 |
ADP vs Rippling
March 19, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
17★
Fast, easy, and designed specifically for small businesses. From payroll and tax filing to HR, time tracking, and more, ADP helps Small Business succeed. Running a small business is 24/7 job. That’s why we make it easier with simple, reliable small business payroll and expert HR management services to help you make better, more informed decisions about your business.
15★
Rippling makes it unbelievably easy to manage your team's payroll, benefits, computers,
and apps — all in one, modern platform.
ADP and Rippling are both sophisticated ways for humans to avoid doing payroll themselves, which, as anyone who has ever attempted it will tell you, is a fate worse than Vogon poetry. They exist in the cloud, though nobody really knows what that means except that you don’t have to keep a clunky server in your office anymore. Both ensure you remain in compliance with various tax laws, presumably so the Intergalactic Revenue Service doesn’t show up demanding an audit. They also let employees access their pay stubs, which is handy if one ever wants to remember where all their money went. And, of course, they integrate with other software, because life is just one long process of integration.
ADP, being the elder statesman of payroll solutions, has been around since 1949, which in software years is roughly the Jurassic period. It caters to large enterprises, mid-sized businesses and anyone who enjoys filling out compliance paperwork for fun. With headquarters in the United States, it has extended its reach across the known corporate universe, particularly for companies with employees scattered across multiple time zones. It also offers PEO services, which essentially means "we'll handle your HR problems so you can pretend they don’t exist."
Rippling, by contrast, is the flashy newcomer, having emerged in 2016, presumably after someone realized payroll and IT could be merged into one vaguely magical process. It’s especially fond of small businesses, startups and anyone who refers to their office as a "hub of innovation." Also headquartered in the United States, it attempts to streamline not just payroll, but IT and finance as well, meaning it can onboard new employees and give them access to company software before they even know what their job is. It even manages devices, so you can ship a laptop to a new hire without first deciphering the mysteries of FedEx tracking.
See also: Top 10 HRM Software
ADP, being the elder statesman of payroll solutions, has been around since 1949, which in software years is roughly the Jurassic period. It caters to large enterprises, mid-sized businesses and anyone who enjoys filling out compliance paperwork for fun. With headquarters in the United States, it has extended its reach across the known corporate universe, particularly for companies with employees scattered across multiple time zones. It also offers PEO services, which essentially means "we'll handle your HR problems so you can pretend they don’t exist."
Rippling, by contrast, is the flashy newcomer, having emerged in 2016, presumably after someone realized payroll and IT could be merged into one vaguely magical process. It’s especially fond of small businesses, startups and anyone who refers to their office as a "hub of innovation." Also headquartered in the United States, it attempts to streamline not just payroll, but IT and finance as well, meaning it can onboard new employees and give them access to company software before they even know what their job is. It even manages devices, so you can ship a laptop to a new hire without first deciphering the mysteries of FedEx tracking.
See also: Top 10 HRM Software
