7 Best Free Applicant Tracking Systems 2022
Charlette has over 10 years of experience in accounting and finance and 2 years of partnering with HR leaders on freelance projects. She uses this extensive experience to answer your questions about payroll.
Juvy has over 10 years of content writing experience and was a licensed teacher. She has evaluated and written about dozens of payroll and HR software solutions for small business to provide the best answers to your software questions.
This article is part of a larger series on Hiring.
The best free applicant tracking systems (ATSes) simplify job postings, filter incoming resumes and applications, and improve candidate-employer communication. A good ATS can store resumes for future reference, screens applicants, and organize and manage referral programs to boost recruitment efforts.
In this guide, we evaluated 11 free applicant tracking systems and narrowed it down to our top seven recommendations:
- Freshteam: Best (overall) for companies with 50 or fewer employees
- MightyRecruiter: Best for small businesses in industries vulnerable to discriminatory hiring processes
- SmartRecruiters: Best for fast-growing firms (with professional recruiters) planning to upgrade talent acquisition features
- JobScore: Best for recruiters and companies needing multichannel job posting and referral programs
- Breezy HR: Best for solopreneurs and startups
- Indeed: Best for companies wanting unlimited job postings over advanced ATS tools to support hiring increase
- Homebase: Best for restaurants and retailers requiring applicant tracking, scheduling, and attendance management solutions
Want to use a spreadsheet to manage applicants while you’re deciding on an ATS? Download our free applicant tracking spreadsheet!
Free Applicant Tracking Systems Compared
Pricing | Unlimited Jobs | Interview Scheduling and Mobile Access | Offer Management | New Hire Onboarding | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | $0 to $4.80/month /employee + platform fee* | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
 | $0 | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ |
 | $0; also has custom pricing | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
 | $0 to $449+ per month | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
 | $0 to $479 per month | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
 | $0 to $5/day pay-per-click advertising | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ |
 | $0 to $99.95 per month, per location | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ |
*Freshteam’s paid plans include a monthly platform fee of $71 to $203, depending on the plan.
In addition to the features highlighted above, all our best applicant tracking systems offer:
- Job posting
- Customizable career page branding
- Applicant tracking and screening
- Applicant assessment
- Interview scheduling
- Mobile access
Interested in learning about other recruiting systems? Explore our guide on the best recruitment software.
Freshteam: Best Overall Free ATS for Small Businesses
Freshteam
Overall Score: 4.31
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Customizable career site
- Job posting on multiple channels
- Feature-rich mobile app
- Fully automated parsing and candidate profile populating
What's Missing
- Overwhelming features that can be hard to navigate at times
- Limited editing features
- Limited third-party integrations
Freshteam Monthly Pricing*
- Free
- Growth: $1.20 per employee + $71 platform fee
- Pro: $2.40 per employee + $119 platform fee
- Enterprise: $4.80 per employee + $203 platform fee
*Discounts available with annual plans
Freshteam is a cloud-based HR software best for businesses with 50 or fewer employees. Its feature-rich free tier lets you publish up to three job postings per month and manage a basic career site. It also allows you to establish a strong candidate pool, collaborate with your hiring team, receive job applications via email and referrals, and track successful candidates using Kanban boards anywhere through Freshteam’s mobile app—all for free.
In our evaluation, Freshteam got an overall rating of 4.31 out of 5 because it has robust applicant tracking and reporting features and is popular among users. It got a low score on pricing since its paid tiers are quite expensive compared with other providers on our list. Online reviews are mostly positive, though some users said that the initial implementation should not have been overwhelming.
More than 7,000 customers worldwide use Freshteam.
With Freshteam, you can email candidates, get feedback from hiring members, and advance candidates through stages. (Source: GetApp)
Freshteam Features
- Multichannel job posting: You can create, manage, and publish job postings from your ATS within minutes. Also, you’ll have the option to choose where and how you want to publish them—externally or internally. If you do not have templates for posting an open position, you can choose from Freshteam’s 100+ pre-built job description templates or customize your own—similar to what MightyRecruiter offers.
- Hiring team and archived resumes: Compared with the other solutions, you can select and set up your hiring team using Freshteam. A rep will work closely with you to find your job postings’ matches and modify your hiring process depending on your requirements. Also, you can easily access Freshteam’s database of passive candidates that can be tapped when similar job opportunities open up in the future.
