Outgrowing free HR software?
Kredily made its name on free-forever HR tooling, a real service to teams formalising for the first time. This page is for the moment the payroll month starts costing more in checking than the software saves in fees.
What free-first gets right, and where it strains
Kredily's freemium model lowered the barrier for thousands of Indian SMEs to move off registers and spreadsheets: attendance, leave and HR records with payroll capability layered on, and paid tiers above the free core; verify current tier boundaries on their pages. PeopleDeck sits one decision later in a company's life: when payroll correctness, statutory files and audit-ready records become the point, the model flips from free-plus-upgrades to one per-employee rate with everything included and nothing to check against a tier table.
How to run this evaluation
Price your month honestly: hours spent verifying computations, chasing inputs and building files, times whoever does it. Free software with manual verification is rarely free at payroll time. Then run both against a real month — PeopleDeck's start is free too, so the comparison costs nothing, and check where each product's paid line actually sits for the features your month needs.
The side-by-side, honestly
Concrete claims below are about PeopleDeck only. For the other column, we state category facts and what to verify. Products change, so check current details on their own pages before you decide.
| Dimension | PeopleDeck | Kredily; verify on their pages |
|---|---|---|
| Product shape | One platform for payroll, attendance, leave, onboarding to FnF, records and self-service, bought self-serve by any business | Freemium HR platform — free core with paid tiers; verify which capabilities sit on which side today |
| Payroll & statutory | PF, ESI, PT and TDS applied on every payslip; upload-ready ECR and return files generated. Filing stays with you | Payroll capability offered; verify statutory depth, file generation and what tier it requires |
| Pricing model | Per employee, per month, in ₹. Whole platform included, rate shown transparently at sign-up, start free | Free core plus paid plans; check their current tier boundaries; no claim made here |
| Attendance & leave | Rosters, rotating shifts, biometric, web and mobile punches; attendance feeds payroll directly | Attendance tooling is central to their free offer; verify device support and policy depth |
| Onboarding to exit | Joining checklists to a computed full-and-final statement with every line's working shown | Verify lifecycle scope and FnF computation against your exit cases |
| Self-service | Payslips, balances, declarations, claims and Form 16 data in every employee's hands | ESS offered; verify payslip detail and declaration flows |
| Getting started | Self-serve sign-up; import employees, run a parallel month, go live when it reconciles | Self-serve — comparable start; the difference is what the first payroll month proves |
What switchers say they were actually looking for
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1
The cost of free at payroll time
Attendance can tolerate rough edges; payroll cannot. Once PF, ESI and TDS ride on the computation, verification time becomes the real price, and a product whose statutory layer is its core tends to beat one where it is an upgrade.
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2
Files, not just figures
Upload-ready ECR and return files generated from the approved run, reconciling to payslips by construction: the artifact your consultant actually needs monthly. Verify where this sits in any tiered model.
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3
A bill that scales with headcount only
One rate per employee, everything included: no re-reading a plan matrix when you need one more capability, no discovering the feature you assumed was free is not.
PeopleDeck in depth: the payroll engine · statutory compliance · per-employee pricing
Migrating without a bad payday
The migration is straightforward: export employees, structures and balances, import via validated sheets, encode policies, and carry statutory year-to-date figures as opening records. Teams coming from freemium tools usually find the master data is in decent shape: the gap is on the payroll-records side.
Run the parallel month, reconcile, go live on a month boundary. The honest test of the switch is the first inspection-grade export you produce without assembling anything, that artifact is what the per-employee fee buys.
The boundary that decides it
PeopleDeck is a standalone HRMS any business signs up for, priced per employee, per month, with PF, ESI, professional tax and TDS applied to every payslip and upload-ready return files generated, never filed behind your back. If you are an education institution comparing ERP-bundled payroll instead, that is a different product shape: see SchoolDeck staff payroll for schools or CampusAlly payroll for colleges, licensed per institution.
Frequently asked questions
Why leave a free product?
Because the free product did its job: it got you formalised. The next job (statutory-grade payroll with audit-ready records) is a different product's centre of gravity, and worth pricing honestly against your verification hours.
Isn't PeopleDeck's free start the same freemium model?
No; it is a trial-shaped start, not a permanent free tier: run real payroll free while you evaluate, then per-employee pricing with everything included. The model has no upgrade ladder to fall off.
What do we actually gain on the statutory side?
Contributions applied to every payslip at current rates, contribution-period ESI handled, state-wise PT mapped, upload-ready files from every approved run, and registers that reconcile by construction, as the default, not a tier.
How long does migration take?
Typically an afternoon of imports plus one parallel cycle. Freemium-era data exports cleanly, and policies get encoded once.
What should we verify on Kredily's side?
Today's free-versus-paid boundary for the features your month needs, statutory file coverage, and payslip detail, on their current pages; freemium boundaries move.
When payroll becomes the point.
Run a parallel month on your own data — the reconciliation decides, not the brochure.
Start free