Glassdoor and Indeed are two recruiting and job board sites that allow employers to attract qualified candidates and boost their company brand online. While both aim to help businesses improve recruiting and hiring, their platforms are designed to serve slightly different purposes. In this guide, we compared the two to help you understand the differences and how you can best use both.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: When Each Is a Good Fit
- Glassdoor: Best for businesses that need employer branding tools to attract high-quality candidates with a unique skillset
- Indeed: Best for budget-conscious companies hiring for common positions that they need to fill quickly
Glassdoor vs Indeed: When Neither Is a Good Fit
If you’re looking for a recruiting solution with robust job posting and applicant matching tools, then you may want to consider an alternative job board. With ZipRecruiter, you can boost your hiring activities through job aggregation—distributing your open jobs to more than 100 job boards with just one click.
- ZipRecruiter: Best for growing companies with plans to scale and need a wide job posting reach to find qualified candidates
Why We Recommend Businesses Use Glassdoor and Indeed Together
Given that Glassdoor and Indeed have slightly different features and strengths, we recommend business owners use both platforms. They’re less of “competitors” and more of “partners” since they joined forces.
In 2020, Glassdoor and Indeed formed a partnership to provide clients a wider audience of job seekers to find qualified candidates and share their brand stories with. One of the advantages of the partnership is streamlined job postings, wherein jobs that you post on Indeed will also appear on Glassdoor. Meanwhile, clients who want to list open jobs on Glassdoor will now be redirected to Indeed.
Glassdoor provides the perfect place to manage your employer brand, allowing you to engage job seekers by letting them know about your company and workplace culture, a necessity when you’re hiring for a niche position that’s highly sought after.
It has a variety of solutions, from branded job postings to job ad advertising and a customizable company page. However, Glassdoor doesn’t have a way to search resumes of passive job seekers and reach out to them as Indeed does.
Glassdoor Pros and Cons
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Free company page with reviews management | Its free plan doesn’t include branded job postings and job ads advertising |
| Free salary tool | No resume search tool |
| Has robust employer branding tools | Lacks an applicant tracking system (ATS) |
Indeed lets you post unlimited jobs for free and view applicant resumes online. This is optimal for small employers who have open jobs and need to hire quickly at little cost. You can also advertise jobs by setting your own budget instead of paying for a package as required on Glassdoor.
Your jobs will be seen by a large pool of applicants (it has more than 150 million job seeker resumes), and you can set filters to ensure you find a good fit. You are more susceptible to receiving applicants that are just mass applying to numerous jobs, so you’ll need to use Indeed’s features and establish some internal processes to increase efficiency.
Indeed Pros and Cons
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Ease of use | Occasional resume parsing inaccuracies |
| Unlimited job postings | Applicant tracking tools are not robust |
| Free listings | Expensive to subscribe to all of its add-on features |
If you need help learning how to advertise your open position, check out our guide on how to post a job ad.
How We Evaluated Glassdoor vs Indeed
We evaluated Glassdoor vs Indeed based on these criteria:
- Price: We compared pricing structures to check whether or not each provider has transparent fees, free options, and reasonably priced plans for small businesses.
- Ease of use: Apart from offering online tools that are simple to learn, the best recruiting and job posting sites should be intuitive—making it easy for job seekers and employers to use.
- Job posting: We looked at both providers’ job posting functionalities, including their job advertising tools and reach.
- Job seekers: Having access to a platform that can attract job seekers is helpful. In addition to job posting tools, we looked at each providers’ employer branding solutions like a company page with custom content.
- User reviews: We evaluated customer reviews to find the best option for recruiters and job seekers alike.
Glassdoor vs Indeed Side-by-Side Comparison
Features | Glassdoor | Indeed |
|---|---|---|
Pricing | Free tier available; custom priced paid plans (fees start at $249 per month) | Free job postings; optional pay-per-click (PPC) for job ads advertising |
Job Postings | Unlimited (via Indeed)* | Unlimited |
Job Ads | Included in paid plans | PPC fees range from 25￠to $5 |
Resume Search | N/A | Unlimited resume searches; contacting job seekers who didn’t apply cost either $100 or $250 per month |
Company Page | ✔ | ✔ |
Company Reviews | ✔ | ✔ |
Salary Tools | ✔ | ✔ |
*Given the partnership between Glassdoor and Indeed, clients who want to post jobs on Glassdoor will be redirected to Indeed. Note that Glassdoor clients need to create an account on Indeed in order to post jobs to Glassdoor.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Which Is Better for Employers?