- Smart candidate sourcing: Unlike Homebase, Freshteam allows you to customize your mobile career site with your own branding. To reach a wider talent base, Freshteam allows you to post jobs on free job boards like Adzuna, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and Glassdoor or share it on social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You can even add a custom tab on your Facebook brand page to source candidates.
- External recruiters: You can tap your vendors to increase the number of applicants using Freshteam. Vendors get exclusive access to your applicant tracking software through the vendor portal, where they can add candidates and track them without having to depend on you. You’ll just have to sync your career email inbox with Freshteam and convert every email you receive into an application.
- Resume screening: Freshteam immediately parses the uploaded resume and automatically populates the candidate profile with it. The profile contains every applicant detail plus interaction history, feedback, and interview scores. You can also archive them if the candidate doesn’t fit your criteria at the moment and for future reference. Your selected hiring team can make their opinions count through comments and ratings.
- Pre-assessment: During technical rounds, Freshteam is the only provider that offers pre-assessment test integrations with HackerEarth, HackerRank, or Codility to screen a high volume of applicants.
- Candidate engagement: Instead of waiting for your applicants’ feedback, you can sync your email with Freshteam to correspond with candidates from your ATS. Simultaneously, you can keep all hiring stakeholders automatically informed by sending out notifications for any updates. You can even create canned responses, schedule emails, communicate with applicants and your hiring team in bulk, use tasks and reminders to manage workloads, and assign tasks.
- User-specific access control: You can create roles and set role-specific privileges for different users.
- Recruitment: Freshteam allows you to collect feedback from the hiring team using scorecards. Once you decide to hire a candidate, you can make and manage offers, configure offer fields, generate offer letters, and even record candidate decisions.
- Mobile application: Freshteam’s Android and iOS apps help you keep up with your recruiting pipeline from anywhere. You can email candidates, submit feedback, get complete context on a candidate or the interview process, and advance candidates through the recruitment stages with just a few taps.
- Powerful integration: The platform works well with Skype and Google Hangouts. These integrations allow you to communicate with your top leads faster. You can easily schedule interviews with its Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 integration.
- Flexible customer support: Freshteam has 24/7 free email, unlike the other providers on our list, and a 24/5 chat and call support.
Read Our Full Freshteam Review
MightyRecruiter: Best for Small Businesses in Industries Vulnerable to Discriminatory Hiring Practices
MightyRecruiter
Overall Score: 4.26
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- User-friendly and highly accessible
- Free full featured ATS
- Resume database with over 22 million candidate profiles
What's Missing
- Job posting approvals take 24 to 48 hours
- Unresponsive customer support
- Limited free job boards
MightyRecruiter Pricing
- Free: Includes unlimited jobs, resume searches, and user accounts.
MightyRecruiter is a free end-to-end ATS that can post to 29 job boards and social networks with just one click. It enables you to manage candidates and keep you compliant with the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Commission and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) via its reporting features. You can create screening questions for candidates, review and rank them, and communicate with them using customizable email templates—all in a single platform.
The platform earned an overall score of 4.26 out of 5 in our evaluation for its strong applicant tracking features, transparent pricing, and ease of use. Access to a dedicated account manager also contributed to its high score. However, it got low marks on popularity because of its limited online reviews. It also scored lowest on reporting as it doesn’t allow customization.
MightyRecruiter has around 9,200 global candidates.
MightyRecruiter has configurable admin tools. (Source: MightyRecruiter)
MightyRecruiter Features
- Job posting and distribution: You can post job openings to leading job boards and sites simultaneously—something that Freshteam and SmartRecruiters also do. Also, it integrates well with social media accounts like LinkedIn and Facebook, so you can easily schedule your posts, and MightyRecruiter will post your open jobs for you.
- JobPromote: If you need help finding qualified applicants in highly competitive job markets, MightyRecruiter’s JobPromote can help. It gets your work opportunities in front of the right candidates and fills your position in no time—a unique function that only MightyRecruiter offers.
- Customizable career site: Similar to all solutions on this list, MightyRecruiter lets you easily customize and let your company culture attract potential talent using a career page. You can place your company logo, advertise your company culture, use your own accent colors, and upload custom images and videos to get qualified candidates’ attention. If you have an existing career page, just copy and paste the widget code into your site where you would like it to appear, and the software will update it for you.
