ADP alternative
An ADP Alternative That Runs Your HR System for You
ADP Workforce Now offers three packages, names roughly seventy capabilities across them, and marks clearly which package each one lands in. Managed Zoho People is priced by hours of Zoho work rather than your headcount, and what it buys is somebody running the system.
With Cascadia you get
- We configure your actual policies
- Onboarding that runs without reminders
- Time that reaches payroll
- Permissions set on purpose
- Your account, your data
- Connected to the rest of Zoho
Cascadia vs ADP at a Glance
Three Questions That Decide It
Is Payroll the Actual Problem?
Does Someone Own the HR Configuration?
Do you want time tracking and benefits in one package?
Side by Side
| ADP | Cascadia | |
|---|---|---|
| US payroll and tax filing | Runs payroll inside the platform | ×We do not run payroll |
| Scope you can read | Every capability named and marked by package | Scope written down in advance |
| Published price | ×None, a three step form instead | –Published plans, no headcount form |
| Time and attendance | –Premium package only | Included, no package upgrade |
| Benefits administration | –Plus package and above | ×Not something we sell |
| Who configures it | –Implementation support, then up to you | We build and revisit it monthly |
| Who answers later | ×A support queue | The people who set it up |
| Leaving | –Depends on your contract | 30 days notice, no exit fee |
US Payroll and Tax Filing
Scope You Can Read
Published Price
Time and Attendance
Benefits Administration
Who Configures It
Who Answers Later
Leaving
What Ships in the Standard Plan Here
A very capable HR and payroll platform with a clearly documented scope, with the configuration decisions left to your own team.
- A published monthly plan, not sized by headcount
- Leave policies, approval chains, and probation rules built around how the business already works
- Somebody revisiting the workflows each month as the headcount and the policies shift
- An employee handbook and an onboarding flow that get written rather than left as blank templates
- A named person who already knows your setup when the review cycle lands at year end
- The forms, the approvals, and the reminders built once for the things that repeat each quarter
- One monthly figure, with no package upgrade needed to reach time tracking or benefits
- The wiring into your CRM, your books, and your projects done as part of the service
- Being told plainly when a payroll bureau is the correct purchase and we are not
- Reporting that answers the question you were actually asking about your headcount
Where a Capability List Stops Describing the Work
Zoho People set up around how your business actually hires, approves leave, and runs reviews, with the workflows, the policies, and the reporting all ours, on one monthly plan.
Every plan covers the full scope of the work
The published plan price is the monthly fee, and anything beyond it is agreed with you first. There is nothing held back on a package we have not sold you yet.
The people who set up your system are the people who answer about it later
You are not routed to a support queue that has never seen your approval chains, and there is no implementation consultant or account manager to buy separately for the privilege.
Who This Comparison Is For
The Scope Is Clearly Documented
Select covers payroll and tax, HR tools, onboarding, and record keeping. Plus adds benefits administration. Premium adds workforce management. Every capability underneath those headings is named and marked.
Time and attendance sits in the top package, and benefits administration in the middle one
Workforce Management, which is where time collection, scheduling, accruals, and time off requests live, is marked included on Premium and on neither package below it.
ADP Runs Payroll as Well as HR
ADP processes payroll and payroll tax inside the same platform. We do not run payroll, so if that is the job you need done, ADP does it and we do not.
Choose ADP if
- You need US payroll run and payroll tax filed
- Someone in house owns the HR configuration and has the time
- You want benefits and workforce management inside one platform
Choose Cascadia if
- Payroll is handled and the HR side has no owner
- The person who ran the implementation has moved on
- You want one fee with no package to upgrade into
How Switching Works
- 1
Nothing gets configured until we have followed a real hire and a real leave request end to end
We sit with whoever collects the paperwork and whoever approves the time off, and we write down what actually happens rather than what the handbook assumed was happening.
- 2
Records move across and are checked before anybody files anything new inside them
Employee records, leave balances, documents, and the policies behind them.
- 3
The approval chains and the leave rules get built for your business rather than accepted as defaults
A default policy set produces reports nobody reads. We build the approvals and the accruals around how the business actually works, so the reporting answers a question somebody was already asking.
- 4
You run a full cycle in it, including a real month end and a real set of reports
The first month of live use runs with us alongside it. Whatever routes wrong in the first approval cycle gets fixed while everybody still remembers the request behind it.
What Clients Say About Working with Cascadia
“I’ve always dreaded website management, but Cascadia has done an incredible job with my WordPress site, making it one less thing for me to worry about.”
“I’ve worked with Cascadia for several years now. They are always ready to help in any way I ask and can implement my ideas with ease. A company that values their clients!”
