Do you actually need an applicant tracking system?

If you hire a handful of people a year, one job at a time, you probably don’t need an applicant tracking system (ATS). If you hire continuously, across several jobs and hiring managers, or you depend on posting to many job boards, you probably do. Most teams in between are buying an ATS to fix a different problem: they have too many applications to read. An ATS only partly solves that one.

This guide helps you work out which problem you actually have, and what fixes it.

What an applicant tracking system does

An ATS manages the hiring process from posting a job to making an offer. The feature lists on vendor pricing pages are consistent about the core:

• Posting and distribution: a careers page, and sending the job to job boards. Workable, for example, lists distribution to more than 200 boards.
• Collecting applications in one place, from those boards and the careers page.
• A pipeline: moving candidates through stages, with notes and history.
• Communication: emailing candidates from templates, often texting.
• Interviews: scheduling, often with calendar sync, and interview kits or scorecards.
• Reporting: time to hire, source of applicants, pipeline numbers.
• More, on higher plans: offers and e-signatures, onboarding, HR records, integrations, single sign-on.

Most now also sell AI screening, either built in or as a metered add-on. More on that below.

The four problems people buy an ATS for

1. Getting the job in front of people

If you post to many boards and track which ones work, an ATS saves real effort. If you post to one or two places, or applicants mostly come through your own website or LinkedIn, you need very little here.

2. Keeping track

Several jobs open at once, several people reviewing candidates, emails going back and forth: this is what applicant tracking was built for. A shared spreadsheet copes with one job and one decision-maker. It strains quickly beyond that, because nobody can tell which email went to whom, or who has seen which candidate.

3. Deciding who deserves a closer look

This is the one most small teams are actually struggling with: 150 applications for one role, and nobody with a day to read them. An ATS organises those applications, but organising them is not reading them. Keyword filters and knockout questions narrow the pile mechanically. AI screening features go further, and vary a lot in what they show you (see can AI help you identify the best applicants?).

4. Records and compliance

Whatever tool you use, you need to keep hiring records. In the United States, EEOC regulations require employers covered by federal anti-discrimination laws to keep personnel and employment records, including application forms, for one year, and longer if a charge is filed. Canadian provinces and other countries have their own rules. An ATS keeps records automatically, which is genuinely useful, but a well-organised shared folder with a retention date can meet a one-year requirement too. Check what applies to you.

Which tool fits which situation

Your situation	Spreadsheet and email	Screening tool	Applicant tracking system
One or two hires a year, small pile (under ~50 applications)	Good fit	Optional	Overkill
A few hires a year, large piles (100+ per job)	Strains on reading	Good fit	Works, at platform cost
Hiring most months, several jobs open, several hiring managers	Breaks down	Covers one step	Good fit
You rely on posting to many job boards	Manual	Doesn’t post	Good fit
You need interview scheduling and scorecards in one system	No	No	Good fit
Reporting or audit requirements beyond keeping records	Weak	Partial	Good fit
You already have an ATS but nobody has time to read applications	n/a	Worth considering alongside it	Check its own AI screening first

The 50 and 100 thresholds are judgement, not research. The question is whether someone can read every application carefully in the time they have. Our resume screening guide has a time budget table to help you answer that honestly.

A screening tool here means software that evaluates applications against your requirements and tells you who to look at first, without running the rest of the process. SortTheStack is one.

What it costs

Prices as listed on each vendor’s own pricing page on 9 October 2026, in US dollars. They change often; check before you decide.

Product	Entry price shown	Priced by
Breezy HR	Free plan (one active job); paid from $157/month billed annually	Plan
JazzHR	$1,000/year (Hero plan, billed annually)	Plan; excludes some businesses
Manatal	$15 per user/month billed annually (up to 15 jobs)	Users
Zoho Recruit	Free plan (one active job per recruiter licence); paid prices not shown in the page text we could read	Recruiter licences
Workable	$299/month, shown for 1–20 employees	Company size
Recruitee, Greenhouse, Lever	Quote only	Company size or hiring needs
SortTheStack (screening, not an ATS)	Free first pile; $149 per job; from $49/month	Open jobs

Two things to check that the headline price hides. First, AI screening is often extra: Workable’s agent runs on AI credits, and Breezy’s AI features are a credit-based add-on. Second, what the price scales with: per user, per job or per company size. Per-user pricing gets expensive when you want every hiring manager to see candidates.

When you clearly should buy one

• You hire continuously, with several jobs open at once.
• More than two or three people need to see and act on candidates.
• Job board distribution is how you find applicants.
• You want scheduling, structured interview kits and scorecards in one place. Greenhouse, for instance, lists structured interview kits and scorecards on its entry plan, and Workable lists them on every plan.
• You need reporting on your hiring for leadership or compliance.

If three or more of those are true, the question is which ATS, not whether. See how to choose hiring software.

When you probably shouldn’t

• You make a few hires a year and post to one or two places.
• Your real bottleneck is reading applications carefully, not tracking them.
• You’d be the only user, and a spreadsheet already works.

In those cases, a spreadsheet with a clear method, or a screening tool, gets you most of the value for much less money and setup. We compare those two directly in SortTheStack vs spreadsheets and email.

Revisit the decision when

• You start hiring for more than one role most months.
• A second or third person becomes a regular part of hiring.
• You lose track of a candidate, or one tells you they never heard back.

Any of those is a sign the tracking problem has arrived.

Sources

• Vendor pricing pages, accessed 9 October 2026: Breezy HR, JazzHR, Manatal, Zoho Recruit, Workable, Recruitee, Greenhouse, Lever.
• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Recordkeeping requirements, accessed 9 October 2026.