Small Improvements: One of the main reasons that we chose Small Improvements for our top spot is price. The system is free for up to 10 users. After that, Small Improvements costs $6 per user per month with an $150 monthly bill minimum. This means you can get 25 users for $150/month, which is $1,800 per year total.

One advantage of Small Improvements is that they don’t charge in tiers, so there aren’t huge price hikes as you add employees. You also don’t have to sign a long term contract. You pay per user by the month (versus by the year, like Cornerstone). Trakstar only does annual subscription in blocks of 25 employees per price tier.

Cornerstone Growth Edition: Similar to Small Improvements, Cornerstone does a per user price. Their price tag is currently $72 per user per year; their representative estimated that the price will increase sometime in 2017 to $84 and even potentially up into the $90’s within 2 years due to added features.This translates to:

• 25 employees = $1,800 at $72/user; $2,100 at $84/user
• 50 employees = $3,600 at $72/user; $4,200 at $84/user

Cornerstone also a minimum annual bill $1,000, and you need to sign a 1, 2, or 3 year agreement with them. Price breaks are possible if you sign a longer term agreement.

One area that Cornerstone falls flat is the $3,000 setup fee if you want them to set it up for you (you can set it up on your own for free).

Trakstar: Trakstar does an annual subscription that increases for every 25 employees. The current annual pricing falls into the following tiers:

• 1-25 employees = $3,034
• 26-50 employees = $3,340
• 51-75 employees = $3,944

The downside of Trakstar is that you might be paying for users you don’t have. For instance, if you have 26 employees, you’ll get bumped up to the 2nd tier.

When I asked about multiple year subscriptions, the representative said that wasn’t the usual for Trakstar, but he thought he could get me a discount if I was up for signing a 2, 3, or 5 year contract–so it’s worth it to ask if you want to sign up for the software long term!

The big perk about pricing for Trakstar is that they include a training plan and custom set up for free that we will talk about more in the setup section.

Small Improvements: With Small Improvements’ 30 day trial, you get to play with a mock scenario that is pre-uploaded for the free trial. I found it a little annoying that I would have to purchase first before uploading my own company’s data into the system, and it makes it a bit hard to evaluate their setup process.Unfortunately, Small Improvements won’t reach out to you in person during the setup process. However, to combat this lack of training from a live person, Small Improvements does have twice weekly live webinars where you can interact with the representatives’ demonstration and ask questions. There is also a mini-tutorial. You could also instead watch their pre-recorded webinars and videos about set up. If you want a real person though, the other two systems have a leg up on Small Improvements in this area.

Cornerstone Growth Edition: I was really impressed with how Cornerstone went through the setup with me for their system. I simply registered for the free trial online, and I was contacted by both email and phone from an account representative. He walked me through the system and answered any questions that very same day so that I could make the most of the 7 day free trial. Even though we set aside a half hour, we went well over time and he would have stayed on longer.

To set up your team, the process takes 6 steps and the system walks you through them. As you are setting up, unlike the other 2 systems, with Cornerstone you will be using your real employees’ data, which is really nice. The steps are:

• Selecting a performance review template (role-based, customize, or company-wide where everyone would be the same)
• Managing your roles (including 47 templates included for popular roles)
• Customizing goals and competencies (including 20 goals and 87 common competencies, or you can make your own)
• Configuring your ratings/scoring system
• 360 feedback- you can turn it on or off
• Scheduling your review cycle (as a plus, Cornerstone can run more than 1 cycle at once, i.e. if you want to do a 90 day cycle for sales, but annual for everyone else)

The only downside is the 7 day free trial is much shorter than Small Improvements’ and Trakstar’s free trials, which forces you to get setup and decide quickly. Should you choose to purchase, your data from the free trial will automatically transfer to your actual portal, so your work isn’t done in vain!

Trakstar: Trakstar also impressed me with their setup process. When I registered on their website for the free trial, I was setup in a demo scenario portal within 3 minutes. I was also setup within 24 hours with a full hour long demo of what they system can do from a representative. However, in the end, you cannot upload your company’s data during the free trial, which is frustrating. Only Cornerstone lets you do that.

If you become a customer, Trakstar will set up everything for you…free of charge! They will actually take you through 5-6 training sessions, including a training for your managers that they record and give to you so that you always have it. They said this process, because of heavy customization, takes about 4-6 weeks, but it can take as few as 5 days if the business owner is ready to rock. I thought this was a huge plus! It really takes the headache out of performance management so that the system can just run, which is what it should do.

Small Improvements: Once you get all of your employees set up into the Small Improvements system, they claim that their system is as easy to use as Facebook. Their main 4 steps to their performance management process are:

1. Performance Reviews – the actual important yearly or biannual performance review form
2. 360 Degree Feedback – the employee also ranks themselves on the same aspects as the review form, which is useful for their manager to see for comparison (or you can turn this feature off)
3. Objectives – the goals you want to set for your employees. You can use the system’s performance review forms and feedback log and link them to these goals
4. Lightweight Continuous Feedback – the system asks managers and employees for feedback on their progress towards objectives on a weekly basis (you can change that frequency if you want)

You may use all in combination, or just pick the ones you need, and all of them can be automated and set to remind people to do their tasks, like recording weekly notes in each employee’s profile (which you can set for them to see or for only you to see).