“Cascadia has been great to work with! We recently needed some updates, and Cascadia was quick to get them completed! We highly recommend Cascadia Web Services.”
“Cascadia is very responsive and we’re happy with them as our primary IT vendor.”
“They do great work, been using for years. Prompt responses to requests.”
Ready to Move from ADP?
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ADP Alternative Questions
Straight answers about switching, pricing, and what moves with you.
See Managed Zoho PeopleStill have a question?
What is an ADP alternative?
Anything that holds the employee records and runs the HR processes around them without being ADP. On this hub that means Paylocity, Paycor, Personio, and Zoho People. The useful question is not which platform has the longer capability list, because at this end of the market they will all store a record and route an approval. It is who configures it and who is accountable when it drifts.
How is Cascadia different from ADP?
ADP sells a package of software and runs your payroll inside it. We sell the work of running the HR system around payroll. Our fee covers the onboarding workflows, the leave and attendance policies, the approval chains, the review cycles, the records, and the reporting, and the people who built it are the people who answer when you call. We do not run payroll, so for a lot of businesses the honest answer is both of us rather than either.
Is ADP cheaper than this?
It depends on what you need. For a business that needs payroll run, ADP is selling something we do not sell at all, so it is not really a price comparison. For a business that has payroll handled already and needs the HR side owned, our published monthly plans are sized to the work rather than your headcount.
What is not included in your fee?
Your Zoho licenses, which Zoho bills to you directly at their published rates. US payroll processing and payroll tax filing, which we do not do and which you will need somebody else for. And the employment decisions themselves, which stay with you. Everything involved in making the system work and keeping it working is inside the fee.
Why not just use ADP and run it ourselves?
If somebody in the business owns the HR configuration and has the time for it, do exactly that. ADP is a capable platform and its implementation support is real. The reason people end up talking to us is not that ADP failed them. It is that the person who ran the implementation moved on, and nobody inherited the workflows.
Should we buy this at all?
Often not, and finding that out now is far cheaper than finding it out in month four. If payroll is the actual problem, or if somebody already owns the HR configuration and enjoys doing it, paying somebody to manage it is a solution looking for a problem. We would rather say so on the first call.
Do we have to migrate everything at once?
No. Active employee records, current leave balances, and the documents people actually need move first, because those are what the business is working from. Historic records and superseded policy versions follow once the live system is settled. Splitting it that way means nobody waits on a full migration before they can book time off.
Does anything break while you take over?
Nobody stops getting paid and nothing goes dark. If ADP is running your payroll it carries on running your payroll, because that is not the part we replace. Your existing setup stays exactly where it is until the new system has run a full cycle with nothing falling through it. Cutting over is a decision you make once you have watched it work, not a date we impose on you.
What if we already run ADP and want to move?
The first thing to establish is what you are actually moving, because for most businesses the answer is the HR side and not the payroll. Plenty of clients keep a payroll provider and hand us everything around it. Where it gets fiddly is deciding which existing policies and workflows are worth carrying over, because most HR setups accumulate a few nobody remembers writing. We work that out before anybody signs anything, so the tidying up is known rather than discovered.
Do you own the system or the data?
No to both, and the arrangement is deliberately dull. The Zoho account is in your name, the employee records and the documents are yours, and if you stop working with us you keep every record and carry on. Nothing about leaving is designed to be awkward.
What exactly is included?
One published monthly plan, from $250 a month, priced by hours of Zoho work with nothing counted per user. It covers the onboarding and offboarding workflows, the leave and attendance policies, the approval chains, the review cycles, the employee records and documents, the reporting, and the integrations with the rest of your Zoho apps.
Do you guarantee the implementation will go to plan?
No, and be wary of anybody who does. A migration meets policies nobody has looked at properly in years, and a first cycle of live approvals usually turns up two kinds of request the business had never named. What we will commit to is that those surprises are ours to absorb rather than yours to be invoiced for.
What does the monthly report actually contain?
Who joined, who left, what leave was taken, what is sitting unapproved, and what took longest, alongside anything we changed in the rules and anything odd enough to be worth mentioning. It is a page rather than a deck, and it is written so somebody who never opens the HR system can still tell how it is doing.
How long before we see a difference?
Four to eight weeks to a full cycle running cleanly in most cases, and longer where years of ad hoc spreadsheets have to be sorted out first. The honest variable is not our speed, it is how quickly somebody can tell us what ought to happen to a request nobody has named before.
What if we want to leave?
Cancel any time and the service runs to the last business day of that month. There are no partial refunds. Nothing is stranded. The Zoho account stays in your name, the policies and the records stay exactly as they are, and the documentation comes with you. There is no exit fee and no data to pry out of us, because it was never ours to hold.