Rippling is an all-in-one workforce platform that combines HR, payroll, IT, and spend tools in a single system. It bundles an HRIS, global payroll, benefits, device and app management, and an ATS so teams can hire, pay, and manage employees.
However, it also comes with some trade-offs. While it excels at automating complex HR and payroll workflows, its recruiting module is functional but has limitations compared to specialized ATSs.
Our research team invested over 40 hours analyzing Rippling's platform, verified user reviews, and integrations. This detailed Rippling review reveals where it shines, where it falls short, and how teams can maximize its potential.
Why Trust Our Rippling Review?
To ensure our Rippling review is honest and thorough, we followed a clear review methodology:
- Official Product Analysis: We evaluated Rippling's HR, recruiting, payroll, and IT features directly from the official website, product pages, and platform documentation.
- Verified User Reviews: We analyzed patterns from verified reviews on G2, Capterra, and others to identify real-world strengths and limitations.
- Role-Based Use Cases: We assessed value for founders, HR leaders, recruiters, and TA heads across recruiting, onboarding, global payroll, and compliance.
- Feature vs. Experience Validation: We cross-checked promised capabilities against actual user-reported performance, limitations, and usability challenges.
This review contains no affiliate links or paid placements. Our only goal is to help you make an informed decision.
Rippling Overview
Rippling is a cloud-based workforce management platform for mid-to-large organizations. It helps manage HR, recruiting, payroll, and IT operations across multiple locations and countries.
The platform features "the employee graph." This unified data model keeps employee information in sync across all modules. It eliminates duplicate data entry and disconnected systems.
When a candidate accepts an offer in Rippling Recruiting, it triggers onboarding workflows in Rippling HCM. This also provisions IT access and sets up payroll deductions, all without manual handovers.
Rippling Key Features
Below are the standout features we verified on the Rippling platform:
- Unified HRIS: Central employee directory, org charts, and digital records that serve as a single source of truth for HR, payroll, and IT. This reduces duplicate data and errors.
- Recruiting / ATS: An applicant tracking system that integrates sourcing, workflows, dashboards, and hiring automation so that recruiters can move candidates through stages faster.
- Global Payroll & Tax Filing: Multi-country payroll with automated federal/state/local filings in supported regions, designed for US and international payroll needs.
- Onboarding & Offboarding Automation: Automated checklists, device provisioning, software access, and e-signatures to get hires productive quickly and to secure offboarding.
- Time & Attendance: Clock-in/clock-out, overtime rules, kiosk/mobile access, and direct integration to payroll for accurate pay calculations.
- IT & Device Management: Zero-touch device setup, app provisioning, SSO, password management, and scheduled offboarding to reduce IT overhead and security risk.
- Benefits Administration & PEO options: Benefits enrollment, broker support, and PEO services for companies that want enterprise-level benefits without local entities.
- Headcount Planning & Workforce Analytics: Planning tools that let finance and HR sync hiring plans, approvals, and budgets. Built-in dashboards for recruiting metrics and workforce health.
- Expense & Spend Management: Virtual and physical corporate cards, automated expense workflows, and reimbursement features integrated with payroll and accounting.
- Workflow Studio & Policy Automation: Custom workflow builder and policy rules that trigger actions across HR, IT, and payroll when conditions are met. It helps standardize approvals and reduce manual work.
Rippling Pricing
Rippling does not publish standard, transparent pricing. All pricing is custom-based on your organization's size, the modules you select, and feature requirements.
Rippling’s own product posts indicate the core HRIS begins at $8 per employee per month, and there is typically a monthly base fee (often cited as $35/month) with payroll and other modules added on top.
For accurate quotes, you need to contact sales because final costs depend on modules, country coverage, and transaction volumes.
Pros and Cons of Rippling
Below are the highlights users frequently mention across verified review platforms:
- Unified Platform: It centralizes HR, payroll, IT, benefits, and devices into one platform, creating a single source of truth and reducing duplicate data and reconciliation time.
- Strong Automation: The platform automates onboarding, offboarding, payroll sync, device provisioning, and approvals, significantly cutting administrative workload and lowering human error across HR and IT processes.
- Reliable Payroll: It processes payroll and files taxes reliably for US customers. Users highlight consistent runs, accurate tax filings, and streamlined year-end reporting across teams.
- Global Payroll & PEO: It offers multi-country payroll and EOR/PEO services to hire internationally without local entities, simplifying compliance, payroll setup, and global employee management for teams.
- IT Integrations & Device Management: The platform offers robust integrations, SSO, app provisioning, and zero-touch device setup. This helps IT manage access to HR data, boosting security and speeding up deployment.
Despite several benefits, verified users reported these Rippling limitations:
- Support Inconsistency: Some users report inconsistent or slow customer support responses, especially for escalations or complex integrations, causing delays during implementation and issue resolution.