- Searchable resume database: MightyRecruiter has a database of over 22 million resumes that can help you find employees from those unique, opted-in candidates.
- Pre-screening: For the application process, you can include screening questions from MightyRecruiter’s Question Library or customized ones to eliminate applicants who fail to meet predetermined requirements (like location or age requirements and certifications and essential skills).
- Reporting and analytics: You can generate reports for job postings, candidate sourcing, job advertising costs, and even data to comply with the EEO and OFCCP in the case of an audit (this is a function JobScore also offers).
- Customer support: Only MightyRecruiter, has a dedicated account manager available for all customers. You can also contact MightyRecruiter’s support team via chat, phone, and email for basic troubleshooting and quick questions from Monday until Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central time.
Read Our Full MightyRecruiter Review
SmartRecruiters: Ideal for Fast-growing Firms (With Professional Recruiters) Planning to Upgrade Talent Acquisition Features
SmartRecruiters
Overall Score: 4.06
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Easy to set up, use, and deploy in multiple locations
- Unlimited number of users and candidates
- Mobile-optimized career site
- Candidate database management
What's Missing
- Pricing is not transparent
- Self-scheduling feature is glitchy sometimes
- Job posting approval process for the free version takes longer than usual
SmartRecruiters Pricing
- Free: Up to 10 active job posts
- SmartRecruit: Custom-priced
SmartRecruiters is a scalable end-to-end talent acquisition software with seamless integration and collaboration, making it ideal for fast-growing firms. It helps recruiters and hiring managers by augmenting their HR functions and has a free version that supports multiboard job postings, pre-integrated assessments, candidate management, applicant screening, interview scheduling, offer management, and onboarding. Its SmartGlobal tool, which comes with multilanguage customer support, enables you to recruit globally and hire locally.
The solution earned an overall score of 4.06 out of 5 because it has efficient applicant tracking and reporting features. Also, it has more than 400 online reviews with a lot of positive feedback; users commented that it is user-friendly and that its free version supports an unlimited number of users and candidates. However, it lost points on pricing because it lacks transparency; you need to contact its sales team for a quote to upgrade from the free plan.
Many popular brands—including Visa, Etsy, Verisk, Marc Jacobs, Skechers, and Gameloft—use SmartRecruiters.
SmartRecruiters’ workflow management has configurable tasks and reminders to ensure you’re on top of the hiring process.
(Source: SmartRecruiters)
SmartRecruiters Standout Features
- Multiboard job posting: With just one click, SmartRecruiters can post jobs on more than 300 job boards. Its SmartDistribute tracking reports and post-to-hire metrics even identify which job boards are helping you fill your talent pipeline, a function only SmartRecruiters offer.
- Collaborative hiring tools: To fast-track the hiring process, SmartRecruiters allows hiring managers and other stakeholders to communicate, share resumes and notes, and collaborate in one platform. You can maintain communication records with its historical message tracking and create a consistent messaging system with SmartRecruiters’ template library.
- Mobile application: This lets you stay connected with your hiring team at any time—and only SmartRecruiters, Indeed, and Freshteam offer one. Aside from staying up-to-date with hiring activities, you can screen, review, and approve candidates using your iOS or Android device.
- Workflow management: SmartRecruiters’ unique workflow management is one of the best in the market, as it’s so simple to configure, unlike other providers where inexperienced users may need guidance. This solution prevents workflow stagnation with configurable tasks and reminders, easy approvals, and real-time dashboards. You can also keep passive candidates updated with scheduled check-ins, improve candidate experience with timely feedback, and even set reminders to reduce the time you spend on each vacant job position.
- Applicant screening: SmartRecruiters has customizable application forms that let you identify qualified candidates quickly—a function JobScore also has. It even has fully integrated assessments and skills tests to predict if a candidate is fit for the role and if they will stay with the company for a long time—something Freshteam and Indeed can also do.
- Interview scheduling and process: You can schedule virtual interviews with multiple candidates and provide interview updates automatically. Standardized scorecards are used to get objective feedback from interviewers.
- Hiring plans: You can set hiring goals and monitor and improve the hiring team’s performance during the recruitment process.
- Offer management and onboarding: Only with SmartRecruiters can you extend timely offers to applicants using integrated and configurable offer letter templates and forms and automated approvals via any mobile device. You can even let candidates view, sign, and accept their offers quickly and from any device using SmartRecruiters’ DocuSign integration. It also has an automated onboarding process complete with background checks for new hires.
