Small-business HR without the enterprise tax

HR software has a pricing model that quietly punishes the businesses it claims to serve. The per-employee model means every hire comes with a new line item — and the minimums mean small teams pay enterprise-ish money for a fraction of the headcount.

The math

Take the published 2026 prices. BambooHR's Core plan is $10 per employee per month — but teams of 25 or fewer pay a flat minimum starting at $250/month. So a 10-person company doesn't pay $100/month. It pays $250: $25 per head, for the privilege of being small.

Gusto's Simple plan is $49/month plus $6 per employee. At 10 employees, that's $109/month. At 20, $169. At 50, $349. The per-employee meter runs forever, and it runs on the thing you're trying to grow: your team.

Neither price is outrageous in isolation. The problem is the incentive: the software taxes headcount. Every hire, every seasonal worker, every contractor you convert — the HR bill goes up. The pricing model is a small, permanent drag on growth.

What you're actually paying for

Strip the pricing away and HR software does four things: keeps people records, runs onboarding workflows, validates compliance, and (in Gusto's case) runs payroll. The records part — the core of it — is a database with a UI. It is not a $25-per-head-per-month problem.

The per-employee price persists because the market lets it: switching HR systems is painful, so vendors price for the switching cost, not the software cost. You're paying a ransom shaped like a subscription.

What flat pricing changes

Flat rent for HR — one price for the whole team — changes the planning math. Hiring stops having a software line item. The 10-person company and the 50-person company pay the same, which is how it should be when the software's actual cost doesn't scale with headcount.

It also changes the vendor relationship: a flat-rent vendor wins by keeping you, not by taxing your growth. The incentive finally points the right way.

The honest trade-offs

• Payroll is separate. Records and compliance are one job; moving money is another. Creytix People is the records layer — payroll lives in Creytix Payroll. That's a cleaner separation than the all-in-one vendors, but it means two tools instead of one bill.
• Enterprise features are enterprise features. If you need 40-country payroll, EOR, and a dedicated implementation team, the enterprise HRIS is the tool. Flat-rent HR is for businesses, not multinationals.
• Migration is the real cost. The software is cheap; moving 50 employee records, their documents, and their history is the project. Budget the migration, not the subscription.

The question to ask any HR vendor: "What do I pay when I double headcount?" If the answer is "double," you're not buying software. You're renting your own growth back from them.