The crux of someone’s career can depend on how they are evaluated, and how intensely their growth is nurtured in their workplace.
Performance appraisal software does more than just store ratings and reviews. It offers a transparent approach to measuring subjective metrics, roots out unfair comparisons, and sets the stage for a professional development dialogue that benefits both the organization and employees at large.
Choosing the right software is the secret to getting it right, even if you have the best review process in the world.
Take an informed approach to choosing the right performance appraisal software. Dig into the reviews we’ve collected for you, to make your decision-making easier.
What is Performance Appraisal Software?
Performance appraisal software is a tool a company uses throughout their performance cycle, to set organization-wide goals, and translate them to department-wise and individual goals, set metrics to track progress, monitor progress made, course correct, and give feedback at the end of the performance review period.
Choosing the right performance appraisal software is one of the toughest decisions to make, and a critical area of concern for HR, as it can either reduce their workload or add to it colossally.
It’s a great way of taking a snapshot of the current skill level and productivity of the organization, and a solid backing to assign pay increases and bonuses.
“The reason why managers and employees dread performance appraisals is because companies have forced their people into buckets of performance and it impacts their future pay and career progression. Having a tool that helps do this in an unbiased manner, and with minimal effort is key to getting appraisals done on time.” – Josh Bersin, Industry Analyst and Researcher in the HR industry.
Without the right performance appraisal software in place, managers will be asked to fill in reviews multiple times, or without a proper structure, which can make way for bias to kick in, along with vaguely worded, open-ended feedback that may not be useful to plan the growth trajectory for employees.
It wouldn’t highlight the performance expectation vs actuals gap.
“The right performance appraisal tool allows a transparent approach to reviews, and roots out unfair comparison. Consider this: Managers who head a 10-member team take at least 1.5 hours to prepare for their reports’ reviews, conduct reviews for 1 hour each, and follow up on review-related administrative tasks for at least 2 hours. A good appraisal tool will reduce the time taken to review each report and make the managers’ job easier.” – Sue Ingram, a renowned HR Consultant, Facilitator & Coach.
How to Evaluate a Performance Appraisal Software?
Before you browse hundreds of performance appraisal software options, it’s important to sit down and consider the following:
✅What features do you want to retain in your legacy performance appraisal software?
✅What’s not working that you want fixed?
✅How is the same functionality different, or better in the new software you’re eyeing?
✅Can the new system do the same function more efficiently?
✅What’s keeping you from scaling up?
✅Is the performance appraisal software compatible with your HRIS? Or, do you want a standalone tool?
✅What data visualization capabilities suit your needs?
✅ Is the software easy to use, and with a straightforward learning curve?
✅ What is the review cadence you’re visualizing?
✅ What is the pricing of the tool, and how much do customizations cost?
✅ How responsive is the customer support team?
✅ What do your competitors, and peers use, and how has their experience been?
✅ What integrations would you need to make your workflows simpler? (Do you want the performance appraisal software integrated into employee engagement, organization chart, and recognition platform, or do you want them all built into the tool?)
Apart from these, you may also want to consider what information informs the review and how you want the data to flow – is it project information, goals/competencies, manager feedback, or cross-functional feedback?
As part of the performance review process, managers will have to review past notes, get familiar with previous action items, follow up on what action items have been met and what haven’t, and identify what’s working and what’s not.
They need to jot down important talking points and come up with an agenda that covers everything they need to cover with the employee in the given timeframe, without compromising on any element.
Since reviews involve considerable preparation, the performance appraisal software you choose needs to have preparatory sections that involve minimal effort, optimal retrieval, and immediate access. These are a few features you need to consider when evaluating your options.
Top Performance Appraisal Software to Choose From
Let’s compare the tools talked about the most in the industry, and weigh their pros and cons, to help you arrive at the right decision.
1. Peoplebox – 4.8/5
Peoplebox is a holistic OKR and Performance Appraisaland 360-degree review tool with auto-tracking goals and competencies. The tool offers a smooth and seamless onboarding experience and gives an amazing interface for team members to collaborate, set goals, track progress, analyze, and offer feedback instantly and thoroughly.
