We performed a comparison between BambooHR and UKG based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, BambooHR came out ahead of UKG. Even though it has many valuable features, most UKG users found it more complex to deploy, more expensive, and requiring improvement in its customer support.
"We use this solution for our end to end HR needs from onboarding and hiring to learning."
"The performance goals and personal features of every employee with the dashboard is most valuable."
"BambooHR is accessible to users who aren't good with technology. If you don't have an IT background, you can easily find information about any employee."
"The product is user-friendly."
"Leave management is the most valuable as they all started with leave management and then progressed to performance management. Of course, employee profiles are central to everything. It is also very easy to use. Customers get on board with it very quickly. One of the selling points for BambooHR is that they have a very wide partner network. There are lots of other partners that have integrations with BambooHR. They have an open API. This is one of the things that is driving its growth because lots of people and companies are literally just building integrations of BambooHR to ride the wave. If you have an integration with BambooHR, you get sales. People are more likely to choose your product because they've already chosen BambooHR. That's how it is happening. It is a cloud deployment, so there is only one version. They do the updates every month, and because of this, you are encouraged to send them feedback all the time. You never know. Your feature may be included in the next release."
"The HR metrics that this solution provides has been most useful. We also really like the fact that employees have the ability to be self sufficient and manage their own information."
"The scalability of BambooHR is good."
"The solution's technical support is super responsive and helpful. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"It enables us to manage the system ourselves. We don't need an additional team to do a lot of maintenance and add the things that we want."
"The solution has improved our organization by helping us cut hours and lessen our labor force. It saved us probably over $100,000 in just the last couple of years."
"The employee self-service feature is most valuable. This is the restaurant industry, and they have a mobile app that allows employees to go in and manage their data. So, employees can manage direct deposit accounts, emergency contacts, and other things in the app. That's definitely the biggest benefit."
"The tool improved employee onboarding efficiency, especially in healthcare, where timely onboarding is crucial. This change directly impacted retention rates positively. It was a massive project that involved various teams working together. It took about a year to revamp the entire process and ensure compliance. However, once implemented, it improved employee satisfaction by saving them two whole days in the onboarding process."
"The fact that I can see the whole HR information in a single point is valuable. There is a unified view of everything, which is good. Previously, we had many different systems for each part of the information. Now, it is all centralized. It is very good."
"The most valuable feature is being able to get time management reports which break out reclassified jobs and departments to separate areas of the company. This allows for better tracking of hours spent in certain jobs and where more hours may be needed."
"It is much easier to use and the customer service is better than our previous solution."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be business intelligence and Cognos reporting."
"It would be good to include more options for approvals and workflows. They are deliberately not the most sophisticated version of anything that they do, but it is like 80/20. They hit the vast majority of all the needs, but I have started to run up against the limits of their functionality. It has forced me to start paying attention to the marketplace or sending feedback to BambooHR. Clients are still happy though. Timesheets is a new area in which they're slowly expanding. It is currently very limited, but it meets the needs of standard nine-to-five salary employees who just want to be able to key in their time, have it approved, and then pushed off to payroll. It does not have any of the bells and whistles that an hourly employee or hourly worker might need. That is one area that is currently limited, but they have integrations with some of the best companies that do that."
"The UI needs improvement because it needs to be more user-friendly."
"BambooHR could be improved by managing leave in a way that transfers remaining days at the end of the annual year to the following year."
"The performance could be improved. When you save some documents, it takes longer to store them in BambooHR's systems than it used to. Something needs to be upgraded or fixed in the code. Alow, we provide services to other companies, so Bamboo isn't able to help us in many areas because of the way we work."
"We cannot add more questions to the assessments if we want to."
"There are some issues with the job tab under my info where you add the salary."
"I would like to be able to export some documents into PDFs a little easier. Right now, only HR can update the training record and as you scale your company, managing the system can be manual and time consuming."
"In the BambooHR performance management annual evaluations we have some limits to the questions. We can only add four extra questions, and they already have three basic questions, this is not easy for us. We would like to have more flexibility with the questions."
"UKG could be a little more flexible in some areas."
"Reporting is always a hurdle for any user just because it is so extensive. They provide a lot of out-of-the-box reports, but it is something that you always need to work on because you need more advanced writing of reports."
"UKG has complex clock-in and clock-out features. It changes things too often, and it feels like the tool is constantly changing things without testing before implementing changes in production. Additionally, it doesn't communicate these changes very well."
"The navigation on the screen could be better. Sometimes, I have to dig a little bit deep to find what I need. Everything is there. It just needs to be a little bit smoother."
"I would like to see more functionality in the next release to be able to get hours and dollars per calendar month rather than just by payroll in the Business Intelligence reports."
"The solution could improve by simplifying it even more core reports, such as more sample reports, more generic reports that you can edit and improve on yourself."
"One area where UKG could improve is in its ability to understand its own competency and then work hard to improve it."
"I would like the capability to use UKG as a single platform without the need to alternate between systems."
BambooHR is ranked 9th in Cloud HCM with 31 reviews while UKG is ranked 5th in Cloud HCM with 119 reviews. BambooHR is rated 8.2, while UKG is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of BambooHR writes "HRIS software used for a company of 300 employees that offers employee tracking, data insights and automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of UKG writes "A solution with the capability to integrate seamlessly with other third-party applications". BambooHR is most compared with SAP SuccessFactors, HiBob, Workday, SunFish DataOn Philippines Inc. and Paylocity, whereas UKG is most compared with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft, SAP HCM and Dayforce HCM. See our BambooHR vs. UKG report.
See our list of best Cloud HCM vendors, best Benefits Administration vendors, and best Talent Management vendors.
We monitor all Cloud HCM reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.