Five Sense HR alternatives, chosen by the job you refuse to lose.

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; Sage HR fits Sage-oriented mobile and modular HR; BrightHR fits software bundled with advice and safety support. Keep Sense HR when Elite's ATS, workflows, attendance, agents or API breadth are the fit.

Only when the team needs HollyHR's focused shipped core and accepts a manual, reconciled migration. HollyHR is not equivalent for Sense HR's native mobile and no-email frontline access, performance reviews, goals and 1-to-1s, built-in AMI, e-signature and document workflows, advanced onboarding and automation, custom screens, multi-entity administration, TrustID-style right-to-work identity verification and scheduled reporting, fit-note, return-to-work and SSP workflows, ATS, shifts, timesheets, geofencing or clock hardware, native integrations, or a complete migration of Sense records, histories, files, balances, signatures, workflows and configuration.

HollyHR's controlled early-access Free plan is £0 for up to 10 active employees, while Sense Team is £20 for up to 10. HollyHR Standard is £2 per active employee per month before tax, but Sense Team's published bands are cheaper at 25, 50, 100 and 200 people when each band is full. Compare scope, VAT and contract as well as price.

Team is a banded core product with mobile apps, performance, an AMI assistant, a data loader and UK chat support. Elite starts from £8 per employee per month on an annual contract and adds ATS, custom screens, multi-entity support, advanced workflows and agents, attendance options, read/write API, webhooks and implementation support.

Sense publishes fit-note, return-to-work, Bradford-trigger and SSP workflows. HollyHR records generic current or future Time Off but does not automate retrospective sickness entry, fit-note lifecycle, return-to-work, SSP or trigger casework. Its aggregate category, month and department reporting is currently visible to every signed-in member and can identify sickness in a small team, so test that privacy boundary before switching.

The models differ. Sense ships AMI inside its product and reserves open API and webhooks for Elite. HollyHR has approved organisation-scoped beta API reads and controlled hosted MCP reads; write-capable API/MCP access is Standard+, approved and controlled, and MCP writes are environment-disabled by default. That is not a claim of parity with Sense Elite's wider REST, webhook, workflow and agent surface.

No. HollyHR has no Sense 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, custom screens, performance records, workflows and integration configuration require separate handling.

Sense documents custom and scheduled reports with CSV, Excel, PDF and API export. A current public specification for a complete account-and-files exit package was not found, so request a sample full offboarding extract and uploaded-file process directly rather than assuming report exports contain every specialist record and binary.

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