Independent advisory · since 2019

Buying HR software
shouldn't take six
months.

We've spent the last five years studying every HR & payroll platform that matters in India — how they price, where they break, who they actually fit. Tell us about your team in 3 minutes, get 3 hand-picked vendor recommendations in 48 hours. No spam calls. No affiliate junk. Free for you, always.

★★★★★ 4.9 / 5 from 600+ HR leaders advised 120+ vendors evaluated · 0 affiliate links
3 vendors shortlisted From 120+ evaluated · 48hr turnaround
~40 hrs saved vs. demoing every vendor
Your HRsays brief
In review
Company profile
FMCG · 280 employees · Mumbai HQ
Captured
Must-haves
Multi-state payroll, biometric attendance, mobile ESS
Captured
Advisor matching
Asha is reviewing 14 candidate vendors
In progress
Shortlist delivered
Top 3 fits · with pricing & trade-offs
Tomorrow
Likely top matches (preview)
k Vendor K 94% fit
g Vendor G 88% fit
z Vendor Z 82% fit
120+

HR & Payroll platforms independently evaluated by our analyst team

600+

Companies advised — from 20-person startups to 8,000-person enterprises

42hrs

Average evaluation time saved per customer vs. doing it yourself

85K+

HR leaders read our newsletter & deep-dive reports every month

The problem with HR tech buying

Choosing HR software is brutal.
And the cost of choosing wrong is brutaler.

Most HR & payroll switches take 4-6 months of evaluation — demos with 12 vendors, spreadsheets nobody reads, decisions made on feature checklists and slick sales decks. Two years later, half the buyers are looking again.

HRsays exists because there's a smarter way: ask the people who've already done the homework.

"
63%

of mid-market HR teams regret their HRMS purchase within 24 months — usually for reasons that were knowable upfront.

"
18L

average sunk cost of switching HR platforms once you've signed — data migration, retraining, productivity loss, license overlap.

How HRsays works

From "we need an HRMS"
to a confident decision — in a week.

No demos with 14 vendors. No sales spam. Just a careful brief, a curated shortlist, and answers to the questions you'd never know to ask.

Tell us about your team

A 3-minute brief: company size, current stack, what's broken, what you'd love, your budget envelope. The more candid, the better.

3 min · free

An analyst picks up your brief

A human (not a chatbot) reviews your requirements, cross-checks our vendor research, and identifies the 8-10 platforms worth a closer look for your situation.

Same day

We share a shortlist of 3

Three best-fit vendors with honest trade-offs — what each does brilliantly, where each falls short, indicative pricing, and what to ask in demos.

Within 48 hrs

You decide. We stay neutral

Talk to the vendors directly (we don't get in the middle). Need a sanity check during evaluation? We're a Slack message away. No commitment, ever.

Forever free
Why HRsays — and not a Google search

The internet has opinions.
You need judgement.

Review sites are rented. Affiliate blogs are paid. Vendor sales calls are sales calls. We're not any of those.

Genuinely independent

We don't take affiliate fees. We don't take placement fees from vendors. Our analyst team is paid to be right — not to be friendly. If a vendor is wrong for you, we'll tell you, even if they pay us.

"They told us to not go with the vendor we'd already half-decided on. That single piece of advice probably saved us a year."

We've done the homework

Five years. 120+ platforms. Real onboardings observed. Customer support response times measured. Implementation horror stories collected. We know which vendor's payroll module breaks at 500 employees — and which one quietly scales to 10,000.

"Their analyst knew our finalist vendor's product better than the vendor's own demo team."

You save the time, not us

A typical HRMS evaluation eats 40-60 hours of HR's calendar over 3 months. We compress that into a curated shortlist in 48 hours. You still pick the vendor — we just dramatically shrink the universe of "maybes".

"It's like having a friend who happens to be a Gartner analyst, except the friend has actually used the products."

Software we cover

The whole people-tech stack,
independently mapped.

From core HRIS to niche tools for offsite payroll — if it's part of how you run HR in India, we've reviewed it.

Core HRMS

Employee database, org charts, document management, helpdesk.

32 vendors evaluated

Payroll & Compliance

Salary processing, PF/ESI/PT/TDS, Form 16, statutory reports.

28 vendors evaluated

Time & Attendance

Biometric, geo-fenced, shift rosters, OT calculation, leave policies.

22 vendors evaluated

Applicant Tracking (ATS)

Recruiting, JD generation, candidate pipeline, interview scheduling.

24 vendors evaluated

Performance & OKRs

Goal cascades, 360° reviews, calibrations, 9-box, continuous feedback.

18 vendors evaluated

Engagement & R&R

Pulse surveys, eNPS, peer recognition, rewards catalogues.

16 vendors evaluated

Learning (LMS)

Course catalogs, certifications, learning paths, compliance training.

14 vendors evaluated

Expense & Reimbursement

FBP, claim workflows, GST handling, corporate card integrations.

12 vendors evaluated
How we evaluate vendors

A 47-point
analyst rubric — refined since 2019.

Every vendor goes through the same scorecard: real product walkthroughs, customer reference calls, support response audits, statutory compliance reviews, security posture checks, and 5 anonymized implementation interviews.

We re-evaluate the full list every quarter. The market moves; our research has to move with it.

