Last updated on
Reviewed by Steph Leung
Stackfix Product & Operations Lead
Personio and Sage serve different segments of the HR software market. Personio excels in workflow automation and integration capabilities, and has a EU focus, making it ideal for European companies with complex HR processes and multiple software tools.
Sage, while having fewer integrations, offers superior core HR functionality like employee information management and goal setting, making it better suited for companies prioritizing robust HR data management and performance tracking.
Advantages of Personio
Advantages of Sage
Personio
Sage
 Personio Starting at $8.85Converted from EUR employee / month Billed monthly |  Sage Starting at $6employee / month Billed monthly |
|---|
| Stackfix Verdict | ||
|---|---|---|
| Functionality | 7 <p>Personio offers most functionality that most SMBs will need. Besides core HR features (store employee info, manage time-of), Personio also allows you to run performance reviews, run compensation reviews, recruit employee via a native applicant tracking system and more.</p><p>It's missing the ability to manage payroll and benefits, and manage employee's software access and benefits.</p> | 8 <p>Sage HR provides robust functionality across key features like employee data management, performance reviews, and goal setting. Many tools include all the standard capabilities businesses need, with some offering advanced options, such as automatic actions in time-off management. However, a lot of features are only accessible as paid add-ons, and some, like workflow automation, fall significantly behind competitors.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 6 <p>We find that Personio is generally user-friendly and easy to navigate. However, there are some UX imperfections and HR managers we've interviewed report their teams struggling with Personio's interface and locating key information.</p> | 5 <p>Some aspects of Sage HR can be unintuitive. For instance, setting up a performance review requires creating a cycle in one section of the settings and then customizing the review in another. Similarly, certain features, like managing time-off requests, are located in less obvious places (e.g., the time-off hub is under the reports tab). That said, with a bit of guidance, most users can get comfortable with Sage's core functionality in about half a day.</p> |
| Look and feel | 5 <p>While Personio has a clean and simple interface that is visually acceptable, it suffers from slow loading times (3-4 seconds per page).</p> | 5 <p>While Sage is visually acceptable, we found that pages would often take a few seconds, or more, to load.</p> |
| Customisability | 5 <p>Personio has strong customisability for some features such as workflow automation while lacks basic customisability for other.<span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);"> As an example, you are stuck with 2 employment types only - "Internal" and "External". There is no way to add common employment types e.g. "Full-time"/ "Intern"/ "Contractor" etc. It's also impossible to customise things like the email reminders and the platform's layout. For teams looking for high customisability for most features, Personio is quite limiting. However, teams looking for basic customisability for basic features and strong customisability for automation, Personio is a strong option.</span></p> | 8 <p>Sage HR offers strong customizability in time-off policies, performance reviews, and surveys, with features like tailored eligibility, conditional logic, and flexible question settings.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p>Personio offers a self-serve free trial that doesn't require users talking to sales to gain access. Purchasing requires you to talk to sales. It takes 10-30mins to complete basic setup (entering company information and adding employees). Fully customizing and setting up the platform can be done in 1 week. Customization and set up is simple enough that you don't need help from an expert and more complicated processes can be done with help from the help center.</p> | 6 <p>Sage HR does offer a free trial without needing to speak to sales. Purchasing does not require speaking to sales if you purchase after using the free trial. It takes 10-30mins to compete basic setup (entering company info, adding employees). Fully customizing and setting up the platform takes approximately 1 week; customization and setup is simple enough that you don't require an expert to assist you. More complicated customization can be done with help from the help center.</p> |
| Customer Support | 5 <p>You can reach Personio's support team via web tickets and callbacks in-app during UK/ Germany business hours. Unlike most HRIS's, live chat doesn't seem available as an option. Users we've interviewed have complained about Personio ignoring requests, especially for English channels.</p> | 8 <p>Users can use the SageHR knowledge base which provides useful articles on how to use different features on the platform. Users can also access the in-app AI chat bot and if unsatisfied can ask for a human customer support agent; response times in our experience being around 10 minutes. The human customer support agent is able to answer questions about different features on the platform and users also have an option to hop on a demo call where human customer support agents will demonstrate how to do different actions users are unsure/curious about.</p> |
| Integratability | 9 <p><span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);">Personio has 150+ pre-built integrations with most relevant products across most categories, such as ATS, payroll and accounting. However, it is missing a few key integrations, such as Remote and Deel for global payroll. It does offer an API for custom integrations.</span></p> | 4 <p>While Sage HR offers an open API for building custom integrations, its selection of pre-built integrations is incredibly limited. It doesn't integrate with many popular HR tools like QuickBooks (Accounting), Lattice (Performance Management), and Workable (ATS). Sage HR really only works for teams planning to use Sage for all their HR needs, rather than integrating with third-party solutions.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(9, 9, 11);">Personio allows users to export key data data via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request. However, users have reported difficulty while exporting data from reports. </span></p> | 7 <p>In addition to the open API, users can export a lot of the data throughout the HRIS.</p> |
Want to find out how Personio or Sage stacks up with their competitors?