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Sterling

Sterling 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page
  • Overview
  • Pricing and Plans
  • Features
  • Integrations
  • User Reviews

Overview

Sterling
Sterling
4.0
(30)

Pricing

Pricing available upon request

About Sterling

Sterling Talent Solutions provides tech-enabled human resource services related to background screening and candidate onboarding. Designed for financial services, retail, healthcare, staffing, nonprofit and gig economy organizations, it helps simplify recruitment, tracking and monitoring of applicants. Additionally, it assists HR professionals and franchise owners in creating secure work environments for their employees, customers and partners.

Key features of Sterling Talent Solutions include criminal background checks, verifications, workforce monitoring, drug and health screening. Moreover, it provides fingerprint services, which facilitates electronic fingerprint submissions, reduced rejections, regulated compliance and faster onboarding.

Sterling Talent Solutions integrates with Bullhorn, Greenhouse, Icims, Jobvite, SAP Success Factors, Snagajobs, Workday, Lever, Agile HR, Ceridian, Cornerstone and various other third-party software for streamlining HR operations. The prices of the software platform vary on the basis of business requirements and support is provided through email, phone and FAQs measures.

Sterling Screenshots

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Sterling Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $1.00
Free Trial
Free Version

Basic

$1.00

No plan information available

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    Sterling Features

    • Popular features found in Background Check
      Background Screening
      Batch Processing
      Employment Screening
      Online Applications
      Reference Checking
      Reporting & Statistics
      Screening Services Integration
      Self Service Portal
      Status Tracking
      Tenant Screening
    • More features of Sterling
      Alerts/Notifications
      API
      Compliance Management
      Dashboard
      Data Verification
      Employee Onboarding
      Employment Eligibility Verification
      Identity Verification
      Onboarding
      Records Management
      Reporting/Analytics
      Summary Reports
      Third-Party Integrations

    Sterling Integrations

    Agile HR
    Agile HR
    Avature
    Avature
    Mitratech TalentReef
    Mitratech TalentReef
    Fountain
    Fountain
    LinkedIn for Business
    LinkedIn for Business
    Cornerstone HR
    Cornerstone HR

    See all 14 integrations

    Sterling User Reviews

    Overall Rating

    4.0

    Ratings Breakdown

    5

    47%

    4

    23%

    3

    23%

    2

    0%

    1

    7%

    Secondary Ratings

    Ease of Use

    4.2

    Value for money

    4.1

    Customer support

    3.7

    Functionality

    4.1

    Tanim's profile

    Tanim A.

    Verified reviewer

    Internet

    10000+ employees

    Used weekly for less than 2 years

    Review source

    Reviewed January 2022

    Probably the best I have ever used

    5

    Ratings Breakdown

    5
    Ease of use
    5
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    The best thing about this is, it is simple and easy to use. It is pretty works very well for Background checks, I-9 verifications and others. It is quite feature rich.
    Cons:
    It is a little slow, most of the times. Other than that, I like pretty much everything.

    Read More

    CC

    Chris C.

    Verified reviewer

    Automotive

    1001-5000 employees

    Used daily for more than 2 years

    Review source

    Reviewed August 2024

    Sterling is a solid product. Everything you want in a background screening provider.

    4

    Overall excellent experience. Salesforce is top notch and customer service has been responsive.

    Ratings Breakdown

    5
    Ease of use
    4
    Value for money
    4
    Customer support
    5
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    Sterling has a very nice interface and overall it's a smooth running program. Great network for drug screens and timely background screening results.
    Cons:
    I would like the move to their Modern Hub completed. Right now we have the two options and can toggle between them. Do the Modern view and just continue to improve that.

    Reasons for switching to Sterling

    Customer Service and Overall network available for Drug Screens

    Read More

    VW

    Victoria W.

    Verified reviewer

    Food & Beverages

    501-1000 employees

    Used weekly for less than 2 years

    Review source

    Reviewed January 2026

    Good for Background Checks and Reference Checks

    4

    Sterling was easy to use but did not offer other checks as part of the site which made it difficult because the organization had to rely on other vendors to get that information.

    Ratings Breakdown

    5
    Ease of use
    4
    Value for money
    5
    Customer support
    5
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    I liked the ease of using the program, and the verification process was always very timely. Reference checks can also be conducted by employees for the organization saving HR time.
    Cons:
    I did not like that it did not integrate with the BOP which is a required check where we operate. I did not like that if there were a minor discrepancy or a reference check was not able to be completed, they would flag the account.

    Read More

    JJ

    John J.

    Verified reviewer

    Hospital & Health Care

    51-200 employees

    Used monthly for less than 6 months

    Review source

    Reviewed September 2025

    Bottom-dollar pricing represents bottom-barrel quality

    1

    Checking on this company after my own horrible experiences, I wasn’t surprised to find that it is popular specifically because it costs less for client companies than most of their companies. However, bottom-dollar usually comes with bottom-of-the barrel quality, and companies need to recognize that before signing on with Sterling. — In my recent experience with two of their service sites for background checks and information verification, I found that accurate data entry is nowhere near the Sterling strengths, as they’ll literally list a college course completion as being 5 years before you even started attendance. Or past employers will be listed with dates up to TWENTY YEARS off! Trying to enter or correct info is a nightmare, with site connectivity/ operation simply dropping if you hit the “Next” tab at the bottom of page. And, as if their site being slower than dial-up internet weren’t bad enough, you may have to enter and re-enter the SAME data 6 or 7 times before it finally saves. . Oh, and customer service? There is none, as everything is automated, including their listed phone support service. You’re looking at a minimum of two days response, usually just in the form of a new link sent for your info entry process. (Yes, their site drops you — only on 2-3 pages into their 22-page required process — and then you can’t automatically get back into it.) So, the “twenty minutes” their site says it will take at the start is really more like 8 hours of the most frustrating and slow website design you’ll ever encounter. Literally, it takes longer to finish their required online data entry than it takes for them to collect your background results… which will be wrong because you couldn’t fully enter or edit your info on time. . And, it doesn't get any better after that, as the rest of the Sterling processes on other sites/ links will also be bad. Like where you’re asked to enter citizenship, you won’t find the United States or the United Kingdom among their options. Just entering a telephone number, finding your country code is difficult, and then you have to enter the area and the actual telephone number all in separate (slow) data boxes. And, OMG, just avoid entering dates if you can, because the site won’t let you just TYPE a date, instead giving a calendar for the current month… and making you go backwards month-by-month to provide a date. . Think about that. You going to enter your 30-year old wife’s date-of-birth in such a system? . Absolutely, the worst system I’ve ever seen… and I been around since before the internet.

