Workzenly makes time clock, scheduling, PTO and payroll software, and it appears in this list as one option. We researched every product on its own website on November 7, 2026. No company paid to be included. Features and prices change, so check each vendor’s site before you buy.
The best applicant tracking system for small business is the one that fits how often you hire and who you hire. A company filling a few salaried roles a year needs something different from a restaurant group hiring line cooks every week. We compared nine options, from free hiring tools to full ATS products, so you can match one to your hiring volume and budget.
For each product we checked the vendor’s own pricing page, trial or free plan, platforms and the hiring features small US employers actually use: posting to Indeed and other job boards, a careers page, screening questions, interview scheduling, texting, offer letters and the hand-off to onboarding. If you also need HR records and payroll, read our guide to the best HRIS for small business, because several of these products sit inside one.
Top picks at a glance
WorkableBest for frequent salaried hiring
Breezy HRBest for unlimited users and jobs
JazzHRBest for a low yearly price
HomebaseBest for free hourly hiring
WorkstreamBest for multi-location hourly hiring
BambooHRBest for ATS plus HRIS
Comparison table
| Tool | Best for | Free plan or trial | Starting price | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workable | small teams that hire salaried roles every month | 15-day free trial | $299/month (Standard, 1 to 20 employees) | Web, iOS, Android |
| Breezy HR | unlimited jobs and hiring managers on a flat fee | 14-day free trial | $157/month (Startup, billed yearly) | Web |
| JazzHR | lean teams that hire a few roles a year | No trial listed | $1,000/year (Hero, billed yearly) | Web |
| Homebase | free hiring for hourly roles | Free hiring tools; 30-day trial of Unlimited | Free; Unlimited from $99/month (billed yearly) | Web, iOS, Android |
| Workstream | high-volume hourly hiring across locations | No trial listed | Quote | Web, iOS, Android |
 Manatal | a low per-user price for one or two recruiters | 14-day free trial | $15 per user/month (billed yearly) | Web, mobile web app |
| BambooHR | hiring inside an HRIS you already want | 7-day free trial | $250/month flat (Core, up to 25 employees) | Web, iOS, Android |
 Recruitee | growing teams that want a careers site and workflows | Free trial (length not stated) | Quote | Web, mobile app |
 Workzenly | onboarding hourly hires after the offer is accepted | Book a demo | Book a demo | Web, phone app, shared tablet time clock |
- Best for
- small teams that hire salaried roles every month
- Free plan or trial
- 15-day free trial
- Starting price
- $299/month (Standard, 1 to 20 employees)
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android
Workable is a full applicant tracking system with HR tools attached. It fits a small company that hires several roles a quarter, wants to post widely and source candidates who are not applying, and may later add Workable’s separate HR package for time off and employee records.
Pricing is set by company size. For 1 to 20 employees, Standard is $299 a month ($3,588 a year) and Premier is $599 a month, which adds texting, video interviews, assessments and referrals. Every plan posts to more than 200 job boards, includes a careers page builder and a jobs widget for your site, two-way calendar sync with Gmail or Microsoft 365, and self-scheduled interviews. Workable also searches passive candidate profiles and offers AI screening and sourcing that use credits; every plan includes 3,000 credits, and more cost from $600 for 5,000. The free mobile app runs on iOS and Android; its time-off features need the HR package.
Strengths
- Posting to 200+ job boards and a careers page builder on every plan
- Candidate sourcing and AI screening built in
- Free iOS and Android app for the hiring team
Drawbacks
- $299 a month is a lot for a business that hires twice a year
- Texting and video interviews need Premier or paid add-ons
- AI features run on credits that expire after a year
- Best for
- unlimited jobs and hiring managers on a flat fee
- Free plan or trial
- 14-day free trial
- Starting price
- $157/month (Startup, billed yearly)
- Platforms
- Web
Breezy HR is an ATS priced per company rather than per user or per job. That makes it a good fit for a small business where several managers review candidates and the number of open roles goes up and down through the year.
Every plan includes unlimited open positions and unlimited users. Startup is $157 a month billed yearly or $189 month to month, and includes posting to more than 50 job boards, a branded career site, candidate automations, questionnaires, interview self-scheduling, video interviews and email and calendar sync. Growth ($273 a month yearly) adds multiple pipelines, scorecards, employee referrals, automated reference checks and e-signatures. Business ($439 a month yearly) adds offer management, approvals and HRIS integrations. Text messaging starts at $41 a month and an onboarding add-on at $49 a month. Breezy says plainly that it has no free plan.
Strengths
- Unlimited users and open positions on every plan
- Interview self-scheduling and video interviews from the first tier
- Clear published prices for monthly and yearly billing
Drawbacks
- No free plan
- E-signatures need Growth and offer management needs Business
- Texting candidates is a paid add-on
- Best for
- lean teams that hire a few roles a year
- Free plan or trial
- No trial listed
- Starting price
- $1,000/year (Hero, billed yearly)
- Platforms
- Web
JazzHR is an applicant tracking system aimed at small businesses that hire without a recruiter. It suits a company that wants a real pipeline, resume parsing and candidate emails without paying for sourcing and AI features it will not use.
Plans are billed yearly. Hero costs $1,000 a year and starts at three job postings a month, with the ATS, email templates, a LinkedIn Recruiter integration and premium job listings. Plus costs $3,480 a year, allows up to 200 active jobs and adds AI candidate matching, structured interviews and assessments, task automation and standard reports. Pro costs $5,508 a year and adds offers and e-signatures, custom reports and all-access support. JazzHR integrates with more than a dozen free job boards and with HR, payroll, sourcing and background-check tools. Its standard pricing does not apply to staffing agencies, franchises, multi-location businesses or companies over 250 employees.
Strengths
- One flat yearly price, not charged per user
- Interview scheduling, questionnaires and automated candidate emails
- Integrations with background-check and payroll tools
Drawbacks
- Hero allows only about three job postings a month
- Offer letters with e-signature need the $5,508 Pro plan
- Multi-location businesses and franchises need a custom price
- Best for
- free hiring for hourly roles
- Free plan or trial
- Free hiring tools; 30-day trial of Unlimited
- Starting price
- Free; Unlimited from $99/month (billed yearly)
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android
Homebase is scheduling and time-clock software for hourly teams, and its hiring tools are built for the same businesses: restaurants, retail and local services filling crew and front-line jobs. If you hire hourly staff a few times a year, its free hiring tools may be all you need.
The free Manual Mode is included on every Homebase plan, including the free one. It writes job descriptions with AI, suggests pay for the role, posts in one click to Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google, Facebook and Craigslist, and gives you a hiring dashboard, a branded careers page and self-serve interview scheduling. The Unlimited tier with the Hiring Assistant adds AI screening with your own questions, candidate profiles and automated interview scheduling and messages, for $99 a month billed yearly or $199 month to month. New accounts get a 30-day Unlimited trial after posting the first job. Job post boosts start at $50 a post and background checks cost $30 each.
Strengths
- Free job posting to major boards plus an applicant dashboard
- New hires move straight into Homebase scheduling and time tracking
- Background checks available inside the app
Drawbacks
- Built for hourly roles, with few structured interview or scorecard tools
- AI screening and automated scheduling cost $99 a month or more
- Few reporting tools compared with a dedicated ATS
- Best for
- high-volume hourly hiring across locations
- Free plan or trial
- No trial listed
- Starting price
- Quote
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android
Workstream is a hiring, onboarding and payroll platform for hourly, deskless and multi-location businesses, especially restaurants, retail, healthcare and hospitality. It suits an owner or operator with several locations who is always hiring and loses applicants because nobody calls them back fast enough.
Its applicant tracking leans on automation. VoiceAI answers applicant calls at any hour, runs a first-round call and sends you a summary of availability, experience and start date, and VideoAI lets applicants record answers on their phones so you review a short highlight reel. Hired applicants move into onboarding, complete paperwork and flow into Workstream payroll. Indeed is listed as an integration, and there are iOS and Android apps. Workstream does not publish prices; you book a demo for a quote. When we checked, it was advertising up to eight months free on payroll and its bundled plan for new customers.
Strengths
- Answers and screens applicant calls automatically
- Hiring, onboarding and payroll in one system for hourly teams
- Made for multi-location operators
Drawbacks
- No published pricing or self-serve trial
- More system than a single-location business needs
- Less suited to salaried or specialist roles
- Best for
- a low per-user price for one or two recruiters
- Free plan or trial
- 14-day free trial
- Starting price
- $15 per user/month (billed yearly)
- Platforms
- Web, mobile web app
Manatal is an AI-assisted applicant tracking system and recruitment CRM priced per user. It fits a small business with one or two people doing the hiring, and it is also used by recruiting agencies, so it handles a large candidate database well.
