Five Sage HR alternatives, after you price the modules you actually use.

It depends on the job. HollyHR fits focused core HR and current early-access Free/£2 pricing; Breathe fits established UK-SME core and add-ons; CharlieHR fits performance, engagement, perks and optional advice; Sense HR fits automation, ATS and attendance; BrightHR fits software bundled with HR and safety support. Keep Sage HR when native mobile, e-signatures, modular workforce tools or Sage payroll adjacency are the fit.

Only when the team needs HollyHR's focused shipped core and accepts a manual, reconciled migration. HollyHR is not equivalent for Sage HR's native mobile and payslip experience, electronic signatures and signing evidence, automated task assignment and employee-change workflows, richer leave accrual plus starter/leaver and irregular-hours rules, retrospective sickness entry plus medical-certificate and return-to-work workflows, Sage's Azure-directory SSO option or any SCIM-dependent provisioning requirement, performance, timesheets, shift scheduling, expenses, recruitment, announcements, custom reports, Sage payroll connections, or a complete migration of histories, files, balances, signatures and configuration. HollyHR also does not calculate historical or blended FTE or provide SSP casework; SSP processing sits with separate payroll products rather than Sage HR. HollyHR onboarding is manually launched without automatic assignment, reminder/escalation delivery or provider provisioning; its current future-starter identity controls are unsuitable for confidential starters, and aggregate sickness charts can identify sickness in a small team.

For the published core prices, yes. HollyHR's controlled early-access Free plan is £0 for up to 10 active employees and Standard is £2 per active employee per month before tax. Sage HR lists Core HR and Leave Management at £5 per employee per month before optional modules. Compare early-access status, tax, support and required scope as well as price.

Standalone Sage HR has no ongoing free plan. Sage currently lists Core HR and Leave Management at £5 per employee per month. Performance, Timesheets and Shift Scheduling are each £2.50 per employee per month, Expenses is £1.25 per employee per month, and Recruitment is £184.45 per month. Its 30-day trial requires no card and ends automatically. Sage HR Essentials is a limited version included with a separate Sage Payroll UK purchase, not a like-for-like free standalone plan.

HollyHR does not ship a native mobile app, electronic signatures, performance goals and 1-to-1s, timesheets, shifts, expenses, recruitment, Sage payroll connections, custom report builder or equivalent automated task-assignment, employee-change workflow and announcement tooling. HollyHR onboarding also lacks automatic assignment, reminder/escalation delivery and provider provisioning. Treat those as migration work or reasons to keep Sage HR.

No native Sage Payroll or Sage 50 Payroll connector is shipped. Sage documents connected payroll and payslip experiences as separate paid products. If that relationship matters, test the exact Sage product, data direction and fields; do not replace it on the assumption that a generic export is equivalent.

No. HollyHR has no Sage HR adapter. Its generic importer maps 12 people fields and accepts up to 500 rows and 2 MB. Managers, working patterns, pay and bank data, leave balances and history, documents, signatures, performance, timesheets, shifts, expenses, applicants, reports and integration configuration require separate handling.

Sage provides exportable employee and specialist reports, but its documents report excludes signable documents and time-off requests, and the Excel export does not include document files. Completed signable PDFs are individually downloadable only after every recipient signs, so preserve awaiting, partial and expired signature status and evidence separately. Do not assume one export contains all records, signatures, binaries and module state.

There is no honest universal time. It depends on the quality of the people CSV and how much manager, leave, document, signature, payroll, performance, time, expense, applicant, report, workflow and integration state must be rebuilt and reconciled. Keep Sage available until the parallel run and retained source evidence pass review.