What Is Ceipal?
Ceipal is a recruiting software provider that offers a comprehensive platform of its three main products.
- Integrated ATS and CRM system
- Procurewise VMS
- Workforce Management
The integrated ATS and CRM are its core offering for recruiting needs, so we’ll focus primarily on this product throughout the review.
Featured Partners
1
monday sales CRM
Free; $9 per user per month for basic features
14 days
Yes
2
HubSpot
Free; $15 per user per month (billed annually)
14 days
Yes
3
Pipedrive
$14 per user per month (billed annually)
14 days
Yes
4
Salesforce
$25 per month per user for basic features
30 days
Yes
How Ceipal Works
Ceipal’s core product for recruiting is its ATS and CRM in one. Ceipal’s ATS sources candidates for you automatically, matches and ranks them and, finally, syncs with various communication channels to keep candidates engaged and interested. These channels include email, SMS and chatbot and can be configured to run automated campaigns.
The home screen when first logging into Ceipal.
We tested the Ceipal ATS on an Android mobile device and a PC laptop using the Chrome browser. When first logging into Ceipal through a desktop web browser, you immediately see dashboard key performance indicators (KPIs), such as number of interviews scheduled, where applicants are coming from and many more. On the mobile app, we didn’t have dashboard access. Our demo representative told us that the mobile dashboard is deactivated in demo accounts.
You can configure the dashboard the way you want by navigating to “Set up”>Edit Dashboard. Then, you can choose a layout, add components and drag and drop components as you see fit.
By contrast, other common functions are easy to initiate through the main menu, the submenu or by clicking the plus sign in the upper right corner.
What Sets Ceipal Apart
Ceipal is different from other ATS providers in that it offers features specific to certain types of recruiting use cases, such as in-house hiring teams, companies that outsource some or all of their recruiting to agencies and, finally, agencies themselves that need to attract and manage clients and their respective job requisitions.
What we particularly like about Ceipal’s ATS is that it provides a holistic view of each candidate. That is, while it does measure a candidate’s fit based on the job description itself, it also assesses the candidate’s work style, learning style and workplace values. This gives you a more well-rounded idea of who the candidate is, not just as an employee but as a person.
In addition, Ceipal offers additional products and services beyond recruiting needs, such as Employee Management, Immigration Management and Financial Management all within its Workforce Management solution.
Ceipal Features
Ceipal’s core product for recruiting is its ATS. However, it also offers a VMS and Employee Management solution.
Applicant Tracking System
Ceipal’s ATS packs several automated, AI-driven features to help you make the most informed hiring decisions for your organization.
Job Posting
There are two ways to create a job in Ceipal. The simplest method is by clicking “Create Job Posting” in the submenu or clicking on the plus sign in the upper right. From there, you’re presented with four options to create your job post.
Creating a job is simple in Ceipal. You can choose four different ways to create a job post.
When creating a job post manually, you still have to enter the full job description, but Ceipal can take it from there by generating a job summary using ChatGPT. We tested this out when creating a job manually, and it generated a summary that fit our job title successfully.
Ceipal uses ChatGPT to generate a job summary based on a job title.
Alternatively, for the agency use case, a recruiter who receives a new job from a client via email can use Ceipal’s email inbox extension to grab that information from the client and transfer it right into the ATS as a new job. You can also create and apply a job description template easily to save time.
Ceipal’s ATS integrates with over 50 job boards and connects with the vendor management portal as well. That way, you and the recruiting agencies you work with are on the same page about current job openings and the candidates for each.
When testing out the Job Posting module on the mobile app, we found it easier to navigate than on the desktop browser screen because it allowed vertical scrolling without the need to scroll horizontally. We were impressed that most features could fit onto a more compact screen size in a way that’s still easy to use. Not all features in the Job Posting module are available on mobile, for example, creating a new job post and using AI candidate matching.
Candidate Sourcing and Matching
Ceipal’s ATS sources passive and active candidates and scores applicants automatically based on their fit for a job.
Ceipal scours public domain sites, such as Google and GitHub, for passive candidates that make a good fit for your roles and adds them to your talent pool. Ceipal also uses AI to match, rank and provide contextual information on passive and active candidates for your open job requisitions. The score it gives each candidate reflects their “cultural alignment” and “technical alignment,” social skills as well as how likely they are to take the job. However, this feature is currently unavailable due to upgrades but will be available as an add-on once it goes live again.