Read Our Full SmartRecruiters Review
JobScore: Ideal for Recruiters & Companies Wanting to Develop Referral Programs
JobScore
Overall Score: 4.06
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- User-friendly and highly accessible
- Customizable career page and application forms
- Reward referral for employees
What's Missing
- Advanced features cost extra
- Takes more than 48 hours for customer service to respond
- Filters need improvement
Job Score Monthly Pricing
- Free: 1 active job post
- Start: $149; 5 active job posts
- Scale: $449; 10 active job posts
- Enterprise: Custom-priced
JobScore is an all-in-one recruitment platform great for recruiters and companies that need a multichannel job posting site with a strong referral program. Its free plan allows you to post an unlimited number of job ads (both paid and unpaid) to access an unlimited number of candidates. It also lets you get more applicants with its employee referral programs—as an employee, you can get a reward once a successful referral gets hired.
The platform earned an overall score of 4.06 out of 5 in our evaluation and received high marks for its robust ATS. However, it did not do well in popularity since it has a limited number of online reviews on third-party sites. In addition, you have to upgrade to its pricey enterprise version if you want premium features, like custom data exports, account analysis and insights, and a dedicated account manager.
JobScore has 1,000+ active employers, holds 15+ million job applications, and serves 150+ countries.
JobScore’s workflow system (Source: JobScore)
JobScore Standout Features
- Customizable career page and application forms: JobScore allows you to configure your career page using videos, pictures, and team profiles that showcase your company, environment, and products. Similar to SmartRecruiters, you can use pre-built or customizable short or long application forms to build a better candidate profile.
- Automated job posting: Users can automatically post jobs to free job boards or have them posted on paid job board sites at negotiated rates. In case your niche job board doesn’t integrate with JobScore, you can create a custom tracking link and insert it in your job posting. The solution also keeps track of your job postings.
- Social recruiting: JobScore promotes jobs via social media. However, instead of cross-posting the open jobs to social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you’ll have to send a referral campaign email to prompt your employees to share open positions through their social media networks.
- Overdue reports: With JobScore’s Scale and Enterprise plans, you can set the maximum time a candidate should be in each workflow stage—or else their status will be “overdue.” The Overdue Report shows how many people are overdue in each stage and prompts you to take action.
- Employee referral portal: Like Freshteam, JobScore lets your employees take part in your hiring process by using their networks for referrals. There will be an employee referral portal so your team can easily send resumes and track their referrals in the hiring process.
- Reward referral: To motivate your employees more, you can make rewards available when they have a successful referral.
- New candidate alerts: As an administrator, you get to control who gets notified when a new candidate applies for a specific position. You can also ask hiring managers to make a special preference for referral candidates and search firm (vendors) submissions.
- Immediate candidate response: Employers and hiring managers can sort resumes using applicant scoring (1 to 10). The scores will help you decide who to contact or to decline. You can create email templates, schedule when emails are sent, and decide whether you’ll respond to candidates individually or in bulk.
- Search firms management: With JobScore’s Enterprise plan, you can invite search firms to submit candidates for open positions via email with detailed submission instructions. When agencies submit candidates, JobScore parses and sends the resumes to the hiring team. Search firms will be kept in the loop in every communication between you and the candidates.
- Candidate review: JobScore lets you extract all pertinent information from resumes to easy-to-scan profiles. You can set scoring criteria and ask inbound questions that will easily filter and sort qualified candidates. Scale and Enterprise subscribers can use a powerful action menu to move candidates to any step in the hiring workflow, tag candidates for future roles, or re-assign candidates to different jobs that are a better fit—all in one click.
- Interviews: Among the other providers, only JobScore’s Scale and Enterprise plans help you prepare interview templates that you can use at each stage of the hiring process. Scheduled interviews link to these templates, so your team can always be prepared.
- Calendar integration: JobScore synchronizes with Google Calendar and Microsoft 365. So, you can view the availability of your team and every conference room in real time and add calls or interviews directly to your teams’ calendars.
- Automated reminders: JobScore helps you focus on what’s important by taking care of reminders like confirmed interviews and appointments and feedback collection.
