Best Employee Onboarding Software in 2024

Employee onboarding is one of the most important parts of your new and ongoing relationship. It determines how quickly they’ll be able to help the team hit goals, how well they integrate, and their overall experience.

Unfortunately, most organizations get it wrong. A simple way to improve your onboarding is by using purpose-built employee onboarding software. It’ll ensure you disseminate all the right information, get new staff up to speed quickly, and have a single source of all relevant training materials.

This guide will walk you through ten of the best employee onboarding software solutions in 2022. We’ll look at the features, price point, and even cons so you can have a clear idea of what each tool is bringing to the table.

What to look for in employee onboarding software

Knowledgebase/Wiki

Above and beyond the content that’ll be consumed by a new hire for their specific role, it’s essential that your onboarding software can store general team knowledge.

These are loosely structured documents that share processes, templates, video training, announcements, etc. Anyone should be able to create a new piece of content that contributes to the organization as a whole.

Guided steps

There should be a simple way to string all the related content together so new hires have a guided learning path for their specific department or position. For example, a series of videos and articles that shows a developer how to set up their local environment. Conversely, it could be a training program that gets new marketing hires up to speed on strategy, processes, customer personas, etc.

Ease of use

Everyone has a different level of technical know-how and each new piece of software needs to be learned. The best onboarding software has an easy learning curve so users can focus on their goal – not new software.

Pricing

Lastly, it should be affordable for the majority of businesses (or the specific type of business it’s made for). Clear pricing that scales with your needs and doesn’t force you into long contracts is ideal. Let’s look at the best of the bunch that meets this requirement.

Contract and agreement management

This is an added benefit for these kinds of tools but, if it’s not available, it’s not a deal-breaker. Many HR tools offer document storage and third-party tools like UsefulPDF make it possible to get your documents signed electronically. While signing is an essential part of the process, making sure your employees know what they’re doing is arguably more important.

On the other hand, you can use a more complete tool like DoxFlowy to handle all of the document aspects of the onboarding process automatically. For example, NDAs, Non compete agreements, etc.

I digress.

Let’s dive in.

Best employee onboarding software

1.    Trainual

Trainual can be considered the new kid on the block. It’s purpose-built to make it easy to create SOPs, onboarding paths, and otherwise serve as the brain of your team. There’s an emphasis on building playbooks – repeatable processes – so that anyone can join your team and start being beneficial from day 1 (or week 1).

It provides insights that you can use to better understand how employees are interacting with the training you’ve made which creates opportunities to improve your organization. It’s laser-focused on the onboarding and knowledge sharing aspect so it doesn’t have many auxiliary functions like contract signing.

Key features

• Guided training
• Policy documentation
• Company organogram
• Built-in screen recording
• Integrations with multiple software tools
• Large collection of 100’s of templates
• Internal organization of content and files
• Robust search function
• Assessments to test the knowledge of trainees

Cons

• It doesn’t have added functionality for managing the paperwork side of things.
• Cannot purchase seats for individual users – they’re grouped into specific plans.

Pricing

Trainual has three main pricing plans which are divided based on features and the number of seats available:

• $49/m with 5 seats included
• $99/m with 10 seats included
• $199/m with 20 seats included

2.    Slab

Slab is technically a knowledge-sharing tool that serves as your team’s wiki. It can also double as the center of employee onboarding due to multiple robust features.

You’re able to integrate it with multiple tools to pull in data from or send data to the apps you already use. For example, when a new entry goes live, you can set up notifications for Slack. Additionally, you’re able to embed videos right on the page so there’s supporting material for the training an employee is going through.

Of course, you can set content to public or private, use robust search tools, and access multiple templates to jumpstart your content library.

My favorite feature of Slab is the guided training capabilities which it refers to as series. You can tie multiple posts together so a trainee will be able to easily switch from one to the other and interact with all of the most important material.

Key features

• Set permissions
• Create categories and subcategories
• Create guided training series
• Large number of native integrations
• Easily embed images and video
• Real-time editing
• Content map – view the organization of all the content within the platform
• Versioning

Cons

• Custom formatting in Slab is minimal to nonexistent (for example, setting the size of tables)
• The reporting features are basic and don’t provide deep insights into how people are interacting with content

Pricing

It starts with a free plan then charges $8/m to $15 for the startup and business plans respectively.

3.    BambooHR

As the name implies, BambooHR is a purpose-built HR platform that helps manage the entire employee lifecycle. It has employee records, manages time-off, allows new hires to sign relevant documents, and even stores files.

For employee onboarding, it focuses on ensuring all documentation is sorted out from the beginning, providing an easy-to-follow checklist, and timely reminders. While you can’t create content and training within BambooHR, you’re able to populate the checklists and lead people to the right place.

Key features

• Onboarding checklists
• Reminder messages to move people along in the process
• Document storage
• Signing documents and submission
• Templates to use for onboarding
• Analytics and tracking

Cons

• Cannot create long form native content for training
• Can get complex for new users

Pricing

BambooHR doesn’t display pricing publicly but it starts at $99/m for 12 employees which works out to less than $10 employee. Each individual employee is $8.25/m.

