Under 200 employees, you probably do not need a full HRMS
A company under 200 employees usually needs five things from HR software: compliant documents, payroll with EPF and ESI, attendance, leave, and exit paperwork. greytHR, Keka and Zoho People bundle far more than that, and price accordingly. Match the tool to the work your team will actually run.
greytHR, Keka and Zoho People are capable products. That is not in dispute. The question is whether a company your size will use enough of each suite to justify the invoice. This page lays out what the three cost in 2026, which modules tend to sit idle at a smaller company, and a short test to decide what you need before you sign anything.
Where the money goes on a full HRMS
The commercial pattern is the same across the category. A base fee against a headcount floor, a per employee rate on top, extra modules sold as add ons or gated behind higher tiers, and often a setup fee with an implementation period to match. Each piece is defensible on its own. Stacked together, they assume a buyer with a real HR department who will switch most of it on.
A 40 person company is a different animal. One HR person, often part time. Hiring in ones and twos. No formal review cycles, no learning programmes, reimbursements settled on WhatsApp and a monthly Excel. For that buyer the suite's ledger runs one way: you pay for the ceiling, and you live on the ground floor. The talent layer itself, and why it rarely fits a small team, is covered in our companion piece on human capital management for a small business. Here the focus is narrower: the three names you will actually be quoted, and their numbers.
What does greytHR cost a small team in 2026?
greytHR is the veteran of the category, with the deepest statutory engine of the three. Its published pricing is also the most transparent, which makes the arithmetic easy to run.
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Essential plan | ₹2,495 a month, covers up to 50 employees, then ₹45 per extra employee |
| Growth plan | ₹4,495 a month, then ₹85 per extra employee |
| Performance add on | ₹35 to ₹45 per user a month |
| Timesheets add on | ₹35 per user a month |
| Expense add on | ₹35 per user a month |
| GPS Live tracking add on | ₹140 per user a month |
| Recruit add on | ₹2,500 per recruiter a month |
There is no permanent free plan, only a 7 day trial.
₹2,495 for up to 50 people is a fair base price, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. The tally moves when the add ons arrive. GPS tracking for a 50 person field team is ₹7,000 a month on its own, before the base fee. Performance for the same team adds up to ₹2,250 more. A familiar switching story is the invoice that lands at a multiple of the quoted base once the add ons are counted. The line by line detail sits in our greytHR vs Offrd comparison.
What does Keka cost, and who is it built for?
Keka does not publish its prices. Its pricing page lists three plans, Foundation, Strength and Growth, and a nominal setup fee, but the rupee figures sit behind a sales call. Third party reviews through 2026 put the Foundation plan near ₹9,999 a month, covering up to 100 employees.
Read that structure from a 30 person perch and the mismatch is plain. The entry tier is sized for a company three times your headcount, so you pay for 70 seats you have not filled. The features Keka is famous for, performance reviews, OKR tracking and talent analytics, sit in the Growth plan, higher again. Hiring runs through Keka Hire, priced per recruiter. All of it is coherent for a company with a people team and an active pipeline. None of it is priced for a founder who hires five people a year.
If you do run structured review cycles and a recruiter with a live funnel, Keka is a serious option and you should evaluate it properly. The feature by feature detail is in our Keka vs Offrd comparison.
Zoho People looks cheap per user. What is the catch?
Zoho People goes the other way. The entry price is low, ₹48 per user a month on annual billing for the Essential HR tier, with a free edition for up to 5 users and a five seat minimum on paid plans. For a small team that number looks hard to beat.
The catch is which tier holds the feature you came for. Essential HR at ₹48 is onboarding, employee records, documents, leave and reports. Attendance, timesheets and rosters start at Professional, which doubles the rate to ₹96. Performance and compensation are Premium at ₹144. The help desk and learning system are Enterprise at ₹192. Payroll is in none of them, because Zoho Payroll is a separate product at ₹1,250 a month for 25 employees. A 20 person company that wants attendance and payroll pays ₹1,920 plus ₹1,250, so about ₹3,170 a month.
One caveat. If your company already runs on Zoho One, Zoho People fits with the rest of the suite and the bundle pricing changes the calculation. Zoho often wins that one. For everyone else, read the tier ladder before you budget. We break it down in the Zoho People vs Offrd comparison.
