As a fast-growing scale-up, you want founders, HR leaders, and finance managers zeroing in on product expansion and revenue milestones. Instead, the team is bogged down in repetitive chores: processing payroll twice a month, tracking leave balances in spreadsheets, and approving contractor invoices one at a time. The result is wasted hours and creeping burnout.
That is the moment to simplify your HR operations.
Keka is HR and payroll software built to automate time-consuming people-ops tasks. It bundles a payroll engine, HRMS, leave management, and more into one platform.
But is Keka the right fit for your company? What do existing Keka users say about its performance?
Settle in for a concise Keka review that outlines its pros and cons and showcases five Keka alternatives to consider before you buy. Let’s dive in.
Keka is an HRMS platform for growing enterprises and can accommodate thousands of employees.
The core features of Keka are - HR software to automate day-to-day HR operations, Payroll software and Time & Attendance software within a single dashboard.
Keka is expensive for growing businesses with the base plan, Foundation (up to 100 people), starting at ₹9,999 per month and offers limited features. It also has setup and implementation fees.
According to the review of Keka users, the user interface has design improvement opportunities, and there are syncing issues between payroll and attendance solutions.
There is a list of Keka alternatives, including Craze, with feature differences and pricing comparisons.
In this Keka review article, the three core products that we will be assessing are:
Payroll software: Automatically processes payroll according to the Indian labour laws and tax deduction rules.
Modern HR: Custom employee workflows to experience streamlined employee engagement and analytics.
Time and attendance: A time-tracking application that tracks leaves and attendances according to the Indian standard leave policy.
Time to assess the performances of each of the above Keka products and break down the essential features:
Keka Payroll Software
All image via Keka.
Keka allows companies to deploy range-based salary structures to simplify the automation process. You need to select a salary range for the employees, and the individual salary elements like HRA, conveyance, etc., are configurable separately.
Keka simplifies salary planning for new employees or salary revision for existing employees to provide HR professionals with complete control over statutory compliances. The built-in compliance management tool automatically calculates professional tax, TDS, and Form 24Q generation.
You get a detailed preview of the salaries, deductions, payable days and other critical parameters to make changes at a micro-level before processing the final payroll.
It has built-in time-tracking software that helps HR calculate payrolls accurately.
The integrated expense management platform auto-configures expense payouts before releasing the salaries.
Keka integrates with multiple accounting and finance solutions, like Tally, and provides an intuitive payroll tracking dashboard to track compensations and create budgets for the upcoming quarter.
Integrate with banks, recruitment CRMs, and biometric systems to develop custom workflows, add simple levels like approvals, escalations, and monitoring, and automate time-consuming manual tasks to improve overall productivity.
Features and Availability
Features | Availability |
Error-free, timely payroll processing | Yes |
Tax compliance and filing | Yes |
Multiple payment options and direct deposits | Yes |
Multi-currency support | Yes |
Mobile Accessibility | Yes |
Benefits and deduction management | Yes |
Customised payroll reports | Yes |
Confidentiality of secured employee data | Yes |
Employee expense management | Yes |
Audit and reconciliation tool | Yes |
Employee self-service portal | Yes |
Keka Modern HR Software
Keka’s HR workflows cover hiring, onboarding, internal movements, and probation confirmation. It speeds up actions like peer feedback, onboarding tasks, and approvals through both web and mobile applications.
The employee self-service (ESS) portal has individual employee profiles, single sign-on access, and a dashboard to apply for and track leaves.
It digitises and stores all documents (such as ID proofs, educational certificates, payslips, appreciation letters, etc.) within a centralised database so employees and managers access, track and download their required documents whenever they need them.
Keka’s built-in helpdesk ensures that employees get help in time.
It provides employees an easy way to submit requests, and assign HR, payroll and IT owners.
Features and Availability
Features | Availability |
Employee self-service portal (ESS) | Yes |
Employee Performance Management System | Yes |
Built-in learning and development centre | Yes |
HR metrics dashboard | Yes |
Mobile Accessibility | Yes |
Integration with CRM and other tools | Yes |
Workflow automation | Yes |
Confidentiality of secured employee data | Yes |
Collaboration and engagement with co-workers | Yes |
Keka Time and Attendance Software
Flexible leave policies appropriate for remote and hybrid employees. Manage different leave types like paid, unpaid, sick, and statutory leaves in the same platform and plan your leaves based on cultural preferences.
It integrates with biometric devices to keep your workplace safe from unauthentic access attempts.
