Deel Review: Is It the Real Deal for Global Payroll?

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Deel revolutionized global hiring and payroll management and is recognized as an industry leader in managing international teams. Deel offers automation in onboarding, payroll, and workflow building, helping its users get free from performing repetitive tasks.

Founded in 2019, this California-based company has a presence in over 150 countries. Companies belonging to Fintech, Agencies, SaaS companies, and SMEs will find its services to be useful.

In this Deel review, I’ll discuss its product offerings, use cases, integration, pricing, alternatives, support, and more.

Features

• Hire EOR and contractors in 150+ countries.
• Run US and global payroll in 130 countries.
• Background check and equity management facilities.
• Immigration support through a dedicated case manager.
• Performance management with surveys and training.

Pros

• Fee HR management software.
• Multi-currency payments using 15+ methods.
• Dedicated CSM manager for EOR and PEO services.

Cons

• Does not offer phone support.
• Limited country and integration support compared to its competitors.

Top 6 Deel Products

Deel is a complete workforce management platform with several products that help you manage your international team. Here are its top six products.

1. Global Payroll

Deel offers a team of in-house payroll experts, dedicated points of contact (POC), and all the necessary tools to manage your international workforce’s payroll. It oversees compliance, tax deductions, and filings in all the countries where you have entities. Deel lets you pay your employees using 15+ payment methods, providing unmatched flexibility. 

Using Deel, you can actively monitor the latest payroll regulatory changes and get recommendations about preferred actions to allow you to stay compliant with payments, taxes, benefits, and other regulations. It helps you with tax payments, employee benefits and deductions, payslip creation and delivery, localized contracts, and local filing.

It only takes 10 days to set up your payroll and enables you to review, approve, and run the payroll from the same platform. Deel’s HR and payroll analytics and reporting feature is also worth mentioning. You can get a unified view, variance view, and comparative view of your company expenses.

If you do not have a global team, you can still use Deel to run payroll for your US team. Its US payroll feature supports quick approval before paying employees in 50 states. Deel has 350+ in-house payroll and legal experts to support US payroll. You can rely on it for tax filing and automatic payslip distribution. 

2. Deel EOR (Employer of Record)

Deel’s EOR service allows you to hire and onboard employees from 150+ countries without opening an entity. You can even pay their salaries, file taxes, and stay compliant from the same platform. It has 200+ in-house payroll and legal specialists who help you with minimum wage, contracts, terminations, and other local laws, mitigating risks as your business evolves.

Deel gives you much-deserved peace of mind with its next-level automation and in-house infrastructure. Be it country-specific documents, leave and overtime policies, salary benchmarks, benefits, and termination practices, its localized products let you stay compliant across the employee lifecycle. 

You can complete a compliant onboarding in 5 minutes. It enables automatic document collection and secure storage. Deel has time tracking and time-off approval for EOR, so you can pay them accurately. Offboarding automation calculates the final payments of the employees so you can compliantly bid them farewell.

3. Deel COR (Contractor of Record)

Do you know that misclassifying employees is often considered a tax and federal law violation and can lead to fines and hamper your company’s reputation? Deel COR service reduces the risk of worker misclassification by taking responsibility for worker classification, legal protection, background checks, localized contracts, and global payments.

While many other agents of record take months to onboard international hires, Deel does it in days. It performs correct workforce classification and suggests whether a particular worker should be a contractor or an employee. Besides contractor management, it creates locally compliant contracts and collects all necessary documents on your behalf.

4. Deel PEO (Professional Employer Organization)

If you do not want to handle the administrative workload of team management, Deel PEO is here to help you. You can hand over your HR admin responsibilities to Deel as it will take care of your payroll, HR, benefits, state tax compliance, terminations, and worker claims in all 50 states of the US.

It saves you from facing unexpected challenges such as taxes and lawsuits by handling them with a team of experts. It mitigates risks with careful local, federal, and state compliance management. It also provides you with custom HR policies and on-demand HR support.

From onboarding to offboarding, from retention to payroll, from benefits to final payments, Deel PEO keeps everything in line with regulations and helps you adapt best practices. Moreover, it offers an employee handbook with policies, training on sexual harassment and discrimination, and guidance on EEOC, ADAAA, ADEA, FMLA, and CRA compliance.

5. Deel HR Platform

Deel HRIS assists your HR professionals in compliant global workforce management, including employees, EOR, and contractors, in 150+ countries. It comes with self-service onboarding in minutes, a people directory, organizational charts, store and sign documents, task and approval automation, time-off request and approval, expense and payouts management, app provisioning, and reporting.

Deel’s HR software has built-in local compliance for tracking local laws and regulations. It keeps you compliant and reduces the chances of risks with mandatory PTO, minimum wages, benefits, and termination requirements. Deel proactively monitors changes in local labor laws and compliance issues and recommends action plans before you make any costly mistakes. You can get answers to your queries about HR, payroll, immigration, and compliance in Deel’s Global Knowledge Base. 

