The 7 best Applaud AI alternatives for HR & IT support in 2025

Picking the right tool to handle your internal HR and IT support can be a real headache. You need something that can untangle complex questions but is also simple enough for your team to use without needing a six-month training course. Applaud has a solid employee experience platform, but a lot of teams are now hunting for more modern and flexible Applaud AI alternatives.

If you’re feeling boxed in by a tool that’s too rigid, expensive, or just plain difficult to connect with your other apps, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve waded through the top options to find the platforms that give you fast, smart, automated support without making you rebuild your entire tech setup from scratch. Let’s get into the top 7 alternatives that could really change how you manage internal support in 2025.

What is Applaud AI?

So, what’s Applaud AI all about? Think of it as a sleek, user-friendly layer that sits on top of your big, traditional Human Capital Management (HCM) systems like Workday or SAP. The main idea is to make the employee experience better by pulling HR services, knowledge articles, and other common tasks into one clean portal.

The platform gives HR teams no-code tools to build their own workflows, hoping to deflect common questions and make case management a bit smoother. While it has an AI assistant, its real superpower is making clunky, old-school HR systems look and feel like a modern app. It’s generally a good fit for huge companies that are already deeply invested in something like Oracle or SAP and just want a better-looking front door for their employees.

Why look for Applaud AI alternatives?

While Applaud does a great job of putting a pretty face on legacy systems, its approach isn’t for everyone. Teams often start looking for Applaud AI alternatives for a handful of common reasons:

• It’s a bit of a one-trick pony. Applaud is built to work best with large, all-in-one HCM systems. If your company knowledge is scattered across different tools like Confluence, Google Docs, and Slack, you might find it struggles to pull everything together compared to other platforms.

• It’s not exactly a quick win. Being an enterprise platform, getting started can be a long, drawn-out process. If you’re looking for something you can set up yourself and see results in minutes (not months), it can feel painfully slow.

• It can feel like a total overhaul. Even though it works with your existing HCM, you still have to get your team to adopt its entire employee portal. For teams that just want to add some smart AI to their current help desk or chat tool, that’s a pretty big ask.

• The price is a mystery. Like a lot of enterprise software, the pricing is hidden. This makes it tough to figure out what you’ll actually pay without sitting through a bunch of sales calls.

Our criteria for the best Applaud AI alternatives

So, how did we pick the best Applaud AI alternatives? We weren’t just looking for a long list of features. We focused on what actually makes a difference for busy HR and IT teams today.

• Easy setup: How fast can you get it working? We leaned towards tools that you can actually set up yourself, without needing to book a demo or sit through a mandatory onboarding.

• Smart automation: Does the AI actually do useful stuff? We looked for the ability to learn from past tickets, create custom automated actions, and build real workflows.

• Plays well with others: How well does it connect to the tools you already use? The best options should bring all your knowledge together (from help desks, wikis, chat apps) without making you move everything.

• Clear pricing: Is it obvious what you’re paying for? We gave extra points to platforms with straightforward plans and no weird, hidden fees.

Top 7 Applaud AI alternatives compared

Here’s a quick side-by-side look at how our top 7 Applaud AI alternatives measure up.

Feature	eesel AI	ServiceNow HRSD	Leena AI	HiBob	Slack/Teams Bots	Motivosity	Workday Help
Best For	Self-serve AI automation	Enterprise ITSM/HRSD	AI-first HR chatbots	All-in-one HCM	Custom solutions	Employee engagement	Workday-native shops
Ease of Setup	Minutes (self-serve)	Months (consultant-led)	Weeks	Weeks	Days to weeks (dev-led)	Days	Weeks to months
Unified Knowledge	✅ (100+ integrations)	🟡 (Ecosystem-focused)	🟡 (Primarily HR)	❌ (Internal only)	🟡 (Custom build)	❌	❌ (Internal only)
Train on Tickets	✅	🟡 (Requires tuning)	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Pricing Model	Transparent (tiered)	Custom (enterprise)	Custom	Per employee/month	N/A (dev cost)	Per employee/month	Add-on to Workday
Free Trial	✅ (Free forever plan)	❌	❌	❌	N/A	❌	❌

The 7 best Applaud AI alternatives in 2025

Alright, let’s dive into the details of the top platforms for modern HR and IT support.

1. eesel AI

eesel AI is our top pick for teams who want to add genuinely useful AI to their support process without kicking off a massive, company-wide project. It plugs right into your help desk (like Zendesk or Jira Service Management), chat tools (like Slack or Teams), and all the places you keep your documents to automate answers and help out your support agents.

