An online recruiting system earns its keep when more than one person needs to act on the same hiring, which is most small businesses even when only one person is called the recruiter. The founder wants to see the shortlist, the manager wants to book the interview, and the bookkeeper wants to know what the agency invoice relates to. Done by email, each of those is a copy of the truth that immediately starts to diverge; done in one record, they are views of it. That is the whole of what the system provides beyond a spreadsheet, and it is worth being precise about because the arithmetic, the cost per hire and time to hire figures, is free on this site and needs no system at all. This page sets out what to check about multi-person access before buying, including the pricing trap that quietly undoes it.
Who actually needs access
List them before you shop: the recruiter, the hiring managers, whoever approves an offer, and whoever reconciles the invoices. That list determines which pricing model suits you far more than any feature comparison does.
The per-seat trap
If access is priced per user, the natural response is to keep managers off the system and forward emails instead, which reinstates exactly the divergence you were buying the system to remove. Flat pricing avoids it; per-seat pricing needs a deliberate decision to pay for the seats.
Permissions matter more than they sound
A hiring manager who can see their own roles is useful; one who can see every salary and every applicant across the business is a problem. Check what the permission model can actually express before you assume it can express yours.
Questions people ask about online recruiting system
How many users does a small desk need?
More than people expect, because hiring managers count. A four-person business hiring one role often needs three people touching the record at some point in the process.
Can I just share a spreadsheet?
You can, and it works until two people edit it at once or someone needs history. Those two failures are what the system prevents.
What does access cost?
Per-seat products commonly start around $19 per user per month on monthly billing (Manatal Professional, manatal.com/pricing, read 4 September 2026). Reqnix Pro is $189 a month flat for the whole desk, which is the same money at about ten people.