If you want to promote your company and workplace culture to job seekers, Glassdoor is a better option. Its branding tools are more robust—enabling employers to casually sprinkle their brand exposure in front of Glassdoor applicants seeking employment. With Indeed, you also get employer branding solutions, but its platform is more focused on letting you post jobs. Compared to Glassdoor, Indeed’s strength is helping you quickly find qualified job seekers to fill vacant positions.
Glassdoor’s employer branding tools can help get your company’s brand in front of job seekers even when you do not have active recruitments underway.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Which Is Better for Job Seekers?
From a job seeker’s point of view, Indeed is probably the better place to look for a job. In addition to being a job board, Indeed aggregates jobs from other job posting sites and cross-posts them. Even job listings of Glassdoor clients appear on Indeed given the two companies’ partnership.
When job seekers find a position they’re interested in, they can check out the company’s reviews on both sites. With Glassdoor, you can view feedback from the business’ previous and current employees. You may even get insight into what the company’s interview process is like.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Pricing
You can sign up for a free employer account on both Indeed and Glassdoor. The free account allows you to claim your company page and online reviews. You can also post jobs and access each platforms’ salary tools for free.
However, if you want to advertise your open positions, you have to pay extra regardless of which job posting site you use. Advertising ensures your job posting is seen by a larger audience, increasing the likelihood that qualified job seekers will apply.
- Glassdoor pricing: Free and custom priced paid plans (fees start at $249 per month); premium tiers include custom company page content, branded job posts, and targeted job ads; brand advertising and insights from employee reviews are available as paid add-ons
- Indeed pricing: Free job postings and resume searches; job advertising follow PPC pricing (fees range from 25 cents to $5); contacting job seekers who didn’t apply cost either $100 or $250 per month with contact limits of 30 and 100, respectively
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Company Page Features
You can claim your company page for free on both Glassdoor and Indeed. You can also use that to share information about your business and workplace culture with job seekers.
On Glassdoor, former and current employees can post their feedback and reviews on your page. Applicants can even find out more about the interview process with your company. However, if you want customization options, you need to subscribe to Glassdoor’s paid plans.
Fit Small Business’ company page on Glassdoor
For Indeed, its company page is very similar to Glassdoor’s company profiles. It shows current and former employee reviews, open jobs, photos, and a Q&A section where job seekers can ask questions. Applicants can also follow the company by clicking the “Follow” button at the top of the page. This way, job seekers get notified whenever company updates and new jobs are posted.
Fit Small Business’ company page on Indeed
Note that unlike with Glassdoor, you don’t need a paid plan in order to customize your profile.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: “Featured Employer” Ads
With Indeed, you can pay to become a “featured employer” on its platform. This means that your ad is displayed on the sidebar of the webpage that job seekers view when looking at posted job opportunities. It also provides a way to brand your organization with job seekers. In turn, job seekers gain some initial familiarity with your company after having seen your “featured employer” ad.
Glassdoor, on the other hand, provides display advertising that targets individual job seekers based on location, occupation, and other demographics. It can even put your ad on a competitor profile so those job seekers can also learn about your brand while researching other companies.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Job Posting and Job Advertising Tools
There’s no limit to the number of jobs you can post for free on Indeed. The same goes for Glassdoor since it now redirects its clients to Indeed’s platform for their job postings.
Since Indeed’s primary purpose is to post jobs, the process is streamlined and allows for quicker job postings.
If you want better visibility, Indeed has a “sponsored jobs” feature that allows you to widen your job ads’ reach. However, this is a paid solution that follows PPC pricing (fees range from 25 cents to $5 per click). You start by setting a budget (for example $5 per day), then Indeed runs and calculates the total cost of your job advertising campaigns based on the number of times job seekers click on your job posts.
Note that the price of a click varies, depending on the competition in that job market. Paid clicks also tend to cost less in a small rural market than in a major urban area like San Francisco or New York.
