whats-best.ai
Search Sign in

HR Management

Zoho People

Rest of world Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Zoho Corporation · www.zoho.com

Report an error on this page Is this your product? →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The People Lead

Weighted verdict

Runs HR for 400 people with two colleagues and is replacing a shared drive and eleven spreadsheets. Optimizes for the record being true and the month closing without chasing anyone. Buys breadth that actually connects, and is unmoved by a beautiful org chart sitting next to a manual vacation calculation.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The People Lead

Digital personnel file & data model

How this is scored

The system of record: employee master data, the digital personnel file, org structure, custom fields, and whether history is kept rather than overwritten.

0 — A contact list with job titles; no document storage, no org structure, no history — changes overwrite what was there.

3 — Employee records with document upload, but a flat structure: no org chart, few or no custom fields, and no dated history of contract or salary changes.

5 — Digital personnel file with structured document types, an org chart, custom fields, and change history on the core employment fields.

8 — Complete record: versioned contract and compensation history with effective dates, document templates with e-signature, org structure supporting multiple entities and cost centres, and granular field-level permissions.

10 — The file is the single source of truth an auditor could work from: full effective-dated history on every field, retention rules per document type, delegated administration per entity, and export that reproduces the record intact.

Report an error

The People Lead

The product page promises one centralized employee database with document management and a compensation module, which is the shared-drive replacement at its most basic. We found no public information on an org chart, custom fields, or dated history of contract and salary changes — the difference between a database and a personnel file I could defend in an audit, so this stays at the store-and-upload level. 1

Report an error

Payroll handoff

How this is scored

Whether the month closes cleanly into payroll — DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, an in-house system or an external tax adviser — and how much of that is automated rather than re-typed.

0 — No payroll path stated at all; whatever leaves the system leaves as a spreadsheet somebody retypes.

3 — Generic CSV export said to be usable for payroll, with no named payroll system, no defined format and no handling of mid-month changes.

5 — A named payroll integration or a documented export format for at least one major system (e.g. DATEV LODAS/Lohn und Gehalt), covering the recurring monthly fields.

8 — Certified or vendor-maintained integration with a named payroll provider, covering variable pay, absences and mid-month joiners and leavers, with a documented pre-payroll check.

10 — Payroll is a first-class part of the product: maintained bidirectional integrations with several named systems, an auditable approval and lock step before transmission, retro-accounting for backdated changes, and the tax adviser given their own access.

Report an error

The People Lead

The only handoff on show is an integration line naming Zoho Payroll and Zoho Expense; we found no public information on a DATEV or Lohn und Gehalt export, a defined file format, or how mid-month joiners and leavers reach payroll. A named integration beats a generic CSV promise, but I cannot see what actually arrives at my tax adviser, so this sits just below the mid-point. 1

Report an error

Absence & working-time

How this is scored

Vacation, sickness and working-time recording — including whether the product meets the German recording duty (BAG 2022, ArbZG) rather than merely offering a timer.

0 — No absence or time handling; both live in a spreadsheet elsewhere.

3 — Vacation requests with an approval step, but entitlement is manual, carry-over is not handled and there is no working-time recording.

5 — Automatic entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, an absence calendar, and basic working-time capture with a report per employee.

8 — Configurable per country and contract: pro-rata entitlement, public-holiday calendars per location, break and rest-period rules, overtime accounts, and an export the employer can hand to a labour inspection.

10 — Working-time recording built as a legal obligation rather than a feature: tamper-evident records, documented compliance with the ArbZG recording duty, works-council-configurable monitoring limits, and shift or on-call models handled without add-ons.

Report an error

The People Lead

Time and attendance appears as a module name on the product page and nothing more. We found no public information on automatic entitlement, carry-over, sickness handling, or working-time recording that would satisfy the German recording duty, so I have no basis to trust either the vacation calculation or the time records — a label is not a capability. 1

Report an error

Recruiting & onboarding

How this is scored

The join path — vacancy to signed contract to a person who has an account, equipment and a plan on day one.

0 — Neither applicant tracking nor onboarding exists; hiring happens in a shared inbox.

