Remote Payroll Review 2024: Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Remote is a global hiring and workforce solution that includes global payroll software, contractor management features, Employer of Record services and some limited human resource features.

In this in-depth review, we investigate Remote’s various features and dive into the pros and cons to help you decide if it’s the right choice for your business. We also briefly mention a few of Remote’s closest competitors, so you can explore other options if you decide that Remote isn’t the right solution for your international hiring needs.

Remote’s pricing

Remote offers four distinct plans for different business needs and price points:

• HRIS features: Free to use in perpetuity.
• Contractor Management: $29 per contractor per month.
• Employer of Record: Starts at $599 per employee per month, varies by country.
• Global Payroll: Costs $50 per employee per month.
• Remote Talent: Costs $119 per job posting.

You can mix and match Remote’s different plans to suit your workforce’s changing needs over time. For instance, you could use the Global Payroll system to pay employees in the United States and Canada, the Employer of Record services to hire full-time workers in France and the Contractor plan to manage freelancers in India. This means you can stick with Remote for the long term, rather than having to switch between companies or services as your business evolves and expands into new countries.

Remote’s key features

Global payroll

Remote’s global payroll software lets you run payroll for multiple countries on a single system. Payroll runs are organized by country, each of which has a progress bar that tells you the status of payroll for that country. You can also choose to see upcoming pay by employee rather than by country. Remote’s implementation team will set up the payroll schedule for each company — just let them know what cutoff and pay dates you want.

Remote’s payroll software features will automatically account for any costs and deductions associated with benefits. Remote’s team will also calculate your employer tax contributions to make sure you remain compliant in each location. The global payroll software can handle other changes to payroll as well, including salary increases or decreases, one-time bonuses, commissions, expense reimbursement and paid time off.

Once the payroll run is ready, review the estimated costs to see if everything is accurate. If it looks correct, hit the “approve” button to run payroll with a single click. If you notice an error, hit the “request changes” button and explain what the mistake is. You can also ask Remote’s in-house payroll team questions about your payroll run using the comments function. Once payroll is finalized, both employees and HR can review pay slips. You can also download documents for in-progress and completed payroll runs.

Contractor management

Remote’s contractor management plan is available in more than 200 countries and offers a 30-day free trial, so you can try it out before committing to a payment plan. You only pay for active contractors, so if a freelancer takes a month off, Remote won’t bill you for that person that month.

Remote’s self-service onboarding features let contractors enter their own information and verify their identity. You can add individual contractors or onboard multiple contractors in bulk to speed up the process, and Remote allows you to work with business entities or individual contractors (or both) depending on who you want to hire.

Use Remote’s contract templates to quickly generate a new document or upload your own. Then Remote’s in-house legal experts can vet each contract to ensure compliance with local tax and employment laws. You can even create bilingual contracts to help keep everyone on the same page.

When it comes to actually paying contractors, Remote supports 70+ currencies and allows you to make payments via credit card, ACH or direct debit. You can invoice and pay in bulk, either by paying multiple invoices in one click or by setting up automatic smart approvals. For contractors who bill the same amount regularly, you can even generate invoices on their behalf and auto pay them on a weekly, monthly or bi-monthly basis. Remote’s invoice reports support accurate accounting, and the software will even pre-fill tax forms for contractors to make tax time easier.

Employer of record (EOR)

Remote’s employer of record (EOR) services are available in about 80 countries. While this is less than some competitors, Remote owns all of its own international entities, which means you’ll have a streamlined experience. Some other competitors contract with third-party legal entities in order to offer EOR services in more countries, which can sometimes lead to an inconsistent experience from country to country. With Remote, you don’t have to worry about that.

When you hire an employee with Remote’s EOR services, they’ll handle payroll, taxes, benefits and compliance, all for one flat monthly fee per person. Remote makes it quick to onboard new international hires in days instead of weeks and the onboarding process follows all local compliance requirements and includes necessary identity checks.

You can also customize onboarding information, including individual job rules, probation periods, salary and benefits. Add new team members one at a time, or bulk add multiple people at once if you’re on a hiring spree. Workers are paid in their local currency, but you will be billed in your main currency to simplify calculations.

Remote offers multiple tools to support online hiring, including a cost calculator that helps you figure out how much it will actually cost your company to hire a worker in another country. It also includes a misclassification risk tool to help you figure out whether or not a contractor might need to be moved to full-time status.

HRIS

Remote offers a limited set of human resource information system (HRIS) tools that are free for businesses of any size to use. The main features are guided onboarding and offboarding, employee profile and document management, time off management, time tracking and expense management and reimbursement. Remote also provides an employee self-service portal via both the web portal and mobile app, so employees don’t have to contact HR each time they need to access a document.

While we appreciate that Remote provides all these features for free, it does lack certain HR tools that more comprehensive software like BambooHR offers, such as performance management and employee experience surveys. You’ll need to seek out third-party software solutions if you want that functionality in addition to Remote. Remote offers a handful of pre-built integrations, and you can also connect Remote to thousands of apps via Zapier or build your own connections using the Remote API.

If you’re looking for a more comprehensive HR solution, check out our recommendations for the best HR software overall.

Remote pros

• Available in more than 80 countries.
• Owns its own global entities.
• Intuitive UI design that’s easy to navigate.
• HRIS software is free to use.
• Fast employee onboarding.

Remote cons

• Free trial is only available for contractor plan.
• Customer support available via email only.
• EOR services offered in fewer countries than some competitors.
• HRIS tools could be more comprehensive.

If Remote isn’t ideal for you, check out these alternatives

Rippling

While Remote only offers employer of record services (EOR), Rippling offers both professional employer organization (PEO) and EOR options, so you can choose the one that works best for you or switch between them as needed. Rippling also offers HR, finance and IT software, so you can centralize your entire business software stack in fewer platforms. However, it doesn’t disclose its EOR pricing or the countries it’s available in, so you will need to contact the company for a quote.

Papaya Global

Papaya offers EOR services, global payroll and contractor management for over 160 countries, about twice the number of countries as Remote. It achieves this by partnering with third-party entities, so you might not find the experience as seamless as working with Remote. Papaya Global also offers volume discounts, which is a great option for companies that are looking to expand quickly in international markets.

Deel

Deel is a very close competitor to Remote and offers free HR software for companies with less than 200 employees. It provides global payroll, contractor management and EOR services in over 100 countries and owns all of its entities except for China. Deel also recently added a PEO option for companies that prefer it over EOR support. The platform offers some cool features, like immigration visa support in more than 30 countries and global background checks in more than 200 countries. Check out our Deel vs Remote comparison for more information.

Review methodology

To review Remote, we consulted product documentation, user reviews and product demos. We considered features such as global payroll platforms, contractor management plans, employer of record (EOR) services and HRIS features. We also considered other factors such as pricing, customer service and country availability.