Instead of making you switch to a whole new portal, eesel AI just makes the tools you already have smarter. You can get it up and running in minutes. The coolest part is its ability to learn from past tickets, pull knowledge from over 100 sources like Confluence and Google Docs, and even simulate how well it will perform on your old tickets before you turn it on. That means you can try it out with basically no risk.

Pros:

• Genuinely self-serve: You can sign up, connect your help desk, and launch an AI agent in about 10 minutes without ever talking to a salesperson.

• Brings all your knowledge together: It seamlessly connects to your help center articles, past tickets, and internal wikis to give accurate answers from one source of truth.

• Risk-free simulation: The simulation mode is a standout feature. It lets you test the AI on thousands of your past tickets, so you know exactly how it will perform before it ever talks to an employee.

• Transparent pricing: The pricing is clear and predictable, with no strange per-resolution fees that pop up and surprise you later.

Cons:

• It’s not a full-blown HCM or employee portal. It’s hyper-focused on doing one thing really well: AI-driven knowledge management and support automation.

Pricing:

eesel AI’s pricing is upfront and based on usage. There’s a 7-day free trial to test everything out.

• Team Plan: $299/month ($239/month billed annually) for up to 3 bots and 1,000 AI interactions. This gets you training on docs, an AI Copilot for your help desk, and the Slack integration.

• Business Plan: $799/month ($639/month billed annually) for unlimited bots and 3,000 interactions. This adds the big features like training on past tickets, a fully automated AI Agent, MS Teams integration, and custom AI Actions for things like ticket triage.

• Custom Plan: For larger companies with more complex needs, offering unlimited interactions, advanced AI actions, and extra security controls.

2. ServiceNow HR Service Delivery

If your company already runs on ServiceNow for everything from IT to finance, then using their HR Service Delivery (HRSD) tool can be a no-brainer. It offers powerful case and knowledge management and ties in perfectly with all the other IT workflows on the platform.

But all that power comes with a lot of complexity. Getting it set up is a massive project that requires hiring specialized consultants, so it’s not something you can just spin up and try. It’s really built for large companies that want one single platform to rule them all and have the budget and team to manage it.

Pros:

• Connects deeply with the rest of the ServiceNow platform (ITSM, etc.).

• Can be customized to death and scales up for huge organizations.

• Solid features for managing workflows and support cases.

Cons:

• It’s incredibly complex and expensive to set up and keep running.

• Definitely not a self-serve tool; you’ll need a team of experts.

• The AI can sometimes feel like it was bolted on later, rather than being a core part of the product.

Pricing:

• ServiceNow doesn’t publish its prices. You have to go through their sales team for a custom quote, which can make it hard to compare options without a long-winded sales process.

3. Leena AI

Leena AI is an AI-first platform that focuses on automating HR support, usually with a conversational chatbot. It’s designed to handle common employee questions about company policies, payroll, or benefits. It also includes case management for when a question gets too tricky and needs to be sent to a human. Gartner even points to it as a direct competitor to Applaud.

Its main focus is HR, so it might not be the best fit if you need to bring IT and HR knowledge together or connect with a lot of non-HR tools.

Pros:

• A strong, clear focus on using conversational AI for HR.

• Great for automating the simple, repetitive questions your HR team gets all day.

• Includes other HR features like employee onboarding and engagement surveys.

Cons:

• Not as strong at pulling in knowledge from non-HR sources.

• Pricing isn’t public.

Pricing:

• You won’t find Leena AI’s pricing on their website. You have to book a demo to get a custom quote.

4. HiBob

Think of HiBob as the "do-it-all" platform for mid-sized companies. It’s a modern Human Capital Management (HCM) system that handles everything from core HR and payroll to performance reviews. It has a built-in help desk feature, which makes it an option for teams who want one single platform to manage the entire employee journey.

The catch is that its support tools are just one small piece of a much larger suite. It doesn’t have the specialized AI automation or deep knowledge integrations you’d get from a dedicated tool like eesel AI. HiBob is a fantastic choice if you need a whole new HCM, but maybe not if your main goal is just to automate internal support.

Pros:

• A complete, modern HCM platform for the entire employee lifecycle.

• The interface is clean and easy to use.

• Has strong features for performance management and company culture.

Cons:

• The help desk feature isn’t as advanced or AI-focused as specialized tools.

• It’s not built to unify knowledge from outside sources like Confluence or Google Docs.

