Rippling Review: Pricing, Features & Alternatives

Rippling has four subscription levels (Core, Pro, Unlimited, and Enterprise) that offer the following:

• Unified workforce directory
• Global workforce analytics & dashboard
• Onboarding/offboarding automation
• Advanced admin & field privileges
• Compensation bands
• Rippling mobile app
• Workflow studio
• Advanced policy management
• Dynamic permissions & approval management
• Advanced document management
• Compliance 360
• Vacation and leave management

• US and global payroll
• Time and attendance
• Benefits administration
• Flex benefits: FSA, HSA, commuter
• ACA & COBRA administration
• Recruiting
• Learning management
• Headcount planning
• Performance management
• Surveys
• HR help desk: HR support
• PEO services
• Administrative services organization (ASO)
• Global employer of record (EoR) services

• Identity and access management
• Device management
• Inventory management

• Corporate cards
• Expense management
• Bill pay

Designing workflows, policies, and permissions to automate HR, IT, and payroll processes is easy with its “workflow automator” tool—no coding skills required. Similar to MS Excel formulas, it utilizes IF/THEN and other conditional logic commands, but is structured in a way that makes it straightforward to use.

Rippling provides options you can use to set up the conditional logic of simple to complex policies and workflows (Source: Rippling)

You don’t have to worry about updating your employees’ permission and approval settings whenever their roles change—Rippling will handle this for you. Its system automatically inherits the permissions associated with specific roles and positions, so you don’t have to manually update this every time there are employee movements in your organization.

Apart from policies and workflows, Rippling lets you build custom triggers and tasks. You can set up conditional formulas to trigger specific actions, such as sending SMS and email alerts, assigning tasks, and complying with approval requirements. What’s great about this is that it also works across Rippling’s partner networks.

For example, you can create a workflow to detect potential pay inequity when hiring a new employee and have Rippling notify you through Slack (one of the collaboration tools it integrates with). Or, you can set up an alert to inform specific employees via Slack, email, and/or SMS of a high-priority ticket raised on Jira when the person in charge is out on PTO.

With Rippling, you can use the employees’ attributes (like department or worker status) to create “trigger workflows” that automate processes. (Source: Rippling)

‘Recipe’ Templates

If you’re unsure whether or not you can create workflows on your own, Rippling has a library of “recipe” templates you can use. Some of these customizable “recipes” include workflow automations to create Google Calendar events for employee benefits enrollments and mandatory learning sessions. It even has a “recipe” to automate the task of informing your payroll team when a hiring referral bonus is scheduled for pay processing and who it should go to.

Apart from workflows, Rippling’s “recipe” library contains report templates—from payroll registers to hiring pipeline reports and employee attrition summaries. Ready-to-use formula options are also available, such as a formula to compute the percentage of employees who completed learning courses.

With Rippling payroll, you don’t need to manually enter data (such as hours worked and benefits deductions) since all of its modules connect seamlessly with each other. You can run unlimited payroll each month and pay employees (including contractors) through direct deposit, paper checks, and even via international wire (for employees based outside of the US).

Plus, with Rippling’s EOR and ASO services, and even through your own local entities in the Rippling platform, companies can hire and pay global employees. Rippling currently supports over 180 countries.

In addition, Rippling’s integration with AP Intego grants you access to pay-as-you-go workers’ compensation insurance. It also supports all types of wage garnishments and can even send the funds to applicable agencies.

Rippling claims that its payroll module can process employee payments in as fast as 90 seconds. (Source: Rippling)

Rippling automatically calculates, files, and pays your federal, state, and local taxes. And at year-end, your employee tax forms (1099s and W-2s) will automatically be generated and electronically distributed. If its reps make a mistake during the tax filing process, Rippling will pay the penalties.

Not sure what payroll features to look for? Check out our guide on how to choose a payroll service to help you evaluate if Rippling is a good fit for your business.

Rippling has an extensive range of employee benefits options, including health insurance (medical, dental, and vision) that covers all 50 states. It also offers commuter benefits, flexible spending accounts (FSA), health savings accounts (HSA), and 401(k) plans.

If you’re looking for new benefits options, you can use Rippling to get quotes, compare packages, and enroll in over 4,000 benefits plans from leading carriers. If you have pre-existing plans, you can opt to retain those—you can even connect your current coverage with Rippling.

As part of its onboarding process, Rippling automatically invites your new hires to review and select benefits options online. (Source: Rippling)

With Rippling, your employees can clock in/out via the computer, a tablet kiosk, and its mobile app for time tracking. All approved hours sync automatically for pay processing, and you can even review your staff’s time cards directly from its payroll solution.

Setting up time tracking rules is made easy with Rippling’s automated workflows. Its system also has built-in compliance that automatically follows federal, state, and local labor laws based on your employee’s work location. Once the rules have been set up, it sends alerts for missed breaks, overtime requests, and unapproved hours.

Apart from monitoring time, Rippling can help you manage and track PTO. Employees can request PTO through its system, which will automatically go to their identified managers for approval.

With Rippling, you can approve employee hours either in bulk or on a per-day basis. (Source: Rippling)

Rippling’s hiring tools include applicant tracking, one-click job postings to multiple job boards and sites (such as Indeed and LinkedIn), and robust reporting to help you check your pipeline and candidate feedback.

