

If you’re not satisfied with what they’ve provided, Manatal will enrich their profiles with LinkedIn and other social media data so that you’re able to score better matching recommendations.

Pricing

While there isn’t a free plan on offer, Manatal is one of the most affordable ATS solutions, and even its most basic plan is packed with features. Some features you’ll only find in its Enterprise plan onwards are SMS recruitment, Zapier Integration, and Open API access:

7. Recruitee – Top Choice for Reaching Out to the Maximum Number of Candidates

Recruitee will post your open vacancies in over 2,900 free and paid job boards, and with custom landing pages to funnel candidates back to your career page and a straightforward Chrome extension for bringing candidate information into Recruitee, it’s a potent platform.

What’s more, Recruitee has made sure to cover every base, including excellent customer support, compliance with rules and regulations, easy-to-use mobile apps, and the ability to create custom dashboards and reports to prioritize data that matters the most to you.

You’ll also be able to text candidates directly from their profiles, which will further amp up the speed with which you fill open job roles with Recruitee. This feature is available on every plan, although as a paid add-on only.

We also love Recruitee’s support for over 17 languages, allowing you to hire from around the world. Moreover, it’s worth noting that Recruitee will give you a 20% commission on plan payments for the first year should a new customer join after your referral.

This can be an easy way to balance the costs you’ll be shelling out for the platform (yes, it’s admittedly not the cheapest on our list) – simply recommend it to your friends in other companies that are hiring.

Pricing

Recruitee is admittedly on the expensive side of things. That said, its feature sets, right from the Launch plan, are on par with other providers’ most high-end plans:

8. Workable – Applicant Tracking System with Top-of-the-line Customer Support

Workable has so far helped over 27,000 companies hire over 1.5 million candidates, and with stellar customer reviews across the board and a 15-day free trial that doesn’t ask for your credit card details, we didn’t find a reason not to try it ourselves.

Workable prides itself on its ease of use, and on trying it first-hand, we found it hard to disagree. It’s not just the interface and features that are easy to use though.

With dedicated account managers and 24/7 global support with a response time of less than 25 seconds, you’ll find help whenever you need it. We also liked that, similar to BreezyHR, Workable also hides the gender, ethnicity, and age from candidate profiles to foster objective analysis.

The good part about Workable is that it takes this a step further by hiding the education level of the candidates as well – while this may come across as counterproductive, it’ll ensure that you’re able to objectively judge candidates based on their skill assessment tests.

While essential features like video interviews, texting, and assessments are all available, it’s quite unfortunate that none of them are offered as part of a plan – they’re all paid add-ons and will have to be purchased separately.

Workable’s feature set is quite impressive, though, with access to over 200 job boards, AI-powered candidate sourcing, and support for multiple languages. Plus, you’ll even be able to set deadlines and set automated reminders to clients to avoid any delays.

With all that said, from a value-for-money standpoint (especially for small businesses), one of our top providers will make more sense because Workable’s basic plan is expensive and allows you to post only 2 active jobs and onboard just 50 employees.

However, the latter shouldn’t be a problem if you’re a small-to-medium-sized business.

Pricing

In addition to the following, Workable offers 3 paid add-ons, namely Video Interviews ($49/month), Texting ($39/month), and Assessments ($29/month), and you can purchase them no matter the plan you’re on:

9. BambooHR – An All-purpose Solution for All Your Hiring and Employee Management and Tracking Needs

BambooHR is a one-stop solution for all your hiring and management needs. Not only does it come with a class-leading applicant tracking system, but it also offers solutions for managing payroll, hiring and onboarding, and improving employee experience and performance.

Speaking of its ATS leg, it allows you to source the right candidates for your open job roles by entering keywords in candidates’ resumes, such as a certain qualification or skill you may be looking for.

Reporting features are in abundance as well, and you’ll easily be able to find out the source of where your best candidates are coming from, bottlenecks in your hiring process, and even get a transparent view of candidate demographics to ensure compliance with government rules and regulations.

Although BambooHR doesn’t quite give you access to hundreds of job boards, it’s connected to the most important ones like Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter, and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It’s easy to see that the platform prioritizes quality over quantity.

We also love its New Hire Packet Templates that allow you to tailor the onboarding process depending on the candidate in question, making them feel more welcome and engaged with the whole process.