Automated shift rotation with 24/7 coverage so you can manage employees working in multiple shifts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Features and Availability
Features | Availability |
Compliance with location-specific leave policy | Yes |
Custom leave approval workflow | Yes |
Team calendar and scheduling | Yes |
Mobile accessibility | Yes |
Leave-related notifications and reminders | Yes |
Customised leave usage insights | Yes |
Confidentiality of secured employee data | Yes |
Leave-related documents management | Yes |
Leaves dashboard and absence tracker | Yes |
Employee self-service portal | Yes |
Multi-language support | Yes |
Keka’s HR and Payroll platform comes with three distinct pricing plans:
Foundation
The Foundation Plan costs ₹9,999 per month for up to 100 employees, and to accommodate new employees, you will need to pay ₹90/month per additional employee.
This plan suits businesses starting their automation journeys and includes essential features like payroll automation with statutory compliance, employee self-service portal, and advanced leave management. Features like employee onboarding plus, custom notifications, and single sign-on are unavailable in this plan.
Strength
The Strength Plan costs ₹12,999 per month for up to 100 employees, and to accommodate new employees, you will need to pay ₹120/month per additional employee.
This plan suits organisations in the scaling phase, looking for advanced automation and employee engagement features. While features like employee onboarding and exit surveys, custom notifications, custom report builders, attendance system, etc., are available in this plan, you won’t get access to features like performance review, OKR management, skill matrix, etc.
Growth
The Growth Plan costs ₹15,999 per month for up to 100 employees, and to accommodate new employees, you will need to pay ₹150/month per additional employee.
Targeted toward organisations in the growth phase, this plan offers all features in the Strength plan, along with employee surveys, 1:1 meetings, performance reviews, OKRs, etc.
Is Keka pricing apt for growing businesses?
Keka offers many helpful features in its HR automation and payroll products. But here’s the thing: this HRMS platform might not suit startups and small businesses. Here’s why:
Fewer employees don’t mean fewer feature requirements. Keka’s Foundation Plan gives access to the basic feature only and doesn’t cover useful features, employee onboarding and exit workflows, Self-attendance, timesheets, and advanced roles and permissions, etc. This means a startup might need to opt for more exclusive plans like Strength or Growth,along with paying setup fees to access the advanced features, even though they have fewer employees.
Keka has a minimum commitment user policy, which might differ for some organisations. According to this policy, if you avail yourself of a discount, price negotiation, or any additional features not part of your plan, you commit to Keka the number of employees, minimum billing period, or both. Even though your license fee is described as “per employee per month”, the subscription charges will be charged for the minimum committed billing period. And you cannot modify or revise these commitments throughout the term of the plan.
A more suitable pricing structure for startups and growing businesses would be per-employee-per-month pricing. This would mean startups accessing all advanced features while paying for the exact number of employees available in their teams.
We recommend - Craze for startups and growing businesses. Craze provides you access to all advanced features without any lock-ins, no setup fees, and no minimum commitments or charges on a per-employee basis.
Here are the available Craze pricing plans:
Start with Core HR at ₹60 per employee each month
Core is your foundation: employee directory, org chart, granular permissions, secure file storage, plus smooth onboarding and exit workflows. Everything a growing company needs without the frills.Plug in only the extras you care about
Payroll, Leave & Attendance, Document Management, IT Asset Management, Employee Engagement, Performance Management. Each add-on sits neatly on top of Core and is priced to match your headcount and the mix you pick, so bigger teams see a lower cost per person.
What you will not run into
• No minimum-user clauses, you pay exactly for active employees
• Every setting is unlocked from day one; nothing sits behind an “upgrade” wall
• Bundle savings when you combine two or more modules
• Zero setup charges and the same responsive, founder-level support that Craze customers rave about.
The result: a flat ₹60 base and a menu of optional modules you can switch on as you grow. Scale up, and your per-employee price falls, unlike other flat models that punish growth.
Based on our analysis of user feedback across popular review platforms like G2, Capterra, GetApp and Techjockey, here’s what the users say about Keka:
Benefits of Keka
Simple and flexible HRMS platform with a narrow learning curve.
A responsive customer support team that guides users whenever they face any challenges.
Easy payroll software to automate payroll operations, generate salary slips, Form16 and similar employee documents, one-click processing and management.
Automation of day-to-day HR tasks like attendance regularisation, leave approval, and birthday/anniversary reminders.
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Disadvantages of Keka
Account sync issues where login and logout times often mismatch in the portal.
Payroll features like tax filing and investment plans are missing.
Quick tasks such as approving leave or checking a detailed report are smooth on a desktop but awkward or missing on the phone.
Standard exports are fine, yet any deeper cut—say, department cost trends or a custom KPI dashboard—usually means dumping data to Excel and crunching it yourself.
