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.
"I like the fact that the annual days are calculated automatically and that if annual leave is taken in the future, those days are put on hold. You know at every point how many days of annual leave are you left with and how many are on hold."
"The tool's most valuable features are the recruitment module, performance module, and document storage."
"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."
"We use this solution for our end to end HR needs from onboarding and hiring to learning."
"I can easily go to BambooHR to search for any staff member in the company."
"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."
"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 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."
"It is much easier to use and the customer service is better than our previous solution."
"The solution's UI is good. Also, it is very easy to use."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"UKG allows us to customize our home screen so that we can easily monitor important items on a daily basis."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be business intelligence and Cognos reporting."
"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."
"BambooHR needs to have more flexibility around performance management."
"It would be useful to have the possibility to assign a task to the different users within the software."
"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."
"The UI needs improvement because it needs to be more user-friendly."
"The color palettes could be changed to make the solution a little more attractive and easier to use."
"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."
"If you are dealing with two or more businesses under one company name, it is not possible to transfer employees between companies if they have a separate bamboo set up."
"I would like the capability to use UKG as a single platform without the need to alternate between systems."
"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."
"Certainly, the time and attendance and the payroll integration need a lot of work. They are disjointed pieces, and they don't work smoothly together. That's the main drawback."
"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."
"One area where UKG could improve is in its ability to understand its own competency and then work hard to improve it."
"The solution could use better reporting with standard reports. We use the Cognos platform in BI for a lot of our reporting. However, they need to have more robust standard reporting available to their user base."
"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."
BambooHR is ranked 7th in Benefits Administration with 31 reviews while UKG is ranked 6th in Benefits Administration with 117 reviews. BambooHR is rated 8.2, while UKG is rated 7.8. 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 Personio, whereas UKG is most compared with Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft, SAP HCM and Atlas. See our BambooHR vs. UKG report.
See our list of best Benefits Administration vendors, best Talent Management vendors, and best Cloud HCM vendors.
We monitor all Benefits Administration 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.