- EEO and OFCCP compliant: Similar to MightyRecruiter, JobScore helps you stay in compliance with state laws and regulations with its disclaimer that gives applicants the option to volunteer their gender, ethnicity, disability, and veteran status. Its self-identification form also matches the recommended OFCCP font and layout. JobScore has configurable “disposition codes” to disclose the reason for declined and withdrawn candidates.
Breezy HR: Best Free ATS for Solopreneurs & Business Startups
Breezy HR
Overall Score: 3.96
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Scalable and transparent pricing
- Multilanguage support for all plans
- Robust applicant tracking features
What's Missing
- Expensive paid plans
- Limited talent sourcing options
- Limited talent sourcing options
Breezy HR Monthly Pricing
- Bootstrap: Free (one active job post)
- Startup: $171 (unlimited jobs)
- Growth: $299 (unlimited jobs)
- Business: $479 (unlimited jobs)
- Pro: Custom-priced (unlimited jobs)
Add-ons: Start at $149
Breezy HR has scalable plans and a broad set of features. Its basic hiring platform for the free plan is ideal for solopreneurs and startups looking to add talent. With its free option, users can create a branded career site, post one job, source, and track applicants. As your business grows, Breezy HR’s paid plans provide more advanced features, such as automations and HRIS integrations.
This ATS earned an overall score of 3.96 out of 5 in our evaluation. While it’s a popular software that’s well-loved by its users for its robust hiring features, it got lower marks on pricing and ease of use (for lack of immediate support).
Some of Breezy HR’s customers are T-Mobile, Dollar Flight Club, Spark Lifecare, and Research Talent Hub.
Breezy HR helps you showcase your job openings with its customizable career website. (Source: Breezy HR)
Breezy HR Features
- Intuitive career website creation: Even with the free plan, users can make attractive career sites using Breezy HR. It has customizable templates, or users can make one from scratch. Apart from showing basic information about your business, there are also fields to add images or testimonials.
- Free and simple job ad creation: Unlike other software in this list, Breezy HR has customizable job description templates, which helps in creating job ads quickly. Thus, users save time creating their own text for the position and ensure that the description is within the industry standard.
- Free job posting: Users can select the channels to advertise their jobs for free, pay extra to post on other sites, such as LinkedIn and Monster, or sponsor ads on Glassdoor and Indeed to achieve a wider reach.
- Simple candidate pipeline management: Breezy HR lets users see where candidates are in the pipeline, how many are in the different stages, and the next actions they can take. Like Freshteam, Breezy HR uses a Kanban board style candidate pipeline. With paid plans, you can automate the next actions for your pipeline. For example, you can send automated SMS or email to new applicants. You can also create different pipelines with various automated actions for each open position. These pipelines are saved so that users can reuse them for similar job roles.
- Candidate scorecard: Starting with the Growth plan, users can customize their scorecard to help evaluate applicants based on predefined criteria for the position. This way, a hiring manager evaluates candidates using unbiased information, so they make decisions based on the job requirements instead of depending on gut feeling or personal preference.
- Talent sourcing: Users can communicate with applicants, review new applications, and look for candidates using the search functionality based on location, job title, skills, or background.
- Reports and analytics: Breezy HR allows users to track metrics—including number of views for different positions, scheduled interviews, and candidates applied, referred, sourced, hired, or disqualified. Users may also check the time needed to fill each position and send employee and candidate satisfaction surveys to check the pipeline’s efficiency.
Indeed: Best for Companies Needing Unlimited Job Postings To Support High Turnover or Hiring Increase
Indeed
Overall Score: 3.95
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Post unlimited jobs for free
- Indeed Assessments evaluates candidates’ on-the-job skills and qualities
- Access to 200 million resumes
What's Missing
- Have to submit a ticket to get support
- Some jobs sponsored on desktop may not be sponsored on mobile
- Software sometimes glitches when posting a job
Indeed Pricing
- Free (unlimited jobs)
- Optional: $5/day pay-per-click advertising fee for job promotion
- $100 or $250 monthly to email 30 or 100 candidates, respectively
Indeed is a free job board site with over 3 million job seekers each month. It’s great for any business wanting to maximize its reach with free job postings and basic applicant tracking. Its management tools allow you to message candidates throughout each stage of the hiring process, schedule interviews, and send assessments—and it updates the candidate’s status automatically. Meanwhile, its salary tools provide employers information about current pay rates based on the job title.