For candidates who have already applied, Ceipal scores and ranks them automatically. When clicking into the job and selecting “AI Matching Profiles,” it displays all candidates in order of suitability to a job, from highest score to lowest.
Alternatively, you can search for the job in the “Job Posting” section and expand the plus sign to show all associated candidates and their scores. However, when browsing through candidates this way, the scores column doesn’t have a rank function to organize candidates from highest to lowest scores. Automated candidate matching is available in Ceipal’s second price tier.
Candidate Relationship Management
Ceipal ATS enables communication with candidates via email, SMS or chatbot. Ceipal enables two-way email inbox syncing for Google, Outlook and Office 365, so you can write and reply to emails directly from within Ceipal’s interface. We were able to easily find the email functionality in a candidate’s profile in the desktop view. However, in the mobile app, the candidate’s email address and phone number are grayed out and unclickable.
On a larger scale, you can set up automated email and text campaigns to keep in touch with a broader swath of candidates. Ceipal’s Email Validator double-checks email addresses for validity and eliminates those who unsubscribe from your email list or alerts you to email addresses that are misspelled or deactivated.
To reach candidates via text, Ceipal’s ATS integrates with TextToHire to enable individual or bulk text messaging. As with email, you can set up automated text campaigns as well. TextToHire has some preprogrammed marketing and outreach campaigns that you can tailor to your needs. You can generate distribution lists for your text campaigns based on skill set, work experience, and more. This helps you narrow down your target audience and create messages that are customized to them.
Ceipal’s chatbot helps candidates get more information about your company or job requisition, while also doing some legwork for recruiters. The chatbot provides job recommendations to candidates, collects basic information and resumes from them and can also conduct prescreening assessments. The preliminary assessments gauge whether a candidate is potentially a good fit and should be advanced in the hiring process. The chatbot can also collect more information from a candidate further into the process to save recruiters time.
Scheduling Tools
Ceipal integrates with your calendar, and you can send availability to candidates via text or email. Following the knowledge base, we navigated to a candidate’s profile and selected the “Interviews” tab. From there, you first assign an interviewer whose calendar availability pops up, from which you select time slots and the videoconferencing platform of your choice before sending off the invitation.
You can schedule an interview with candidates directly from within Ceipal.
We found it just as easy to schedule an interview on the mobile app.
Interview Tools
Ceipal uses AI to generate interview questions for you and comes equipped with interview scorecard templates to ensure each candidate gets evaluated fairly. Those tagged in a job or its interview process receive invitations and automatic reminders. Plus, they can take interactive notes in Ceipal. Ceipal integrates with Zoom, Skype and other video conferencing platforms.
We tested the ChatGPT function to generate interview questions for a role by clicking on the green gear button in the job profile and choosing “Interview Q/A.” Click the green “Generate Questions” button as many times as you like, and the system saves the history of previous questions generated. To edit the questions, you have to copy them elsewhere, for example, into a Word document.
In any job in Ceipal, you can have ChatGPT generate interview questions by navigating to the green button in the upper right corner.
Ceipal incorporates ChatGPT to help you come up with interview questions. Sample answers are provided, in case the interviewer is not as familiar with the subject area.
Similarly, you can generate General Assessment Q/A for specific skills that are pertinent to the job.
Candidate evaluation templates are deactivated for the demo environment. However, in the live demo we were shown how it works by going to Quick Links>Form Templates>Create New.
There, you enter the job title, description, format, category, such as evaluation or survey, and enable the template for particular application submissions or job pipelines.
After clicking “Next,” you’re directed to enter questions and their formats and click “Publish Template.” You can access published templates under Job Postings>Expand any job to see associated candidates>Select a candidate checkbox>Click “Schedule Interview.”
Onboarding
Ceipal’s ATS comes with onboarding software that’s customized to your company branding and features its own built-in e-signature tool. This saves you the cost of a separate account from or any other e-signature software vendor. The onboarding software allows you to create customizable onboarding/offboarding documents, checklists and workflows.
When onboarding an employee, it’s easy to see who’s ready to onboard and do so individually or in bulk. When you initiate onboarding a candidate who’s ready, their information populates into the general information form, and you can select preloaded checklists or create a new one easily.
Start onboarding for one or more new employees. You can also create and add checklists to the onboarding process.
Plus, the document library contains critical onboarding documents, such as I-9 and W-4 forms, that new employees can sign digitally. You can keep track of a new hire’s progress through the onboarding process and send automatic notifications and reminders.
