Zoho People vs Shiftelio · verified September 2026
Zoho People alternative: the Rs 48 plan cannot mark attendance
Zoho People is quoted everywhere at ₹48 per user per month, and on Zoho's own plan comparison page attendance tracking, biometric integration, overtime and geo restrictions all start at Professional, which is ₹96. That is Rs 28,800 a year at 25 users before payroll, which is a separate Zoho product with its own bill. Shiftelio is Rs 5,999 a year for 25 people with GPS attendance and Indian payroll in one price.
Price comparison for a team of 25, attendance plus Indian payroll
Zoho People rates are from zoho.com/people/zohopeople-pricing.html and the plan contents from zoho.com/people/pricing-comparison.html, both read on 8 September 2026: Essential HR ₹48, Professional ₹96, Premium ₹144, Enterprise ₹192, per user per month billed annually, taxes extra, with "Minimum users 5" stated against every paid plan. Zoho Payroll India rates are from zoho.com/in/payroll/pricing/, same date: Standard ₹1,000 per organisation per month billed annually, including 25 employees, ₹40 per additional employee, exclusive of GST. Shiftelio figures are from our own pricing page. There is a genuine Zoho People free plan for up to 5 users and a genuine Zoho Payroll free plan for up to 10 employees, and both are described below rather than buried.
| Plan | Works out to | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Shiftelio, GPS attendance and Indian payroll in one plan | Rs 500 a month equivalent | Rs 5,999 |
| Zoho People Essential HR at ₹48 per user. Cannot mark attendance on this plan | Rs 1,200 a month | Rs 14,400 |
| Zoho People Professional at ₹96 per user. The first plan that can | Rs 2,400 a month | Rs 28,800 |
| Zoho People Professional plus Zoho Payroll Standard, two products, two bills | Rs 2,400 plus Rs 1,000 a month | Rs 40,800 |
The second row is the one that matters, and it is the row every comparison gets wrong. Zoho's own plan comparison page puts Attendance Tracking, People Kiosk, Biometric Integrations, Attendance Regularization, Overtime management and Geo restrictions at Professional and above. Essential HR at ₹48 gets shift creation and scheduling, which is a roster, not a check-in. If you are buying Zoho People to know who turned up, ₹48 is not your price. ₹96 is.
Feature comparison
Zoho rows are from zoho.com/people/pricing-comparison.html and zoho.com/in/payroll/pricing/, both read on 8 September 2026, and the plan named in each note is the plan the feature first appears on. Three rows carry our cross rather than theirs. Read those three before you read the price table again, because for a certain kind of business they outweigh everything above them.
Attendance tracking on the entry paid plan
Attendance Tracking starts at Professional, ₹96 per user per month. Essential HR at ₹48 has shift creation and scheduling, not check-in.
Location restriction on the entry paid plan
Geo restrictions, both the Google Maps and IP-based forms, start at Professional. Zoho Maps geo restriction is Professional and Premium only.
Indian payroll in the same product and the same bill
Zoho Payroll is a separate product with separate pricing. Standard is ₹1,000 per organisation per month including 25 employees, and Leave and Attendance management inside Payroll only arrives at Premium.
No minimum seat count
Their feature table states "Minimum users 5" against all four paid plans. A three-person business pays for five.
Overtime and attendance regularisation without an upgrade
Overtime management and Attendance Regularization both start at Professional.
A free tier
Theirs. Zoho People is free forever for up to 5 users with employee database, time-off and document management, and Zoho Payroll India is free for up to 10 employees with real statutory compliance. Under 5 people and not needing GPS, take the free plan. We have no free tier: Shiftelio Basic is Rs 999 a year with 3 months free.
Biometric hardware integration
Theirs, from Professional. If you have already bought biometric devices and want to keep them, that is a real reason to choose Zoho.
Performance, learning, cases and an HR suite around it
Theirs, and it plugs into Books, CRM, Desk and the rest of Zoho. We build attendance and payroll, and nothing else.
GPS check-in with selfie capture
Geo restrictions from Professional, and facial recognition attendance from Professional. Available, but two plan tiers above the price people quote.