3 — A basic applicant list with statuses, or an onboarding checklist — one of the two, without the handover between them.

5 — Applicant tracking with a careers page, structured stages and rejection handling, plus a checklist-driven onboarding that carries the hired candidate over into an employee record without re-entry.

8 — Multi-posting to named job boards, interview scheduling and scorecards, GDPR-conscious applicant retention and deletion, e-signed contracts, and onboarding that triggers tasks in IT and payroll.

10 — The whole join is one governed flow: approval-gated requisitions with budget, structured and bias-conscious evaluation, automated applicant deletion at the stated deadline, and provisioning driven from the record so day one needs no HR intervention.

Report an error

The People Lead

Onboarding workflows are named and offers can carry an electronic signature, while recruiting happens in a separate Zoho recruiting product reached through integration rather than in this system. We found no public information on careers pages, structured stages, applicant retention or the candidate-to-employee handover, so this is one half of the join path plus a pointer to the other. 1

Report an error

Employee data protection & co-determination

How this is scored

How the product handles the most sensitive personal data a company holds — retention, deletion, role separation, subject rights — and whether it can pass a works council (BetrVG §87) rather than merely a procurement checklist.

0 — No stated retention or deletion handling, no role model beyond admin-or-not, and no DPA offered on the site.

3 — A DPA exists on request and roles are coarse; retention and deletion are described as something the customer arranges themselves.

5 — A signable DPA is published, roles are configurable per module, applicant and employee retention periods are stated, and deletion can be executed rather than only promised.

8 — Field-level access control with an audit log of who read what, configurable retention per data category with automatic deletion, documented subject-rights support, and monitoring or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for the works council to say yes: published processing documentation and subprocessor list, per-entity data separation, tamper-evident audit trail, evaluation and behavioural-analysis features off by default with their scope documented, and a data-protection impact assessment the customer can build on.

Report an error

The People Lead

A data processing agreement is available on request via a form, a data protection officer contact and deletion timelines on account closure are stated, and the vendor commits to no advertising use of data — more than a procurement checkbox. But we found no public information on role granularity or field-level permissions, and the privacy policy states company data is used to build tailored models per customer, which my works council would want scoped or switched off before saying yes. 2 3

Report an error

European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are, and whether the answer is documented rather than assumed. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as the buyer would weigh it.

0 — US-headquartered vendor, US contracting entity, hosting region unstated or US, subprocessors not named.

3 — EU hosting is offered as an option but the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is incomplete or absent.

5 — EU hosting stated as standard and an EU contracting entity, but the subprocessor chain includes non-EU providers without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, an EU contracting entity, the full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, contracting entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, certification of the data centres published, and an on-premises or private-cloud option for buyers who need it.

Report an error

The People Lead

The imprint names a German GmbH in Essen with a commercial register entry while the site footer credits the Indian parent, and the privacy policy describes processing in the USA, the European Economic Area and other countries where Zoho operates. EU data centres appear only within certification scopes, and we found no published subprocessor list — a German entity helps, but I cannot tell my four hundred people where their data sits or who else touches it. 2 3 4

Report an error

Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether an HR lead can compute the real annual invoice for their headcount — including the modules they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — An entry price per employee exists, but the modules most buyers need are unpriced, or a minimum headcount, setup fee or mandatory onboarding package is not stated publicly.

5 — Per-employee prices are public for the main tiers with the billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed module (payroll, time, recruiting) hides in an unpriced bundle.

8 — Every tier and module priced publicly with per-employee maths, billing period, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom enterprise work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table that produces the annual invoice for a given headcount and module selection, including setup, minimums and renewal terms.

Report an error

The People Lead

The public product page offers a free trial and a demo request, and we found no public prices of any kind — no tiers, no per-employee rates, no billing period. An HR lead cannot begin to estimate the annual invoice for their headcount from this, so this is the bottom of the scale. 1

Report an error

European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency EU optional ⚠ unverified 1/3 pts 3 Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Do you know more about Zoho People? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (4)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Product page www.zoho.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Privacy policy www.zoho.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 30 Aug 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Security / trust page www.zoho.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Imprint — found from the homepage www.zoho.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →