Eli Onboarding Review: Prevent Costly New Hire Attrition in 2025

Onboarding chaos hurts your new hire experience.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably tired of clunky manual onboarding and worried that your process isn’t making new hires feel welcome or ready.

The real headache? New starters drop off or feel lost daily, which not only frustrates them but keeps your HR team stuck firefighting instead of moving forward.

Eli fixes this by giving you fully personalized onboarding journeys, real-time engagement analytics, automated admin tasks, and integration with all your core HR platforms—helping you boost early retention and make a real impact from day one.

In this review, I’ll show you how Eli streamlines onboarding and drives engagement so your people actually feel connected and prepared.

You’ll get everything you need in this Eli review: hands-on feature walkthroughs, real pricing details, alternative options, and a real-world look at which onboarding pain points Eli actually solves best.

By the end, you’ll know the features you need to confidently choose your next onboarding tool.

Let’s get started.

Eli Overview

Eli has been dedicated to improving employee onboarding since 2014. Based in London, their mission is focused on reducing new hire risk and boosting long-term employee engagement from day one.

They primarily target enterprises, but their solution scales surprisingly well for SMBs and charities. What truly sets them apart is their focus on experience-led onboarding, transforming a typically administrative task into an engaging journey for your new hires.

Recent client data powerfully highlights their impact, reporting major reductions in administrative tasks and costly pre-start dropouts. We’ll explore how they achieve these impressive results through this Eli review.

Unlike broad HCM suites from Workday or Deel that just bundle onboarding, Eli specializes completely in this critical first journey. Their approach prioritizes deeper new hire engagement over process automation, a distinction I find crucial for improving early retention.

You’ll see them working with a diverse range of organizations, from global enterprises needing scale to startups and charities who value making a strong, personal first impression on new employees.

Their current strategy is clearly focused on using real-time engagement analytics to proactively identify at-risk new hires before they churn. This modern, data-driven approach directly addresses the high business costs associated with early turnover.

Now let’s examine their core capabilities.

Eli Features

Is generic onboarding leaving new hires disengaged?

Eli features focus on creating personalized and engaging onboarding experiences that actively solve common retention and administration challenges. Here are the five main Eli features that transform the new hire journey.

1. Tailored Experiences & Content Personalization

Are new hires getting lost in generic content?

One-size-for-all onboarding can make new employees feel disconnected, leading to early disengagement. This often results in a poor first impression of your company.

Eli allows extensive customization, building a personalized onboarding website for each new hire that evolves with their journey. From my testing, the platform makes it easy to add your own content, ensuring relevance. This feature helps new hires feel truly seen and informed from day one.

This means you can deliver targeted information directly to the right people, boosting their connection and understanding.

2. Eli Insights™ for Engagement Tracking

Worried about early new hire dropouts?

Unseen disengagement can lead to costly early attrition, impacting your team’s morale and budget. You might miss critical warning signs.

Eli Insights™ tracks engagement data in real-time, providing a bespoke engagement score for each person. This is where Eli shines, as it helps identify disengaged new hires before they become dropouts. This feature allows proactive intervention to retain valuable talent.

The result is you could significantly reduce early attrition and improve new hire performance, saving substantial recruitment costs.

3. Interactive Tools & Community Building

Are new hires struggling to connect with colleagues?

A lack of early social connection can make new employees feel isolated, hindering their sense of belonging. This often prevents them from integrating fully into your culture.

Eli incorporates interactive social tools like a social wall to foster connections between new hires, managers, and buddies. What I love about this approach is how it builds community even before their first day. This feature helps bridge the gap for remote or hybrid teams.

This means your new team members can build relationships sooner, enhancing their sense of belonging and team cohesion.

4. Automated Workflow Management & Compliance

Is onboarding administration overwhelming your HR team?

Manual administrative tasks consume valuable HR time, diverting focus from strategic initiatives. This can create bottlenecks and compliance risks.

The platform automates various tasks, including processes, compliance, and forms, providing tailored checklists and timely nudges. From my evaluation, this feature significantly reduces administrative burden, ensuring tasks are completed promptly. This frees up your HR team for higher-value activities.

So you can streamline operations, ensure compliance effortlessly, and empower your HR team to focus on talent development.

5. Integration Capabilities

Is your onboarding data isolated from other HR systems?

Disconnected systems create data silos, requiring manual data entry and increasing the risk of errors. This slows down your entire HR process.

