ATS Comparison
How do Ashby and SmartRecruiters differ?
Both tools are built to help TA teams achieve better hiring outcomes, but key differences set them apart. Read on to see how they compare.
Ashby
Ashby All-in-One combines your ATS, CRM & sourcing, scheduling, and analytics into a single tool with a modern UI, powerful reporting, and configurations that enable hiring goals at any scale. TA teams from startup to enterprise have the latest in AI, automation, and quality of hire built into Ashby.
Companies that choose Ashby tend to prioritize:
A truly all-in-one solution that eliminates the need to switch between tools or spend hours on manual reporting
A rapid pace of product development to keep customers ahead of evolving regulations and technological advancements (shipping over
130 featuresin the past year)Robust reporting and dashboards across the full recruiting cycle with BI-tool-level customizability and real-time data access to enable strategic decision-making
Highly configurable workflows and permissions across the tool to support the complexities of growing organizations without sacrificing on user experience
An ATS that TA Teams, hiring managers, finance, execs and candidates all love interacting with
SmartRecruiters
SmartRecruiters is an ATS touted for its simple UI and open API ecosystem. They offer a core ATS product and a number of paid add-ons for functionality like CRM and AI, though many customers end up purchasing additional point solutions to achieve the functionality necessary to achieve their goals.
What some customers have to say about SmartRecruiters:
An ATS with a straightforward interface that works well for teams without complex recruiting needs, but lack of customization options can present challenges for scaling organizations
Reporting requires manual data manipulation, dedicated analysts and/or additional BI tools to return key metrics, investigate bottlenecks and create executive visibility
While the UI is simple, some customers report the user experience can be hindered by slow load times, unnecessary clicks and cumbersome multi-step processes
Core functionality often needs to be supplemented with additional tools for CRM, sourcing, scheduling, and analytics capabilities. Larger customers often make substantial investments in additional development to achieve necessary functionality
What makes Ashby different?
AI & Innovation
While some legacy ATS platforms treat AI as an afterthought or a paid add-on to circumvent architectural issues within the tool, Ashby has built AI capabilities into its core architecture. That means every All-in-One customer benefits from AI-assistance and automation as we ship features at a rapid pace.
Rapid Product Development
Often first to market on AI developments, Ashby ships dozens of improvements across the platform each month. Product innovation and engineering velocity ensure you always have the highest standard of tooling.
Identify Top Candidates
Reduce the time burden of application review and act on top talent faster. Ashby’s AI matches applicants against your specific criteria, while AI-powered CRM search helps to surface the best talent from your existing pools.
Efficient and Effective Outreach
AI-powered personalization tokens create compelling, customized outreach sequences that see a ~46% lift in response rates with candidates. AI automatically classifies the sentiment of candidate email responses, giving you clean data to optimize your sequences from.
Scheduling with Ease
Advanced Scheduling Automation in Ashby uses AI to auto-schedule complex interview panels and loops. Keywords in calendar invites automatically register “soft” conflict detection. Automation works seamlessly across time zones and considers interviewer limits, reducing the administrative burden of scheduling.
Calibration Efficiency
Improving collaboration on hiring decisions leads to better hiring outcomes. With AI-Assisted App Review, hiring managers and recruiters can align on ideal candidate criteria from the start. AI-generated summaries of interview feedback provide quick insights at any stage of the process, including debriefs. Keep your hiring process moving forward by easily identifying a candidate’s strengths and areas for review at a glance – then drill down into key discussion points.
Ashby has been able to continue to innovate with AI in ways that allow us to really customize our communication. The continued quick turnaround around AI features has been impressive and needed.
What makes Ashby different?
Data and Reporting
Where SmartRecruiters requires manual exports and data manipulation, overlaid BI tools or dedicated analysts to pull key insights, Ashby's native analytics provide real-time insights around key metrics like time-to-fill and quality of hire, enabling true data-driven recruiting.
Unified Data Architecture
Where other platforms overlay BI or AI tools to work around architectural limitations, Ashby's modern infrastructure makes data insights accessible through every part of the platform.
Real-time Visibility
Give leadership confidence with access to real-time data on interactive dashboards. Align your TA team quickly and consistently without waiting for data analyst requests. Automated real-time alerts notify stakeholders of priority candidate activity, potential issues, or when they’re out of compliance with SLAs. Accessible real-time data enables faster, more strategic data-informed decisions.
