The best employee onboarding software in 2024

The employee onboarding period is filled with information, forms, and meetings. It can get overwhelming—and not just for the new hires, but for managers and HR reps too. The right employee onboarding software can make this transition easier.

To help you find the best employee onboarding platform, I tested the most popular onboarding apps. Drawing from my experience working in internal communications, I zeroed in on user experience, personalization, and culture. The best software is practical and easy to use, while also delivering a rewarding experience for your new team members.

The best employee onboarding software

• Sapling for creating a smooth onboarding process

• Enboarder for a supportive, engaging onboarding experience

• Coassemble for building a more interactive onboarding experience

• Innform for delivering fun, hybrid onboarding experiences

• Waybook for teams that need a new home for documents and workflows

What makes the best employee onboarding software?

There are plenty of tools and apps out there that have an employee onboarding function. While the feature is built into most HR platforms as standard, it often lacks depth, engagement, and impact. My goal was to find the best, most engaging, and most purposeful employee onboarding tools out there.

• Ease of use. Whether you're onboarding one new hire or hundreds, the onboarding tool needs to be user-friendly. It should help streamline your process and simplify it—not introduce complicated steps, awkward navigation, or challenging processes.

• Automated processes and workflows. Automating some (or all) of the tasks on your onboarding checklist saves you time and means everyone gets the same quality experience. I've looked for onboarding platforms that help you build a system or workflow that you can repeat over and over.

• Personalization options. Processes are great, but you also want to find ways to make the experience feel special and unique. From uploading images to customizing your dashboard, these apps empower you to make an impact through personalization.

• Self-service features. Your new hires should be able to find and upload documents quickly and easily, without fuss. I've prioritized apps that offer self-service features to help them get to know your company and make their way through the onboarding process smoothly. 

• Culture and engagement features. Going through a digital onboarding process can feel lonely. In my testing, I've looked for apps with features you can use to bring some of your company culture to life—like presentations, quizzes, and updates.

• Reporting. Once you have everyone signed up and engaging with your onboarding platform, you'll want to know how they're using it. The apps I've included offer reporting features that give you crucial insights into user engagement, activity, and effectiveness.

Some of these apps cater to one of the criteria above more than others. There are apps that feel vibrant, fun, and engaging—and others that help you perfect your onboarding workflows, so they feel like a delight to run. Which you choose will ultimately depend on your specific goals, company culture, and internal processes.

Throughout my time testing these apps, I created a new account, personalized my settings, and explored all the onboarding features they have to offer. These are my top recommendations for the best onboarding software. 

The best employee onboarding software at a glance

Best employee onboarding software for a smooth onboarding process

Sapling (Web)

Sapling pros:

• Built for onboarding and people management at scale

• Smart automation helps speed up the onboarding process

Sapling cons:

• Range of people management features may be overkill for some

It's easy enough to manage onboarding one new hire without a strong workflow, but what about hundreds? Sapling (part of Kallidus) makes it easy to onboard team members at scale, even across diverse locations, departments, and roles. 

Sapling's approach to building an onboarding experience favors workflows, processes, and tasks. Create a workflow, add tasks, and assign them to someone—whether that's the new hire, their manager, or a buddy. Each task can be given due dates, descriptions, and sub-tasks to help you organize your process.

What I like about Sapling's workflow approach is that you can set dates relative to milestones or other dates, so you can schedule a welcome email five days before your new hire starts. This makes it easy to repeat and automate workflows, so every new hire gets a good experience. 

One feature that really stood out to me was Sapling's Smart Assignment feature. It helps recommend workflows, templates, and documents based on the data you enter about your new hire—like their location, home office, department, or employment status. I think this is so useful for busy HR teams that are handling lots of new hires, departures, and role changes. 

As well as creating your own onboarding workflows, there's a dedicated onboarding form. You can find this both in the main navigation menu and also through a handy button on the admin dashboard. This walks you through adding all the personal, role, and benefits information you need for every new hire. Use Sapling's template or personalize it to create your own. I like the idea of adding extra custom fields here to capture fun details about your new hires—like their favorite food or the names of their pets. 