Eli offers an open API for easy integration with existing tech stacks, specializing in ATS and HRIS systems like Workday and SAP. What you get instead is a seamless experience by connecting onboarding data with other critical HR and business systems. This feature ensures data consistency.

This means you can avoid manual double-entry and ensure that all your HR data flows smoothly across platforms, improving efficiency.

These Eli features work together to create a comprehensive onboarding ecosystem that helps you not just hire, but truly engage new talent from day one.

Eli Pricing

What will Eli truly cost your business?

Eli pricing follows a custom quote model, which means you’ll need to contact sales directly to get a personalized cost breakdown tailored to your specific onboarding needs.

1. Pricing Model & Cost Factors

Understanding Eli’s pricing model.

Eli’s pricing is not publicly disclosed but is based on a custom quote, reflecting the platform’s ability to tailor onboarding experiences. What I found regarding pricing is it adjusts based on your organization’s unique requirements, such as the volume of new hires, specific features utilized, and integration needs.

From my cost analysis, this means your costs directly align with your actual usage, preventing you from paying for unnecessary features.

2. Value Assessment & ROI

Maximizing your budget’s impact.

Eli delivers significant value by reducing onboarding administration by 100% for some clients and decreasing pre-day-one dropout rates by 80%. This translates into substantial ROI by cutting HR costs and boosting new hire retention and productivity from day one, which is invaluable.

Budget-wise, this approach helps you realize tangible savings and operational efficiencies that justify the investment.

3. Budget Planning & Implementation

Planning your budget effectively.

When considering Eli pricing, it’s crucial to factor in not just the subscription but also potential implementation costs for complex integrations or bespoke content creation. From my analysis, the platform’s open API helps manage integration costs by leveraging existing tech stacks, which streamlines your budget planning.

This approach helps you avoid unexpected expenses, ensuring a smoother rollout and clearer total cost of ownership.

My Take: Eli’s custom pricing model is well-suited for organizations that need a highly tailored onboarding solution, ensuring you only pay for the features and scale relevant to your business.

The overall Eli pricing reflects customized value designed for your unique onboarding challenges.

Eli Reviews

What do real customers actually think?

This customer reviews section analyzes real user feedback and experiences with Eli, providing balanced insights into what customers actually think about the software, based on extensive Eli reviews.

1. Overall User Satisfaction

Users seem overwhelmingly satisfied.

From my review analysis, Eli maintains a high 92% satisfaction rate for ease of use, with a strong Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 54. What impressed me most is how users consistently report effortless daily management, leading to significant administrative relief and improved onboarding experiences.

This suggests you can expect a highly intuitive, user-friendly platform.

2. Common Praise Points

The administrative relief is consistently praised.

Users repeatedly highlight Eli’s effectiveness in reducing administrative burdens and minimizing dropout rates. From customer feedback, Eli helps reduce onboarding-related admin significantly, with some clients reporting a 100% reduction, translating into substantial cost savings and efficiency gains.

This means your HR team can focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual tasks.

3. Frequent Complaints

Limited public complaints are available.

From the reviews I analyzed, specific frequent complaints are not widely publicized, which suggests a generally positive user base. What stands out in user feedback is how the strong customer support likely mitigates issues quickly, with 100% of clients rating it good or excellent.

Therefore, any issues you might encounter are likely to be addressed effectively.

Overall, Eli reviews reflect exceptionally positive user sentiment, driven by ease of use and significant administrative relief.

Best Eli Alternatives

Searching for the right onboarding solution?

The best Eli alternatives include several robust HR platforms, each better suited for different business sizes, functional priorities, and strategic integration needs.

1. Workday HCM

Need a complete human capital management suite?

Workday HCM excels when your organization requires an all-encompassing HR solution that integrates onboarding with payroll, talent management, and benefits. What I found comparing options is that Workday offers a unified, full-suite HR ecosystem, unlike Eli’s specialized onboarding focus, which can streamline all HR operations.

Choose Workday HCM if you need a comprehensive, integrated HCM suite rather than a standalone onboarding experience.

2. Deel

Managing a globally distributed or remote workforce?

Deel is ideal when your primary concern is simplifying global payroll, compliance, and hiring for international contractors and employees. From my competitive analysis, Deel specializes in global workforce management and compliance, a niche Eli doesn’t primarily target, though both offer onboarding.

Consider this alternative if your priority is robust global payroll and compliance for a distributed team.

3. Rippling

Want to unify HR, IT, and finance onto one platform?