Single Source of Truth
Ashby provides a single source of truth for all recruiting metrics, eliminating the manual exports and data reconciliation in spreadsheets often required by legacy systems. This unified data model ensures consistent reporting across every function, from sourcing through to hire.
Accurate and Trustworthy
When pulling data from legacy systems, conflicting datasets and timestamps can lead to inaccurate and inconsistent reporting on table stakes KPIs like time-to-fill or hire. Ashby’s native, all-in-one data gives consistency to your reporting and analyses and transparency into how reports are built from your candidate and job data. The result is data and insights you can trust when making decisions.
Customization and Granularity
Segment, drill-down and analyze data across any field or activity within the ATS – including custom and calculated fields. Gain insights from across the entire funnel. Foster curiosity and get granular with your data. Fully customize reports and dashboards to meet any team or stakeholder's needs.
Measure, Investigate, Implement
Ashby was built with analytics at its core, going beyond basic reporting to enable true process optimization. Identify trends and bottlenecks, conduct root cause analyses, implement changes and track the impact of your initiatives all within a single tool.
Ashby is a game-changer for the TA reputation as a whole. We want to be business advisors, not just task-takers. And the fastest way to do that is through actionable and well-presented analytics. We’re able to build reports to answer any question in minutes – and to proactively share data to drive recommendations.
What makes Ashby different?
All-in-One
Though SmartRecruiters offers sourcing, CRM and scheduling functionality across their suite of products and add-ons, some customers still supplement their tech stack with additional tools or development work due to insufficient capabilities. Ashby is a true all-in-one product with a unified data architecture that eliminates silos and enables workflows that aren't possible with disconnected point solutions.
Streamlined Workflows
Eliminate the need to integrate multiple tools and hack together workarounds. Source candidates and move them into pipeline stages that kick off interview scheduling automation. Conduct customized interview plans and execute offer creation and approval chains. All without worrying about data syncing issues or switching between tools.
Scheduling
Ashby's native scheduling capabilities help customers schedule 40% faster than legacy systems. A deep Google and Microsoft 365 integration enables visual calendar management and integrated recruiting workflows. Advanced automation and AI manage complex loops and debriefs. Candidates are always sent real calendar invites, not .ics files. The result is a better candidate experience, fewer steps, and more time spent on high-value recruiting activities.
Sourcing & Talent Pools
Ashby offers built-in talent pool management with custom fields and confidential projects for sensitive sourcing. Sourcing forms, a one-click Chrome extension, advanced CRM search, and automated nurture campaigns — all natively integrated — help teams build, manage, and nurture talent pools more effectively and efficiently.
Quality of Hire
All-in-one data enables meaningful and easy-to-implement quality of hire measurement. Gain insight into the parts of your recruiting process that are generating the highest talent density, and use this data to optimize sourcing efforts, improve interview calibration, and reduce costly mis-hires.
Planning & Strategy
Build a recruiting plan from historical data to align with finance and leadership on targets, resources and timelines. Unlock visibility so finance teams can see how TA executes against the headcount plan in real-time. These strategic workforce planning tools powered by all-in-one data help align recruiting efforts with business objectives.
We can do it all with Ashby. Without switching and punting candidates between four different tools, we can now hire for the diversity of the roles we’re opening with a far more simplified recruiter experience. This allows us to become more specialized in our recruiting and build trust in our team without any of the previous friction in operations.
What makes Ashby different?
Experience
Ashby delivers an optimal hiring experience for every stakeholder, from finance to executives, recruiters to hiring managers, and most importantly the candidate. Through thoughtful design and automation, Ashby's modern interface and workflows adapt to how teams actually work.
TA Teams
Ashby streamlines TA team workflows to eliminate unnecessary clicks, administrative burden and tool-switching. Automation helps with repetitive tasks. AI assistance reduces time spent on inbound application review. Unified analytics provide instant access to key metrics without leaving the platform. All-in-One means recruiters can execute on their entire workflow without constant tool switching.
Candidates
Ashby delivers a friction-free candidate experience that strengthens your employer brand. All-in-One enables automated communication workflows, self-service scheduling, and real calendar invites (not .ics files.) Candidate experience surveys and robust analytics help TA teams continuously improve their processes.
Executives
Ashby provides executives with real-time visibility through interactive dashboards and strategic planning tools. Automated reporting delivers instant insights into hiring progress, pipeline health, and resource utilization. Headcount planning tools facilitate better collaboration between TA, Executives and Finance teams.
