Global HR software has become a critical component for businesses looking to manage distributed teams outside of their base country.
As remote working continues to grow faster than ever, businesses will need tools that combine payroll, compliance, and employee management through a single platform across the globe. When choosing between platforms, there is a direct correlation between what you choose and operational effectiveness, statutory compliance, and employee satisfaction.
Deel, Remote, and Oyster are three of the top solutions in this space.
Each solution will have its strengths and weaknesses for managing a remote team across borders, from payroll automation to rolling out benefits, creating contracts, and providing employment protections. While they all seek to simplify global HR, the different features, pricing, and user experience will appeal to companies of different sizes, geography, and employee requirements.
This article will allow you to compare Deel, Remote, and Oyster in terms of the key functionality, usability, and value they provide to an organization with a distributed team.
By understanding the capabilities and limitations of each one, organisations will be able to make better decisions to support growth, compliance, and employee experience in a global workforce.
If you want to manage a global workforce, you want HR software that is simple, reliable, and scalable. Deel, Remote, and Oyster are three of the biggest platforms to help businesses manage international workforces. Each platform aims to make payroll, compliance, benefits, and employee management easier. The three platforms vary in features, pricing, benefits, and target users.
Deel is the best-known benefit of using a company that is flexible and has a broad footprint.
The platform enables hiring, payroll, and employee or contractor management in over 150 countries worldwide.
The highlighted features include:
International payroll automation
Local compliance lead-in management
Custom contracts for employees and contractors
Accounting and HR tools integration for ease of use.
Remote is committed to making the complexities of global employment easier and compliant.
It is the best option for companies wanting to hire full-time employees in foreign countries, even if they are not establishing a foreign entity. Important features include:
Global payroll and benefits management
Contractor management and compliance
Employer of record services in many countries
Simple and easy onboarding & offboarding
Oyster puts emphasis on great user experiences in combination with practical compliance software.
Oyster is focused on helping companies scale their distributed teams quickly, without unnecessary burdens or complexity. Important features include:
Automated payroll for employees and independent contractors
Local labor law compliance
Benefits offerings that are customized to each region
A friendly and intuitive user experience.
Each platform is designed to relieve administrative burden and provide a consistent experience for employers and employees alike.
Deel is the best choice for flexibility and contractor management. Remote has the most experience in global full-time employment for your workers.
Oyster aims to do the best job in ease and compliance. Each platform is slightly different, and with an understanding of their differences, businesses can choose the best for their global needs.
Identifying the best global HR software has implications that can impact how well your business runs and its compliance.
Dealing with a virtual or remote team of employees, choosing the wrong platform may result in delays, compliance consequences, and frustrated employees.
Before we look into a direct comparison of Deel, Remote, and Oyster, it's important to establish the criteria that will matter most to you so that you can make sure you are getting a platform that works for your current needs and the future of your growth.
Global employment can involve complex labor laws, taxes, and mandatory reporting. A good HR platform should be able to:
Assist with compliance for every country where you have employees
Provide simplified legal guidance or local legal regulation updates
Assist with employment contracts and contractor agreements as per local law
Manage employment contracts, tax filings, and any necessary approvals paperwork as required
Noting the more compliance coverage, the less likely you are to incur any unwanted penalties, legal or financial.
Calculating and processing payroll in different countries is cumbersome, and mistakes can be costly. A good platform will:
Automate calculations for salaries, taxes, and deductions
Be able to make multi-currency payments
Set expectations for payment timing in every country
Allow payroll reports in local formats and local languages.
Automated payroll means saving time, reducing mistakes, and making sure employees and contractors are paid right and on time.
There are many distinctions in benefits packages across countries. An effective HR solution should be able to:
Provide localized benefits that comply, or exceed the legal requirements in various jurisdictions.
Facilitate health insurance, retirement planning, and various perks specific to a region
Have options for customization to attract and retain talent
Be able to manage automatic enrollment and renewals.
Great benefits management improves employee satisfaction and retention.
The platform's user interface will need to be simple enough for HR teams and employees. Some key considerations include:
A clean and intuitive dashboard
Easy onboarding and offboarding process
Ability to integrate existing HR, accounting, and collaboration tools
Mobile access for managers and employees
Easy-to-use software limits training needs and keeps organization-wide adoption higher.
Global HR platform pricing varies considerably based on their pricing models. It is good to consider a software that gives you a long-term value by looking out for:
No hidden charges/costs
A suitable price plan for contractors, employees, or mixed teams
Plan flexibility if you want to add new countries or users to your platform
Volume discount prices as your team sizes increase.
Good scalability means that no matter how your workforce expands into new markets, the platform will have the ability to provide you with what you need.
Examining a global HR platform against these criteria can help narrow down your options and develop a better focus on what is a reasonable and great fit for your business model.
Deel, Remote, and Oyster each touch on these areas differently, and that is why it is so crucial to know your priorities first. Once those have been established, you will be ready to provide a more detailed review and comparison, knowing now what features and capabilities matter the most to you with your global team.
In assessing Deel, Remote, and Oyster, we want to look at how the platforms compare across the areas of compliance, payroll, benefits, usability, and scalability.
All three products are designed to make global HR projects easier. However, they have different areas of strength and weakness.
