Comparisons · November 2026 · 5 min read · By the OfficeHR team

Zoho People Alternatives for UAE Companies

Most people who search for a Zoho People alternative are in one of two places. Either HR has quietly turned into three subscriptions and they wonder whether one tool would be simpler, or they looked at Zoho because it showed a price and then found that UAE payroll sits in a different product from the HR they were looking at. Both are reasonable places to end up.

OfficeHR is one subscription for HR, payroll, WPS salary files, attendance and hiring: AED 250 a month for up to fifteen employees, then AED 9 for each extra employee, billed yearly, with a 30 day free trial and no setup fee.

First, work out what you are paying for today

Zoho sells HR and payroll as separate products. Zoho People is the HR side, with employee records, leave, attendance and onboarding. Zoho Payroll is where the UAE payroll features live. Before you shop anywhere else, add up everything you pay for today, including every product and every extra employee, on the billing frequency you actually use. Ask each vendor for the current number directly rather than relying on a comparison page, ours included.

Plenty of companies discover they pay more than they assumed. Plenty discover the opposite. Both are useful to know.

Why UAE companies look elsewhere

The stack grows. Employee records in one product, payroll in another, accounting in a third. Each can be sensibly priced on its own, but together they are a stack to administer, and the work falls on whoever does HR, which at a thirty person company is usually one person doing four jobs.

One employee record. When hiring, HR and payroll live in separate systems, a new joiner is entered more than once, and a salary change has to be made in two places.

Payroll depth. A straightforward monthly run works almost anywhere. Complicated structures, final settlements and gratuity are where teams discover how much of the work they still do by hand.

Local support. When a salary file is rejected by your bank, you want someone who knows what that looks like in the UAE.

When staying where you are makes sense

We would rather say this plainly than bury it. If your payroll is simple and stable, your team is small, and your accounting and other systems already live in the same suite, moving may not pay off. A switch is worth it when the stack has become the problem.

Where OfficeHR fits

We built OfficeHR for UAE companies from about fifteen people upward. Core HR, leave and attendance, payslips, the WPS file, hiring and performance come in one subscription rather than three.

AED 250 a month for up to fifteen employees, then AED 9 for each extra employee, billed yearly. Quarterly billing saves over 20% against monthly, and monthly billing is available at a higher rate. There is no quote only tier at any size.

What OfficeHR costs by team size, up to 100 people

The subscription count is the real comparison. Hiring is included, so a role goes from requisition through scored skills tests and interviews to a signed offer and an employee record without another tool or another bill. Only employees on payroll count toward the price, so HR admin logins are unlimited. And there is a runway tool that models what a hire does to your cash before you make it, and what releasing someone would cost once gratuity, notice, leave and repatriation are counted.

At thirty people the yearly price is AED 385 a month for HR, payroll, attendance and hiring together.

What OfficeHR does not do. It is a younger product with a shorter track record. It has no accounting product behind it and no live integration with accounting systems, so the monthly payroll total goes across as a journal entry. There is no insurance brokerage and no visa or PRO service, and it does not file Emiratisation, ILOE or anything else with MOHRE for you.

If you do decide to move

Export first. Pull your employee records, salary history and leave balances out of your current system before you give notice on anything, because retrieving data after a subscription lapses is a different and more annoying conversation.

Then run one month in parallel. Generate the new system's SIF file for a month you have already submitted, and compare it line by line against the file your bank actually accepted. Same employees, same IBANs, same components, same total. Our free WPS file checker does that comparison for you in your browser. If the files match, the rest of the migration is paperwork. Pick a month end as your cut over, because mid month migrations are where leave balances get mangled.

Common questions

Is one subscription better than separate HR and payroll products?

Often, for a company of twenty to fifty. One employee record means a joiner or salary change is entered once, and the payroll run, leave balances and gratuity all read from the same place. Separate products can still make sense if your payroll is very simple.

What does OfficeHR cost compared with running several subscriptions?

OfficeHR is AED 250 a month for up to fifteen employees, then AED 9 per extra employee, billed yearly, excluding VAT. Add up your current products at your own headcount and compare the yearly totals. That is the only comparison that matters.

Does OfficeHR integrate with accounting software?

Not live today. The monthly payroll total goes across as a journal entry, which is how most companies of this size handle it regardless of tooling.

Does OfficeHR handle visas, Emiratisation or ILOE filing?

No. It keeps employee records and payroll in order. It does not file anything with MOHRE on your behalf, and you should be suspicious of any vendor that says it does.

Keep reading

Not sure whether to move? Email three of your employment contracts, with employee names and ID numbers removed, to hello@officehr.ae and we will send back a short read on what they say against the Labour Law's default positions. Free, no call, and no obligation to look at OfficeHR at all.

Last checked November 2026. Prices and features of any HR product change, so confirm directly with each vendor before deciding. Zoho, Zoho People and Zoho Payroll are trademarks of their owner and are used here only to describe what readers are searching for.

Try it on your own payroll.

AED 250 a month for up to 15 employees, billed yearly. Run last month's payroll in the free 30 day trial and compare the file against the one your bank accepted.

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