It integrates with your work tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Hubspot, and Salesforce and makes your employees love performance appraisal. It’s integration with Slack/Microsoft Teams goes beyond notification to help you run entire goal alignment and appraisal within Slack and get 100% participation.
Users say that the tool is alsoextensively used for business review presentations without switching between different tools or waiting to transfer data from day-to-day work tools to the OKR tool. The 1:1 and 360-degree feedback modules are raved about by user communities.
Pricing: $7/month/user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Slack/Microsoft Team IntegrationGets reviewer and team members to work seamlessly | ❌ Not all language supportedSome features may be work in progress |
| ✅ Auto-Tracking of GoalsSuitable for offering instant, real-time feedback | ❌ Features like Performance Development Plan, and Career Path are being developed |
| ✅ 9-Box and Manager CalibrationHelps establish strong team connections across teams | |
| ✅ Unmatched Customization to run appraisal as you wantAmazing to gauge employee pulse and assist in employee engagement | |
| ✅ Simple, intuitive, and user-friendly UI | |
| ✅ Excellent customer support | |
| ✅ Right for setting and tracking goals and objectives, and data visualization | |
| ✅ Gives a flexible and smooth integration with plenty of work tools:Slack MS TeamsGoogle Sheets and WorkspaceAsanaPipedriveGoogle AnalyticsJiraCRMMySQL | |
| ✅ Numerous pre-built templates for OKRs, Surveys and surveys to capture employee pulse and feedback |
2. Keka HR – 4.5/5
Keka HR is a leading HRMS brand for small and medium enterprises. It’s known for adapting, evolving, and scaling your performance function. Users report that onboarding takes an unusually long time, and there isn’t much support from the tool. It has a fantastic integration ecosystem, right from project management to data monitoring tools/software.
Pricing: $3.98/month/user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Good analytics features, and data visualization capability | ❌ Navigation within the tool can be really confusing |
| ✅ Commendable 360-degree feedback features | ❌ Getting help from customer support teams takes a lot of time |
| ✅ Good integration capability with:QuickbooksEmpulsWeThriveJunoiTacitPlumSuccessionHR | ❌ Occasional server down issues come up |
| ✅ The performance management is directly linked to the payroll module, reducing hassle in data transfer | ❌ Doesn’t provide Slack integration |
| ✅ Makes room for flexible peer appraisals | ❌ Customer support has very slow response times |
| ❌ Lacks integration with predominant project management or HRIS tools | |
| ❌ Almost impossible to change or customize the tool to suit your unique performance appraisal processes | |
| ❌ Slightly difficult UI, no proper survey or feedback options |
3. Profit. Co – 4.7/5
Profit. co is an AI-powered, continuous performance management software, that is amazing for creating strategy roadmaps, OKR management, task, and performance management, and employee engagement.
Users report a seamless experience tracking year-long performance, and balancing organizational and individual goals. But, one downside to the tool is that the tool rolls out constant updates, but provides inadequate training or helpful materials for users to learn from.
Pricing: $9/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Easily customizable templates that make sending out surveys and review questionnaires a cakewalk | ❌ Tough to go back to finished reviews and complete check-in for previous weeks |
| ✅Great self-service portals for employees to finish reviews in no time | ❌Cluttered UI |
| ✅ Great and responsive customer support | ❌It can be expensive to roll out to the entire organization |
| ✅ Easy task tracking | ❌ The survey feature is pretty basic |
| ✅ Add sub-owners easily | ❌ Doesn’t involve employee engagement |
| ✅ Anyone can understand how they’re contributing to the bigger entity | ❌ Tough to upload performance data |
| ✅ Offers great integration capabilities:MS TeamsTrelloSlackJiraSalesforceHubspot |
4. Bamboo HR – 4.4/5
Bamboo HR is a well-known HRMS tool in the market, that offers a full suite of HR functions. It’s usually preferred by large enterprises to streamline all HR processes and have a single source of truth.