Leave management and shift rosters
Android and iOS apps
How the two bills are shaped
A single total is only true at one headcount. The shape of the charge is what decides the bill as your team changes size, and it is the part that does not go stale.
| Zoho People | Shiftelio | |
|---|---|---|
| Charging model | Per user per month, billed annually, with a five-user minimum on every paid plan, and payroll billed separately per organisation. | Flat annual price per plan. No per-seat charge, no minimum, no second product. |
| The cheapest plan that can record a check-in | Professional, ₹96 per user per month. Rs 28,800 a year at 25 people. | All of them, including Basic at Rs 999 a year. |
| Adding Indian payroll | A separate purchase. Zoho Payroll Standard is ₹1,000 per organisation per month billed annually, including 25 employees and ₹40 for each one above that. | Included. Payslips, PF, ESI, TDS worksheets, loans and advances are in the same plan. |
| Free tier | Yes, and it is real: People free forever up to 5 users, Payroll India free up to 10 employees. Attendance is not part of either. | No free tier. Basic is Rs 999 a year and starts with 3 months free. |
| Growing from 25 to 40 people | Every added person adds ₹96 a month on People and ₹40 a month on Payroll. Fifteen people is about Rs 24,480 a year more. | One step, Rs 5,999 to Rs 14,999, and that band runs to 100 staff and unlimited locations. |
| GST | Both pricing pages state that taxes are extra. | Extra as well. Both columns above exclude GST, so the comparison is like for like. |
The comparison to run before any demo is not plan against plan. It is: list the features you will not launch without, find the cheapest plan on each vendor that carries all of them, and compare those two numbers. On Zoho People, for a business buying attendance, that plan is Professional.
Why teams switch to Shiftelio
The quoted entry price is not the attendance price
Attendance Tracking, People Kiosk, Biometric Integrations, Attendance Regularization, Overtime and Geo restrictions all begin at Professional on Zoho's own plan comparison page. The ₹48 tier does rosters. Doubling the rate before you have started changes the whole comparison.
Attendance and payroll are two products there and one here
Zoho People plus Zoho Payroll is Rs 40,800 a year at 25 people across two subscriptions. One product, one bill, one employee list, one price is Rs 5,999.
A five-user minimum on every paid plan
Stated in their own feature table. A three-person salon or clinic pays for five seats on any paid Zoho People plan. There is no floor here.
Built for the phone in a worker's hand
Geofenced sites, a selfie on every check-in, offline capture that syncs when signal returns, and a trail an owner can read without training. That is the product, not a module inside a suite.
What Zoho People is actually for
Zoho is one of the best software companies in the world at what it does, and Zoho People is a serious HR platform: onboarding, cases, performance, learning, a genuinely useful free tier for up to five people, and an ecosystem that ties into Books, CRM, Desk and the rest. If your business already lives inside Zoho, the marginal cost of adding People is not the number on the pricing page, and none of the arithmetic below applies to you in the way it applies to somebody buying Zoho for attendance alone. This page has one narrow job: to state which plan can actually record a check-in, because the widely quoted entry price cannot, and to add up what attendance plus Indian payroll really costs when both come from Zoho.
Stay with Zoho People when
If any of these describe you, this page has done its job and you should stop reading. We would rather lose the signup than the trust.
- You already run Zoho. If Books, CRM, Desk or Zoho One are already in the business, People sits inside a suite you have already paid for and already know, and the standalone arithmetic on this page is the wrong arithmetic for you.
- You have five people or fewer and no location requirement. Zoho People is free forever at that size, and free beats Rs 999. We would rather say that than sell you something.
- You have ten employees or fewer and payroll is the whole problem. Zoho Payroll India is free up to 10 employees with genuine statutory compliance: income tax, EPF, ESI, statewise professional tax, LWF and payslips. That is a remarkable free product and nothing here beats it on price.
- You have already bought biometric devices. Zoho integrates with them from Professional. We are a phone-first product and we do not.
- You need performance cycles, learning management, HR cases or an org-wide people platform. Zoho People does all of that and Shiftelio does none of it.