Professional costs $15 per user per month billed yearly ($19 monthly) and allows up to 15 jobs and 10,000 candidates, with AI candidate enrichment, AI recommendations, applicant tracking, a recruitment CRM and reports. Enterprise, at $35 per user per month yearly, removes the job and candidate limits and adds workflow automation. Enterprise Plus at $55 adds a report builder, open API access, a candidate portal, single sign-on and custom permissions. The 14-day trial needs no credit card, but job board posting, mass emailing, email automations and AI job descriptions are switched off during the trial, so test posting only after you subscribe.
Strengths
- Lowest published per-user price in this list
- Recruitment CRM keeps past candidates searchable
- Monthly billing available
Drawbacks
- Professional caps you at 15 jobs
- Workflow automations need Enterprise
- Job board posting is not available during the trial
- Best for
- hiring inside an HRIS you already want
- Free plan or trial
- 7-day free trial
- Starting price
- $250/month flat (Core, up to 25 employees)
- Platforms
- Web, iOS, Android
BambooHR is an HRIS first, and applicant tracking comes with it. It makes sense when you also want employee records, time off and onboarding in one system, so the person you hire becomes an employee record without re-typing anything.
Hiring and onboarding are part of the Core plan: job postings, candidate records, email templates and offer letter templates, with onboarding checklists, new hire packets and e-signatures listed in the plan comparison. Companies with 25 or fewer employees pay a flat $250 a month for Core; larger companies pay from $10 per employee per month. Pro ($425 a month flat for small teams) adds performance management. Payroll is a paid add-on for US employees. The 7-day trial is short, so plan a hiring scenario before you start it. As a standalone ATS it has fewer sourcing and automation tools than Workable or Breezy HR.
Strengths
- Candidates become employee records with onboarding in the same system
- Offer letter templates on the Core plan
- Includes time off, records and reports, not just hiring
Drawbacks
- $250 a month flat even if hiring is all you need
- Fewer sourcing, texting and automation tools than dedicated ATS products
- Short 7-day trial
- Best for
- growing teams that want a careers site and workflows
- Free plan or trial
- Free trial (length not stated)
- Starting price
- Quote
- Platforms
- Web, mobile app
Recruitee, now sold as Tellent Recruitee, is a collaborative applicant tracking system for small and midsize companies. It suits a team where hiring managers and interviewers all leave feedback, and where a good careers site matters for attracting applicants.
The Start plan allows up to five active job posts, a single-page careers site, posting to several job boards at once, candidate pipeline automation, AI help writing emails and feedback, a mobile app, more than 200 marketplace integrations and API access. Advance removes the job limit and adds workflow automations, knockout questions, self-scheduling, offer letters, a multi-page careers site with a custom URL, referrals and custom reports. Optimize adds requisition approvals, single sign-on and a dedicated success manager. Prices are not shown in US dollars on the pricing page; you request a quote, and the minimum commitment is one year, with 20% off for paying yearly. Ask for the price at your headcount before you build the careers site.
Strengths
- Careers site builder, multi-page with a custom URL on Advance
- Interviewer collaboration and pipeline automation
- Large integration marketplace and an open API
Drawbacks
- No published US price; quote only
- One-year minimum commitment
- Start plan limited to five active jobs
- Best for
- onboarding hourly hires after the offer is accepted
- Free plan or trial
- Book a demo
- Starting price
- Book a demo
- Platforms
- Web, phone app, shared tablet time clock
Workzenly is our product, and it is not an applicant tracking system. It does not post jobs, collect applications or run an interview pipeline. We include it because the hiring job does not end when the candidate says yes, and for hourly teams the next two weeks are where most mistakes happen: missing forms, a first shift nobody scheduled, a pay rate typed wrong.
Once you hire someone in your ATS, Workzenly handles onboarding with e-signed forms and stores the documents on the employee record. The new hire downloads one app, sees their first shifts, clocks in from a phone or a shared tablet with GPS and geofencing, requests time off and reads their pay stubs. Payroll runs from the hours they clocked. Pair it with any ATS on this list if you hire hourly staff often. We do not publish prices; book a demo to see it with your setup.