Deel HR software is totally customizable with custom fields and documents that suit your unique business needs and company structure. You can use it to create reports on the workforce, forecast headcount, analyze global costs, and collect demographic data to ensure diversity and inclusion. 

6. Deel Talent Management

As an organization, your responsibility does not end with hiring and running payroll. You must put efforts to retain top talent by creating a culture of high performance and growth. Deel Engage is an AI-powered people suite from which you can manage development, performance, and training programs for your employees. 

It works as an all-in-one talent management for productivity enhancement through multiple learning and training courses. Deel’s 360° reviews ensure bias-free performance feedback so the employees know about their strengths and weaknesses. You can also guide them to achieve career goals through career progression frameworks. 

The AI capabilities of Deel Engage make your HR team 10 times more productive by saving hours every week, letting them focus on actual development, and sharing insights into people development, engagement, and performance. Features like manager training programs and custom surveys make your team more efficient.

Apart from the above features, Deel provides fast-track immigration services and mobility support in 157 countries. It offers free visa assessment within 48 hours with the required document list and cost breakdown. You can easily track your visa application status using an in-app tracker and renew your visa in one click.

5 Reasons To Use Deel

Now that you know the notable products of Deel, here are the reasons why you must use it for your company.

1. Expand Globally

Deel makes it super easy for you to hire and onboard employees and contractors from anywhere. You don’t need to establish legal entities in different countries to hire international employees but can still access a global talent pool. As Deel handles the complexities of international hiring, you can focus on finding the best talent without administrative burdens.

2. Local Law & Compliance Management

Navigating the legal and compliance scenarios of international employment is challenging. Deel takes the burden off your shoulders by ensuring compliance with local labor laws and regulations in 150+ countries. It generates legally compliant contracts, manages your tax obligations, and helps you stay up-to-date with evolving legal requirements. Hence, you can expand your team, adhering to all the necessary legal frameworks.

3. Multi-Currency Payroll

If you have employed employees and contractors from different countries, running payroll for them can be a logistical nightmare. With Deel, you can pay your global teams in their local currency without any complex currency conversions. Moreover, it makes sure everyone gets paid accurately and on time.

4. Integrated Benefits Management

Attracting and retaining global top talent requires you to offer competitive local benefits. Deel works as a central platform from where you can manage and track benefits for your international team. Using it, you can ensure that your employees receive the entitled benefits while you get a clear overview of your benefits offerings.

5. Cost-savings

Choosing Deel to hire EOR and international payroll is a significant cost-saving decision for your company. For example, establishing an entity in a foreign country involves high setup costs like legal fees, registration, and potentially office space. It includes ongoing expenses such as local salaries, benefits, and compliance management. Deel lets you avoid these costs of entity setup and reduce operational costs. You can have streamlined hiring, compliance, and payroll management at a lesser cost.

4 Deel Use Case

Deel is a global employee management and payroll software that lets you hire remote teams for your company and pay them. Its prominent use cases include:

1. Startups Looking to Expand Remote Teams

Deel helps startups accelerate their growth by simplifying remote talent hiring and compliantly automating the team management process. It provides a centralized platform to manage contracts, onboard employees, and ensure compliance with local labor laws. Thus, startups can access a global talent pool from 150 countries and compliantly onboard them quickly and cost-effectively. 

2. Paying International Freelancers and Contractors

Deel functions as a streamlined payroll solution for international freelancers and contractor payments. It automatically generates tax-compliant invoices and lets you make secure and timely payments in multiple currencies. So, even if you have to manage the finances of a distributed workforce containing freelancers and contractors, you can pay them accurately and on time.   

3. SMEs Looking for EOR to Save Cost

SMEs can leverage the Employer of Record (EOR) services of Deel in 150+ countries. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do not need to establish legal entities in multiple countries to hire internationally. They can use Deel’s EOR to avoid the expenses and administrative burdens of establishing legal entities in different countries. As Deel efficiently manages payroll, taxes, and compliance as the EOR, SMEs can focus on their core business activities.

4. International Payroll Management

Deel global payroll feature is ideal for companies with legal entities in multiple countries. Its comprehensive international payroll automates payroll processing, tax calculations, and compliance for globally operating businesses. Its dedicated points-of-contact (POC) for each country and in-house payroll experts make it easy to manage local contracts and employee benefits, as well as compliant onboarding, offboarding, and local filing.

Deel Integrations

You can integrate Deel with 100+ accounting, automation, collaboration, payroll, hiring, HR, productivity, SSO, time tracking, and expense management apps. You can visit the Deel App Store to find the collection of supported apps. Some highlighted integrations of Deel are:

QuickBooks: This integration lets you sync vendors, invoices, bills, and payments generated in Deel with QuickBooks. It is useful for multi-currency-based global operations and detailed financial tracking.

SAP S/4HANA: Using this integration, you can sync general ledger data from Deel to SAP S/4HANA.

Workday: You can use it with Deel Global Payroll and Deel EOR. Syncing employee data and mapping it lets you automate the employee onboarding process and efficiently manage global payroll operations.