The provider received an overall score of 3.95 out of 5 in our evaluation because it is easy to use and navigate. Even though it earned mixed reviews, it is popular with online reviewers. However, its reporting features and workflow options aren’t nearly as robust as those offered by Freshteam. Indeed also scored low on pricing as it lacks multiple tiers and its paid option for sponsoring posts is costly at $150 per month.
Indeed lets you and hiring team members send messages to candidates directly or schedule an interview from its platform. (Source: Indeed)
Indeed Standout Features
- Careers page and employer branding: Your free Indeed company page informs job seekers what it’s like to work for your company. You can add photos, and employees can leave reviews about your company. Unlike Freshteam, you don’t have to upgrade to customize your careers page.
- Sponsored job postings: Indeed’s Sponsored Jobs is the only pay-per-click plan to boost your job postings in this guide. You can post jobs directly on its platform for free, but you can also pay a small fee (starts at $5/day) to sponsor jobs. Sponsoring your ad is one way to maximize your job post on Indeed. If you have an existing company career site, you can post a job for free in the general search results or pay to advertise.
- Mobile recruiting: Like Freshteam and SmartRecruiters, you can cast a wider net for qualified applicants since Indeed job postings automatically receive applications via Indeed Apply, even on mobile. Indeed Apply is a feature that allows job seekers to quickly send their applications using an Indeed Resume or a traditional resume file.
- Applicant screening: Like MightyRecruiter and Homebase, you can add screening questions to the job application form, e.g., “How many years of experience do you have?” You can also ask job seekers to complete online exams to verify their skills, like customer support, typing, or Excel.
- Candidate communications: Like all the other providers, Indeed lets you and members of the hiring team send messages to candidates or schedule an interview from its platform. It also stores all messages, allowing you to track applicant communications easily.
- Email templates: You can create templates for common messages, such as “Thank you for applying” or “We’ll be contacting you for an interview.” This lets you correspond using standardized communications to keep job seekers in the loop.
- Third-party integration: Only Indeed works seamlessly with more than 200 third-party platforms such as Applicant Pro, Breezy HR, Greenhouse, Hirebridge, JazzHR, TalentReef, Workable, and Zoho Recruit.
Homebase: Best for Restaurants & Retailers Needing Applicant Tracking, Scheduling & Attendance Management Solutions
Homebase
Overall Score: 3.83
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Post job for free on top online job boards
- Message applicants and schedule interviews within the platform
- Applicants can use QR codes and Text-to-Apply to submit resumes faster
What's Missing
- Job posting boost is expensive
- Constantly lagging
- Notifications are overwhelming
Homebase Monthly Per-location Pricing
- Basic: $0 (for one location)
- Essentials: $24.95
- Plus: $59.95
- All-in-One: $99.95
- Add-ons: Start at $79/post or $99 per month to access HR Pro advisers and resources
Homebase is an applicant tracking, employee scheduling, and time tracking solution perfect for restaurants and retail shops that have one or more locations and mostly hire hourly workers. Aside from sending resumes via your career page, applicants can make use of Homebase’s QR codes and Text-to-Apply to reach you faster. After you accept applications, Homebase allows you to contact, screen, and interview applicants using the same platform almost automatically. These recruiting tools are optimal since restaurants and retailers have the highest rate of employee turnover.
In our evaluation, Homebase received an overall score of 3.83 out of 5, taking a hit because of popularity. And although it has a strong set of applicant tracking features, it lacks customizable reporting. Most online users find its interface straightforward. Some, however, say that it has a lot of features but is not well-integrated. There were even times that the software lagged.
Homebase is used by more than 100,000 businesses.
Homebase’s application tracking system dashboard (Source: Homebase)
Homebase Standout Features
- Per-location pricing: While other providers charge monthly fees on a per-employee basis, only Homebase bills you based on the number of business locations you have. This is optimal for employers with plans to grow their workforce in one location.
- Feature-rich free tier: Compared to all of the applicant tracking software we reviewed, only Homebase has a robust offering of free-to-use hiring, scheduling, and time tracking tools. You even get a built-in team messenger and a self-service portal where employees can manage their own information.
- Intuitive interface: It has an easy-to-use platform with intuitive controls that enable users to create and post jobs to multiple online job boards and social media platforms such as Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn—similar to how Freshteam reaches a wider database. Applicants can also send their resumes through the job boards and go directly to the Homebase Hiring dashboard, where you can message, interview, and hire applicants all in one place.