However, users report a high cost of implementation even if done for small teams. Another common hassle frequently cited is the not-so-great customer service.
Pricing: $7.50/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Amazing 360-degree feedback feature | ❌ Not linked to compensation or payroll to reflect monetary changes after the performance appraisal |
| ✅ Access to the entire employee database, helping you maintain a single source of truth, along with employee engagement, rewards, and recognition | ❌ The tool may not be proactive enough |
| ✅ Easy goal-setting and tracking | ❌ Basic and unhelpful reporting feature |
| ✅ Simple and easily serviceable self-service portal | ❌ May not have an integration between BambooHR and the payroll system |
| ✅ Helps performance tracking | ❌ More modules can only be included without any additional cost |
| ✅ User-friendly interface | ❌ Rigid performance review templates that don’t allow room for customization or flexibility |
| ✅Easy to set up and onboard the tool | ❌ Lack of integration with accounting tools |
| ✅ You can add performance milestones to track, leave peer reviews anonymously, and carry out simple evaluations | ❌Even with about 125 integrations, the tool still requires you to have middleware to integrate with major project management tools |
| ✅ 125+ pre-built integrations, including Google Workspace and Slack, including Officevibe and Lattice. |
5. Engagedly – 4.6/5
Engagedly is a useful, non-overwhelming performance management and employee engagement tool to help organizations improve employee performance and enhance workplace culture, with learning and development, succession planning, OKRs, recognition, etc.
Users report that they were onboarded with extensive handholding and excellent support from the team.
Pricing: $2/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Easy, seamless UI | ❌ Multi-rater systems and performance features are very complicated |
| ✅ Offers very good customer support | ❌ Customizing and designing the right templates is a pretty labor-intensive process |
| ✅ Prompt issue resolution | ❌ Reminders are sent to everyone in the review process, instead of those whose tasks are pending |
| ✅ Fully customizable templates | ❌ Steep learning curve to maneuver the tool and inadequate materials |
| ✅ Great level of permission controls module and feature-wise | ❌Rewards and recognition modules aren’t connected like other tools |
| ✅ Helps set skills and courses for upgrading employees seamlessly | ❌ Inability to edit goals already set |
| ✅ Simple, straightforward dashboard suitable for real-time decision-making | |
| ✅ Smooth goal check-in to track performance, 360-degree reviews | |
| ✅ Offers the full range of performance management and development – 1:1s, LMS, mentoring, engagement surveys, and feedback loops | |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities with:SlackHibobBambooHRPaylocityPersonioMicrosoft AzureGustoNamelyLinkedIn Learning |
6. 15Five – 4.7/5
It’s a holistic performance management tool, and it can serve as the single tool to improve manager effectiveness, drive high performance, and increase retention. It offers a full-performance suite – 360-degree performance review, employee engagement surveys, goals, and OKR tracking, weekly feedback, 1:1s, and pulse ratings.
Users report it’s great for goal and productivity tracking. There are also issues with respect to the billing systems and refunds.
Pricing: $9/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ The tooltip and instructions in the tool are excellent | ❌ No analysis tool at the end of a review period to see ‘manager-only’ data |
| ✅ Great custom integrations with API | ❌Customer support is tricky and unresponsive |
| ✅ Not much training is needed to use the tool – pretty straightforward | ❌ Not much training imparted as part of onboarding for first-time users |
| ✅ Easy to use and development-focused | ❌ No data visualization to track overall team performance and productivity |
| ✅ Great for weekly 1:1s, and periodic check-ins | ❌ Needs users to use multiple external tools for data management (before and after review) |
| ✅ Easy to give public and private kudos and feedback to team members | ❌ Very difficult to allow the collaboration of multiple owners and add inputs |
| ✅ Simple to use | ❌ Only works on hierarchy – if multiple managers need to access and comment on a review without being ranked on top of another |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities including:Bamboo HRSlackMS TeamsNamelyGoogle CalendarOktaMS Extra ID | ❌ Difficult to slice and dice data without exporting every single time |
7. Betterworks – 4.6/5
Betterworks is a goal alignment tool to set and track OKRs and is a robust performance management software.
