The price you cannot see is the price you pay

PeopleMuster costs $3 per person per month, every module included, and the number sits on the pricing page where anyone can read it. A price you cannot read before the call is a price set after the vendor has learnt your headcount and your deadline. In September 2026, eight of the vendors in this category published no figure at all.

Every figure below was read on the vendor's own site in September 2026; the Zoho People, Productive, Kantata, Certinia, Workday and ADP rows on 24 September 2026.

What a gated price is really for

A quote-only price is a number the seller sets after the discovery call, once they know how many seats you need and how soon you need them. That is the whole point of the form.

Enterprise deals are bespoke, and a form makes sense there. Most of this category is selling seats to a forty-person company, and the form exists to start a sales conversation you didn't ask for.

That cost lands on you. Shortlisting four gated products means four demos, four rounds of discovery questions and four follow-up sequences before you've seen a single figure.

Who gates the price, checked September 2026

Eight vendors send you to a form. Two more publish a partial answer. Each line names what the pricing page actually does, read on the vendor's own site, so you know what to expect before you click.

Rippling: no public price. The structure is published: products sold separately on top of a required core platform, billed per employee per month, some with a monthly base fee. rippling.com/pricing, September 2026.
HiBob: the pricing page redirects into a demo request. hibob.com/pricing, September 2026.
Darwinbox: a module picker and a Request a Quote button. darwinbox.com, September 2026.
Resourceinn: quote-gated, with a Get a Quote button in place of a figure. resourceinn.com, September 2026.
Kantata: Request Pricing, positioned as a professional services automation platform. kantata.com/pricing, 24 September 2026.
Certinia: the pricing page resolves to Get a Demo. certinia.com/pricing, 24 September 2026.
Workday: Contact Sales. workday.com, 24 September 2026.
ADP Workforce Now: three packages named Select, Plus and Premium, and no figure for any of them. adp.com, 24 September 2026.
Scoro: publishes per-user plans; prices on scoro.com.
Personio: one entry figure, from €7.60 per employee per month on Core, with every tier above it behind a demo request. personio.com/pricing, September 2026.

Who publishes, and what they charge

Publishing is a choice, and plenty of vendors selling to the same buyers make it. These are the list prices, per person per month unless the line says otherwise, read on each vendor's own pricing page.

BambooHR: Core $10, Pro $17, Elite $25 per employee per month; a flat rate from $250 a month at 25 employees or fewer. September 2026.
Deel: HR Core from $5 per employee per month. September 2026.
Zoho People: Essential HR $1.50 up to People Plus $10 per user per month, billed monthly; a five-user minimum on paid plans. 24 September 2026.
Productive: Essential $10 per user per month billed yearly ($12 monthly), Professional $25 ($29 monthly); a three-seat minimum. 24 September 2026.
Float: Starter $7, Pro $12 per scheduled person per month. September 2026.
Factorial: from $8 per user per month, with modular add-ons. September 2026.
Gusto: Simple at $49 a month plus $6 per person. Verified 22 September 2026.
PeopleMuster: $3 per person per month, every module included, no base fee, no seat minimum. Annual billing is $30 per person per year.

The shape of a price tells you where the cost lands

Four shapes cover this whole list, and knowing which one you're looking at predicts your invoice better than the headline figure does.

Per seat scales in a straight line. A base fee plus seats, the Gusto shape at $49 plus $6, weighs heaviest on a small team, because the base is fixed however few people you have.

A flat floor inverts that. BambooHR charges from $250 a month at 25 employees or fewer, which makes a small team's bill predictable and a twenty-sixth hire a step change.

Seat minimums are quieter and just as real. Zoho People starts paid plans at five users and Productive at three, so the advertised per-seat figure is not what a two-person team pays.

PeopleMuster is the first shape with nothing attached: $3 per person from the first person, and the bill is headcount times three.

What a published price does for you

A published price changes what the first call is for. Nobody spends it extracting a figure, so it goes on whether the product fits the way your team works.

It also makes the comparison honest in both directions. A competitor can read our number, and you can hold every other vendor to the same standard.

And it removes the renewal surprise. Whatever your headcount did last year, the number on the page is the number.

What to ask a vendor who will not tell you

A gated price is not a reason to walk away on its own. Make the form cost the vendor something too: ask the questions that reveal the shape before the call, and ask them by email.

Most of the answers are structural rather than commercial, and a salesperson can give them in writing in ten minutes.

Is it per seat, a base fee plus seats, or per module?
Is there a seat minimum or a headcount floor, and what happens just below it?
Does the price change by region, and by how much?
What counts as a seat: everyone in the directory, or only active users?
Is there a setup or implementation fee, and is it refundable?
What does the number do at renewal if headcount stays flat?

Why $3 is the whole bill

Three dollars sits under every paid per-person price in the table above. It is also the entire invoice: no base fee, no platform fee, no setup fee, no seat minimum. We set the system up with you as part of the subscription.

Every new customer gets 14 days free with no card required before the $3 starts. You're billed monthly and can cancel any time, and annual billing is $30 per person per year, which is two months free.

The gap comes from shape rather than corners. HR and project delivery live in one database, so there's no second tool to license and no sync between two vendors to maintain. Approved leave empties the capacity plan immediately, timesheets feed utilisation, and the audit log records field-level before and after values across all of it.

One number, one source. Our price lives in a single constant in the codebase, and a build check fails any page that prints a currency figure that is neither our $3 nor a competitor price we dated and verified. Prices drift otherwise: a post written in March and a pricing page updated in June disagree until a customer notices.

Questions people ask

Which HR software vendors do not publish their pricing?

Rippling, HiBob, Darwinbox, Resourceinn, Kantata, Certinia, Workday and ADP Workforce Now publish no figure, each checked on the vendor's own site in September 2026. Personio publishes one entry figure, from €7.60, and gates the tiers above it.

Which HR software publishes a per-employee price?

BambooHR ($10, $17 and $25 per employee per month), Deel HR Core (from $5), Zoho People ($1.50 to $10 per user), Factorial (from $8) and PeopleMuster ($3 per person, every module included) all print a figure on their own pricing page, read in September 2026.

How much does PeopleMuster cost per person?

$3 per person per month, from the first person, with every module included and no base fee or setup fee. Annual billing is $30 per person per year, two months free, and every new customer gets 14 days free with no card required.

How were the competitor prices on this page checked?

Each figure was read on that vendor's own site in September 2026 and dated on the line where it appears. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the line says the price is gated rather than repeating a third-party estimate.