Only twelve months of history stay visible in the portal, so digging up data for full and final settlements or an audit turns into a scavenger hunt.
After the initial training, you are pushed into a ticket queue; timely call-backs or a dedicated point of contact are rare.
Small changes, like the new Announcements widget, roll out without notice and often feel half-finished, forcing admins to re-explain the UI to everyone.
User reviews- negative comments
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Overall Verdict on Keka
Feature: Payroll Software
Pros: Easy to operate, one-click payroll processing and automated document generation.
Cons: Features like tax filing and investment planning for employees are missing.
Feature: Modern HR software
Pros: Flexible HRMS and easy-to-learn.
Cons: Clumsy UI, no internal file management system.
Feature: Time & Attendance software
Pros: Automated attendance regularisation, leave approval, birthday/anniversary reminders.
Cons: Frequent account syncing issues.
Based on our analysis of Keka and after reading through the reviews of existing Keka users, our final verdict is:
Sign up for Keka if you have a team of 100+ people. If you don’t have budget restrictions and are looking for all the advanced features, opt for Keka’s Growth Plan, which costs ₹15,999 per month.
But if you have a team of 100 or fewer and are looking for a flexible HRMS platform that offers all significant HR, payroll, and leave management features at a reasonable cost and doesn’t have a minimum commitment policy, we suggest opting for a Keka alternative.
But what are these Keka alternatives? Find out in the next section.
Craze
Craze is a great fit for small, mid & large-sized teams that want their HR and payroll to “just work.” You get the full toolkit - centralised employee records, built-in templates, leave and attendance dashboards that sync with payroll, plus one-click, tax-compliant salary runs and smooth contractor payouts. Best of all, support comes straight from the founding team, so answers land in minutes, not days.
Pricing keeps things simple. You pay only for each active user every month, with no setup fees and no costly add-ons hiding behind another paywall. Whether you are twenty people or scaling toward a hundred, the bill grows in line with headcount, and you never shell out for seats or features you are not using.
Here's how Craze stands out compared to others:
Unmatched granularity and control: Advanced workflows for reimbursements, leaves, attendance, and more, with flexible approvals and rejections.
Smart policy management: Assign policies at a cluster level, with no manual work when employees move between roles or locations.
Fast, founder-led support: We respond within minutes. No ticket queues. You’ll always have senior team involvement.
Modern, intuitive UI: Built for today’s teams — simple, clean, and easy to use.
Transparent, affordable pricing: No hidden support, onboarding, or feature access charges.
GreytHR
GreytHR has a free plan with limited features that accommodates startups with a maximum of 25 employees. It’s an ideal choice for medium and large-sized organisations.
Zoho
Zoho simplifies the migration from other HRMS platforms to Zoho. Additionally, there are multiple templates to speed up the payroll processing.
RazorpayX Payroll
RazorpayX Payroll is an automated payroll and compliance product with error-free payroll processing.
ZingHR
ZingHR has a built-in talent acquisition solution and regular HR features like automation, payroll processing and employee engagement.
Keka is a complete HRMS platform with advanced HR and payroll automation features. Large organisations with 100+ employees can use this platform to automate their HR workflows, process error-free payroll within seconds, and provide employees with a self-guided portal.
However, Keka users complain about its clunky UI and syncing issues between payroll and attendance solutions. Additionally, Keka is expensive for startups and mid-size organisations as they must pay a minimum of ₹9,999 per month with limited features, irrespective of their team size.
Here's the (short) sales pitch. We're biased, obviously, but we think Craze is the perfect Keka replacement if:
You are looking for a people operating system covering HR, Finance and IT use cases
You want to access all advanced features without any feature-gating
You value transparent, non-restrictive pricing
You love fast support for issues and feature requests
Here’s what Craze’s customers have to say👇
What types & sizes of businesses benefit most from using Keka?
Keka is suitable for companies with over 100 employees. However, due to its pricing structure and limited features in lower-tier plans, there may be better choices for startups and small businesses.
Is immediate support available with Keka?
Keka has a responsive customer support team that guides users whenever they face challenges. Users have praised the quality of support they receive from Keka's team.
Does Keka include features for payroll and compliance management?
Keka's payroll software automates payroll processing according to Indian labour laws and tax deduction rules. It also ensures statutory compliance and generates necessary documents like salary slips and Form 16.
Is there a mobile app available for Keka?
Yes, Keka offers a mobile application that allows employees to access the platform's features, such as the employee self-service portal, on the go.
What third-party tools can be integrated with Keka?
For seamless payroll tracking and budget creation, Keka integrates with multiple accounting and finance solutions, including QuickBooks and Tally. It also supports integration with biometric devices for attendance management.