It’s easy to configure the settings for employee reminders and various other aspects of the system for complete automation, making Small Improvements easy to use.

Here is a sample of how easy the administration screen is:

Cornerstone Growth Edition: Once the legwork of setup is done, Cornerstone Growth Edition is easy to use.

You can set automatic reminders for nearly everything (or you can turn them off if your team gets annoyed). This is one of the biggest issues in performance management–getting the managers to do the reviews, getting the employees to do their self-reviews… the chasing can take a ton of time, so automation here really helps.

Once you get going through a review cycle or two, the goal of Cornerstone is to be completely automatic, where all you have to do then is configure new employees into the system and erase employees who leave your company.

Here is how easy Cornerstone makes automation settings:

Trakstar: Trakstar is all about custom setup for ease of use.

Their dashboard gives a snapshot of where each employee is in the performance management cycle with due dates (which is what the screenshot is below). The system also has a high level of customized automated email, which remind people to fill out reviews and take other actions in the system.

You can program email reminders for continuous feedback, which is a huge part of performance management for Trakstar, and they encourage reminders and feedback to be logged at the minimum once every 2 weeks. This is due to how goal oriented the system is.

Here is what a sample Trakstar dashboard looks like:

Small Improvements: Small Improvements sticks to the basics for actual performance review features. They primarily run their performance reviews based on these 2-dimensional graphs (pictured in a screenshot below). If you go into the system to rate someone, you can move that dot in the screenshot below to where you think they should rank (from poor to great and the axes are behavior and results). You can then write actual comments below.The main perks of Small Improvements are:

• The continuous feedback aspect
• Objectives linked to each person’s, team’s, and the company’s goals
• Tracking progress in the system towards these goals (be it by due date or by task)
• 360 degree reviews that engage the employees to review themselves
• Customizable performance review forms

Overall, Small Improvements gets our top vote since the system is easy to use and affordable but still chock full of features–a great first performance management review system for a small business.

Cornerstone Growth Edition: Cornerstone has the following performance review features:

• 47 role-based templates for performance reviews
• 20 pre-set goals that span a wide range
• 87 competencies for evaluation that span a variety of positions
• The ability to set your scoring guidelines in the system (i.e. what a “3” out of 10 on a competency means versus an “8” out of 10)
• The ability to turn on 360 reviews where employees fill out a self-review on the same form. The system then can easily create an apples-to-apples report on where discrepancies are
• A 9-grid system for ranking each employee, which can even be the base for compensation and promotion decisions

The last of these features, the 9-grid system, is a really cool feature that small business owners can use to compare many people in the same role, or to compare people along certain competencies. This feature is a 9-grid analysis chart, and you can look at where an employee stands on it, where multiple employees compare to each other, and even where the whole company is. Here’s a look at the 9-grid system:

Trakstar: Performance review features is where Trakstar shines and you can see why it has a higher price tag than the other systems.

First, Trakstar has a great goal setting system, where managers and administrators can see who is working on what. You can assign goals to one person, a team, even the whole company, and then you can compare performance on those goals.

The goal setting process itself is super thorough and asks the administrator or manager to include measurements, progress, and due dates. This is so that you can really put some “numbers” behind your performance reviews.

The standard performance reviews features that Trakstar has:

1. 360 degree reviews (if you’d like them- you can turn it off)
2. Customizable performance reviews forms for your company (from the setup process)
3. Customizable scoring (also from setup process)

Other Trakstar performance review features that are unique to Trakstar and not available on the other systems:

1. Multi-rater setting – You can elicit input from anyone on reviews and then have it show up to the employee if you choose.
2. You can invite anyone to review a person – Have a client you want to hear from about Joe the Account Executive? Send them a request by email for a one-time log into to Trakstar and they can put their feedback on Joe’s performance review too.
3. Coaching tips feature – Great for newer managers who do not know exactly how to give feedback. The system prompts them with suggestions on how to “say” something the right way on a review.
4. Extensive custom reporting and analytics – You can choose everything from a histogram to a line graph, and there is even a function to see rater bias. This can be great if you have a lot of managers and won’t be doing all of the performance reviews yourself. There are 3 drop down menus at the top, and those can all be changed to give new data and in different ways:

Small Improvements: The entire mission of this company is to make performance reviews a positive experience and to use continuous feedback for continual improvement and achievement.To do this, they have configured in:

• Heavy employee interaction features, like awarding badges and giving kudos to teammates
• 360 degree reviews
• Encouraging companies to let their employees set their own goals and objectives in addition to the ones set by a manager.
• Employees can also request feedback within the system from their manager or teammates.

If this doesn’t appeal to you, you can turn off the 360 review function very easily, as well as you can regulate the ability of employees to request and give feedback to each other. However, this is the big point of the Small Improvements system–getting everyone involved in the review process, including employees as much as managers.