Sapling has built-in profiles where your new hires can share some details about themselves. There's a searchable organization chart and list of team members too, and a company page where you can talk about your culture and history. You can also highlight work anniversaries and birthdays on the dashboard, which is a nice touch. 

Sapling might look like an enterprise-level tool, but it's also practical for smaller teams and growing startups. With a focus on streamlining the whole process through clever categories and automation, it's ideal if you have plans to scale up and want to invest in an app that can see you right through the growth process. 

When I first tested Sapling a couple of years ago, it was a standalone product. During this testing round in 2024, it's now part of the Kallidus platform. This has brought some welcome improvements in the user experience and navigation, as well as the option to easily integrate with Kallidus' other HR tools for HRIS, learning management, recruitment, and more.

Like a lot of HR tools, you can integrate Sapling with Zapier. Explore the triggers that you can use to make things happen when a stage gets completed, a key date is reached, or a profile change happens. 

If you need to onboard and offboard employees at scale, Sapling is a great contender for your employee onboarding software app. Once you've set up your processes and workflows, adding new team members feels effortless—thanks to the clever Smart Assignment feature. 

Sapling pricing: Custom

Best employee onboarding software for a supportive, engaging onboarding experience

Enboarder (Web)

Enboarder pros:

• Fun, engaging way to handle the onboarding process

• Excels in an environment where you have a buddy or mentor system

Enboarder cons:

• The amount of customization options and settings may be overwhelming for some users

What I noticed almost immediately about Enboarder was the strong focus on supporting both your new hires and managers through the onboarding process. Often onboarding apps are built to serve content to a new hire, but Enboarder shifts the attention to building workflows that support everyone through this transitional moment. 

Enboarder does this through an innovative, highly visual workflow builder. Instead of adding a task within a window, you create a journey that's home to different tasks, activities, and assignments. You can assign tasks and responsibilities to new hires and managers, as well as a built-in buddy role that you can assign. I love this very visual approach to onboarding and milestones, and think it's ideal if you're used to mapping out projects this way. 

Loading Enboarder for the first time, I was greeted with a walkthrough that explained the different buttons, features, and options. This was a welcome introduction—especially if you're used to a more traditional approach to planning onboarding processes. Getting used to this new way of building takes some time, but I found it really intuitive once I was familiar with it. 

Start with one of Enboarder's templates to get inspiration for your ideal onboarding process, then tweak and optimize it—or start from scratch. Create and add tasks to your timeline, like notifications, forms, and emails. Set phase lengths, add sequence reminders, and add reminders for when tasks are overdue. There are a lot of options and settings, so you can personalize each and every step of the onboarding process—but you can also leave these settings on default. It's very detail-oriented.

There's lots of flexibility to use tasks, emails, and other mediums to build an onboarding process that matches your culture and needs. Use custom fields to personally address emails and pre-populate details, so your communication never feels generic. You can use forms to encourage new hires to upload documents or digitally sign documents, but there's no central directory or resource library. This tool is very much focused on the process and workflow, leaving room for you to find the perfect employee engagement or culture app to work alongside it. 

If you want to plan, optimize, and roll out a highly detailed employee onboarding experience, Enboarder should make your shortlist. Its unique approach to workflows and creating a person-focused journey makes it stand out as a great companion for any HR team with similar goals. 

Enboarder pricing: Custom pricing

Best employee onboarding software for a more interactive onboarding experience

Coassemble (Web)

Coassemble pros:

• Build engaging onboarding courses with interactive elements and quizzes

• Get employee feedback from post-course surveys and ratings

Coassemble cons:

• Coassemble is course-based, so may lack some of the traditional onboarding process features some organizations are looking for

Online learning can feel dry and hard to work through. That's not the case with Coassemble. This employee-focused course-building software brings a fresh energy to building and sharing onboarding programs with your team members.

I had a lot of fun testing out Coassemble. It seems to be designed around making the onboarding process more engaging, which is something I'm definitely on board with. Instead of static slides and generic emails, this app helps you create fun, interactive slides that introduce your company and your new hire's place within it. 

