HR software pricing in India: how per-employee pricing works and what is usually included

How per-employee pricing works

Under per-employee-per-month (PEPM) pricing, the vendor multiplies a rate by the number of employees in your account and bills you monthly or annually. If you have 40 staff at ₹99 each, you pay ₹3,960 a month. Hire ten more and it becomes ₹4,950.

For a company of 10 to 200 people it is usually a fair model. A 15-person clinic does not pay what a 150-person logistics firm pays, and you are not paying upfront for seats you have not filled. The flip side is that the bill moves with hiring, so you should know exactly what makes it move.

Six things to check beyond the headline price

1. Minimum bill. Most vendors set a minimum headcount or minimum monthly amount. If you have 8 people and the minimum is 10, you pay for 10.
2. What counts as an employee. Active staff only? People who left during the month? Interns, trainees, contract staff? Ask for the exact definition.
3. Monthly or annual billing. Some advertised prices apply only to annual prepayment. Check what monthly billing costs and whether you can cancel.
4. Setup, implementation and migration. Is there a one-time fee to configure the system or load your existing data?
5. Add-ons. Hiring, attendance devices, extra companies, SMS, extra storage or premium support are sometimes priced separately.
6. GST. Check whether the quoted rate includes GST so you compare like with like.

Put every quote into the same sheet with these six columns. The cheapest headline rate is often not the cheapest product once they are filled in.

What is usually included at each tier

Tiers tend to follow a pattern, although every vendor draws the lines differently:

• Entry tier: employee records, leave and holidays, sometimes attendance. Aimed at the first HR process in a small company.
• Middle tier: adds payroll and payslips, and often performance or approval workflows. This is where most growing SMBs land.
• Top tier: higher headcount, multiple entities or locations, priority support and migration help.

The trap is buying the entry tier, then finding the module you actually needed is a tier up. Before you pay, list the three things you most need the software to do this year, and check each against the tier, not the product overall.

HR-VEND's pricing, in plain numbers

HR-VEND publishes its prices on the pricing section of the home page. They are the same numbers the billing system charges.

A few details worth knowing:

• Minimum of 10 employees. Billing is to a minimum of 10, so the smallest bills are ₹490 (Starter), ₹990 (Growth) and ₹1,490 (Enterprise) a month.
• Headcount comes from your records. The in-app billing screen reads your headcount from the employees in your workspace, so nobody has to count staff by hand.
• Charged a month at a time. Payment is through Razorpay, so cards, UPI, net banking and wallets work. If online payment is not switched on for your workspace, you are invoiced directly.
• The trial needs no card. After 7 days your workspace stops letting people in until you pay, and your data stays where it is. Nothing is charged automatically.
• Paying early does not lose trial days. A paid month runs from whichever is later, today or the end of your current period.
• Enterprise does not add features. It has the same modules as Growth; the difference is headcount, support and migration help.

Worked examples

Two things to notice. A Starter company that grows past 25 people moves to Growth, because Starter covers up to 25; plan for that if you are hiring quickly. And if you want payroll inside the system, you need Growth or above regardless of size.

These figures are HR-VEND's list prices on the date of this article. Check the pricing section for current prices and ask us about GST on your invoice. We do not quote other vendors' prices here because they change and differ by quote; ask each vendor for a written quote using the six checks above.

Working out whether it is worth it

Price only means something next to the time it saves. A rough way to judge it:

1. Estimate the hours a month your team spends on leave queries, attendance corrections, chasing candidates and rebuilding the salary sheet.
2. Multiply by what those hours cost you.
3. Add the cost of mistakes you already know about: a wrong salary, a good candidate lost, an exit settlement dispute.
4. Compare that with the monthly bill at your expected headcount a year from now.

For the full buying process, read HR software for a small business in India. If hiring is your main pain, start with Excel vs an applicant tracking system.

What the price does not include

Be clear about what any HR software, including ours, does not do for the subscription. HR-VEND keeps your records and does the calculations, but it does not file PF, ESI or tax returns on your behalf, and its India payroll rules are still being reviewed by a chartered accountant. Budget for your CA or payroll provider alongside the software.

Frequently asked questions

This article is general information for Indian employers, not legal or tax advice. Labour and tax rules differ by State and change over time, so confirm anything you act on with your CA or labour law consultant.