Users report the UX is difficult to maneuver and major functionalities are locked according to user type. They also cite that it’s easy to set corporate and individual goals while comparing and aligning them with each other.
Pricing: Custom pricing
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Great for exclusive OKR management with a single source of truth | ❌ Hard to follow up on specific tasks and activities. Even for simple follow-up tasks, you need integrations. |
| ✅ Easy to set quarterly objectives while staying on track with the organizational yearly goals | ❌ Steep learning curve |
| ✅ Easy to mark progress on ongoing efforts | ❌No regular updates or reminders to review goals as the cut-off date approaches |
| ✅Simplified annual employee engagement assessment | ❌Customizing some of the survey templates is hard |
| ✅ Simple and exhaustive reporting | ❌ Active and inactive goals are hard to differentiate because of a difficult UI |
| ✅Straightforward manager-employee check-ins, and exhaustive templates to capture every part of every conversation | ❌ The tool needs to improve integration capabilities easily |
| ✅Simple but informative dashboard, and customizable surveys | |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities:SlackAsanaGoogle SheetsGithubBambooHRMS TeamsMicrosoft ExcelLinkedIn LearningWorkdaySAPOracleOktaGmail |
8. Lattice – 4.7/5
Lattice is an AI-powered people management platform to make managers more effective, simplify people operations, and leverage workforce capabilities, which includes effective performance appraisal.
Users state Lattice is a comprehensive tool that manages all their talent management needs – goal setting, feedback, reviews, 1:1s, growth goals, and monitoring performance. One major hassle of the tool is that it makes it tough to integrate with HRIS.
Pricing: $11/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Easy editing of goals, and updating tasks | ❌ Setting review meetings is very difficult, and takes a lot of integration to integrate with meeting software and calendars |
| ✅Retrieve performance feedback easily | ❌ Reminders and notification emails contain the entire reviews, which can be accessed by email and network operators. There’s a lack of confidentiality. |
| ✅Offers great UI for managers, and employees alike, and any template can be designed with plenty of options to launch a review program | ❌ Tough to measure progress for cross-functional projects |
| ✅Excellent customer service with prompt issue resolution | ❌ Extracting reports on reviews, and surveys is exceptionally hard and clunky. It involves the double work of cleaning the data every time before using it |
| ✅Simple to review goals and evaluation forms, set 1:1 agendas, 9-box reviews, biannual performance reviews, career tracking, and engagement surveys | ❌ Hard to customize the tool |
| ✅Convenient to send nudges to praise employees publicly | ❌ Tough to bring all inputs collected throughout the year, and bring them together during reporting or performance plan creation |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities with:SlackGmailGoogle WorkspaceMS TeamsGoogle CalendarGustoMicrosoft OutlookWorkday HCMOktaSapling |
9. Rippling – 4.6/5
Rippling is an integrated workforce management system, and can conveniently manage the entire employee lifecycle. Users rave about the excellent customer support, and how it is easy to use.
But one of the main hassles of using the tool turns out to be that you treat external people as employees, and require you to buy the tool per user even if they are contractors.
Pricing: $8/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Simple goal-setting tool with easy organizational and subordinate goals | ❌Glitches frequently |
| ✅Easy and integrated performance tracking, performance management, and succession planning | ❌Needs users to buy advanced workflows separately |
| ✅ Ability to build individual performance plans, including goals and compensation easily | ❌ Tough to configure and onboard |
| ✅ Track and review performance appraisal status easily | ❌Updates take long to be configured |
| ✅ Set reminders to track the status of every user’s inputs | ❌ Sends too many email notifications |
| ✅ Succession planning capabilities are highly raved about | ❌ Credit redemption can be extremely difficult |
| ✅Offers integration capabilities with:QuickbooksGoogle DriveGoogle DocsPayPalSlackGoogle WorkspaceTrelloDropboxMicrosoft 360DocuSignSurveyMonkeyAsana |
10. Workday HCM – 4.3/5
A legacy tool, opted by large enterprises conventionally for finance and HR management. As with most other legacy software, it’s difficult to customize it according to a unique performance appraisal process and shows frequent performance issues.