For Glassdoor, you need a paid subscription in order to gain access to its branded job posting and job advertising solutions. With these tools, you can target job seekers by role, location, and industry. You can also view data on how your ads are performing, allowing you to boost job ads so that they’re featured in search results and/or sent to candidates via job alert emails.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Applicant Tracking
Jobs that you post on Indeed appear in general search results, where job seekers can apply online or via mobile. Similar to an ATS, you can manage candidates through the recruiting pipeline—directly from your Indeed dashboard. Moreover, it provides pre-employment screening tests and offers integration with third-party ATSes like Homebase.
Unlike Indeed, Glassdoor doesn’t have built-in applicant tracking tools. However, you can integrate its platform with several third-party ATSes such as BambooHR, Greenhouse, and PeopleSoft.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Resume Search
With Glassdoor, you can view candidate resumes online after applicants apply to your job postings. Note that you cannot search for candidates and contact them if they haven’t applied for a job you’ve posted.
Meanwhile, what sets Indeed apart from most other job boards is the feature that allows you to search and view resumes for free. When you find a candidate you want to contact, then you can choose to pay the monthly fee. For $100 per month, you can contact up to 30 job seekers. If you want to contact up to 100 candidates, you have to pay $250 monthly.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Salary Tools
You can use Glassdoor and Indeed’s salary tools for free. This provides both employers and job seekers with information about pay estimates on open jobs and salary ranges for specific positions.
For Glassdoor, the company designed its salary tools based on the need for employees to find out what they can expect to be paid. Its data comes from salaries reported anonymously by workers with the same or similar job titles.
Salary tools on Glassdoor show what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) jobs pay.
Indeed’s salary tools also have the same look and feel as that of Glassdoor. Aside from employees’ anonymous reporting of their pay details, Indeed’s salary data is based on real job ads that employers have posted for the same positions. Indeed also typically uses twice as many data points, likely improving the accuracy of their salary information.
Salary tools on Indeed showing what an SEO job pays
Glassdoor vs Indeed: Ease of Use and Customer Support
Indeed has a clear and user-friendly interface for both job seekers and employers. It even has mobile apps (for iOS and Android devices) that allow job seekers to search for employers and apply for jobs. Recruiters and employers can also use the app to post jobs and manage candidates who have applied.
Glassdoor has easy-to-use tools for job seekers and employers. It provides a dashboard that employees can use to set up job alerts, post company reviews, and upload resumes. Job seekers can also research companies and apply to job ads through a mobile app (for iOS and Android). However, Glassdoor doesn’t have an app for employers to manage job postings and candidate applications while on the go.
In terms of customer support, both job seekers and employers can contact Indeed’s support team Mondays through Fridays, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. Aside from phone support, you can submit a request through its website or use Twitter to send your concerns to @IndeedSupport. Indeed also has a robust Employer Help Center organized by topics such as contacting candidates, posting jobs, and managing company pages.
Glassdoor, on the other hand, provides customer support by having you fill out a form online. Employers can contact its representatives by phone, but job seekers are not provided with an option to call. They have to complete an online form to get a response to their inquiries.
If you linger on Glassdoor’s “For Employers” page long enough, a chatbot will also pop up. However, it can only respond to questions within its programming. Plus, some of its standard responses include setting up a sales call or redirecting you to Glassdoor’s website for an answer.
Glassdoor vs Indeed: User Reviews
- Glassdoor: Reviewers who left feedback on G2 and Capterra rated Glassdoor 4.2 and 4.1, respectively. They like that it helps them get insights about a company, its organizational structure, estimated salaries, and interview processes. What they don’t appreciate is the lack of resume search and applicant tracking tools.
- Indeed: Users rated Indeed 4.3 and 4.5 on G2 and Capterra, respectively. Most of the online reviews are from job seekers who said that it helps them to find jobs in a variety of locations. Other users said that its user-friendly tools enable them to efficiently post jobs and track qualified candidates. Meanwhile, some said that its search and applicant filters aren’t robust.
Bottom Line
Indeed and Glassdoor are both great recruitment software options; each has specific strengths to improve employee branding and hiring activities. What’s important is determining your business’ talent acquisition strategies and needs to help you identify which of these two is most useful to you. Many companies utilize both of these platforms to cover all their unique employment needs and to target a variety of candidates in today’s job market.
