Is EOR software something you can buy on its own?

Summary

Not in any useful sense. What gets called EOR software is the dashboard that comes with an employer of record service, where you onboard people, submit payroll changes and approve time off. The legal employer is the provider's local entity behind that dashboard, and an HRIS or a payroll tool, however capable, never becomes anyone's employer.

Look at one vendor's price list

Deel sells HR software, payroll and EOR as separate products, and the prices make the point better than any definition.

Deel HR is its HRIS. Deel describes an HRIS as the system that "holds the worker profile and runs core admin: time off, documents, approvals, reporting," and the Core tier starts at $5 per employee per month. Deel Payroll is pitched "for companies running payroll through their own entities." Deel EOR costs $599 per employee per month and, in Deel's words, handles "contracts, payroll, benefits, and compliance" for people hired without a local entity.

The $5 product and the $599 product run on screens that look much alike. What the EOR adds is spelled out in Deel's developer docs: "Deel acts as the legal employer while you maintain day-to-day management of the worker." That role, not a feature list, is what the EOR price buys.

Remote draws the same line. Its $699 EOR plan includes "HR Essentials as standard," while its $29 Payroll plan is aimed at organizations that "might already have legal entities in foreign countries." The arithmetic of running your own payroll through your own entity is laid out in the article comparing EOR with global payroll.

What the dashboard does

Rippling claims its EOR automates the paperwork around a hire, from the local employment agreement and work authorization to benefits enrollment and software provisioning, and sells the idea of keeping domestic staff, international hires and contractors in one place. It does not publish a price; the page asks you to book a walkthrough.

Some providers also open an API so your own systems can talk to theirs:

• Deel's EOR API returns the contract fields a given country requires and the benefits available there, then creates the EOR contract.
• Remote's API covers hiring, payroll, time off and expenses, and syncs people, contracts and payroll inputs with your other systems.

If you already run an HRIS, those integrations are a fair reason to prefer one provider over another. They do not change who the employer is. Whichever dashboard you pick, the employment contract is signed by the provider's entity in that country.

Sources

• https://www.deel.com/solutions/hr/
• https://www.deel.com/solutions/payroll/
• https://www.deel.com/pricing/
• https://developer.deel.com/api/employer-of-record/hiring
• https://remote.com/pricing
• https://www.rippling.com/products/payroll/employer-of-record
• https://developer.remote.com/docs/getting-started-with-remote

Related on this site

• Employer of record costs by country
• If you already have a local entity, what does an EOR give you that payroll doesn't?
• If the big EOR providers charge about the same, what actually separates them?
• Rippling won't publish an EOR price, so what do you compare its quote against?