--- title: "CATS Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of CATS. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if CATS is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/recruiting-agency/cats-ats-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Recruiting Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/hr/recruiting-software-comparison/) / [CATS](https://www.softwareadvice.com/recruiting-agency/cats-ats-profile/) / CATS Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/recruiting-agency/cats-ats-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/recruiting-agency/cats-ats-profile/alternatives/) # CATS User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.2/5 - Total reviews: 144 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.3/5 - Customer support: 4.3/5 - Value for money: 4.3/5 - Functionality: 4.1/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 65 reviews (45%) - 4 stars: 57 reviews (40%) - 3 stars: 16 reviews (11%) - 2 stars: 5 reviews (3%) - 1 star: 1 reviews (1%) ### Most mentioned cons - Good, easy system, but support lacking and next to zero AI. ## CATS customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 144 (page 1). ### CATS - Great value CRM for small businesses - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: November 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. CATS was always easy to work with. Great customer service. I always got a reply within a day of my inquiry. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros CATS is very cost-effective and easy to use. It was my first CRM for my business and it's was a great starting CRM. #### Cons There were limited CRM features for scheduling and communicating with candidates. I also needed a CRM with a really strong Search function. CRM wasn't as strong there. --- ### CATS: Easy to Use, But Customer Service Falls Short - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Cara D. - Industry: Staffing and Recruiting - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: July 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I would say my experience has been positive until the last year. We are still using CATS and it has been great but since we are growing we need an ATS company that we can grow with. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like the ease of use, it's easy for my employees to understand and adjust to certain things. I love the buttons and how they function within a workflow, especially how we use them in our company. The videos provided are definitely helpful as well. #### Cons My main issue recently has been the customer service. They responded to most of my questions but there was a big thing I needed answered/help with and I ended up reaching out 3 times and still never received a response. This resulted into searching for a new ATS platform as I need a company that we can grow with. --- ### Without CATs I'm not sure how we would manage - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Staffing and Recruiting - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Excellent, the sales and support staff are always on point. I hate calling tech support in general, but really don't mind with CATs. Always affable and helpful. We have yet to have an issue that wasn't promptly resolved by the CATs tech support. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Ease of in-house communication and interoperability. Each user can easily see the work of their colleagues which cuts down on a huge amount of unnecessary communication. We can seamlessly take over each other's work when colleagues are on leave or otherwise busy. The application portals are very easy to use and the workflow is intuitive and useful. Honestly, I'm not sure how we could manage with such a lean HQ staff without having CATs. #### Cons The only con I can identify with CATs is their search algorithm. The Boolean search functions can be improved. For example, if I'm looking for an "Education in Emergencies Specialist" within my database and search for this phrase using the Boolean quotation marks I will occasionally get results that identify anyone who has the word "in" somewhere in their resume. Yes, I also get "Education in Emergencies Specialists" but also a lot of people with completely irrelevant CVs. Some of this is mitigated by using the tags, lists, and custom fields but sometimes weird results are populated. Again, this is really the only issue I have with CATs and I'm really nit picking here. I don't find this to be a significant impediment to my work, and the pros heavily outweigh this one con. --- ### Better than average product, best in class customer service - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Staffing and Recruiting - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Better than other ATS I have used. Since this is a recruiting and staffing tool, making it as simple as possible is a best practice since we need quick access to notes for reference more than any other functionality. It provides this quickly and efficiently. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros -Responsive customer service -Idiot-proofed functionality -Mobile experience has 90%+ of the full functionality #### Cons -Latest upgrade to Nala was clumsy and left some very obvious bugs in for release --- ### CATS was a Godsend - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Transportation/ Trucking/ Railroad - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We appreciate being able to unify our process, helping streamline our process, provide our applicants with a consistent experience, identifying where our good candidates are coming from and unifying our recruiting team and efforts. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I appreciated the support through the set up process and the responsiveness of the team to our beginning processes. There is so much customization for your workflow and we have appreciated all of the improvements to the system over the time we have used it. (over 6 years) #### Cons Honestly - it's really hard find things we don't like about the software. Support has been great about helping us to work around things we thought we wanted. --- ### Long time user - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Human Resources - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I switched to CATS more than a decade ago when it was a free beta program. It has been a part of my business on an almost daily basis. It's comfortable and hard to imagine switching to something different. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Great interface, comfortable to use. Becomes familiar quickly. Grown with the software. #### Cons No ability to drag and drop related emails or documents into a a candidate or client record. --- ### Excellent ATS Option - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Amber W. - Industry: Staffing and Recruiting - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: less than 1 year · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We went from using the same ATS for over 17 years when we decided to make the change to CATS. It’s modern, sleek, easy to use and customer support is very easy to understand and knowledgeable. #### Cons I do wish there was a platform versus it being web based. --- ### I love CATS - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Human Resources - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: 1-3 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is intuitive and easy to use. It has all the functionality of a large CRM in a great software that is affordable #### Cons Have not found any yet. I would like a couple other calendaring functions but just a minor change would be it. --- ### CATS has been such a help so far! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Accounting - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: less than 1 year · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We have been using CATS since May 2019 and so far I love it! We are a smaller - midsize company and I had been looking for an ATS that would help to make my recruiting process smoother. As the only recruiter here, I needed something to help streamline my process, hold all the candidates information, generate reports and make it easy to know what steps I am in during the process. So far it's everything we have been looking for! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros The SMS Feature Easy job posting Quick Customer service Quickly able to look at the candidates profile Website to host your jobs, makes applying for the candidate easier #### Cons The learning curve, but that comes with any software. --- ### Affordable, Simple, Flawed - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Bill B. - Reviewed: May 2014 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I’m approaching two years with CATS and have reviewed and demoed many other ATS’s including iCIMS, JobVite, The Applicant Manager, AcquireTM and the Monster Talent Management Suite. Bottom line up front: This is a solid choice for new firms on a budget who have low customer service expectations and no need for a reporting capability. The first thing that appealed to me about CATS was that it gave me a free 30-day trial that didn't hold back the bells and whistles. I had access to every feature from the moment I signed up. It was the most intuitive of all the products I demoed. I didn't need a salesperson to walk me through each section (something that I would have been hindered by with the other products). The default customization was nearly perfect and I was able to easily make the few tweaks that my workflow required. I uploaded my stash of resumes, posted my open job orders and started moving candidates through the hiring process. It was simple. Other CATS features - Want to allow candidates apply through LinkedIn or Indeed? Check. Want to push jobs to your company Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn page? Check. Mass emails, automatic emails, job sharing with hiring managers, integration with Outlook and Word, a customizable jobs website? Check. CATS is set up for both corporate and agency recruiting. The two main negatives are customer service and reporting. Customer service is about what you’d expect from a budget firm. Some questions I sent through email were ignored and some were returned with one-word answers. The reporting capability is a bit scary for anyone who might need to generate an AAP/EEO report. The detail just isn’t there and CATS is either unwilling or unable to generate a custom report with the necessary data. #### Pros Affordable, Intuitive #### Cons Customer service, reporting --- ### Overall a great experience utilizing CATS to get work done! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: December 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I love that the technical support of very responsive and open to new ideas in order to continuously improve the system. #### Cons The least thing I like is that it's not fully integrated on a smart phone. That makes working on a mobile impossible. --- ### CATS - AS AN HRIS SYSTEM...it's not just for recruiting anymore - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Human Resources - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have multiple clients and can easily adapt CATS to meet their kooky HR and workforce planning and job posting, ATS needs. It allows me to uniquely tailor my client's portals and documentation and electronic communication needs form job posting to off boarding. No other software program out there does what CATS does...I know I've tried them all including Bamboo HR, Zenefits, HR Direct Apps to name three that don't compare to CATS. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros All the cool customization that I control to meet both me and my clients HR and full cycle recruitment needs. Tech support is awesome and always there to help answer questions and problem solve. #### Cons Perhaps the ability to include I9 and W4 electronic onboarding so I can stop using DocuSign. --- ### Easy to Use but definitely things to fix still - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Product usage: less than 1 year · daily - Reviewed: December 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros It has a simple step by step use, quick start and easy to load everytime - Anyone with internet/Social media user knowledge can get it in no time #### Cons Big issues with different files formats to view without having to download it - Search bar is not the best, it can be definitely better. Search results for candidates or jobs is definitely as accurate as it could/should be --- ### Nice tool as a Database - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Consumer Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: April 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. With the previous version it was an amazing experience, right now the only issue that I have is the tool is very slow response. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros CATS is a very useful tool to keep all the information of customers, candidates, and with the new version is very easy to find the information. #### Cons Right now is very slow, I don't know the reason but is very slow, I think is because they release a new version and they are testing the tool, but right now is very slow --- ### CATS is an excellent recruiting solution for both Corporate and Agency Recruiters - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Reviewed: June 2014 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Let me start by saying that I have been with CATS for the past few years. My experience has been nothing short of excellent. CATS has far more robust features than the other recruitment systems I've explored and/or used. It can be used to manage candidate flow for existing requisitions or to build strategic candidate pipelines for the needs of the future. CATS is easy to customize the system internally to work within your existing recruitment processes. Most of the other tools I've used has required us to create multiple work around processes forcing and even change our internal processes to meet the requirements of the system. This isn't the case with CATS and it only took us an hour or two to set it up. CATS has made various plug-ins available free of charge to its subscribers. These plug-ins allow you to do everything from edit resumes within the system using a Microsoft Word Plug-in, leverage WordPress, and even send LinkedIn profiles and resumes from job boards directly into the CATS system. You can easily move data from other recruiting systems to CATS. You can either upload large batches of resumes or even upload a CSV document from Excel directly into the system. One of the best features behind CATS is that it is a tool that continues to grow and is always improving. They continue to grow in excellence through the value they place on the feedback from their subscribers. Many of the suggestions recommended by subscribers have been implemented very successfully and relatively quickly. I strongly recommend any organization looking for an extremely robust and customizable recruitment solution to consider CATS. You can even avoid lengthy contracts. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 --- ### Works very well for I need - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Product usage: 1-3 years · daily - Reviewed: January 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Customer service is very personable and friendly – they have the rare gift of actually WANTING to be helpful. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It is customizable, versatile. I like being able to sort on the various categories. Every day I learn something new that the program can do / different ways I can sort the data. #### Cons I do not have any at this time. Upon further investigation, the issues that I thought I had actually stemmed from my own need to become more familiar with the program. #### Vendor response Thank you, Jeannine, for taking the time to write a review of CATS! We think we may already have a solution for the issues you mentioned. A member of our support team will be reaching out to help! Replied January 2018 --- ### 8 Year CATS User - Overall rating: 2/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Staffing and Recruiting - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: 3-5 years · daily - Reviewed: June 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Has a nice look and feel. Has good uptime. #### Cons Very clunky and slow at times. Does not offer any integrations that are helpful. I use it for dissemination of my jobs. It is one step above an excel spreadsheet. --- ### Used CATS for about a year. - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Donna H. - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: 1-3 years · weekly - Reviewed: July 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall does get the job done if the user have a good understanding of how to use the system for a decent price. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros - Price is right. - Good for mid to large sized company due to the multiple features it has to accommodate connecting with hiring managers. - Have training tutorials and a customer service contact number. - Customer service are very knowledgeable with the software. - Connects with third party recruiting job posting websites. #### Cons - A new user would require training in order to utilize the software or benefit from the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Not as user friendly as desired. - A challenging software to use because the visual diagrams or presentations are limited and is made up of mostly context. It is important the user is a visual learner. Having visual representations will help the user have a better understanding of the recruitment and or applicant flow chart statuses. --- ### Just OK - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Real Estate - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: 1-3 years · daily - Reviewed: September 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. CATS is an OK solution for agency recruiting teams, but I would not recommend it as a tool for in-house teams. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros CATS is easy-to-use and has decent reporting functionality. It was a good solution for the recruiting agency I worked with. #### Cons It's not a great solution for hiring managers or in-house teams. It's clunky and needs a big UI update. --- ### Cats Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Marjan W. - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: 1-3 years · daily - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We use it as an applicant tracking software. We keep track of applicants from the initial sourcing to the hiring stage and beyond if needed. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like the new beta version, it is easy and user friendly. #### Cons I don't like that you can't search through all of the applicants using a keyword. --- ### CATS is easy to use, but sometimes too simple - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Industry: Retail - Product usage: 1-3 years - Reviewed: May 2015 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros It's relatively easy to use and mostly intuitive in its functions. The support and live feedback chat is great. Also good that the filtering system has improved. #### Cons When applicants apply to a job order more than once or if I copy applicants over from another job order, the "date candidate was created/entered/last updated" doesn't necessarily change to reflect the most recent date. For example, if you mass select a group of candidates and use the "copy to another job order" function, if the candidate already exists in that job order, their "date candidate was entered" doesn't update, which means I have to remove them from the job order and re-add them to the job order to update the date. Also, lately, there have been a lot of delays and errors when filtering job orders with a large pool of applicants. And filtering is taking longer than usual. --- ### Excellent and feature rich applicant tracking system - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Hardware - Product usage: less than 1 year · daily - Reviewed: March 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Time saving features for managing hundreds of applicants. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Very easy to navigate, Great visual interface. Easy to segment candidates and drill down through data quickly and efficiently. #### Cons Some difficulty with one specific API. I am not really going to count this as a negative as I could have gotten the integration with the third party API given enough time --- ### Excellent and cost effective for mid-sized organizations - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Reviewed: May 2014 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered We switched from applicant stack to CATS in 2012 and have never looked back. The clean UI alone was a drastic improvement. Since 2012 we have grown our recruitment department from one F/T employee to 4. CATS allows multiple users to have accounts, which makes collaborating on candidates easy. The system does email integration which is extremely useful in tracking/documenting candidate communication (because sometimes it does not happen through the system). We have customized the system with ease which has allowed for complete workflow and task automation. With the click of a button we can notify candidates of next steps, change their job order, change their interview status, and notify other parties in our organization- this is all with one click. The system allows for the generation of countless workflows, custom email templates for individual or mass emailing, and the mass importing of multiple resume files for prospective candidates. While we wish CATS had an onboarding feature, we have successfully used the system in the past to collect employee documents who are out of state and begin that HR process. CATS has been a life saver. The system offers a lot for a very low cost. Our initial set up including fees was below $500 and our monthly fee per user on the system is $69. It is a great value. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 --- ### I don't know why you would consider anything else! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Mike A. - Reviewed: June 2014 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I have been in the recruiting business for over 25 years. At one time or another I have used just about every major recruiting software out there. For the last 5+ years I have used CATS exclusively. The program is easy to understand, the categories can be customized as needed in the customer service is above and beyond anything out there. Integration with Outlook, Word and LinkedIn works seamlessly. The CATS team is technical and creative. They listen to customer suggestions and have weekly webinars to provide support. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 --- ### Full featured ATS, great value - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Insurance - Reviewed: May 2015 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered The interface standard functionality is very robust but the best part is that it is also very customizable and the support team is very responsive particularly to requests to make things work in ways specific to my business processes (customization beyond the typical fields / workflow). #### Pros Robust functionality, very responsive, helpful, and knowledgable support team, leadership team focused on constant improvement and maintaining great value for cost. The product has been so customizable both with the obvious and with not so obvious tweaks that support has helped me implement that it works almost exactly to my whim. Love it! #### Cons More options for reporting on activity that I can custom build or integration with a reporting tool that could use any exported activity data ---