Reporting and Analytics
Ceipal includes interactive, role-specific dashboards and custom reports. You can arrange your dashboard to see the recruiting metrics that matter most. Ceipal also has preprogrammed dashboards for various roles in the hiring process to minimize, if not eliminate completely, the need to customize the dashboard yourself. You can schedule automated reports to receive on a routine basis and change a report’s visual style on demand to, for example, a pie chart, bar graph or a 3D graph. Reports were unavailable in the mobile app. However, this might be the case for trial accounts only.
An impressive feature that Ceipal advertises on its website is holistic candidate assessment reports. However, such reports are currently unavailable on the platform for upgrades.
These reports produce in-depth, holistic reports on passive candidates’ motivators, learning styles and other unseen factors. Ceipal gathers information from a passive candidate’s resume and online public profiles and generates actionable insights on how to best engage a candidate and how likely the candidate will accept a job offer.
Vendor Management System
Companies that rely on recruiting or staffing agencies to source talent will want to check out Ceipal’s Procurewise VMS to help manage relationships with talent suppliers. The VMS serves as an extension of your company’s existing recruiting process where you can onboard vendors and, subsequently, monitor their performance using supplier scorecards. Ceipal’s VMS also facilitates communication with vendors through text, phone call, Skype, email or chatbot. Conversely, the VMS can be configured for agencies who want to manage their clients more effectively.
Workforce Management
Ceipal also offers a Workforce Management solution that breaks down into Employee Management, Immigration Management and Financial Management.
- Employee Management: Manage employee information, digital onboarding and more, all from one central system.
- Immigration Management: Stay on top of immigration paperwork and employee status with tools like I-9 management, E-Verify, customized Public Access Files and more.
- Financial Management: Monitor company financials with payroll, accounts receivable and payables, configure recruiter commissions and more. You can integrate Ceipal with QuickBooks and ADP Run.
Ceipal Pricing & Plans
Ceipal has three price tiers. Ceipal Advanced Automation Bundle builds on Ceipal’s standard ATS product. However, Ceipal Workforce Management is available as a separate product that doesn’t build on the features of the other two.
It’s unclear where Procurewise VMS and financial management features fit within Ceipal’s pricing model, as they don’t appear on its pricing page.
| Ceipal ATS | Ceipal Advanced Automation Bundle | Ceipal Workforce Management | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Starting Price
|
$24 per user, per month
|
$48 per user, per month
|
$4 per user, per month
|
|
Number of Users
|
At least five
|
At least five
|
At least 25
|
|
Number of Job Boards
|
50-plus
|
50-plus
|
N/A
|
|
Social Media Integration
|
Included
|
Included
|
N/A
|
|
ATS
|
Included
|
Included
|
Not included
|
|
Candidate Matching
|
Add-on
|
Included
|
N/A
|
|
Candidate Relationship Management
|
Included
|
Included
|
N/A
|
|
Automations
|
Basic
|
Advanced
|
Payroll, accounting, reminders, calculations and assets
|
|
Scheduling Tools
|
Yes, via SMS
|
Yes, via SMS
|
N/A
|
|
Interviewing Tools
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
N/A
|
|
Onboarding
|
Included
|
Included
|
Document management only
|
|
Analytics and Reporting
|
Limited
|
Unlimited
|
Workforce Analytics
|
|
Templates
|
For email, SMS and interview scorecards
|
For email, SMS and interview scorecards
|
For immigration management and reporting
|
|
Third-party Integrations
|
Included
|
Included
|
Included
|
|
Customer Support
|
Included
|
Included
|
Included
|
|
Mobile App
|
Ceipal ATS for iOS and Android
|
Ceipal ATS for iOS and Android
|
Ceipal WorkForce for iOS and Android
|
Ceipal ATS
Ceipal’s basic ATS includes useful features, such as unlimited resume parsing, syndicated job posting, the CRM system and more. However, it lacks automated features that Ceipal’s Advanced Automation bundle offers. Automations are limited to 10 automated reports and building recruiting workflows in the ATS, but you can add more automations for an additional fee.
Ceipal Advanced Automation Bundle
If you’re hiring in large volumes and want to reach a swath of candidates at scale, you’ll want to opt for Ceipal’s Advanced Automation Bundle as it includes automatic candidate matching and ranking as well as credits for mass emails, automatic candidate sourcing and text recruiting. It also has unlimited dashboards to track as many recruiting performance metrics as you’d like.