Strengths: Deel assists companies in hiring workers in over 150 countries, so it is good for both employees and contractors. Deel has automated multifactorial payroll, localized contracts, compliance changes, and multiple currencies. Integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, and BambooHR make it easy to slot Deel within the existing workflows. Deel also has the fastest payments, transparent reports, and wonderful speed.
Limitations: Prices can quickly grow as headcount grows. Advanced features can often be more than small teams need. Onboarding may be strange for those with no prior experience of HR tech since it may take time to learn.
Best for: Companies needing ground flexibility to engage a blend of employees and contractors consistently across the globe. It's perfect for fast-scaling and expanding teams that value broad compliance coverage, enhanced reporting, and robust contractor management tools.
Strengths: Remote provides a good employer of record service, especially for clients that do not have any local entities. They provide proper compliance in over 100 countries and have transparent pricing. Remote provides bundles of HR services that result in fewer vendors than most companies face. Payroll and benefits are the easiest to manage as they have clear processes for onboarding and off boarding.
The interface is very professional and easy to use.
Limitations: Client and contractor management is not as robust as Deel. The native integrations are very limited. That may require more setup for certain workflows.
Best suited for: These organizations want full-time hires, have strong compliance, bundled HR services, clear pricing, and organizations that are positioned for success seek stability and a more consistent employee experience in their key markets.
Strengths: Oyster provides hiring in over 180 countries, compliant contracts, and payroll automation with ready-made benefits packages. The platform itself has an easy-to-use interface, which reduces training time and encourages adoption speed.
For smaller teams, it is reasonably priced and also provides localized benefits to ensure you are compliant with the law for each country. The customer support is very responsive and focuses on enquiry success during onboarding.
Limitations: Fewer integration options than Deel. Less customisation for more advanced HR workflows.
Best suited for: Growing organizations (i.e. start-ups) that need a fast, compliant way for talent to engage internationally.
Organizations that value easy, low-cost, compliant talent engagement first before integrations and customizations.
These use cases illustrate the actual use of Deel, Remote, and Oyster in the workforce.
Three examples will show you how the platform was used, what problem was addressed, and measurable outcomes that will give you context for whether or how these concepts might work for you.
Cohabs transformed their human resources across multiple countries.
Combined many separate payroll systems on
Deel's platform for payroll, HRIS, and EOR
An Estimated 960 hours of admin time (per month)
On track to reduce payroll hours in half by 2025
Ensured compliance and employee experience were consistent globally.
It enabled a global SMB ecommerce company to centralize payroll for their employees in nine countries.
Reduced manual payroll processes by 77%, using Remote's multi-country payroll
Achieved an organizational and reduced admin costs of $83,100 (annually)
Gained accuracy in payroll, and happier employees
Reduced complexity for HR, with one platform
Jitasa enabled expansion in the Philippines by converting a number of contractors to employees.
Converted about 20 contractors into employees seamlessly.
Saved approximately 400 hours of admin work
The retention rate in the Philippines was 94% (80–85% globally)
Provided compliant contracts plus localized benefits packages.
Choosing a global HR platform is just the beginning. It is equally important to check how to use it, manage it, and continuously improve it.
This is what will determine the long-term ROI to your organization.
Once you have selected software, you may want to consider the following best practices to maximize your investment.
Make sure that HR, finance, and your managers understand all the features available to them. Regular training refreshers will keep your adoption levels high and dependence on support low.
Be sure to integrate your platform with your payroll, accounting, and customer relationship manager (CRM), and communication platform to reduce manual work and ensure smooth data flows between systems.
Global labor laws change frequently. Assign someone to track platform compliance alerts that need to be applied in order to avoid expensive penalties.
Time savings, payroll accuracy, employee retention and ramping employees have all saved you and your team time and resources.
Now you should have benchmarking information to demonstrate to your senior leaders or an investment committee about the investment you have made, areas to improve upon, plus much more!
Touch base with employees and their managers with some standard questions about usability and responsiveness to support.
Being informed of pain points early and often is crucial to address them proactively and to put yourself in a better position to keep satisfaction as high as few can
If you become a multinational company, make sure the platform supports new countries or locations first before hiring, so you can maintain consistency without needing to onboard new vendors.
Be part of user forums, participate in webinars, and don’t forget personnel products update calls. If you are engaged, you will have a heads-up with new features, enhancements, best practices for use, etc.
The success of your platform post-adoption phase will totally depend on how you treat it as dynamic, rather than stagnant. If you look after it regularly, it should be able to help your Shifting or scale growth, provide compliance, and provide a fully satisfying experience for employees around the globe.
Global HR software is now a requirement for distributed companies, not a luxury. Global HR software to hire, manage, and pay for employees in the same country has become a requirement.
Global HR platforms allow companies to hire, manage, and pay employees with no geographical limitations while remaining compliant with the local law of the country. The right vendor will depend on how you operate, your growth path, and your budget.
The critical steps at this point are not only to thoroughly evaluate the features and pricing at the outset, but also to decide upon the post-adoption practices of an "adoption plan". With the right platform in place and purposeful use, you will find that your business can scale globally with purpose and ease.
Recommended Blogs:
Do these platforms support contractors as well?
How much does global HR software cost?
What is an Employer of Record (EOR)?
What are some things that make Deel, Remote, and Oyster different?