When I first launched Coassemble, I could choose to upload an existing course or start from scratch. The walkthrough process felt smooth and easy, and I like that the system uses AI to suggest titles and content based on the details you enter.

At the heart of Coassemble is the ability to build online courses that act as your onboarding program. It's like an online playbook tool, only with way more interactive elements. You can add pop quizzes, wheels, flowcharts, flashcards, timelines, and more. I love the focus on engagement and creating better experiences through interacting and exploring the content. 

Creating my own onboarding course felt intuitive and easy to achieve. You can edit everything visually, so there's no wondering what changing the text or button might look like. You can preview your course too, to get a feel for how it'll look for your new hires. It's easy to add videos, embed Google Maps, source royalty-free images directly through Unsplash, and add your favorite memes from GIPHY. Combined with the different screen types, this gives you a lot of creativity to personalize your onboarding experience.

Coassemble comes with some useful templates built in, so you can quickly create your own employee handbook, onboarding program, or employee perks program. You'll also find templates and checklists to support your managers through the onboarding process. 

The theme of support and engagement continues throughout the app. You can create personalized certificates for your new hires after they complete onboarding, which is a sweet touch. I really enjoyed the "feedback popups" that you can add to quizzes and screens. These animated images and emojis are a fun way to interact with your new hires as they move through the process. You can add congratulations messages and digital confetti, too. 

Coassemble stands strong alone, but you can make it even better thanks to its integrations with Zapier. Use triggers and actions to build a custom automation, or try one of Zapier's ready-made templates to add new users straight from your HR software, send surveys to participants, or create new courses based on products.

For HR teams that want to create a dynamic, interactive onboarding process, Coassemble is a wonderful pick. It's filled with features that help you share your culture with your new hire, while also covering the onboarding basics well—and giving you a way to get feedback on your onboarding experience. 

Coassemble pricing: Free Starter plan available, which allows you to create unlimited courses. Upgrade to the Business plan for advanced course distribution, access control, insights, and a built-in image library. Enterprise plans are also available.

Best employee onboarding software for delivering fun, hybrid onboarding experiences

Innform (Web, iOS, Android)

Innform pros:

• Gamify the onboarding process with points, levels, and leaderboards

• Empower new hires to take ownership over their onboarding journey

Innform cons:

• There's no option to customize user profiles or bios

While many companies now embrace remote work, sometimes you'll want to add in-person meetings or training sessions to your onboarding process. This is something that Innform accounts for brilliantly, while also bringing a sense of fun and gamification to the experience. 

When you load up Innform, you're first brought to the learner dashboard. This is a great introduction to the app, and shows you exactly what your new hires will see when they join you. Innform's dashboard is clear, bright, and easy to navigate. 

One of the first features you'll notice is the leaderboard. Innform takes onboarding and online learning and brings a healthy sense of competition to the mix. Your learners (or new hires!) can earn points for completing modules and training courses, causing them to rise up the leaderboard. This leaderboard is visible to everyone, so it's a great incentive to work through your company training content. If you want to introduce gamification to your culture, this is a fun way to do it. Innform does gamification well and brings a spark of fun to the onboarding journey.

Creating content for your onboarding experience feels smooth and easy with Innform. I appreciated how fast the app runs, and loved the autosaving and quick preview features. It didn't take long to create my first modules, and there's a good mix of content types and editing features. Editing happens on the page too, so you can see what your content will look like. 

A unique feature is the ability to create learning paths or "journeys." These user journeys can be assigned to new hires—either individually or based on a property or category. Use this to create pathways of online modules, or try the "blended learning" feature for hybrid onboarding. Used this way, you can schedule online learning modules and virtual calls with all the details included, as well as details about in-person meetings and sessions. This helps streamline and organize the onboarding experience, and creates a better experience for your new hires.

It feels like the focus is very much on individuals "owning" their onboarding experience and learning journeys. Once you've assigned content, your new hires can find this in their dashboard and work their way through it. You can also create brightly colored "highlights" that draw their attention to specific content. After they've completed modules, they can be viewed at any time if you choose to turn them into manuals. This means you can build an easy-to-use self-service center filled with useful information about your company, culture, and benefits. 