Ceipal Workforce Management
As an HRMS, Ceipal’s Workforce Management provides different features than Ceipal’s other two products. Choose this product if you need to manage employee data, timesheets, expenses, time off, immigration documents, assets, company files and more.
Additional Features Worth Noting
Integrated Search
Ceipal’s Boolean search enables you to search across the entire database or through “Tech Fetch” which aggregates candidates’ job site profiles from places, such as LinkedIn, Indeed and others.
You can use a credit to view a candidate’s profile “Tech Fetch” or to pull their profile into your internal database. Ceipal is capable of detecting duplicates between the internal database and “Tech Fetch” to let recruiters know who has already been pulled into the database. That way, a recruiter doesn’t waste a credit by viewing or importing a candidate from Tech Fetch who is already present in the database. The administrator can set credit limits for each recruiter to limit how many unique profiles a recruiter can migrate from Tech Fetch into the database.
Diversity and Hiring
Although Diversity and Hiring is featured on Ceipal’s website, it’s currently under development and unavailable to customers. Once launched, it will be a feature of the ATS that provides an AI-based Diversity Assessment to find out how diverse your current workforce and talent suppliers are by gender and ethnicity. We’re curious to see if it will measure diversity across more metrics, such as age, sexual orientation, neurodiversity and a more varied gender identity spectrum.
Customer Service and Support
All Ceipal customers get a designated customer support representative and can reach customer support 24 hours a day, five days per week via phone or email. In the implementation phase, customers can migrate their data to Ceipal for free as long as they’re migrating from another ATS.
While testing out Ceipal, it would have been helpful to have a chat function to turn to directly in the interface when we had questions about how some features work. Instead, we compiled a list of questions via email to send to support@ceipal.com for questions that weren’t answered through the knowledge base.
We received an answer the same day but not from a support representative. Rather, it came from our demo representative as we weren’t yet a paid customer. In this sense, we weren’t able to get a true sense of how responsive and effective Ceipal’s customer support is. However, the demo rep led us through the platform and answered most of our questions. Some questions we had were related to features that had been temporarily disabled.
Ceipal Alternatives & How They Compare
| Ceipal | Freshteam | Manatal | Workable | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Forbes Advisor Ratings
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
Starting Price
|
$24 per user, per month (five-person minimum)
|
Free up to 50 employees, then $71 per month plus $1.20 per employee, per month
|
$15 per user, per month, when billed annually; $19 per user, per month, for month-to-month billing
|
$149 per month
|
|
Free Trial
|
Yes, after demo
|
21 days
|
14 days
|
15 days
|
|
Syndicated Job Postings
|
50-plus job boards
|
2,500-plus job boards
|
Included
|
200-plus
|
|
Social Media Integration
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
ATS
|
Included
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Candidate Matching
|
Add-on
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Candidate Relationship Management
|
Email, SMS and chatbot
|
Yes
|
Included, email and SMS
|
Yes, email only
|
|
Customizable Workflows
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Automations
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Scheduling Tools
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Interviewing Tools
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Onboarding
|
Included
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Analytics and Reporting
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Included
|
Yes
|
|
Templates
|
For email, SMS and interview scorecards
|
For emails, job descriptions and offer letters
|
For anonymized resume formatting, emails and job descriptions
|
For emails, onboarding and profiles
|
|
Third-party Integrations
|
100-plus
|
450-plus
|
360 |
70-plus
|
|
Customer Support
|
Dedicated rep and 24/5 support via phone or email
|
Chat, email and online documentation
|
Chat, email and online documentation
|
Chat, phone, email and online documentation
|
|
Mobile App
|
iOS and Android
|
iOS and Android
|
Progressive mobile app (Android and iOS)
|
iOS and Android
|
|
Read Reviews
|
‘–
|
Ceipal is one of the top-rated and easiest-to-use ATS on the market. Its particular strengths over the other three competitors include:
- Career page setup
- Candidate sourcing
- Social recruiting
- Candidate search
- Automated resume parsing
- Candidate relationship management
- Candidate evaluation tools
- Reporting
Ceipal is also the only one in this group that features generative AI to produce job descriptions. So far, we’ve seen this kind of feature in HiringThing and Recruit CRM but others are sure to adopt more generative AI features in the future as well.