It’s also one of the few ATS solutions on our list to offer robust offboarding support so that everything from A to Z is as seamless and smooth as it can be. A rather unique feature is Employee Wellbeing Surveys, which will give you great insights into employee motivation, happiness, and engagement.

Pricing

BambooHR doesn’t reveal its pricing, but it’s there for everyone to see that its robust applicant tracking system, including access to job boards, candidate records, and talent pools, is only available with the Advantage plan, which also comes with offboarding support, among others.

10. JazzHR – An Affordable ATS Solution with Class-leading Feedback Loops for Collaborative Hiring

JazzHR is one of the cheapest applicant tracking systems on our list, boasting essential features like customized workflows for each job opening, e-signatures, unlimited user onboarding, and automated hiring at just $49/month.

Every time a candidate applies for the job, you’ll receive an email notification, and with the ability to upload your current talent pool, JazzHR will make sure that you aren’t plagued with duplicate applications or notifications.

These features – resume uploaded and parser – are available on JazzHR’s most basic plan, unlike other tools that reserve it for their high-end packages This is true for other features too – most notably video screening integrations, where you’ll be able to screen candidates based on their pre-recorded video interviews.

Although its basic plan is super feature-rich, we found the absence of Zoom integration and candidate self-scheduling (wherein they schedule their own interviews based on your calendar) a little disappointing.

On the plus side, JazzHR fosters collaborative hiring and collective decision-making with its feedback loops. So, like Zoho Recruit, you can discuss candidates at any stage of the recruitment process by sharing important notes and observations with your colleagues, and that too, simply by mentioning their names.

What’s more, everyone involved can comment directly on the candidate’s profile, keeping the process simple and seamless. Also, useful features like template management, document storage and organization, and offer letter generator are all present to automate every step of the hiring process, right until the very end.

Pricing

JazzHR starts cheap and offers a solid set of features right from the get-go. That said, for automatically sending out emails and carrying out various types of assessments, consider upgrading to either the Plus or the Pro plan.

How to Choose the Best Small Business ATS

Here are the factors you should consider when out shopping for an Applicant Tracking System for your small business:

• Identify your requirements: Whether an ATS will be ideal for your organization will depend on what you’re looking for. A simple ATS will suffice if you only need to fill a couple of spots, but one with added features like screening is essential for businesses wanting to hire a lot of employees.
• Pricing and free trials: As a small business, you don’t want to break the bank, so consider solutions that are within your budget and scalable. We recommend using any free trial, plan, or demo to test the user interface and features risk-free before committing.
• The provider’s reputation: Beyond our own testing of the tools, we analyzed customer reviews on platforms like TrustPilot and Reddit to prepare our guide to the top ATS solutions. We incorporated both the positives and the downsides of the ATS systems to present you with a transparent picture.
• Integrations: Your ATS solution should be able to join hands with other software like those you’re already using for managing employee schedules, documents, and payroll or those for conducting background checks and video interviews.
• Ease of use: As a small business, you’d want to keep things simple, and an easy-to-use dashboard, web extensions, and mobile apps go a long way in ensuring that. Plus, it’s crucial not to underestimate the importance of prompt customer support that should be able to help you out on the fly.

Other Business Software Guides

Having covered the best ATS solutions in this article, here are other guides we’ve formulated for small businesses in need of a well-rounded tech stack to improve efficiency and boost revenue:

• The Best Recruitment Software
• Comparison of the Best Task Management Software
• Ranking of the Best Project Management Software
• The Best Workflow Management Software Reviewed
• A Full Monday.com Review
• The Best Employer of Record (EOR) Services Compared

Conclusion | What is the Best Applicant Tracking System for Small Business Needs?

We hope that you’re able to zero in on an ideal ATS for your specific requirements. We took great care in including ATS solutions of various types in our guide (those with free plans, customizable pipelines, automation-heavy, and AI-powered) so that regardless of your needs and preferences, there’s an option tailor-made for you.

With that said, we feel that Teamtailor is a great one-stop solution for every small and large business looking to straighten out and improve their recruitment process. It allows you to bring an unlimited number of users on board, meaning you’ll be able to collaborate with your HR department and hiring teams in real-time.

What’s more, with features like built-in video conferencing, search engine optimization, and Smart Triggers for extensive automation, there’s hardly anything not to like. The best part is that it comes with a 14-day free trial, so test it out and gauge its suitability for your needs before putting any money on the line.

Small Business ATS FAQs