Factorial vs HiBob

Factorial

Document-management and digital personnel file pages confirm the personnel file is a product area, but the captured facts say nothing about org structure, custom fields, or dated change history. For the file an auditor works from I need versioned contract and compensation history and retention rules per document type, and we found no public information on any of these.

HiBob

The personnel file is shown storing contracts, IDs and tax forms on the profile with e-signature, an org chart updated automatically and definable access rights for pre-approved stakeholders. I found no public information on custom fields, effective-dated change history on employment or compensation fields, or retention rules per document type, so this does not yet read as a file an auditor could work from.

Factorial

The vendor maintains dedicated pages for a DATEV integration and one labelled DATEV LODAS, so a major payroll system is at least named. The captured facts document nothing about export scope, mid-month joiners and leavers, or a pre-payroll check, so the month does not close on evidence.

HiBob

Native US and UK payroll with HMRC recognition, monthly, weekly and bi-weekly cycles and continuous legislative updates is real product depth, and the payroll hub exchanges data with third-party providers by API in real time. But those providers are not named, and I found no public information on a DATEV or Lohn und Gehalt connection, a documented pre-payroll check, or retro-accounting for backdated changes.

Factorial

Vacation-management pages exist, so absence handling is a marketed product area, but we found no public information on automatic entitlement, carry-over, or sickness recording. Critically for the German recording duty, we found no public information on working-time recording at all.

HiBob

Working-time capture is evidenced with flexible tracking, multiple clock-ins per day and attendance reports feeding payroll, plus custom policies for global teams. The pages advertise retroactive edits with no word on tamper-evidence, and I found no public information on automatic entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, or compliance with the German recording duty — as the person who has to defend these records to a works council, that silence decides this.

Factorial

Pages exist for applicant management and for onboarding and offboarding, so both halves of the join path are present at marketing level. We found no public information on structured stages, on the handover of a hired candidate into an employee record, or on applicant deletion at a stated deadline, the point I weigh first.

HiBob

Onboarding is well evidenced — one team member record created at offer signing, e-signed documents, IT equipment requests and bank and tax details passed straight to payroll without re-entry, with per-location templates and policy acknowledgement tracking. Recruiting appears only as a module name: I found no public information on a careers page, structured stages, rejection handling, or any applicant retention period with automatic deletion, and applicant data deleting itself on the stated date is exactly what I look for.

Factorial

A platform data processing agreement is available on the security page, alongside SSO and MFA questions and a trust centre with audit reports on request, which keeps this off the bottom. We found no public information on retention periods, on deletion that executes rather than promises, on field-level permissions with an audit log of who read what, or on a published subprocessor list; a works council would have nothing concrete to review.

HiBob

The published privacy policy states outright that it does not cover the employees, staff and contractors using the product at a customer's direction, so the population that cannot decline the processing has no published retention or deletion commitment at all — retention is described only as "as long as it is reasonably necessary". I found no public information on a signable data processing agreement, configurable retention with executable deletion, an audit log of who read what, or works-council-facing documentation of the AI features, and an unpublished DPA is a finding in my book.

Factorial

The vendor is identified as Factorial HR S.L. of Barcelona, an EU company, but the captured pages name Amazon Web Services and Azure without stating any hosting region. We found no public information confirming the contracting entity on the vendor's own pages, and none on a subprocessor list; until the region is stated, I must assume the data could sit anywhere.

HiBob

Personal data is stated to be maintained, processed and stored in the US, EU, UK, Australia, Canada and Israel, with transfers resting on standard contractual clauses and a US subsidiary's Data Privacy Framework certification; the copyright and the certification both sit with Hi Bob, Inc. I found no public information on a published subprocessor list — only Google Analytics is named — or on which entity the customer actually contracts with, and for data this sensitive an unnamed chain is not documentation.

Factorial

Pricing pages exist, yet the captured facts contain no price at all: no per-employee rate, no tiers, no billing period, no minimums or setup fees. An HR lead cannot compute an annual invoice from this; we found no public pricing information beyond the existence of the pages.

HiBob

The captured pricing page offers a free demo, and the only cost statement anywhere is that the cost of onboarding software varies based on features, number of users and the subscription model. I found no public information on per-employee prices, billing periods, minimum terms, setup fees or VAT treatment, so an HR lead cannot compute even a rough annual invoice from these pages.