    Ratings Breakdown

    1
    Ease of use
    1
    Value for money
    1
    Customer support
    1
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    Nothing. It was the slowest and most difficult website I have EVER encounter, in over 30 years online. Truly a bad and time-wasting experience.
    Cons:
    The slow, low-quality website design in all their apps, and the horribly inaccurate data entry. Something as easy as entering a phone number or date is made excruciating frustrating with these people’s sites. You can’t even find the US or UK listed as nations one can have citizenship with. (US, just pick “American,” as it’s literally the closest option given.)

    Read More

    VR

    Verified
    Reviewer

    Real Estate

    2-10 employees

    Used monthly for more than 2 years

    Review source

    Reviewed December 2018

    TENANT APPLICATIONS AND SCREENING

    5

    The low cost and ease of use makes this product perfect for our needs.

    Ratings Breakdown

    5
    Ease of use
    5
    Value for money
    5
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    This work great for performing credit checks on rental applications. Work seamlessly and gives me results within 24 hours. Plus they only charge per check so easily billed out.
    Cons:
    They seem to have a really long billing cycle so I often get a bill long after the check so have to cross check to make sure the proper person is being billed.

    Read More

    VR

    Verified
    Reviewer

    Insurance

    10000+ employees

    Used daily for more than 2 years

    Review source

    Reviewed January 2025

    Good Services, Poor Customer Service, Dated User Experience

    3

    Overall, they are a good provider, and one of the only ones in Canada that doesn't a decent job at performing pre-employment checks. Their platforms needs updating as does their SLAs with customers.

    Ratings Breakdown

    3
    Ease of use
    5
    Value for money
    2
    Customer support
    3
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    They have a variety of service offerings that are available to their clients and they often get completed packages in a short period of time.
    Cons:
    They customer service was slow to respond to requests. Their platform is dated, and it doesn't have the best user experience (customer or applicant)

    Reasons for choosing Sterling

    They were recently acquired by another organization that will position them to be a well known brand.

    Read More

    MP

    Matthew P.

    Verified reviewer

    Staffing and Recruiting

    5001-10000 employees

    Used monthly for less than 12 months

    Review source

    Reviewed August 2024

    Good Product. Beyond Terrible Customer Service

    3

    As mentioned in my Pros section, running background checks were relatively easy but the customer service gets a 0/10/. Only option to pay is by ACH without a service fee. $5500 in background checks over the course of a few months and now I have to ear 3% using credit card.

    Ratings Breakdown

    4
    Ease of use
    2
    Value for money
    1
    Customer support
    3
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    Running background checks were relatively easy - single use and bulk
    Cons:
    Customer Service and Payment Method - no online payment. 3% fee to use credit card

    Reasons for choosing Sterling

    Came down to cost. They beat out their offer

    Reasons for switching to Sterling

    They were purchased by CheckR and they raised the prices through the roof

    Read More

    VR

    Verified
    Reviewer

    Computer Software

    1001-5000 employees

    Used daily for less than 6 months

    Review source

    Reviewed July 2023

    Not the best with integrations

    3

    So far, not great. The implementation and integration has not been a good experience.

    Ratings Breakdown

    3
    Ease of use
    2
    Customer support
    3
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    I like that recruiters will be able to trigger the background check.
    Cons:
    The implementation and especially the integration was not smooth. Sterling was limited in how they could integrate with our ATS which required our team to make process changes that we did not want. Plus, when we were trying to set up the integration, it didn't work in its full capacity as advertised by Sterling, and they couldn't figure out why.

    Reasons for switching to Sterling

    We were looking for something more scalable and can integrate better.

    Read More

    Richard's profile

    Richard K.

    Verified reviewer

    11-50 employees

    Used daily for more than 2 years

    Review source

    Reviewed March 2018

    Sterling works great under most circumstances.

    3

    Quick and helpful fulfillment of our diverse background screening process under low-to medium volumes.

    Ratings Breakdown

    4
    Ease of use
    3
    Value for money
    3
    Customer support
    4
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    I appreciate the convenience of the user interface. The technical team at Sterling is educated in the background process law and are able to set up packages containing background check components specifically designed to meet my clients' needs.
    Cons:
    Sterling's process can get bogged down under high volume. There are times when my company processes 20 or more background checks per day. We've had some trouble with turn-around times under these situations.

    Read More

    VR

    Verified
    Reviewer

    Staffing and Recruiting

    1001-5000 employees

    Used daily for less than 6 months

    Review source

    Reviewed May 2019

    Sterling Backgrounds

    3

    Ratings Breakdown

    3
    Ease of use
    5
    Customer support
    2
    Functionality
    icon
    Pros:
    Easy to navigate and friendly user. Receive notifications for statuses.
    Cons:
    Too much data entry. Change of date results with no confirmation.

    Read More

    Showing 1 - 10 of 30 Reviews

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