Sample vendor scorecard
How a typical Tier-1 HRMS scores on our rubric
Product depth
Core HRMS & employee lifecycle 9.2 / 10
Payroll & statutory engine 8.7 / 10
Performance & engagement 7.4 / 10
Customer experience
Implementation & onboarding 8.1 / 10
Support response (audited) 7.9 / 10
Mobile ESS adoption 8.6 / 10
Trust & security
SOC 2, ISO 27001, DPDP readiness 9.5 / 10
Pricing transparency 7.2 / 10
From the HRsays desk

Field-tested writing on HR tech
by people who've been in the room.

Browse all 240+ articles
Featured · 14 min read

The 2026 HRMS Buyer's Guide: how 47 platforms score on the only rubric that matters — yours.

An honest, vendor-neutral deep-dive into how India's leading HR platforms compare on product depth, support quality, statutory readiness, pricing transparency, and the dozen smaller things buyers never think to ask about until month four.

Analysis

Why 63% of mid-market HRMS purchases are regretted within 2 years.

We interviewed 80 CHROs who switched HR platforms about why the last one didn't work. Six patterns emerged — and none of them are about features.

Deep dive

The 50% Wage Rule, explained: what payroll teams actually need to do before April 2026.

What the new Labour Codes mean for take-home, gratuity, PF contribution — and the configuration changes your payroll vendor should already be ready for.

Vendor review

greytHR vs Keka vs Zoho People: an honest 2026 comparison.

Three of India's most-shortlisted HR platforms, side by side, on the criteria buyers actually evaluate after the demos are over.

Playbook

The HRMS RFP template our analysts wish more buyers used.

A free, downloadable RFP framework with the 73 questions vendors hope you don't ask. Customizable for your size and industry.

Industry

What we learnt advising 600+ Indian HR teams on their software stack.

The patterns, the surprises, the things every buyer thinks are unique to them but really aren't. A reflective piece from our co-founders.

P
"We'd already burned three months talking to seven vendors and were no closer to a decision. HRsays gave us a shortlist of three in under two days — with a one-page memo on why each was a fit, where each fell short, and the exact pricing range to negotiate to. We signed with one of them eleven days later."
Priya Menon VP People · 480-person fintech, Bengaluru
~50 hrs saved
vs. evaluating solo
Start your free shortlist

Three minutes now.
Forty hours saved later.

Tell us about your team, your current setup, and what's not working. An HRsays analyst will personally review your brief and come back with three best-fit vendors in 48 hours.

  • Free, always We're paid by vendors only when there's a great match. Never by you.
  • Zero spam, zero sales calls We don't pass your details to vendors. You reach out to who you want, when you want.
  • 48-hour turnaround A real analyst reviewing your brief. Not a chatbot, not a recommendation engine.
  • Stay neutral, stay honest We tell you the vendors' weaknesses too. The good and the awkward.

Your brief

Step 1 of 1 · 3 min

Your details stay with HRsays. Never sold, never shared.

The HRsays Weekly

The HR-tech newsletter 85,000+ leaders open on a Tuesday.

One email a week. New vendor reviews, statutory updates, sharp commentary on the platforms everyone's talking about — and the ones nobody is, but should be.

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Open rate — ~5× the industry average
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FAQ

The honest answers,
before you fill the form.

Have a question we haven't covered? Our advisor team is on email — weekdays, fast replies.

Vendors pay us a flat referral fee when a recommendation we make turns into a customer. It's the same fee for every vendor in our network — so we have zero incentive to push one over another. We only recommend vendors we'd be comfortable putting on our own company's payroll.
No. Your contact details stay with HRsays. We share the vendor shortlist with you, and you decide who to reach out to and when. The only person who'll contact you is the analyst working on your brief.
Listing platforms show you what's available; we tell you what's right. They monetize through paid placements and lead-sharing with vendors who outbid each other. We monetize only on successful matches. Our shortlist is three vendors based on judgement — not 47 vendors based on who paid for the top slot.
We'll still tell you. Our shortlist will mention the best-fit vendor regardless of whether they're a paying partner. We track the entire Indian HR tech market in our research, not just our network. Your recommendation reflects our actual analysis — that's the whole point.
A person. Every brief is read by an analyst from our team — most of whom have spent 8-15 years in HR ops, payroll, or HR-tech product roles. The shortlist memo you receive is hand-written, not auto-generated.
Yes — our published vendor reviews, deep-dive reports and HRMS comparison guides are freely available. Subscribe to the newsletter and you'll get them in your inbox each Tuesday. The form is only if you'd like a personalized shortlist for your specific situation.
Our primary research depth is for India. We do cover major global platforms (Workday, BambooHR, Rippling, Deel) where they're sold in India or used by Indian buyers, especially for ATS, EOR and global payroll. If you're hiring across markets, mention it in your brief.
3-minute brief · 48-hour shortlist · always free

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Start deciding.

You don't need another vendor pitch. You need a candid, expert opinion on which three platforms are actually worth your team's time.

Dibang Valley is an important employment hub in Arunachal Pradesh with approximately 6000 active job seekers, 450 employers, and more than 900 registered businesses. Employers across manufacturing, retail, logistics, healthcare, construction, agriculture and service sectors generate an estimated 1200 vacancies annually.

By 2028, the number of job seekers in Dibang Valley is projected to reach 7000 while the number of active companies is expected to increase to approximately 1100. Continued investments, infrastructure development, industrial expansion and skill-development initiatives are expected to strengthen employment opportunities across the district.

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