Does your team actually run these modules?
Skip the demo gloss and answer six questions about the last twelve months. Not what you aspire to. What actually happened.
- Formal reviews. Did you run a structured appraisal or OKR cycle on a calendar, with forms and ratings, rather than conversations?
- Recruiting pipeline. Is someone working a live candidate funnel most weeks, or do you hire a handful of people a year?
- Learning programmes. Did anyone complete a course inside an LMS you administer?
- Engagement surveys. Did you field one, and act on the results?
- Multiple entities. Do you run payroll across more than one legal entity?
- Approval chains. Does a leave request genuinely need more than one approver?
Mostly no? Then your real requirement is the operational core: documents, payroll, attendance, leave, exit. The rest of the invoice is shelfware. Run your own numbers in the HR software cost calculator before any sales call, so the quote lands against a baseline.
When the suite is the right call
Mostly yes, with a full time HR team to run it? Buy the suite without guilt. greytHR earns its keep on statutory depth and automated filing, Keka on performance and hiring. At that point the modules are the job, and this page's argument no longer applies to you.
What to run instead of a full suite
The legal floor does not shrink with your headcount, so cover it properly. Since 21 November 2025 the labour codes have required an appointment letter in writing for every worker, per the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Provident fund runs at 12 percent from employer and employee within the EPFO wage ceiling. Employee state insurance takes 0.75 percent from the employee and 3.25 percent from the employer on gross wages up to the ESIC ceiling of ₹21,000. Getting these right is the job. No talent module helps with any of it.
Offrd covers that floor and stops there. The letters and the payslips, onboarding with verified PAN and bank details, attendance handled by the bundled Atndnz app, leave, exit paperwork with the full and final settlement worked out, a policy builder, Form 16 generation, and resume screening for the pre hire stage. Setup takes about two minutes and there is no setup fee. Filing to government portals stays with your CA, working from Offrd's clean payroll exports.
The pricing is the point. ₹99 a document with no commitment, or ₹50 per active employee a month. A 15 person team pays ₹750 a month, attendance included. Even at 50 people the subscription is ₹2,500, with nothing bolted on later.
4,000+ companies in 350 plus Indian cities use Offrd today, and offer letters worth over ₹7 billion have gone out through the platform.
The full set of guides and tools lives in the HR tools and guides hub.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an HRMS for a 50 person company?
You need HR software, not necessarily a full HRMS. At 50 people the daily work is documents, payroll with EPF and ESI, attendance and leave. A full suite adds performance, engagement, learning and recruiting modules on top, and those mostly sit idle at this size. Start with a tool that covers the operational core and move up only if the extra layers become real work.
When does a full HRMS like greytHR or Keka make sense?
When the modules map to work you already do. If you run formal review cycles, keep a recruiter busy with an active pipeline, manage several legal entities, or need automated statutory filing at depth, a suite earns its price. greytHR is strong on the statutory side and Keka on performance and hiring. Below that point you are paying for headroom, not output.
What is the cheapest way to run HR software for a small company in India?
Pay for usage, not seats you have not filled. Offrd charges ₹99 a document or ₹50 per active employee a month, with 50 free credits on signup and no monthly minimum. A 15 person team pays ₹750 a month on the subscription, attendance included through the bundled Atndnz app. Suite pricing starts near ₹2,495 a month at the low end and climbs from there.
Can I move to a full HRMS later without starting over?
Yes. Every document Offrd generates is a PDF you keep, and the pay per document model carries no notice period, so nothing ties you down while you weigh a suite. Most companies find the move only becomes worth planning once a real HR team exists to run the extra modules.
What does Offrd deliberately not do?
No performance reviews, OKRs or 360 feedback. No engagement surveys, learning system, expense claims, helpdesk or asset register. No multi level approval chains. Statutory filing to government portals stays with your accountant, who works from the clean exports Offrd produces. The product covers documents, payroll, attendance, leave and policies, plus Form 16 generation and resume screening for the pre hire stage, and stops there.
Pay for the HR you actually run
Documents, payroll, attendance and leave, with Indian statutory rules built in and nothing gated behind a higher tier. ₹99 a document or ₹50 per employee a month. Setup takes about two minutes.