An ATS delivered as software as a service is a subscription rather than a purchase, and the honest question is what the subscription buys that a spreadsheet does not. Three things, and none of them is the arithmetic: every figure a hiring desk needs can be computed in a spreadsheet or on the free sheets on this site. The first is concurrency, meaning more than one person can work the same record without forking it into versions. The second is history, meaning a stage change is recorded with the date it happened and survives the person who made it. The third is that it is somewhere other than a laptop, which matters more than it sounds when the person who owned the spreadsheet leaves. Against that, a subscription is a recurring cost and your data lives with a vendor. This page sets out the trade in full and what to check before subscribing.
What the subscription genuinely adds
Concurrency, history and durability. Those three are hard to build in a spreadsheet and easy to underestimate until the moment you need last quarter's stage changes and find the file has been saved over, or the person who kept it has left with it on their laptop.
What it does not add
The figures. Cost per hire, time to hire and pipeline conversion are arithmetic on four fields, and they are free on this site. A product that implies you cannot know your hiring numbers without it is overselling what a subscription does.
What to check before subscribing
What an export contains and whether it includes history; what happens to your data after cancellation and for how long; and whether the four fields you need are actually recorded rather than merely displayable somewhere in the interface.
Questions people ask about ats saas
Is SaaS the only way to buy an ATS now?
Effectively yes for a small employer. Self-hosted options exist but the maintenance cost lands on someone, and for a desk without an IT function that is the wrong trade.
What happens to my data if I stop paying?
That is exactly the question to ask before you start. Reqnix keeps your reqs, applicants, interviews and clients exportable for 90 days after cancellation; other vendors vary and it is worth reading.
Is a spreadsheet really enough?
For the arithmetic, often. For a shared, dated, durable record, no. Which of those you need is the actual decision.