Strengths
- Onboarding with e-signed forms feeds the same record as time, PTO and payroll
- New hires get schedules, the time clock and pay stubs in one app
- Built for restaurants, retail, healthcare, construction and other shift teams
Drawbacks
- No job posting, applicant pipeline or interview scheduling; you still need an ATS
- No published pricing; you need a demo for a quote
How we chose these tools
Our criteria
- We started from the applicant tracking systems small US employers most often compare, then added hiring tools built for hourly and multi-location teams, because many small businesses hire mostly hourly staff.
- We checked every product on its own website on November 7, 2026: home page, pricing page and feature pages. Prices are the lowest published plan with its unit and billing period.
- To rank the best applicant tracking system for small business buyers, we weighted what a small employer needs: job board posting, a careers page, screening, interview scheduling, offer letters and how hires move into onboarding and payroll.
- We left out enterprise recruiting suites without small-business plans and agency-only tools, and anything we could not verify on the vendor’s site.
- No vendor paid for placement, and we did not use review-site ratings. Workzenly is our product; it is not an ATS, and we say so in its entry.
How to choose an applicant tracking system
Count your hires. Look at how many people you hired in the last 12 months, how many were hourly, and how many managers took part. That one number decides most of this: a few hires a year points to free tools or JazzHR, steady salaried hiring points to Workable or Breezy HR, and constant hourly hiring points to Homebase or Workstream.
Buyer’s checklist for hiring software:
- Where your applicants come from. Confirm the ATS posts to the boards your applicants use, usually Indeed and Google for hourly roles, and whether premium or sponsored posts cost extra.
- Speed of response. Hourly applicants often take the first job that calls back. Texting, self-scheduled interviews and automatic replies matter more than scorecards for those roles.
- Pay ranges in job posts. Several states, including Colorado, California, Washington and New York, require pay ranges in job postings, and more states keep adding similar laws. Check that the job template has a pay range field and use it everywhere.
- Background checks and fair chance rules. Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, you need the candidate’s written permission before a background check through a screening company. Many states and cities also limit when you can ask about criminal history. Your ATS should keep consent forms with the candidate.
- Records. Keep applications and hiring records for at least one year under EEOC rules. Make sure you can export them if you change systems.
- Offer letters. If you send many offers, e-signature saves days. Several products only include it on higher plans. Our job offer letter templates work with any of them.
- The hand-off to onboarding. The Form I-9 is completed after the offer is accepted, with Section 2 done within three business days of the start date. Plan how a hired candidate becomes an employee with a W-4, I-9 and a first shift. Our I-9 guide and employee onboarding guide cover the steps.
In the trial, post one real job, apply to it yourself from a phone, and time how long it takes to get from application to a scheduled interview. That test tells you more than any feature grid about which is the best applicant tracking system for small business hiring like yours.
Frequently asked questions
What is an applicant tracking system?
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is hiring software that posts your job to job boards and your careers page, collects every application in one place, and moves candidates through stages such as screening, interview and offer. It keeps notes, emails and interview feedback with each candidate, so nothing lives in a manager’s inbox.
Does a small business need an ATS?
If you hire more than a handful of people a year, or several managers review candidates, an ATS usually pays for itself in time saved and applicants not lost. If you hire one or two people a year, free tools such as the Homebase hiring dashboard or a careful spreadsheet may be enough.
Is there a free applicant tracking system for small business?
Homebase includes free hiring tools on every plan, including its free plan: job posting to Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google, Facebook and Craigslist, an applicant dashboard, a careers page and interview scheduling. Most of the full ATS products in this list offer free trials of 7 to 15 days instead of free plans.
How much does an ATS cost for a small business?
Published prices on November 7, 2026 ranged from $15 per user per month (Manatal Professional, yearly) and $1,000 a year (JazzHR Hero) to $157 a month (Breezy HR Startup, yearly) and $299 a month (Workable Standard for 1 to 20 employees). Workstream and Recruitee quote prices. Add costs for texting, background checks and premium job posts.
How long should I keep job applications?
EEOC rules require employers to keep personnel and employment records, which include applications and hiring records, for one year. If someone files a discrimination charge, keep every related record until the charge or lawsuit is resolved. Your ATS should let you export or retain candidate records for at least that long.