- Recruiting Depth: Rippling’s built-in recruiting module lacks some advanced sourcing, candidate rediscovery, and CRM features found in mature ATS platforms, according to several verified users.
- Learning Curve for Advanced Workflows: Advanced workflow automation and Workflow Studio are strong tools. However, they need skilled setup and time, which raises initial effort and admin tasks.
- Occasional Feature Gaps / UI Quirks: Administrators occasionally encounter edge-case feature gaps, UI quirks, or missing small functions that force workarounds or support tickets to resolve issues.
- Complex Pricing: Uses modular pricing and add-on modules, which complicate total cost estimates; buyers frequently need custom quotes from sales to determine final pricing.
How Can Integrating Skima AI Handle Rippling Limitations?
Recruiting teams integrate Skima AI with Rippling to overcome key ATS limitations, specifically the inability to search historical candidates by skills, the lack of advanced matching algorithms, and the absence of talent rediscovery automation.
Skima AI brings resume parsing, explainable AI match scoring, and contextual candidate search into Rippling's interface. This allows recruiters to find hidden gems in their database and make faster, more objective hiring decisions.
Key benefits of Rippling integration with Skima AI:
- Talent Rediscovery from Past Applicants: Automatically find past applicants who now match open roles from your 10,000+ application history, saving you from manual searches.
- AI-Powered Match Scoring: Every candidate receives an explainable match score showing why they fit a role. Recruiters focus on top matches and trust the recommendations because they see the reasoning.
- Resume Parsing & Data Structuring: Skima AI extracts 200+ data points from each resume with 99%+ accuracy, automatically structuring messy candidate data into clean, searchable profiles within Rippling.
- Reduce Screening Time: Instead of manually reviewing hundreds of resumes, recruiters receive ranked candidate recommendations, saving initial screening time by hours per role.
- Enterprise Security & Compliance: SOC 2 certified, GDPR compliant, with end-to-end encryption. All candidate data stays within your Rippling environment. No external APIs or data sharing.
Who Should Consider Rippling?
Rippling is the right choice for:
- Small to mid-market companies that want one system to replace payroll, benefits, IT provisioning, and HRIS.
- Companies with global hiring or plans to expand internationally that need payroll + EOR/PEO workflows.
- Teams that value automation and want to cut manual HR/IT tasks.
- Organizations ready to work with a sales-led pricing model and willing to commit to a modular platform.
Who Should Avoid Rippling?
Rippling is not ideal for:
- Small businesses that need simple, fixed, low-cost pricing and don’t want modular complexity.
- Recruiters or hiring teams that require best-in-class, specialized ATS features out of the box (they may prefer a mature, dedicated ATS).
- Companies that need rapid, high-touch support SLAs from day one and can’t accept variable support experiences reported by some users.
Final Verdict
Rippling is best described as a modern, modular workforce platform that saves time by consolidating HR, payroll, IT, and spend into a single system. If you value automation, unified records, and global payroll capabilities, Rippling will likely reduce operational complexity and replace multiple vendors.
That said, expect a sales conversation to pin down exact costs and a ramp-up period for advanced workflows. If your top priority is the deepest possible ATS sourcing experience or fixed pricing, evaluate a dedicated ATS or pair Rippling with a recruiting specialist.
Integrating Skima AI is a practical next step: it brings advanced AI screening, talent rediscovery, and predictive insights directly into Rippling’s recruiting flow.
This combo preserves Rippling’s HR/IT advantages while closing gaps in sourcing and matching.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is Rippling?
Rippling is a unified workforce platform combining HRIS, payroll, benefits, IT/device management, and recruiting to manage hiring, pay, and employee IT from a single source of truth.
2. Is Rippling legit?
Yes, Rippling is a legitimate, VC-backed HR platform, trusted by various small and mid-market companies.
3. How much does Rippling cost?
Rippling uses modular pricing: core HRIS is billed per employee per month, with add-on module fees and occasional base monthly charges; final costs depend on the chosen modules and a sales quote.
4. Does Rippling include payroll and benefits?
Yes, Rippling offers integrated payroll with tax filings, benefits administration, and PEO/EOR options. This streamlines pay, compliance, and onboarding for both domestic and international teams.
5. How does Rippling integrate with Skima AI?
Skima AI connects with Rippling to enrich recruiting workflows by adding AI candidate scoring, talent rediscovery, and predictive fit insights. This boosts sourcing and screening, while Rippling remains the HR system of record.
6. What benefits does Skima AI add to Rippling's recruiting?
Skima AI delivers automated candidate ranking, surfaces past applicants and internal talent, supplies fit scores and short summaries, and accelerates hiring decisions while preserving Rippling’s HR records and workflows.