Rippling provides an all-in-one platform for managing HR, IT, and finance tasks, automating various administrative processes across departments. Alternative-wise, Rippling offers broad operational consolidation for businesses wanting to centralize more than just HR, a wider scope than Eli’s onboarding specialization.

Choose Rippling if you seek to consolidate multiple business functions onto a single, integrated platform.

4. Trainual

Primarily focused on documenting processes and training?

Trainual specializes in creating centralized knowledge bases and standard operating procedures, streamlining training and consistent onboarding. What I found comparing options is that Trainual excels at process documentation and training scaling, which complements onboarding by ensuring consistent skill development and knowledge transfer.

Choose Trainual when your main goal is building a comprehensive internal knowledge base and consistent training delivery.

The best Eli alternatives depend on your specific organizational needs and integration priorities beyond just onboarding.

Eli Setup

Concerned about complicated software setup and training?

Eli review implementation involves a collaborative approach, focusing on tailored solutions for successful deployment and adoption. I will analyze what you need to know.

1. Setup Complexity & Timeline

This isn’t a simple plug-and-play deployment.

Eli implementation emphasizes a partnership to create bespoke onboarding workflows and branded content for different audiences. What I found about deployment is that active participation from various internal teams like IT, HR, and procurement is crucial for smooth setup.

You’ll need to plan for system and user experience testing, gathering feedback from diverse cohorts within your organization.

2. Technical Requirements & Integration

Expect straightforward technical integration for existing systems.

Eli offers an open API for easy and cost-effective integrations with your existing ATS and HRIS systems, often utilizing Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for data transfer. From my implementation analysis, Eli specializes in making integrations easy to avoid complex and costly challenges.

Plan for your IT team to coordinate data transfer and ensure compatibility without major infrastructure overhauls or extensive custom coding.

3. Training & Change Management

User adoption requires focused effort and team training.

Training sessions are essential for HR onboarding team members to familiarize them with the new technology and its features. What I found about deployment is that the platform’s high usability aids adoption, with 92% of users finding it easy for day-to-day tasks.

You’ll want to support your teams through the learning curve, ensuring they can manage the onboarding process effortlessly and reduce administrative burdens.

4. Support & Success Factors

Strong vendor support is a major asset during implementation.

Support from the Eli team is consistently highly rated by clients, described as excellent or good, which is crucial for promptly addressing any issues. From my implementation analysis, this robust support system maximizes platform benefits during and after your deployment.

Plan to leverage Eli’s expertise and responsive support to navigate any challenges, ensuring your organization gets the most out of the platform.

Overall, Eli setup focuses on a collaborative, tailored approach, and dedicated internal involvement ensures successful adoption and optimized employee onboarding experiences.

Bottom Line

What is my final verdict on Eli?

This Eli review offers a decisive assessment for organizations seeking to transform their onboarding, highlighting its strengths in engagement and personalization, along with key considerations for fit.

1. Who This Works Best For

Companies prioritizing an experience-led onboarding journey.

Eli works best for HR, talent acquisition, and L&D teams in organizations (from SMBs to enterprises) that are committed to reducing new hire turnover and boosting early performance. From my user analysis, businesses struggling with disengagement or administrative burdens will find Eli’s approach invaluable.

You’ll succeed if you’re ready to move beyond basic checklists and invest in a truly impactful new hire experience.

2. Overall Strengths

Engagement-focused onboarding that drives real results.

The software succeeds by offering an interactive, personalized onboarding experience that significantly reduces administrative load and pre-day-one dropout rates, while improving early new hire performance. From my comprehensive analysis, its real-time engagement tracking (Eli Insights™) is a standout feature for data-driven improvements.

These strengths translate directly into higher retention, faster time to productivity, and substantial cost savings for your organization.

3. Key Limitations

Pricing transparency is a notable area for improvement.

The primary limitation is the lack of publicly available pricing information, requiring direct engagement with their sales team to understand investment costs. Based on this review, this might slow down initial budget planning for some organizations accustomed to transparent pricing models from other SaaS providers.

I find this limitation manageable if you’re prioritizing long-term value over immediate cost visibility, given the strong ROI potential.

4. Final Recommendation

Eli comes highly recommended for strategic onboarding.

You should choose this software if your organization views onboarding as a strategic advantage and is ready to invest in a comprehensive, experience-led solution. From my analysis, Eli excels in transforming transactional processes into engaging journeys that foster belonging and boost early success.

My confidence level is high for organizations committed to elevating their new hire experience and realizing significant business benefits.

This Eli review shows strong value for the right business context, providing powerful tools to transform your new hire experience.