Hubstaff: By integrating Hubstaff with Deel, you can automatically send Hubstaff timesheets to Deel for compliant global payroll. It smoothens the process of timesheet processing by automatically creating and syncing new employee profiles.

Okta: Its API service allows you to import user information into Deel for HR and user management purposes.

Furthermore, you can use Deel API to integrate with your enterprise ecosystem, including HRIS (Human Resource Information System) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Use it to optimize your enterprise workflows and perform workflow automation to manage large-scale operations.

In my opinion, Deel should extend their integration and increase the number of applications they support. Some of its competitors have a higher level of integration support, and Deel might end up losing potential customers due to limited integration support.

What Is Deel AI?

Deel AI is here to answer all your questions about compliance, insights, and analytics. It brings local laws and workforce data spread across tools, reports, and documents at your fingertip. Thus, it saves your valuable time and makes processes like onboarding faster than usual. 

I like how Deel AI can generate reports on HR and payroll data according to your request. These reports enable you to make data-driven decisions and present information in a cohesive manner in front of the project stakeholders.

No need to worry about the security of your company information as its access control feature limits data access to authorized people. However, Deel AI is currently in beta version, and you can rate each Deel AI answer and leave feedback for them.

Deel White Label

Deel’s White label solutions include EOR, Contractor, Contractor of Record, and Global Payroll services. Staffing firms, Consulting firms, HR tech companies, and talent marketplaces can use it to expand their capabilities while maintaining their brand identity and consistency.

It only takes a few clicks to set up Deel under your brand and even configure it later if needed. Using its self-owned entities and global infrastructure, you can extend the global workforce with end-to-end services.

How Much Does Deel Cost?

Deel has a separate pricing structure for the variety of services they offer. Your cost depends on the number of services you want to opt for.

Service	Starting Price (monthly)	Offerings
Deel Contractor	$49	Contractor compliance and payments in 150 countries
Deel EOR	$599	Employee hiring from 150+ countries
Deel US Payroll	$19	Pay  US employees in 50 states
Deel US PEO	$89	Centralized HR, payroll, and benefits for US employees
Deel Global Payroll	$29	Payroll management in 130 countries
Deel Engage	$29	Employee performance management with learning and surveys
Deel HR	Free	Complete solution to manage HR
Deel IT	$99	IT support from onboarding to offboarding
Deel Immigration	Custom	Visa sponsorship for employees in 50+ countries

Deel Support

Deel primarily offers customer support via live chat. Agents are available 24/7 to whom you can contact regarding any software-related issues. If you are uncomfortable using live chat, you can submit a request using a web form, and the team will respond within 8 hours. You can even email them to provide feedback on in-app live chat. Clients also get a dedicated CSM manager who offers them personalized guidance about managing their accounts.

Deel Ratings and Recognitions

Being a prominent platform, Deel received the following user reviews on different software review websites.

• G2: 4.8 out of 5 (based on 5,856 ratings)
• Trustpilot: 4.8 out of 5 (based on 6,223 ratings)
• TrustRadius: 6.7 out of 10 (based on 22 ratings)
• Capterra: 4.8 out of 5 (based on 2,019 ratings)
• Software Advice: 4.8 out of 5 (based on 2,063 ratings)

How Deel Handles Data Security

Deel offers enterprise-grade security features to keep your company data safe from hackers, while its customer account data access is limited to a need-to-know basis. It hosts your data in a fully AWS-hosted infrastructure with strict environment segregation. It complies with GDPR for personal data protection and uses AES-256 encryption to protect all data at rest against brute-force attacks.

Deel boasts SOC1, SOC2, SOC3, and ISO 27001 certifications, signifying its global standard for data security. It provides daily backups, disaster recovery, and strategic database placement.

Deel Alternatives

Below is the comparison table between Deel and its alternatives, such as Remote, Papaya Global, Oyster, and Velocity Global.

Who Should Use Deel?

Deel is an ideal solution for businesses expanding internationally, as it simplifies the complexities of EOR hiring, international compliance, and payroll automation. It is useful for companies needing to pay international contractors and freelancers. Moreover, if you are a US company looking for software to run payroll efficiently and from a centralized solution, Deel will prove to be a valuable tool for you.

Who Shouldn’t Use Deel?

Deel is not the best fit for very small businesses operating exclusively within their own country and planning to expand internationally. Companies focused on a hyper-local market should not use Deel. In such cases, managing payroll and HR through local entities is more efficient and cost-effective to operate.

Deel Verdict

Deel is a strong contender if you are looking for a reliable platform for global workforce management. Its strength lies in hiring EOR and contractors, paying them payroll in multiple currencies, and maintaining compliance from the same platform. Go for Deel if you want to leverage these features and see your company grow with a talented workforce.

In my opinion, companies with plans to expand their businesses internationally should choose Deel without any second thought. They can use Deel as EOR to hire employees from all over the world. Once they decide to establish an entity in other countries, they can continue using Deel to manage their international team and pay them compliantly.

Deel receives the Geekflare Innovation Award for empowering businesses to expand their reach while staying compliant.

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