It also handles new hire state reporting, plus its onboarding solution can help you send offer letters and other new hire documents to incoming employees. Its partnership with E-Verify even allows you to run background checks on new hires.

A snapshot of Rippling’s applicant tracking module. (Source: Rippling)

In addition to letting you upload your own courses into its system, Rippling’s learning management solution has a database of 24 prebuilt training programs for the US—from Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) training to harassment training in all 50 states.

Additionally, it has 150 international courses, available in more than 10 languages, that cover everything from cybersecurity to country-specific anti-harassment training.

It sends alerts to training participants to ensure that courses are completed on time. Rippling then records and sends the certifications to employees who completed the online training. In case you want to prevent staff from clocking in for a job if they’ve yet to complete the required courses, you can use the certifications to create time tracking rules that restrict clock-ins.

If you can’t find the learning courses you need in Rippling’s training library, its partnership with Go1 provides you access to over 70,000 courses you can purchase.

Rippling’s learning management dashboard shows a summary of training courses, including enrollment and training completion data. (Source: Rippling)

If your business grows to a point where you need PEO services, Rippling can help you manage HR, payroll, benefits, and IT (specifically app and device provisioning and deprovisioning). And when the time comes that you don’t require its PEO anymore, you can easily turn the services off from your account settings and seamlessly transition to using its all-in-one HR platform again.

Rippling allows you to onboard employees easily while ensuring you have all required documents in place. (Source: Rippling)

Employees can access payslips, check benefits, request PTO (managers can approve it), search for their coworkers’ contact details, and log in to all of their company-approved apps via Rippling’s self-service portal. This can be accessed online and via its mobile apps for Android and iOS devices.

Rippling’s mobile apps also have time and geolocation tracking capabilities so you know when your employees are clocking in and out and where they are. You can even set location limits to prevent workers from clocking in if they are outside the GPS radius you identified.

Apart from clocking in/out, Rippling’s mobile apps allow employees to view timesheets and attach images or notes to specific work shifts. (Source: Rippling)

Rippling’s suite of IT solutions is designed to streamline the management of computer devices and business software access when onboarding and offboarding employees. This makes it easy for a small business without in-house IT teams to assign and collect computer devices issued to its workforce.

You also don’t have to worry about removing system access of resigning employees on their last day because Rippling allows you to do this remotely. It can even help manage your computer inventory for you.

Device Management

This solution is designed to help you efficiently manage the entire employee device lifecycle. With Rippling, you can easily set up or reassign computers and laptops for employees.

Rippling’s device management solution lets you order/reassign computer units, install required business apps, and ship the devices to employees. (Source: Rippling)

It also automatically installs an app on all your devices, enabling you to make system changes to company-issued computers. This is great for deploying system updates to all devices, including managing settings for Wi-Fi, VPN, and printers.

When offboarding resigning employees, you can use Rippling to schedule the date and time to disable the computer device access. It also lets you wipe the data and employee accounts from devices to get them ready for the next users.

Rippling provides you with several options on how to handle the data on computer devices for exiting employees. (Source: Rippling)

Inventory Management

If you need to buy new computer devices and have these shipped to your staff, you can place the order, identify the software to be installed, and track the shipment directly in Rippling. The provider also keeps an inventory of your unused computers and stores these in their warehouse for safekeeping until you’re ready to reassign the devices.

It even assesses the condition of each unit and records the findings online, allowing you to easily check and monitor your inventory from your dashboard. For resigning workers, most employees hand in their laptops personally to HR or IT on their last day. However, if you have remote staff, you can either retrieve it yourself or have Rippling do it for you.

For resigning remote employees, you can choose to manually collect their company-assigned laptops or have Rippling retrieve this for you. (Source: Rippling)

Rippling will also send resigning employees return boxes with prepaid shipping labels so they can have the company-issued devices shipped back to you or Rippling’s warehouse, depending on your choice.

App Management

Rippling automatically sets up new employees with the apps they will need—like Slack, Gmail, and Dropbox—based on their roles and departments. And with Rippling’s single sign-on (SSO), employees can securely access company-approved apps directly from their dashboard.

Its built-in team password manager, RPass, even helps your staff generate strong system passwords and securely share login credentials and 2FA codes for any app or website.

For resigning employees, Rippling simplifies the account deprovisioning process, so you don’t have to manually disable their profiles from various apps. Rippling will instantly revoke their access during the offboarding process.

With one click, Rippling will disable the app access of resigning employees. (Source: Rippling)

With over 500 third-party integrations, Rippling connects with a variety of software types, including accounting, banking, collaboration tools, learning management, time and attendance, IT, project management, and more.

Sample of software available through Rippling. (Source: Rippling)

Rippling is used by many small businesses for time tracking, payroll processing, administering employee benefits, and basically all HR tasks. It also functions as a professional employer organization (PEO), employer of record (EOR), and administrative services only (ASO).

Rippling offers IT management services with the utmost security. It helps maintain any business’ security by encrypting devices and ensuring they’re updated with the latest antivirus program. It has natively-built IAM, MDM, SSO, and inventory management solutions, as well as security measures (ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II) that secure your data.

If you’re mainly looking for a solution to help you manage your small business workforce with payroll, time tracking, onboarding, and offboarding, then the Rippling platform is an excellent choice. But, if you have a large number of employees and would need an applicant tracking system and benefits administration, then you should consider its other modular options.