Factorial vs HiBob

Factorial

Beyond a captured document-management page and a digital personnel file checklist, we found no public information on structured document types, org structure, custom fields, or whether contract and salary changes keep dated history rather than overwrite it. That question is the entire reason I am replacing a shared drive, and it stays open.

HiBob

The bones of a personnel file are here: contracts, IDs and tax forms stored on the profile, e-signature and document management, org charts that update themselves, and access rights definable per stakeholder. What I could not find is the part I am buying for — no public information on dated change history for contract or salary changes, custom fields, or effective-dated versioning, and without that the record can be true today and unreconstructable for last year.

Factorial

Dedicated captured pages for DATEV, including a specific integration page, suggest a named payroll handoff exists. We found no public information on the export format, variable pay, absences, mid-month joiners and leavers, certification, or a pre-payroll check, so whether the month closes without re-typing is unproven.

HiBob

The Payroll Hub exchanges data with third-party payroll providers over APIs in real time, and native UK payroll is genuinely deep — HMRC recognised, tax-code and student-loan sync, wage compliance alerts, monthly to weekly cycles. But no third-party provider is named in any capture, and I found no public information on a pre-payroll check, mid-month joiner and leaver handling, retro-accounting, or any German system such as DATEV — for my month-end that gap is the whole question.

Factorial

Vacation-management pages exist, but we found no public information on automatic entitlement, carry-over, sickness recording, working-time capture, or how the German recording duty is met. The legal-obligation half of this is entirely unevidenced, which means the time record would still live somewhere else.

HiBob

Hours are captured properly — flexible tracking with multiple clock-ins per day, retroactive edits, manager approval, attendance reports that flow into payroll, and time-off approvals in one place. Beyond that, I found no public information on automatic entitlement, carry-over, sickness recording, holiday calendars, or the German working-time recording duty, and I cannot put an unproven compliance claim in front of a labour inspection.

Factorial

Captured pages exist for applicant management and for onboarding and offboarding, which suggests both halves of the join path are present. We found no public information on careers pages, structured stages, applicant deletion deadlines, e-signed contracts, or a handover that creates the employee record without re-entry.

HiBob

Onboarding is close to the full join — one team member record created at offer signing, pre-boarding from that moment, e-signatures, document collection with automatic filing, task lists per stakeholder including IT equipment requests, first-90-day milestones, and a handoff into payroll and benefits without re-entry. Recruiting, though, is a name: the Hiring Module exists, and I found no public information on a careers page, structured stages, rejection handling, or applicant retention and deletion.

Factorial

A platform data processing agreement is publicly referenced, and least-privilege access, logging, and a trust centre with audit reports on request are named. We found no public information on retention periods, deletion that can be executed, field-level permissions, or an audit trail of who read what, which are the first questions a works council asks me.

HiBob

The privacy posture has real substance — an appointed DPO, standard contractual clauses for the EU, UK and Switzerland, clean separation of controller and processor roles, and AI features that can be switched off through Bob AI settings. But retention is stated only as "as long as reasonably necessary", and I found no public information on a signable data-processing agreement, per-category retention periods, deletion that can be executed, field-level permissions, or an audit log of who read what — a works council would ask for all five on day one.

Factorial

The vendor is Factorial HR S.L. of Barcelona and names AWS and Azure as its infrastructure, but no hosting region is stated in the captured pages, and we found no public information confirming the contracting entity or naming the subprocessor chain. I cannot tell from public pages where my four hundred people's data would actually sit.

HiBob

Processing locations are listed as the US, EU, UK, Australia, Canada and Israel, with a UK address for notices, but the copyright and privacy pages name Hi Bob, Inc., whose US subsidiary leans on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and FTC enforcement rather than EU-resident processing. I found no public information naming the data-centre provider, the contracting entity's jurisdiction for EU customers, or any subprocessor — for the most sensitive data we hold, that is an unquantified chain.

Factorial

A German pricing page was captured, but no price figures, per-employee rates, billing period, minimum terms or VAT treatment were confirmed in what was captured. No annual invoice for my headcount can be computed from public pages, which keeps this a sales conversation.

HiBob

The pricing page states no figures of any kind — its only statement is that cost "varies based on the features, number of users, and type of subscription model" — and the offered path is a free demo. Without a single per-employee price, tier, billing period or term in public, I cannot begin to compute an annual invoice for 400 people.