Another important issue is that any integration with other tools is highly technical and costs heavily in terms of time and costs. The same applies to any custom requests raised by users.
Pricing: $50/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Good user system | ❌ User experience is terrible |
| ✅ Great analytical capabilities in the tool | ❌ Very rigid and expensive to adapt the tool to the company’s process |
| ✅Perfect for performance plans, reviewing status, and reviewing frequency | ❌ Meeting scheduling is difficult, even for 1:1s |
| ✅ Performance reporting and data extraction is smooth and exceptional | ❌ Steep learning curve |
| ✅ Easy to set goals, provide feedback, and conduct reviews | ❌ Tool shows frequent performance issues, |
| ✅ No tons of reminders about pending status – just timely ones | ❌ Archaic user interface and inconsiderate customer support |
| ✅ Increased transparency in each stage of the performance review | ❌ Not intuitive, and still needs extensive manual intervention |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities with:ERP, CRMAdobe SignBeelineSalesforceServiceNowSlackUnanetVertex | ❌ Unable to go back and edit reviews |
11. Dayforce HCM – 4/5
It’s a global people platform and takes care of most performance management and development issues. Users report poor customer service frequently, repeated bugs when traffic increases, and hard-to-complete tasks. Users need to learn code (SQL) to customize forms and conduct surveys extensively. Integrations and carrying out commonly used advanced features require technical knowledge.
Pricing: $22/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Performance ratings easily get pulled into salary planning and move into payroll seamlessly | ❌ Steep learning curve |
| ✅ Easy to mitigate errors | ❌ Constant updates to the tool cause a great deal of hassle |
| ✅ Simple and straightforward to use | ❌ Many unresolved issues for users because the customer support is unresponsive |
| ✅ Easy to work with a 360-degree feedback | ❌ Some users report notes, documents, etc may be difficult to access, and find as and when needed |
| ✅ Ample approval process control | ❌Several problems in implementation |
| ✅ Easy activity tracking | ❌ Generating reports is hard |
| ✅ Simple to manage, sync, and monitor meetings | ❌ Mediocre customer service |
| ✅ Customizable review and survey templates | |
| ✅ Connected to employee engagement modules, and has a simple integration to payroll | |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities with:DocuSignAbsorb LMSiCIMS TalentJobviteCriteriaAssemblySynerionQuantum WorkplaceiTacitLifeworksDynamics365Bridge VMS |
12. WebHR – 4.2/5
WebHR is an HRMS tool that is known for its exceptional self-service, and features for any business to scale up their performance management processes.
The tool is pretty receptive to enhancement requests. Users report excellent customer support, and state they are helpful and friendly.
Pricing: $2/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Easy and user-friendly UI | ❌ Limited integrations with the tool |
| ✅ Affordable pricing, even for additional modules | ❌ Glitches and lags frequently |
| ✅ Simple and customizable templates for reviews and employee surveys | ❌ No automated email system, and need to be integrated with other external tools to send emails |
| ✅ Very flexible tool and great for adapting to the organization’s capabilities | ❌ Performance module doesn’t show the total score for review |
| ✅ 360-degree reviews are raved about | ❌ Multi-level approvals and ratings aren’t available |
| ✅ Access controls are great | ❌ Very basic 360-degree performance review feature |
| ✅ Benefits management, and compensation management after performance appraisals are easy to carry out | ❌ No link to employee engagement modules |
| ✅ Simple to conduct surveys and reminders sent occasionally | |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities with:Google DriveSlackGmailGoogle WorkspaceDropboxAsanaMicrosoft 365FreshbooksZapierOutlookLinkedInQuickbooksHive |
13. Namely – 4.2/5
Namely is an HR solution for mid-sized businesses, and it offers end-to-end HCM solutions including HR, benefits, and payroll functions.
