emPerform covers reviews, pay planning and succession for one yearly fee

One fee, pay planning and a choice of hosting

You choose where it runs, and a typical start takes 3 to 7 days of your team’s time

Companies with 130 to 34,000 staff use it

Size, hourly work and support hours need answers before you sign

emPerform prices each contract by quote

emPerform sells by custom quote. It charges one annual subscription fee for all features. In a blog post of October 2018, emPerform put a subscription at under $3 per user per month. At that rate, 100 employees cost under $3,600 a year. Treat that figure as an old reference point and get a current quote.

emPerform sells custom reports and consulting as service hours. It sells extra training and custom integration the same way. Support comes with the subscription.

You choose where the software runs. emPerform can host it, or you can run it on your own servers. You can switch between the two at any point. Ask whether the fee differs between the two.

You keep ownership of your data. You can export all data and reports to several formats. emPerform sets out how long it keeps data in its privacy policy. Ask for the export formats and the deletion date in the contract.

Get the contract length, the renewal terms, any limit on price rises and the uptime promise in writing.

What to ask emPerform before you sign

1. What yearly fee will you quote for our headcount, with every feature switched on? Good answer: A written fee for the full term, with a cap on any rise at renewal.
2. Which of our needs count as service hours, and what is the hourly rate? Good answer: A list of the work in hours, with the rate written into the contract.
3. Your materials give 150 to 3,000 employees and 50 to 3,000. Which range covers us? Good answer: A named customer of our size, in our country, that has run a full year.
4. Which HR, payroll and workforce management systems do you link to today, and who builds each link? Good answer: A named list, a customer running each link, and the build cost in the quote.
5. Can we see the SSAE 16 and SOC reports? Good answer: Current reports that we can read before we sign.
6. If we run it on our own servers, who handles maintenance and updates? Good answer: A written split of duties, and how long you support each version.
7. What does the “ghost ratings” option do, and can you show the Writing Assistant working inside a review form? Good answer: A live demo, the AI model if there is one, and where our review text is stored.
8. What support do we get outside 9am to 5pm Eastern Time? Good answer: Support hours for our time zone, or a written response time.
9. How do we get all our data out when the contract ends, and when do you delete it? Good answer: A list of file formats and a deletion date written into the contract.

Alternatives to emPerform

Five products do a similar job to emPerform. They are PerformYard, Trakstar, Appraisd (now Talos Perform), SAP SuccessFactors and Empxtrack.

PerformYard publishes $5 to $15 per person per month. The price varies with headcount and the products you choose. The Talent Development plan covers pay, coaching, competencies and succession planning. Contracts renew each year unless you give 60 days’ notice. The vendor may raise the price by up to 20% at renewal.

Trakstar sells by custom quote. Onboarding, set-up and training come with it. Its succession tool also uses a nine-box grid. That grid files each person in one of nine boxes by results and growth potential. Trakstar is part of Mitratech. Its fees are fixed for each contract year.

Appraisd is now called Talos Perform, and its two price pages differ. The Appraisd page sets a £3,600 yearly minimum for the first 50 employees. After that it charges £6 a month each for employees 51 to 100. The rate is £4 for 101 to 200 and £3 beyond 200. Each rate applies only to the employees in that band. The Talos Perform page gives prices from £95 per employee. It sets a minimum of £4,750 a year for up to 50 employees on a two-year contract, billed yearly. Ask which price list applies to a new contract today.

SAP SuccessFactors asks you to request a quote on its site. A reseller, NTT DATA Business Solutions, gives prices on the UK government’s G-Cloud catalogue. In January 2026 it priced Performance & Goals at £2.53 per user per month for up to 2,000 users. SAP’s Pay for Performance package, which adds compensation, costs £2.93 for the same band. Those prices exclude VAT, rise 3.3% each year and leave out support.

Empxtrack lets a company start with 5 appraisals free. It sells extra appraisals inside the application. It also sells software for managing pay that uses performance data. Empxtrack’s plan prices apply to a minimum of 1,000 employees. Ask Empxtrack which price applies to you.

Buying nothing is the last option. If your main HR system already runs reviews, ask its vendor what that covers before you buy a second product. You can read about the rest of the market in our guide to performance management software.