It's easy to connect Innform to your other HR apps with the help of its Zapier integration. Explore different triggers and actions to create and assign users and assignments.

If you're looking for a tool that helps you organize your online-only or hybrid onboarding process, Innform is a fantastic choice. It's a great mix of practical, useful features (like creating learning journeys) and fun elements (like your company leaderboard). 

Innform pricing: Free plan available for up to 15 users, for 1 course. Paid plans start at $1.40/month/person for the Starter plan, with learning paths and blended learning unlocked in the Pro plan at $5.60/month/person. Enterprise plans are also available.

Best employee onboarding software for teams that need a new home for documents and workflows

Waybook (Web)

Waybook pros:

• AI-powered assistance that streamlines the document creation process

• Ideal for teams with information-heavy policies, procedures, or workflows

Waybook cons:

• Lacks engagement and gamification features that other employee onboarding apps have

One of the challenges HR teams and managers encounter in the onboarding process is just how much information you need to share with your new hires—like policies, processes, values, and culture. Waybook gives you a home for all your onboarding documents, plus an intuitive way to share it with your new hires.

When you first sign up for Waybook, you're asked what your goals are. This helps to personalize the experience and allows you to start learning how to use the software for the context you need. 

Your onboarding journey lives within documents on the platform. These are simple to create, with a responsive document builder that autosaves your progress—perfect for when you're working on a long policy or procedure. I appreciate the thoughtful touches that make creating and editing content easy, like the "split step" feature that allows me to turn one process step into two instantly.

While the platform is document-based, it doesn't lack creativity or flexibility. Personalize documents with tables, files, blockquotes, code snippets, and emojis. You can add images from a range of sources, including Unsplash.

One of the best features of Waybook is the way it embraces artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline the process. Employees can use "Waybook Ask" to surface answers to their questions quickly, without asking someone else for help. The built-in AI writing tool also works well to suggest content ideas for your policies, documents, and courses.

Enhance the experience by linking Waybook with Zapier. Use triggers to send data to other platforms for a more streamlined onboarding and people management experience.

The platform is great for teams of any size, and its built-in admin commenting features, audit log, and approval workflows make it a useful contender for enterprise teams that need greater visibility over content updates.

Waybook pricing: Pricing starts at $83/month for Waybook Core. Upgrade to Waybook Pro for more robust management permissions and enhanced support. You can also work with a Waybook consultant to help you set up and optimize your platform for $95/hour.

Other app options for when you don't need a dedicated employee onboarding software platform

My goal with this piece was to introduce you to what I feel are the best apps that either focus solely on employee onboarding or do it exceptionally well. But outside this, there are plenty of other apps that tackle only one aspect of onboarding—and I wanted to include those too.

If you already have an employee management system that handles the onboarding process and simply want a new way to add fun to the journey, or a place to store information, try these apps:

• Goosechase. This unique app is inspired by the concept of scavenger hunts. Set up themed hunts or use built-in prompts. Ask your new hires to venture out into the world, snap photos, and submit them to complete missions.

• Scribe. Looking for a fast way to document processes? This app can help you record a process and turn it into a step-by-step guide in moments—ideal for sharing workflows with new hires.

• Whale. Create an internal knowledge base, document procedures, and train your team all in one place.

• Trainual. Share your SOPs, train new hires and existing employees, and document your company knowledge.

• Worksuite. If you work with freelancers, a dedicated platform like this gives you a hub for onboarding, management, and payment.

How do you find the best HR onboarding software for your company? 

Every great employee onboarding app should be easy to use, simple to automate, and give you back more of that precious resource—time. Beyond that, we all have different needs. Some HR teams want to bring more culture and engagement to the experience, while others need a robust onboarding platform that can help them onboard new hires worldwide at scale.

Think about the features you need the most, then use this guide to help you find the best options for you. Test out a handful of apps, and evaluate what you (and your team) like most about them, so you can find the one that works best for your team.

Related reading:

• The best employee management software

• Free org chart templates to streamline your operations

• The best employee scheduling software