Best ATS Systems for Small Businesses
As a small business employer your best route to find that perfect candidate typically is via your employees. Ask them who they want to work with and bam! They are by far your best source.
Have you exhausted that option? Well I’m here for you and can help in sorting out the best ATS to use. What the heck is an ATS? HR professionals use them on the daily. If you are a small business owner trying to hire an amazing team, I’m here for you. Please read on. If you are an HR pro please skip to here.
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a tool for 1) distributing your job opening to job boards like Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter and more. 2) Managing all the applications that will flood your inbox.
A great ATS at its core has to do both core functions well, otherwise you are wasting your time and money.
Integrate with the biggies
To just be relevant, an ATS has to integrate with the major job boards. Indeed is by far the largest, with ZipRecruiter and Monster following in distant second and third place. Im skipping LinkedIn here as its not really comparable. There are a littnay of niche job boards technical jobs many of which require certification like say CybersecurityJobs.com. Still, most jobs and, more importantly, job seekers, are also on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and Monster. When choosing an ATS, make 100% sure they integrate with at least the big 3.
Watch our complete video on The Best ATS Tools for 2025 here!
Make it easy!
Ever met an employer with extra time and money on their hands? Me either. You dont have time to learn a complex system and why should you? There are lots of options out there and we will help direct you to the ones that are simple.
Filter applications:
If your ATS is good and – your job is attractive – you are going to have a ton of applicants to manage. I get hives just thinking of an overflowing inbox filled with applications to sort through and manage. Personally, I have owned and operated several small businesses where I was overwhelmed with the process. For me, NinjaGig would have been perfect – had I known about it! Yes, I am biased, but in this article, I am doing my best to remain as neutral as I can.
Its impossible to eliminate unsuitable candidates from applying. What is possible is managing the applicants in a way that is easy for you and communicating well with the applicants so they know where they are in the process.
Automation features:
I like to use tags, filtering, and sorting when dealing with a lot of applications. Adding a tag after reviewing an applicant makes it easy to group the applicant into a fitting pool, allowing for easier workflow automation. Automations like mass approvals, emails, and sorting are so much easier once you use tags, helping to maximize your time.
Top ATS for Small Businesses
We obviously love Ninja Gig, and we’ve created our platform for small businesses and boutique employment agencies. We have designed, priced, and custom-built it specifically for this market. Most ATS businesses are not just an ATS, but rather very large HR businesses with an ATS service too. They use the ATS as a way to get a larger portion of your finances. Services like payroll and benefit management add up a lot faster than an ATS service. With that in mind heres our top recommendations not looking like a Trojan Horse.
1. NinjaGig
How could we not? We built it for you and continually add and update features based on our customers requests. Of course, its not perfect, none are. We recently added some new features like our dashboard:
Makes it easy to get an idea of your job posts performance, what is the most popular day of the week applications come in, Your job count and a lot more. We have an aggressive pipeline of new features rolling out over the coming months we are really excited to offer.
It’s built for small companies, startups, and agencies focusing on ease of use, functionalities and keeping it affordable!
After signing up for the free trial you can create your first job in minutes and push it to 12 of the top job boards fast! It takes some time for the boards to post your first job, but you will know when it happens as the applications will likely be rolling in.
We’re always striving for ways to improve. Our current reporting tool is geared to be streamlined and easy to use. Job boards do not share information with ATS services so the only data we or others can share is based off of the specific ATS platform and NinjaGig is not alone here.
Pricing: We offer a 14-day free trial, which I highly recommend checking out.
Thereafter, Ninja Gig only costs $49 per month, including unlimited job postings, up to 10 free team members, and no hidden fees, making this one of the best-priced ATSs available. Plus its super easy to cancel at any time.
2. Zoho Recruit
Zoho Recruit’s platform is straightforward and easy to use, offering a great range of customization options, making it an excellent choice for small businesses with unique requirements. Remember what I mentioned about ATS platforms wanting more of your spend? Well, Zoho has a ton of offerings they try and upsell. Their ATS offering is solid to consider, but be ready for the upsell. They have added new features, such as a client portal and video interviews, but these come at additional costs.
You can utilize add-on apps like Zoho Sales for marketing or their finance app, Zoho Books, making it possible to scale within Zoho’s ecosystem.
However, I have found that Zoho has limited branding options on their lower-tiered plans, which can decrease your visibility when advertising. Zoho also tends to have limitations when it comes to integrating with platforms outside of Zoho’s environment, so if you need to integrate with existing systems, you may need to look at alternative platforms.
Pricing: A Free option is available with limited functionalities. The paid plans start at $25 per user per month.
Overall:
While Zoho offers great features through its ecosystem, brands seeking simplicity without the need for additional modules may prefer more all-in-one solutions.
