Bitrix24 vs Manatal
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentManatal compared with Bitrix24
Bitrix24 bundles a recruiting module into an all-in-one workspace with CRM, tasks, and telephony, and its free plan makes it tempting for a company that will not pay for hiring software at all. It is not a purpose-built ATS: parsing, board syndication, and candidate scoring are shallow or absent. Manatal costs money from day one but does the recruiting job properly. Choose Bitrix24 if hiring is occasional and you want one system for everything; choose Manatal if someone's job title contains the word recruiter.
Choose Bitrix24 if
Cost-sensitive small and mid-sized companies of roughly ten to a hundred people who want to consolidate CRM, telephony, projects, documents, and an intranet into one bill, and who will accept a dense interface and a real learning curve in exchange for very low cost per head.
Choose Manatal if
Recruitment agencies, headhunters, and in-house HR teams of roughly 2 to 50 people that want a complete applicant tracking system plus a client-side CRM for a per-seat price closer to a CRM than to a talent suite, and that value breadth of workflow over depth of analytics.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Bitrix24 | Manatal |
|---|---|---|
| Category | CRM | Hiring |
| Starting price | $0 for unlimited users on the free plan, then $49 a month (Basic, 5 users) on annual billing (free plan available) | $15 per user per month billed annually ($19 monthly) on the Professional plan (14 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Flat monthly plans per account that include a fixed number of users, rather than per-seat pricing, plus a separately licensed self-hosted on-premise edition. | Per user per month, billed monthly or annually, with annual billing discounted. Hiring managers are unlimited and free on every plan, so cost scales with recruiters rather than with everyone who touches a hire. Job and candidate limits apply per account, not per seat, and the entry tier is capped on both. Paid job board contracts, the branded guest portal, and the AI Interviewer are separate purchases. |
| Free plan | Unlimited users with 5GB storage, basic CRM (deals, contacts), kanban and Gantt tasks, shared calendars, chat, and video calls. Sales pipelines, automation, and telephony are not included. | No |
| Free trial | Free plan serves as the evaluation path; paid plan trials are available | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Cost-sensitive small and mid-sized companies of roughly ten to a hundred people who want to consolidate CRM, telephony, projects, documents, and an intranet into one bill, and who will accept a dense interface and a real learning curve in exchange for very low cost per head. | Recruitment agencies, headhunters, and in-house HR teams of roughly 2 to 50 people that want a complete applicant tracking system plus a client-side CRM for a per-seat price closer to a CRM than to a talent suite, and that value breadth of workflow over depth of analytics. |
| Setup time | A day to have the CRM module usable, and considerably longer to configure the wider suite properly. Realistically, a two to six week part-time project to set up pipelines, automation rules, telephony, permissions, and the modules you actually intend to use. | A single recruiter can be posting a job the same afternoon: account creation, mailbox and calendar connection, and a first job take under an hour. A migration from an existing database is the longer piece, typically a few days for bulk import, field mapping, and duplicate cleanup. |
| Learning curve | The steepest in this batch. The interface exposes a great deal of functionality at once, terminology is idiosyncratic, and staff who are used to modern SaaS often push back. Budget for structured training rather than assuming discovery. | Low. The interface follows the Kanban conventions most recruiters already know, and hiring managers need no training to review and comment. The parts that take longer are configuring workflow automations (on plans that have them) and getting the reporting you want out of a suite that is not especially deep. |
| Platforms | Web, Windows and macOS desktop apps, iOS, Android, Self-hosted on-premise edition | Web application, iOS app, Android app, Chrome sourcing extension |
| Compliance | GDPR, HIPAA compliance options on the on-premise edition, SOC-aligned controls on Enterprise cloud tiers | GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, ISO 27001 |
| Founded | 2012 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | Alexandria, Virginia, United States | Bangkok, Thailand |
| Ownership | Privately held; grew out of 1C-Bitrix and has not taken significant outside investment | Independent, venture-backed |
Strengths and limitations
Bitrix24
Strengths
- Per-account pricing with bundled users produces a cost per head nothing else in this category can match once you pass ten or fifteen people.
- Genuinely broad: CRM, telephony, Open Channels, tasks and Gantt, documents, website builder, e-signature, booking, and HR in one subscription.
- A free plan with unlimited users, which no other serious CRM offers, making evaluation and light use cost nothing.
- Built-in telephony and multi-channel messaging attach conversations to CRM records without a third-party phone system or contact centre tool.
Limitations
- The interface is dense, menu-heavy, and dated, and adoption resistance is the most common reason Bitrix24 implementations fail.
- Feature gating between tiers is complicated, and working out which module capability sits on which plan takes real effort before purchase.