Switch to Shiftelio when
- Attendance is what you are actually buying. On Zoho, that requirement puts you on Professional at ₹96 per user per month, not the ₹48 everyone quotes, so the real comparison is Rs 28,800 against Rs 5,999 at 25 people.
- You want attendance and Indian payroll from one product and one invoice. Zoho splits those across two products, and the total at 25 people is Rs 40,800 a year on Professional plus Payroll Standard.
- You have fewer than five people, or an awkward number. Zoho's paid plans state a five-user minimum. Shiftelio Basic is Rs 999 a year with no floor.
- Your staff work away from one address. Geofenced sites, selfie capture, offline check-in and a record you can still read in a dispute three months later are the core of this product rather than a feature that unlocks two tiers up.
- You want the price to be the price. One plan, one number, nothing to add on and no second product to buy for payroll.
The differences that change a decision
What Essential HR actually includes, and why the confusion is so widespread
Zoho publishes this honestly. On zoho.com/people/pricing-comparison.html, Essential HR carries Shift Creation, Shift Scheduling and Shift Change Requests, while Attendance Tracking via web, mobile and facial recognition, People Kiosk, Biometric Integrations, Attendance Regularization, Overtime management and both forms of Geo restriction sit at Professional and above. The confusion comes from the summary tables that third-party comparison sites build: those tables have a column called attendance, Zoho has shift scheduling on the cheap plan, and a tick gets typed. Nobody is lying. The reader still ends up quoting a price that cannot do the job, discovering it in a demo, and paying twice what they planned. It costs nothing to check, and the check is one page on Zoho's own site.
The five-user minimum, which is smaller than it sounds and bigger than it looks
Their feature table states "Minimum users 5" against Essential HR, Professional, Premium and Enterprise. For a company of 25 it changes nothing. For a three-person clinic, a two-chair salon or a four-person agency it means paying for five seats on every paid plan, and those are exactly the businesses that most need a low first bill. It is also why the free tier is capped at five: the paid floor and the free ceiling meet at the same number, which is a sensible design and worth knowing before you plan around it.
Why two products is not just an invoicing inconvenience
Zoho People and Zoho Payroll are separate products with separate plans, separate feature ladders and separate free tiers, and Payroll only gains its own Leave and Attendance management at Premium. They integrate, and Zoho does integration better than most. But two products means two subscriptions to renew, two upgrade paths that can move independently, two support queues, and an employee list that has to stay in step across both. For a 25-person business with no HR person, that is real overhead on top of Rs 40,800. The case for one product is not that Zoho integrates badly. It is that there is nothing to integrate.
Where Zoho is plainly better, and it is not close
The free tiers. Zoho People is free forever for up to five users, and Zoho Payroll India is free for up to ten employees with income tax, EPF, ESI, statewise professional tax, LWF, payslips and salary payments through HSBC. That is a serious compliance product given away, and any comparison that skips past it is not being straight with you. If you have ten people, no field staff and payroll as your only problem, the honest recommendation on this page is Zoho Payroll Free, and we would rather you read that here than find it after buying from us. The suite is the other one: nothing we build will ever sit next to Books, CRM and Desk the way People does.
What we are not
No performance management, no learning management, no recruitment, no HR case management, no biometric device integration, and no free tier. Shiftelio does attendance and Indian payroll for small businesses, in one price, and stops there. If your requirements list runs past that, Zoho People is a better fit and this page has told you so.
Questions people ask
How much does Zoho People cost in India?
From zoho.com/people/zohopeople-pricing.html, read on 8 September 2026: there is a free plan for up to 5 users, then Essential HR at ₹48, Professional at ₹96, Premium at ₹144 and Enterprise at ₹192, all per user per month billed annually with taxes extra and a 30-day free trial. Their feature table states a minimum of 5 users on every paid plan, and organisations above 500 users are quoted separately. At 25 users that is Rs 14,400 a year on Essential HR and Rs 28,800 on Professional.
Can the ₹48 Zoho People plan track attendance?