2. Greenhouse
Greenhouse is easy to set up, customizable, and has many features. Its a nice experience and their UI/UX is great! I know they’re technically a better fit for larger organizations, but small businesses need to consider additional comprehensive platforms that can scale as their companies do. Greenhouse is one of those tools I’d consider looking at for this reason.
That said, there are so many upsides to Greenhouse, but you will need to pay more for the more advanced features like reporting and analytics.
The downside is that the integration with Indeed has its quirks, so as someone who relies on seamless job posting, I found this a significant hurdle. Greenhouse might be overly complex for businesses with straightforward hiring needs or low hiring rates.
Pricing: Pricing plans are available upon request, starting at approximately $6,500 per year for companies with 1-10 employees.
Overall:
While on the pricier side, Greenhouse is a feature-rich platform that would be a good fit for smaller companies that need more in-depth ATS capabilities, analytics and extensive features than smaller ATSs offer.
3. Ashby ATS:
Although it’s one of the newer kids on the block, I think Ashby will quickly become one of the more popular ATSs. They are more expensive at $300 a month and positioning themselves servicing Small to mid sized businesses not really small businesses.
I really like Ashby; it’s intuitive, and they have a comprehensive service offering at their price. In addition to their impressive features, such as powerful automation, analytics, and dashboards, their customer support is truly exceptional. As a great value-add, they have automated scheduling, including calendar integrations. From a candidate experience point of view, it’s one of the few that really stand out.
There are a few downsides to Ashby that I’m hoping will be ironed out as they grow. They don’t yet allow scorecards, making it hard to extract this information. It’s also hard to search on the platform as the built-in search filters are not user-friendly.
The baseline cost is really reasonable, considering all of their features. However, it’s likely to become unaffordable for scaling businesses as they charge for each additional user seat.
Pricing: Their pricing starts at $300 per month for companies with 1-10 employees. They offer a discounted rate for annual commitments and custom pricing plans for companies larger than 100 employees.
Overall:
Ashby is a great platform overall for SMB’s, especially those who value automation. If you’re a cost-conscious organization, you’ll need to carefully consider pricing as your business grows.
4. Workable:
These guys are massive billion dollar company. Not really focusedon the small business but do offer an amazing service focused on the mid sized business. Workable can be set up quickly and doesn’t require a lengthy onboarding process. They have extensive integration capabilities with over 200 job boards, which I found impressive! Honestly though its all about the top 5-10 boards.
Workable also boasts some standout features, including multi-language capabilities that enable you to translate job posts, applications, and more into six languages. This is ideal for smaller companies with a global presence that need to utilize tools that can save time. Workable also helps save time when screening candidates by making use of AI tools that provide candidate profile match scores and candidate profile summaries.
Unfortunately, the paid-for plans on lower tiers are pretty limited, as are the customization options. The customer service response time could also be better.
Pricing: $249 per month for businesses with 1 – 20 employees.
Overall:
My view is that Workable is a solid choice for smaller businesses that need an ATS with broad job board integrations. I love that they have built in AI-assisted screening, and multi-language support may make this a better option for global (and lean) teams.
5. BambooHR
BambooHR is an excellent option if you’re looking for a more comprehensive tool that offers additional functionalities, such as payroll, performance management, and HR Management. As a smaller company, this is a good option if you need a combined system for HR and recruitment instead of using it as a standalone ATS.
I like that they don’t require long-term contracts and offer reasonable costs for monthly plans. While it’s not a super advanced ATS, they have a really user-friendly platform that still provides excellent templates, including customizable email templates and offer letters.
You can also keep track of shared notes and use this as a central repository for feedback, making it easy to collaborate with stakeholders and team members. They also have an excellent app for both Android and iOS.
However, BambooHR has limited job board integrations compared to some of the other ATSs, which I found surprising. I also found the reporting and analytics to be quite limited, so it may be a blocker if you need in-depth analysis.
Pricing: The pricing plans are only available upon request and are customized depending on your organization’s requirements. You can expect to pay approximately $6 per employee per month for the basic plan, based on a rough estimate.
Overall:
If you are hiring for a small business and need an easy to use, light platform that’s fast, NinjaGig is perfect for you. If you are looking for a platform that offers an ATS, manages your payroll, employee benifits and more look at others like Workable, Bamboo and forgot to mention BreezyHR. They are also great.
In summary:
Overall, each of these ATS platforms has its unique strengths and drawbacks, and you will need to decide on what core functionalities are essential to your business. If pricing is a significant factor, consider one of the more cost-effective platforms mentioned above, as they are all excellent options.
User adoption and ease of use are critical, so we recommend trying out those that offer free trials and ensuring all users feel comfortable using the platform!
You also need to factor in the growth potential of your organization and ensure that your chosen ATS can scale as your business needs or recruitment requirements grow, without requiring you to explore other platforms.