Users report they would like to have a free trial or free version, but to no avail, and it’s hard to get the customer support team to attend a meeting with the user team to clarify problems they have with the tool. Any customization also comes with a hefty price tag.
Pricing: $19/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ User-friendly interface | ❌ Performance module has complicated workflows |
| ✅Offers good custom integrations | ❌ Cluttered, confusing processes |
| ✅ 360-degree feedback and surveys work well | ❌Many repetitive and manual processes involved, even after extensive automation |
| ✅Multi-level ratings are made possible | ❌ Customer support isn’t responsive – takes a long time to get on a call with them |
| ✅ Generate extensive reports, slice, and dice as needed | ❌ Goal setting is difficult, HR has to intervene at every step of the process |
| ✅ Linked with employee engagement and talent management modules, to ease the performance appraisal process | ❌ Difficulty getting or seeing all reviews and ratings in one place |
| ✅ Offers integration capabilities with:SlackQuickbooksZapierBonuslyAdobe SignBreezyHRPingboard15FiveNetSuiteGreenhouseAbsorbLMS |
14. Leapsome – 4.5./5
Leapsome is a robust performance management, and personalized learning tool, with excellent customer support.
Users say even though integrations with the tool are limited, the team makes room for custom integration to allow teams to link any tool they need. Users are onboarded smoothly and are offered extensive implementation support even after the hyper-care period.
Pricing: $8/month per user onwards
| Pros | Cons |
| ✅ Simple user interface | ❌ The tool is very slow to upgrade |
| ✅ Launch meetings, periodic reviews, and surveys across the company easily regardless of the size of the company | ❌Navigating reviews can be very hard for a manager |
| ✅ Easy to share positive feedback with the entire company | ❌ Long performance review forms and can be slow to load |
| ✅ Excellent customer support | ❌ Tool doesn’t store feedback after reviews, so users can’t refer to feedback later on |
| ✅ Easy to conduct regular 1:1s and regular check-ins | ❌ The UI isn’t intuitive and it’s hard to switch between different sections |
| ✅OKR setting and carrying out performance reviews are simple | ❌ Difficult to set custom reminder intervals |
| ✅ Following up on OKRs in terms of conversations, feedback, and recognition is possible using this tool | |
| ✅ Survey templates are great to administer | |
| ✅Offers integration capabilities with:SlackGmailGoogle WorkspaceJiraMS TeamsOneloginMicrosoft AzurePayfitRippling |
What Makes Peoplebox the Best Performance Appraisal Software?
Everything from performance appraisal preparation to conducting them, and following up with employees can be a breeze, should you choose to work with Peoplebox.
With a simple and clean UI and quick and smooth workflows, Peoplebox saves time, effort, energy and money you’d otherwise invest in coordinating reviews for your employees.
With Peoplebox by your side, you can:
- Set company, department, and individual goals seamlessly, and make them editable for anyone in your organization
- Set, align, track, and measure achievement of OKRs – all in the same tool
- Show a single-page application to view all goals and track progress so less time is consumed in navigating between pages
- Creating multiple goals is easy, and editing them is easier, with multiple, editable templates for different departments
- Integrate OKRs and goals with every major work tool you have in place (Jira, BigQuery, MySQL, Hubspot, Looker, etc)
- Complete reviews without having to leave Slack, Teams, or whichever tool you use
- Run OKR business reviews in the same tool and capture feedback right there
- Use advanced visualization tools
- Conduct any level of performance reviews with multiple raters and reviewers
- Create seamless 1:1s with clear agendas, talking points, and action items and follow up seamlessly
- Track team members’ productivity like no other
- View team-wise and company-wise engagement scores at a glance and delve deeper for richer insights
We’ve been trusted by leading SaaS companies like RazorPay, and Nova Benefits to streamline their performance management, bring A-Z of performance appraisal under one umbrella, and make the whole process a cakewalk, for an affordable price at lighting speeds.
Want to create the same for your organization? Sign up for a free product tour and demo today!