No. On Zoho's own plan comparison page, Attendance Tracking via web, mobile and facial recognition, People Kiosk, Biometric Integrations, Attendance Regularization, Overtime management and Geo restrictions all start at Professional, which is ₹96 per user per month. Essential HR at ₹48 includes Shift Creation, Shift Scheduling and Shift Change Requests, which is rostering: deciding who is meant to work when, not recording who actually turned up. If attendance is why you are buying, Professional is your entry price and the comparison at 25 users is Rs 28,800 a year against Shiftelio at Rs 5,999.
Does Zoho People include payroll?
Not in India. Zoho Payroll is a separate product with its own pricing at zoho.com/in/payroll/pricing/. It has a genuinely good free plan for up to 10 employees covering income tax, EPF, ESI, statewise professional tax, LWF and payslips. Above that, Standard is ₹1,000 per organisation per month billed annually including 25 employees, with ₹40 for each additional employee, and Leave and Attendance management inside Payroll appears at the Premium tier. So a 25-person business wanting geo-restricted attendance plus Indian payroll from Zoho pays Zoho People Professional at Rs 28,800 plus Zoho Payroll Standard at Rs 12,000, about Rs 40,800 a year across two products. Shiftelio is Rs 5,999 a year for both, on one bill.
Is Zoho People free?
Yes, for up to 5 users, forever, and it is a real product rather than a trial: employee database, time-off management and document management. It does not include attendance tracking, which starts at Professional. Zoho Payroll India is separately free for up to 10 employees. If you have five people, no field staff and no need to verify where anyone checked in, take the free plan. We do not have a free tier and we are not going to pretend that Rs 999 beats zero.
What is the minimum number of users for Zoho People?
Five on every paid plan. Their own feature comparison table states "Minimum users 5" against Essential HR, Professional, Premium and Enterprise. A three-person business on Professional therefore pays for five seats, about Rs 5,760 a year, for a plan it is only half using. Shiftelio Basic is Rs 999 a year for up to 2 staff at one location and Growth is Rs 5,999 for up to 25, with no seat floor on either.
What is a good Zoho People alternative for a small Indian business?
It depends on which half of Zoho you need. If you want the HR suite, performance cycles, learning and case management, nothing on this site replaces it and you should stay. If what you need is knowing who turned up where, and payroll that files correctly in India, Shiftelio does both in one plan: GPS check-in with a selfie, geofenced sites, offline capture, payslips, PF, ESI, TDS worksheets, loans and advances, at Rs 5,999 a year for 25 people. The test is simple. Write down the features you will not launch without, find the cheapest plan on each vendor that carries all of them, and compare those two numbers rather than the two headline rates.
Can I move from Zoho People to Shiftelio without losing my records?
Yes. Export your employee master, attendance history and leave balances from Zoho People, and your payroll history from Zoho Payroll if you use it, and we will import a clean CSV of employees and past attendance so nothing is stranded in a subscription you have stopped paying for. Take the full financial year rather than the recent months: that is what you will need at year end. Switch at a month boundary, and if statutory filings are mid-flight, finish the quarter in Zoho first.
Is there a setup or implementation fee for Shiftelio?
No. Setup is self-serve and usually takes under an hour: add your employees, mark your locations, set your shifts, and staff check in from their own phones. There is no implementation project, no migration charge, no paid add-ons and no per-seat component inside a plan.
See the price before you see a salesperson
Every Shiftelio plan and limit is on the pricing page. There is no quote to request, no implementation fee, no minimum billed headcount and no paid add-on for location verification.
This is a comparison written by Shiftelio, which is one of the two products described. Everything stated about Zoho People is drawn from Zoho Corporation's own published pages and positioning, with the Zoho People rates from zoho.com/people/zohopeople-pricing.html, the plan contents from zoho.com/people/pricing-comparison.html, and the Indian payroll figures from zoho.com/in/payroll/pricing/, all read directly rather than taken from third-party comparison sites, and was checked in September 2026. Where their pricing is quote-based or reported inconsistently across sources we describe the charging model rather than assert a figure, and you should ask them directly. Plans and prices change on both sides. Zoho People and Zoho Corporation names and marks belong to their owners and are used here for identification only; no affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you believe anything here is inaccurate, write to support@shiftelio.com and we will correct it.