Cornerstone Growth Edition: Unfortunately, this is an area where Cornerstone falls a bit flat. Cornerstone is definitely geared towards the ease of performance management from the administrator or manager’s side.

To get more use of the employee features side of Cornerstone, you would want to:

• Turn on the 360 degree setting in the system. Then, you can ask employees to fill out performance reviews for their teammates, making it a bit more interactive.
• Have your employees detail their employee profiles including a summary, certifications, college attended, and additional information, which is unique to Cornerstone. The rep pointed out that when companies do this, it actually can help internally so that your people can know who does what, as well as you can directly email that person through the system, serving as a sort of employee directory.
• Have your employees use the 11 free TED talks related to the workplace and hold online discussions on them

If you have a workforce that lacks basic skills (like Microsoft Word), or if you want to add some job variety into their day (i.e. a customer service rep), Cornerstone can offer this with their 2 for-purchase learning bundles. However, it does lack the fun aspects of the other two systems where people can give each other kudos and badges.

Trakstar: Trakstar has a number of features to get your employees involved. All of them can be turned on or off by the administrator, and, of course, you can customize your platform during set up for Trakstar.

With Trakstar, the employee can:

• Add their own goals (if enabled)
• Add their own notes to track performance
• Their own unique employee portal shows their to-do list
• 360 reviews: Employees can review other employees if asked
• The notes are similar to a Facebook feed (managers can also hide notes from employees)
• Employees can upload and attach files to notes, like samples of work from a project

Also, it’s noteworthy that a manager can see the employee’s own notes but not the other way around. The notes taken from either side then align with competencies from the employee’s review via a drop down menu that is custom to the employee and their review form. So, essentially, you can assign a note directly to the part of the performance review form it belongs with.

Small Improvements: Our top choice for this buyer’s guide also has the most integrations, which can make it a fit for your team if you already have one of these systems:

• Slack – A company chat channel & communication platform that is increasing in popularity, especially for tech companies and those with a lot of remote employees, the integration can record comments and kudos on projects.
• iCal – The Apple calendar application, the integration helps to schedule reviews and meetings.
• BambooHR – This is a full spectrum HR software platform, similar to Zenefits, but with the addition of recruitment and applicant tracking aspects to it, which can be helpful as an integration to Small Improvements for linking an entire profile of an employee from hire onward.
• Bonus.ly – This is an employee engagement platform where employees can earn rewards like gift cards by participating and providing feedback for others, a great compliment to a performance management system like Small Improvements.

Having these integrations shows that Small Improvements is a bit more tech-forward and nimble than the other two systems involved, and that there is potential for them to integrate with other related systems soon as their business continues to grow.

Cornerstone Growth Edition: Integrations is an area where Cornerstone needs to improve. They currently only integrate with ADP, which is most likely not your payroll provider if you are a small business.

On a plus side, the representative told me that they will be opening up the code to an open-source API on 2017, which is a fancy way of saying then they will be able to integrate with other systems your small business might have.

Trakstar: Unfortunately, TrakStar has zero integrations. They have been in business for 15 years, but their representative explained that they simply haven’t been able to decide what systems to integrate with.

They do support what’s called a “Single Sign On.” This means, if you use Office365, OneLogIn, or Google, you can link your account to Trakstar and log in simultaneously. They also tried to explain to me that they do an HRIS (Human Resources Information System) sync, but all that really means is that the system will accept an Excel spreadsheet exported from your payroll system to upload your people into Trakstar, which is nothing impressive.

Small Improvements: Small Improvements is based in Berlin, Germany, and thus its customer service does lack a bit for US-based customers. They have email support and phone support during European business hours that goes until about 12:30 pm EST (the middle of the lunch hour), which isn’t bad if you are East Coast or Midwest based. They do also have a great “message us with your times and we will call you” scheduling system (however, if you are on the West Coast, you still will mostly likely miss all of their times offered).They also do not call you when you set up a free trial–you are pretty much on your own.They also have an extensive training video suite, 2 live webinars per week, and recorded webinars. During the live webinars, you can actually ask questions to the representative during them.

Cornerstone Growth Edition: Cornerstone has the largest range of options out of our 3 companies for customer support, including email and live chat support 24/7 and phone support from 8 am-6 pm PST. They also have a bunch of training options, including an entire help suite that is chock-full of videos and article separated by topic.

My experience with Cornerstone’s customer service was excellent overall. The representative I spoke to was friendly, easy to talk to, and wasn’t trying to hard sell me the product–I actually felt like he wanted to make sure this was a good fit for me.

Trakstar: My experience with Trakstar’s customer service was really good and similar to Cornerstone. The representative I worked with was thorough and answered my questions patiently. He shared his computer screen with me, so I could see examples.

Trakstar has email and phone support available Monday – Friday, 9AM – 8PM EST. They do have a live chat button on their cite, but it is primarily for sales, not for support for existing customers. They also have an ample training suite with webinars, videos, and how-to articles.