- Every module is adequate rather than excellent; each one loses a head-to-head against a focused competitor.
- The learning curve is steep enough that many buyers end up engaging a partner, which adds cost the sticker price does not show.
Manatal
Strengths
- Entry pricing that is genuinely small-business accessible, with a 14-day trial and no card required, in a category where quote-only pricing is common.
- Unlimited free hiring-manager seats on every plan, which removes the usual per-seat penalty for involving the rest of the company in hiring.
- A real recruitment CRM alongside the ATS, so agencies track clients, placements, and fees without buying a second system.
- AI features shipped earlier and more broadly than most SMB-priced competitors, including scoring, enrichment, an asynchronous video interviewer, and an MCP server for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Limitations
- Reporting is the most consistently criticised area in verified G2 and Capterra reviews: standard recruiter-performance metrics are thin, and the custom report builder is locked to the $55 Enterprise Plus tier.
- Search and filtering across a large candidate database frustrates power users, with limited ability to filter on custom criteria drawn from CV or application content.
- Mass email is metered by credits, so outbound nurture at any real volume runs into a cap rather than a soft limit.
- No built-in sourcing database or verified contact data; enrichment works on profiles you already found, so a separate sourcing tool is often still needed.
Pricing compared
Bitrix24
Flat monthly plans per account that include a fixed number of users, rather than per-seat pricing, plus a separately licensed self-hosted on-premise edition.
- Free$0
- Basic$49
- Standard$99
- Professional$199
- EnterpriseFrom $399
On raw cost per head Bitrix24 is unbeatable in this category and the gap is not close: fifty users across CRM, telephony, projects, documents, and an intranet for $99 a month is arithmetic no per-seat vendor can answer. The question is whether you will actually use it. Bitrix24's value is realised through consolidation, so a company replacing four subscriptions gets an enormous win, while a company that only wants a sales pipeline pays less and gets a worse experience than Bigin or Pipedrive would give them. Factor in a real implementation effort and some adoption resistance, and the honest verdict is that Bitrix24 is exceptional value for the buyer who commits to it as a platform and mediocre value for anyone treating it as just a CRM.
Manatal
Per user per month, billed monthly or annually, with annual billing discounted. Hiring managers are unlimited and free on every plan, so cost scales with recruiters rather than with everyone who touches a hire. Job and candidate limits apply per account, not per seat, and the entry tier is capped on both. Paid job board contracts, the branded guest portal, and the AI Interviewer are separate purchases.
- Professional$15
- Enterprise$35
- Enterprise Plus$55
- CustomQuote
On raw capability per dollar Manatal is close to unbeatable in this category: $15 a seat buys multi-board posting, parsing, a full pipeline, a career page, AI scoring, and an agency CRM, where several Western competitors start above $150 a month for a comparable list. Two caveats shape the real figure. Feature gating is steeper than the headline suggests, with automation at $35 and SSO, API access, and custom reporting at $55, and the entry tier's account-wide caps are easy to outgrow. Judged honestly, a small agency that stays inside 15 open jobs gets one of the best-value purchases on this list, while a team that needs API access and real reporting is comparing $55 a seat against mid-market vendors rather than against the $15 headline.
Editorial verdict on each
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is the value argument in this category taken to its logical conclusion: fifty users across CRM, telephony, multi-channel messaging, projects, documents, and an intranet for $99 a month is a number no per-seat vendor can answer. The catch is equally clear. Every module is adequate rather than excellent, the interface is dense and dated, and the learning curve is steep enough that plenty of small businesses buy it, fail to implement it, and quietly go back to spreadsheets. Buy it if you are consolidating several tools, have ten or more people to spread the flat fee across, and can commit to a real implementation with a champion or a partner. Do not buy it if you only want a sales pipeline, if your team judges software by how it feels, or if you were hoping self-hosting would be the cheap way in.
Read the full Bitrix24 profileManatal
Manatal is the clearest value argument in small-business recruiting software. Fifteen dollars a seat buys a complete applicant tracking system, a genuine agency CRM, multi-board posting, multilingual parsing, a branded career page, and an AI layer that several far more expensive vendors have only recently matched, with a 14-day trial and no card required to check. The honest caveats are gating and depth: automation starts at $35, and SSO, API access, and custom reporting all sit at $55, so the price a growing team actually pays is not the headline. Reporting and candidate search are the real functional weaknesses, and if analytics is the reason you are shopping for an ATS, buy something else. For an agency, a headhunter, or an HR team of a few people that needs breadth quickly and cheaply, it is among the highest-return purchases in the category.
Read the full Manatal profileBitrix24 profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Manatal last reviewed 2026-08-23. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.