Pricing:

• HiBob doesn’t list its prices publicly. It’s a per-employee, per-month model, and you have to schedule a demo to get a quote.

5. Custom Slack/Microsoft Teams bots

If you’ve got a team of developers itching for a project, building your own bot inside Slack or Microsoft Teams is always an option. This route gives you total control. You can design the bot to do exactly what you need, connecting it to any of your internal systems.

Of course, that flexibility comes at a cost: a ton of engineering time and ongoing maintenance. You’d be responsible for building everything from the language processing to the knowledge retrieval yourself. This path makes sense for companies with very specific needs that off-the-shelf tools can’t handle. For most teams, a dedicated platform like eesel AI’s AI Internal Chat provides all the power without the maintenance headache.

Pros:

• You have complete control over how it works and what it does.

• Can be built to fit highly specific internal processes.

• It lives right inside the chat tools your employees use every day.

Cons:

• Requires a lot of ongoing developer time and money to build and maintain.

• You miss out on advanced features like analytics, simulation modes, and a simple admin dashboard.

Pricing:

• There’s no subscription fee, but the cost is the salary of the engineers you’ll need to build it. For context, Slack’s paid plans start at $7.25 per user per month.

6. Motivosity

Motivosity is a bit of a different beast. It focuses on another part of the employee experience entirely: recognition, appreciation, and team connection. It’s a tool for building a positive company culture through peer-to-peer shoutouts and rewards.

While it’s a great platform for employee engagement, it’s not a direct Applaud AI alternative for support. It doesn’t do ticketing, case management, or AI-powered knowledge automation. Think of it as a tool that works alongside your support system, not as a replacement for it.

Pros:

• Excellent for employee recognition and improving company culture.

• Simple to use, and employees tend to actually like it.

• Integrates with Slack and Teams to make giving praise easy.

Cons:

• It’s not a support or knowledge management platform.

• It won’t solve any of your HR or IT ticketing problems.

Pricing:

• Motivosity’s pricing is modular. You start with a base platform and add on programs. There’s a $3,000 minimum annual spend, and you have to talk to their sales team for a specific quote.

7. Workday Help

Just like with ServiceNow, Workday Help is the default choice for companies that are all-in on the Workday ecosystem. It provides case management and a knowledge base that are built right into Workday’s HCM data, which allows for some nicely personalized and context-aware support.

The downside? You’re stuck inside the Workday walled garden. Pulling in knowledge from outside sources is tough, and you’re tied to Workday’s schedule for new features and updates. It’s a solid pick for Workday-first companies, but less ideal for those who use a mix of different best-in-class tools.

Pros:

• Flawless integration with Workday HCM data.

• Offers a consistent experience for employees who are already in Workday all day.

• Benefits from Workday’s strong security and data privacy.

Cons:

• Very limited in its ability to integrate knowledge from outside the Workday world.

• Doesn’t have the flexibility or self-serve AI features of more modern, standalone tools.

Pricing:

• Workday Help is sold as an add-on to a Workday HCM subscription. The price isn’t public, so you’ll need to get a custom quote from their sales team.

How to choose the best Applaud AI alternative

Alright, so how do you actually pick one? The right tool really just depends on your goals. Ask yourself a few key questions:

1. What’s our main goal here? Are you trying to rip out and replace your entire HR system, or do you just want to add smart automation to the support channels you already have? If it’s the latter, a flexible tool like eesel AI will get you results much faster than an all-in-one platform.

2. Where is all our information? If your team’s knowledge is spread across Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, and your help desk, you absolutely need a tool that was built to bring it all together. Double-check the integration list for any tool you’re considering.

3. How much time do we have? If you need something working this week, look for a self-serve platform that doesn’t require a six-month implementation project. If you have a dedicated project team and a longer timeline, an enterprise solution like ServiceNow could work.

4. What’s our budget? Be careful with platforms that hide their pricing. A tool with clear, predictable costs helps you make a solid business case and avoid any nasty surprises down the road.

The best Applaud AI alternatives for a new era of support

The world of HR and IT support is shifting. We’re moving away from giant, one-size-fits-all systems and towards more flexible, intelligent tools that work together. While platforms like Applaud helped pave the way for a better employee experience, the best Applaud AI alternatives today are all about delivering value quickly, uniting scattered knowledge, and putting powerful AI right in the hands of your team.

If you’re ready to see how fast you can automate support and give your employees instant, accurate answers, give eesel AI a try. You can set up your first AI agent for free in just a few minutes.