Ceipal vs. Freshteam
Freshteam offers a free version and a free trial without needing to go through a demo first. It also posts jobs to thousands of job boards. However, Ceipal provides dedicated customer support for all its clients. It earns higher ratings for its customer support than Freshteam. Ceipal also earns higher ratings for ease of use, ease of setup, applicant tracking, recruitment marketing and onboarding.
Ceipal vs. Manatal
Although Ceipal and Manatal serve slightly different customer bases, with Manatal’s customer base made up of mostly very small businesses, their product offering is similar. They both serve a variety of use cases: companies hiring in-house, companies hiring with an agency and recruiting agencies themselves.
Manatal comes in at a lower price point than Ceipal and offers a more easily accessible free trial. Their platform also includes automatic candidate matching in its base tier, while Ceipal offers it as an add-on in its base tier.
Manatal also rates more highly than Ceipal in terms of user-friendliness, ease of setup and customer support. However, Ceipal earns higher scores for candidate sourcing, candidate evaluations and automated resume parsing.
Ceipal vs. Workable
At first glance, Ceipal appears to be more cost-efficient than Workable. However, given Ceipal’s five-person minimum, they have roughly the same starting price. After five users, though, Workable is indeed more cost-effective since it charges a flat monthly rate of $149 per month for up to 50 employees.
Ceipal’s strength over Workable lies in customer support, candidate sourcing, candidate management, recruitment marketing and onboarding while Workable outperforms Ceipal in ease of use, ease of setup and job posting features.
Is Ceipal Right for Me?
Ceipal is right for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) that need the option of a more basic ATS or a more advanced one with more automation. Businesses hiring more slowly or in low volumes may find Ceipal’s holistic candidate assessment reports valuable to consider candidates carefully on multiple levels.
As we’ve touched on here, Ceipal doesn’t just offer recruiting software; it offers a VMS and HRMS as well. Ceipal is an especially viable option for companies that plan to outsource some or all of their hiring to one or multiple recruiting or staffing agencies, given its VMS offering. Additionally, a company currently dissatisfied with its HRMS might consider migrating to Ceipal’s workforce management software for a more unified, integrated experience between an HRMS and ATS.
Ceipal Is Best For:
- SMBs with low or high hiring volume
- Businesses with low hiring volume but looking to hire for hard-to-fill roles
- Companies managing several talent suppliers (recruiting and staffing agencies)
- Recruiting and staffing agencies managing multiple clients
- Companies that prioritize dedicated support
- Companies that need help assessing and strengthening workforce diversity
Ceipal Is Not Recommended For:
- Companies that need more automation included in the base plan
- Companies that prioritize anonymizing features in the screening process to mitigate bias
- Companies that want an internal job board for current employees
Featured Partners
1
monday sales CRM
Free; $9 per user per month for basic features
14 days
Yes
2
HubSpot
Free; $15 per user per month (billed annually)
14 days
Yes
3
Pipedrive
$14 per user per month (billed annually)
14 days
Yes
4
Salesforce
$25 per month per user for basic features
30 days
Yes
Our Expert Opinion
Setup
We received a five-day trial of Ceipal ATS only after going through a demo. The trial comes with sandbox data, so it’s easier to see exactly how the system functions as opposed to receiving a blank slate to work with.
Ease of Use
Some Ceipal ATS features are both easy to find and easy to use, such as creating a job post, a job template or creating an applicant. Yet, other functions were difficult, if not impossible, to find because they weren’t enabled for the test environment. We consulted the knowledge base quite a bit, which was useful at times. However, it sometimes directed us to parts of the system that we didn’t see in the test environment.
A helpful tip when navigating Ceipal’s ATS: green buttons indicate an AI feature, although not all AI functionality is labeled this way as some are pink/purple faded buttons.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What do companies use Ceipal for?
Companies use Ceipal for its integrated, scalable, AI-driven ATS that includes features such as job posting, interview tools and candidate sourcing, matching and relationship management.
How is Ceipal used for recruiting?
In-house and agency recruiters alike use Ceipal to:
- Source active and passive candidates
- Evaluate candidates
- Track candidates’ application status
- Nurture relationships with active and passive candidates
- Interview candidates
- Onboard new employees
Agency recruiters, however, also use Ceipal to keep track of not only candidates but the clients for whom the candidates are sourced.
Is Ceipal an ATS?
Ceipal is a recruiting software company that offers an ATS among other products.
Why is HR software so important?
HR software is important because it helps management perform key actions on time while empowering employees to take charge of their own accounts.
