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Freshteam vs SmartRecruiters comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshteam
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SmartRecruiters
Ranking in Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software category, the mindshare of Freshteam is 1.7%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SmartRecruiters is 2.7%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SmartRecruiters2.7%
Freshteam1.7%
Other95.6%
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software
 

Featured Reviews

JoseQuintero1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Services Manager at a tech services company with self employed
Comprehensive HR solution that centralises the management of all staff information
The solution could be improved if it included a payroll system, to be a completely 360 degrees HR solution. Besides payroll, everything else HR related is handled in Freshworks. It would also be great to centralize all the data for potential candidates who are in our talent tool and to be able to search this pool by specific criteria such as skills and experience. We evaluate our personnel in order to consider them for promotions and salary raises. However, this process is completely manual and requires us to dig into their entire history to consider when their last raise and promotion was, for example. It would be really valuable if this process could be made simpler using this solution, especially for large teams and to include reporting functionality related to this data.
SUMANTA  GHOSH - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Recruitment Lead at IQ-EQ
A user-friendly tool that functions without any glitches
With SmartRecruiters, compatibility with other HRIS systems is an area with certain shortcomings that require improvement. SmartRecruiters is a tool that we use as an ATS platform in our company, but we manage the employee lifecycle with the help of SAP, and I don't see the integration of SmartRecruiters with SAP happening quite seamlessly, making it an area where improvements are required.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"There are a few reasons why I like Freshteam, including how easily you can get connected with candidates, and how easily candidates can get connected with you as the employer. One of the best features is its scheduling system, which gives both parties the opportunity to schedule different parts of the recruitment process. So if a candidate wants to know my schedule or when I will be available, that information is easy to find."
"Freshteam has allowed us to leverage all HR-related tasks and processes in a single, cloud-based solution, enormously increasing the speed of candidate acquisition and control of administrative employees schedules such as time-offs and holidays."
"If you want growth in your professional life, then you should go with Freshteam because it's a nice applicant tracking system and it works on a real-time basis."
"Our entire employee base is supported by Freshteam. We register all our employees and their candidates inside the system and use it to handle all interviews, feedback, personal information and budgets."
"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors, and considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that amongst all the other ATS platforms that I have used, SmartRecruiters is the most user-friendly tool."
"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide."
"Once we implemented SmartRecruiters, it meant that we were able to have a consolidated global overview of all the recruitment activities."
"The all-encompassing ability to manage the process cohesively out of the SmartRecruiter system was valuable."
"The candidate experience was better because the whole process was there."
"Job publishing and application tracking are the most valuable features. You can keep the flow of a candidate's application into one system. The whole collaboration can also be done within the system, which means that you can schedule interviews and add your feedback and ratings there. You can also communicate with the candidates. The analytics part of it is also very valuable. It is a useful feature that we use quite a lot. We don't really use other features such as recruitment marketing or CRM candidate relationship management in SmartRecruiters."
"It is a really user-friendly tool, and its implementation is quite wide. It is very easy to manage users and build your workflows. Overall, it works very well for the customization of the workflows for us. The recruitment team has generally found the whole platform useful. We were looking to kind of expand it by using the CRM functions that it has. However, with COVID and recruitment being on the freeze, we weren't really able to make the most of the tool. They are, however, finding it useful to actually build up their talent pools and client candidates to be able to contact them when we kind of have this freeze off."
 