4.    Sage.Hr (formerly Cake.hr)

Popularly known as CakeHR before changing its name, Sage HR is a full-fledged human resources management platform. Naturally, it takes care of certain elements of employee onboarding. It comes with leave management, scheduling, timesheets, etc.

For the onboarding aspect, it focuses on allowing you to create task lists that make it possible to lead new hires through the right steps. You can set start times, due dates, and who the task should be submitted to right from the interface. Of course, after creating a workflow, it can be automatically assigned to new hires that join your team.

Key features

• Employee document and forms management
• Time tracking
• Workflows and tasks lists
• Automatic assigning of new task lists
• Employee off boarding
• Onboarding analytics

Cons

• Cannot create training within the platform
• Inexpensive to get started but additional features are billed as add-ons

Pricing

Sage HR starts at $5.50/m/user and comes with the core HR features. For more features like shift scheduling, performance reviews, etc. you’ll need to pay an additional fee per employee.

5.    Clearcompany

Clearcompany is designed to make it easier for businesses to recruit and onboard promising talent. It does this by creating a system that handles the entire application, onboarding, and continuing engagement process.

For onboarding, it’s one of the most complete solutions available. It provides a branded login portal, guided training that supports text, video, and other rich media, and even lets you manage the devices or equipment of new employees. You can also get employees to fill essential documentation using intuitive forms.

It even goes as far as enabling background checks for new employees so you can be sure everything is above board.

Key features

• Intelligent forms
• Manage essential documents and agreements for compliance
• Set goals and action plans for new hires
• Integrate with payment/payroll tools
• Notifications for tasks that need to be completed
• Guided onboarding training
• Manage the devices of your employees
• Branded employee portal
• Analytics and reporting

Cons

• Reporting is available but it’s limited in a few key areas
• When there’s a technical glitch in the system, it takes a while to get resolved.

Pricing

Clearcompany doesn’t display its pricing publicly but it starts at about $7/m/user.

6.    Lessonly

Lessonly is a bit of a departure from the other onboarding tools on this list. It’s targeted at enterprise customers and dives deep into the training aspect of onboarding so teams can get up to speed much faster than normal.

It’s closer to a learning management system than anything else. You’re able to create learning paths that are for a single person, entire departments, or the whole company. It’s possible to create articles, include videos, take advantage of images, and more with the drag-and-drop interface.

New hires that have finished training can also be tested and given practice that imitates what they’ll experience in the real world. Of course, you get analytics and reporting to help you make the right moves.

• Robust learning management system
• Choose different tracks
• Feedback management and internal communication
• Automated reminders
• Analytics and reports
• Integrations with popular software tools
• API access
• Permission management
• Course certifications

Cons

• No way to manage documentation onboarding for employees
• Pricing isn’t publicly displayed

Pricing

• Plans aren’t publicly available but you can purchase seats in bundles of 25 users with no maximum.

7.    Asana

Asana may not be the first tool you think of when it comes to employee onboarding but it can check almost all the boxes and keep you organized.

How?

By setting up employee onboarding for different departments as a project and asking new hires to go through all the steps. Within individual cards, you can place links to the relevant training and information and I’ll keep them organized while they’re going through all of it. You can even create forms in Asana and request that documents be submitted.

Key features

• Create projects to with multiple steps that need completion
• Document submission through forms
• Analytics for project completion
• Internal communication
• Integrations with multiple tools
• Granular permissions for users

Cons

• Doesn’t allow you to create native content
• Completion analytics are limited

Pricing

Asana has a generous free plan that comes with the core features. The premium and business plans which are $10.99 and $24.99 respectively.

8. Kin

Kin is a full HR suite that helps organizations manage multiple aspects of their employee relationships. It uses a task-based system to ensure new hires complete all the necessary onboarding tasks including training and document signing.

You can sign those documents within Kin and make sure it’s stored in the right place. Introduce new employees to others and speed up the team integration process.

Key features

• Paperwork management
• Online signatures
• Task-based onboarding workflows
• Manage employee data
• Performance management
• Reporting

Cons

• It doesn’t allow you to host robust onboarding training on the platform
• The reports for onboarding are basic

Pricing

It has four pricing plans known as Startup, Studio, Growth, and Enterprise which cost #3/user/m, $5/user/m, $6/user/m, and custom pricing respectively.

9.    Clickboarding

Clickboarding is a robust employee onboarding platform that helps manage everything from getting the right documents to employee training. It even participates in employee offboarding.

It’s possible to create workflows depending on the department of the new hire then further refine what the person needs to do based on custom rules. You can give them quick tips and insights about your organization or build out full training workflows.

Clickboarding is one of the few onboarding software tools that takes every aspect of the employee lifecycle into consideration.

Key features

• Personalize onboarding for each employee
• Drag-and-drop onboarding flow builder
• Fill out forms to generate documents
• Sign documents with the platform
• Employee analysis to boost retention

Cons

• The UI feels crowded and difficult to understand at times
• Updating some of the elements of workflows like forms can be cumbersom

Pricing

Clickboarding does not have publicly available pricing so you’ll need to reach out to them to determine how much you’ll be charged.

Conclusion

This guide has shared the best employee onboarding software solutions available right now. Take a closer look at each one to determine the best tool for your workflow.

Each one has its own nuances so make sure it aligns with your needs before diving in.