- Screening questions: Like Indeed and MightyRecruiter, you can use screening questions to make the vetting process even easier with Homebase. You get up to three questions that can be attached to a job post. Applicants can respond to these questions when they apply.
- Premium boost: To get your job post in front of more applicants, you can purchase Homebase’s Premium Boost, which lasts for 30 days and increases the number of applicants you’ll receive.
- Applicant management: Aside from reaching out to applicants via job boards and social media platforms, Homebase offers different ways you can find applicants.
- Referrals: You can send a link to your job post to your team members.
- QR code: Applicants can download a QR code that they can scan on their phones.
- Text-to-apply: To capture walk-ins, you can send applicants a text message with a link to your job post—a unique feature that only Homebase offers.
- Career page: Customize your career page and use it to describe your business and advertise your company culture. You can also send the career page’s link to applicants.
- Manual: Add applicants directly to Homebase through its Hiring page.
- Multiple filters: Only Homebase narrows the number of applicants down using different filters—Status, Distance, Application Quality, Source, and Availability.
- Automated onboarding process: New employees hired using Homebase will receive a welcome packet and can e-sign direct deposit, W-4, W-9, and I-9 forms.
How We Evaluated the Best Free Applicant Tracking Systems
We compared each ATS on price and ease of use. Also, we looked for essential features like free job board postings, candidate management and tracking, team collaboration, referral programs, integration options, and a careers page. We excluded those that only offered a free trial and demo.
Based on our evaluation Freshteam is the best free applicant tracking system for small businesses with up to 50 employees. It earned an overall score of 4.31 out of 5, with high marks on popularity, applicant tracking, and reporting features. It is also scalable, making it a great ATS with which your business can grow.
To see our full evaluation criteria for the top applicant tracking software, click through the tabs in the box below.
25%
Pricing
25%
Applicant tracking features
25%
Ease of use
15%
Popularity
10%
Reporting
25% of Overall Score
We selected providers that offer free plans and transparent pricing for paid tiers. Additional points were also given if the software has no setup fee and its paid plans are less than $30 monthly. Among the shortlisted solutions, only MightyRecruiter is free forever and caters to an unlimited number of users, job postings, and candidates. Although Breezy HR has a free forever plan with unlimited users and candidates, it only allows one job posting at a time.
25% of Overall Score
We awarded more points to free applicant tracking solutions that allow you to post jobs on multiple job boards. Plus points are given if the provider has communication features for both applicants and hiring teams, a document management functionality for resumes and application attachments, and a customizable career page where you can track the entire recruitment process. Out of the seven ATSes in this guide, Freshteam, SmartRecruiters, and MightyRecruiter have the most robust applicant tracking functionalities that many can utilize to their advantage.
25% of Overall Score
We gave high scores to free systems that real users find intuitive and easy to learn and navigate. We also considered solutions with quick response turnaround via live phone support, how-to guides, and multiple third-party integration options. Additional points were awarded if a user can export documents into a CSV file. Although some of the solutions we evaluated earned 4 points and above, only Indeed and MightyRecruiter got a perfect score because both are easy to navigate and have tutorials and how-to guides for new users.
15% of Overall Score
For this criterion, solutions with an average score of 4+ stars from online user reviews on sites like Capterra and G2 get high scores. Plus points were also given if the software has 200 or more reviews on third-party sites. Freshteam, Homebase, Indeed, SmartRecruiters, and Breezy HR earned high marks in this criterion.
10% of Overall Score
Aside from having access to standard reports, users should be able to create their own reports and view information within their recruitment system. Freshteam and SmartRecruiters have a list of very useful pre-built reports that help users track the candidates’ progress accurately and efficiently.
*Percentages of overall score
Need more help with the hiring process? Use our step-by-step guide on how to hire employees to make it easy.
Bottom Line
An ATS not only streamlines your recruitment process but also saves you time. All the solutions on our list offer free options, simplify job postings, filter resumes and applications, screen applicants, and improve candidate-employer communication.
Among the providers in this guide, Freshteam is the best option. If you need a job-specific hiring team that you can collaborate with to screen, track, and communicate with applicants using both a web and mobile app at no cost, then it is the perfect solution. Sign up for its free plan today.
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