Cons

"In the beginning, I was having a hard time learning the software because I was using it on a remote basis. Of course, I used some YouTube videos and other online resources to get by, but for me personally, I learn a bit more easily when the training is done in-person. I had to work double time just on the learning part of it, so I would say that Freshteam could do with better training resources."
"In the beginning, I was having a hard time learning the software because I was using it on a remote basis."
"Covid took a toll on the support we have received from the Freshworks team with most of their support teams based in India."
"The solution could be improved if it included a payroll system, to be a completely 360 degrees HR solution."
"One of the areas that we would like them to improve is the self-scheduling feature. They have a self-scheduling feature that can be made a little bit more automated when it comes to scheduling. We are trying to use it, but it doesn't feel very user-friendly. This is something that could be improved. They have launched WhatsApp connections in the system, where instead of sending emails, you can WhatsApp candidates directly from the system, but currently, it mainly works in a few countries. Spain, where I'm based, is not one of them. If we use the system, the phone number for the candidates would be from the UK, and we don't think that would be the best. This feature is good for some countries, but not for all at the moment. It was first launched in the USA and then in a couple of countries in Europe. It is not yet launched fully in Europe. Reporting is always something that can be improved. Even though it is working well for us, its reporting can be better. Currently, it is a little bit complicated when it comes to reporting. It has a few pre-made reports that are easy to access, but if you want more details, you need to build your own reports. In order to do that, it is a bit tricky to learn and understand how it works. Even though you have help agents and support for help, it takes some time to learn, but it is not impossible. We have very recently made some integrations with Tableau. We are building dashboards in Tableau where we can get daily updated reports, and they are definitely helpful. That's something we would recommend. SmartRecruiters has recently implemented an inbox. You can have an inbox where you can see all your conversations, but currently, it is not filtering between the recruiters, so you see everyone's emails in there. They have already announced that they are working on the filtering feature for a specific inbox to make it more personalized per recruiter. This way the recruiters can have an overview of their own work."
"We ran into some serious issues related to language barriers."
"There were limitations with the system that we would have liked, not in the time, but the company in Germany really dictated that. So we couldn't do everything in the system we would have liked to it."
"One thing that has been a bit of a struggle is getting tech support."
"SmartRecruiters' one-click application process could be better."
"The major improvement area is how it integrates with other systems. That's where we've had some sort of pain points. They've done a lot of work with their development team in setting up integrations with other types of software like SuccessFactors, which we use, but we have found some glitches there. This is probably where they need to do some work. Sometimes, when it refreshes or there is any sort of update in SmartRecruiters, it has a direct impact on the integrations that we have with other tools. We are not always notified when that takes place. We have had HR say to us, "We've just hired this guy. He is not there in our end board at all. What's going on?" That's when we realized that the integration is actually broken. When we have other solutions like SuccessFactors, it would be very helpful to have knowledge articles for such integrations. We have found some of the templates that we want to use and some of the customizations that we do around the offer letters and the contract letters to be a little bit more difficult, which hasn't made this process any more efficient than it was. We still have to do a bit of manual intervention there. I don't know if it is just our company, but we need to have different clauses and things in place. We have stopped using DocuSign as well, and we are trying to look at other ways of doing that. They are aware of this."
"Some features are not as straightforward or user friendly to implement."
"Sometimes, there is this language or communication barrier in terms of what the applicants mentioned. SmartRecruiters sometimes has trouble understanding certain types of keywords or has certain types of language, translation, or grammar issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For our training period, we were simply given a user ID and password by the company, with which we could log in and do our work on the platform. The licensing was someone else's responsibility."
"Freshteam has a free tier as well as a 14 day free trial. The free tier is suitable for a small or home office. If this tier is not suitable, an organization could sign up for the 14 day trial for a higher tier to try all the features and decide if it suits their needs."
"There were implementation costs in the first year to get everything set up and running, and then they have various modules on top, which are optional and available at an extra charge."
"SmartRecruiters is much better than its competitors. Considering the type of features and services it provides, it is probably one of the best solutions in the market. Others may offer a similar price, but their services won't be that good or the user-friendliness won't be that great. The licensing works based on how many users are there in a company. If you are using other functionalities, like CRM and HRS, the price increases."
"I wasn't involved in its acquisition, but I would assume that SmartRecruiters is pretty pricey."
"I haven't been so involved with pricing, so I don't have all details, but I know that we are paying per head when it comes to different countries. There is an additional fee for new features that they release. If it is something that we would like to use, we need to pay some extra for it."
"Back in 2018, when I engaged with their sales, they wanted to charge around $10,000 for an annual subscription. Depending on your organization, that either could or couldn't be expensive. I personally think it's a fair price. However, I engaged them and negotiated a lower price with them. I think I got closer to $6,000. It came with a commitment of three years."
"SmartRecruiters is an expensive solution."
"They are pretty competitive. As the product matures, it has much more functionality and different pricing models. It can relatively cost a lot more if you want to use additional features, but, in general, it is competitive in the industry. We work on a yearly license agreement based on the company size. There are the support costs, which are a part of the additional cost based on the percentage of the licensing fee. So, it has a license plus support cost. Then, of course, there are other add-on options that we can purchase and procure whenever we want to based on certain negotiated arrangements."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

moneycorp, DSP, SAP, DAIMLER, ocado, Chargebee, ninjacart, TIGER ANALYTICS, NISSAN
Atlassian, Aol, IBM, Napa, Skechers
Find out what your peers are saying about Freshteam vs. SmartRecruiters and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.