Hiring Managers
Ashby drives hiring manager engagement through a modern interface with features that meet hiring managers where they are. Real-time dashboards provide clear pipeline visibility, while mobile-friendly approvals, automated alerts and a slack integration keep busy managers informed and involved. Hiring manager experience surveys and calibration tools allow TA teams to foster better working relationships with hiring managers.
Our executive team — especially our CTO — couldn’t believe that an ATS could be this good.
What makes Ashby different?
Scalability
As organizations grow, many find themselves constrained by their ATS's limitations. Ashby's enterprise-grade tool scales seamlessly with your business, providing the customizations and controls needed to enable a process unique to your organization without sacrificing the user experience that makes teams productive.
Customization
Ashby supports flexible workflow configurations throughout the platform for sophisticated and enterprise needs. Build custom processes for a particular team department or region while maintaining reporting accuracy, compliance, and global consistency through centralized controls. Customize the tool to fit your ideal process instead of modifying your workflows to fit your ATS’s capabilities.
Workday Integration
Ashby's bi-directional API-based Workday integration ensures seamless data flow between systems without requiring expensive consultants or constant maintenance. Automated syncs maintain data accuracy while supporting complex approval workflows and organizational structures.
Compliance
Ashby includes sophisticated permissions structures and features designed to support compliance with various regulations, enabling organizations to manage candidate data securely and in accordance with legal requirements.
Common Building Blocks
Ashby is built on common building blocks that appear throughout the tool—such as alerts, building filters, reporting, and automation—so that once you learn how to use them in one place, you know how to use them everywhere. Onboarding to one tool saves time and complexity when onboarding new team members or agencies to the tech stack.
Collaboration
Functionality like the deep Workday integration or headcount management helps build a bridge between TA teams and other departments. Finance can leverage accurate data from Ashby’s ATS to understand how TA is executing against the headcount plan in real time. In other tools, standard activities like managing evergreen roles often yield inaccurate data points that inhibit Finance and TA’s ability to collaborate.
The customization with Openings (such as custom fields), my ability to pull everything into Google sheets, and my ability to report on progress has made Openings our source of truth. It has allowed us to build a headcount management process that’s trusted and reliable. Everyone can see what headcount we have, what’s been approved, what’s been filled, and it’s all automated which is really nice.
Customer Success
Customer Success, Support and Services
Ashby customers are supported by a world-class Customer Success, Support and Services organization.
Customer Success Team Access
All customers receive onboarding support and access to our Customer Success Team.
Top Rated Customer Support
Our customer support team consistently delights customers with thorough solutions and technical help.
Professional Services
Expert help is available to further your hiring goals. We’re proud to serve as an extension of your team.
We love Ashby! Big fan of the reporting and the customer support has been phenomenal.
What Makes Customer Success at Ashby Different?
Here is just some of what sets our customer-driven team apart.
Customer and business outcome focused
We tailor every engagement to your needs, not ours. You know what drives your business forward, we help you get there with Ashby.
Deep domain expertise
Our team - many former talent practitioners - understands TA deeply, speaks your language, and offers real industry insight.
Accountability-driven
When we say we’ll follow through, we mean it. You can rely on us to deliver, every time.
Internal enablement
We help you drive adoption, build confidence, and make Ashby a success within your org.
Service with intentionality
Every interaction is purposeful and personalized. No feature dumping, no box-checking exercises, just real value.
RecOps expertise
Our in-house recruiting operations experts are available for more advanced implementations or optimizations.
Every day, I get to leverage my TA background to support Ashby customers. I absolutely love collaborating with talent leaders who truly care about building great teams. It’s not just about fielding customer questions; it's a collaborative effort to tackle real hiring challenges and drive meaningful outcomes.
Migrating to Ashby
Fast data imports and best-in-class Implementation. Experts power your transition to Ashby. No bloated timelines. Flexible implementation options. Contract buyouts available.
“How is change management handled for large organizations?“
Work alongside our expert Customer Success Team to define strategy, create workflows, test processes, and receive analytics support as part of your Ashby subscription.
What was so surprising was the seamless transfer of data from [Legacy ATS]. This was my 4th ATS implementation, and by far the best. It was head-scratchingly easy.
A growing base of happy customers
Trusted from startup to enterprise, the fastest growing companies in the world use Ashby to unlock hiring excellence. Ashby has a growing customer base of 2,000+ businesses.
2,000+
Happy Ashby customers
