Globalization Partners vs Multiplier
What do you do if you find a brilliant designer you want to employ, but they live in France? How can you bring a sales team online in Malaysia when your business is registered in the US? In the past, there wasn’t much you could do except travel to these countries and go through the painfully long and challenging process of setting up entities in them.
However, with the advent of video conferencing and cloud computing, new tools have helped to make hiring an international team possible for even the smallest businesses. Employer of Record (EORs) are the final piece of the puzzle that helps companies hire legally and compliantly across borders.
What You’ll Discover:
- In-Depth Feature Analysis: A thorough breakdown of the features and usability of both platforms.
- Pricing Comparison: A detailed look at the costs associated with each service to assist with effective budgeting.
- Pros and Cons: Unbiased assessments of the strengths and limitations of Globalization Partners and Multiplier.
In this article, we’re going to look in depth at two giants in the EOR industry, Globalization Partners vs. Multiplier. Both of these service providers have grown extensively in recent years to become well-established companies.
We’re going to examine the services each one provides as well as their strengths and weaknesses so that you can make an informed decision about which would be a better choice for your organization to work with. So let’s get started!
Globalization Partners vs Multiplier Overview
| Feature | Globalization Partners | Multiplier | Explanation |
| User Reviews | G2: 4.5/5 Trustpilot: 3.8/5 | G2: 4.7/5 Trustpilot: 4.9/5 | Multiplier has excellent reviews, but G-P’s are a lot more mixed. |
| Pricing | EOR price not given $39/contractor per month | $400/ employee per month; $40/contractor per month | Both providers have essentially the same price for contractors. G-P doesn’t reveal its other prices online. |
| User-friendliness | Very good | Very good | Both companies feature easy-to-use platforms though Multiplier’s is rated slightly higher by users. |
| Customer Support | 24/7 live chat support | 24/5 live chat and phone support | While G-P has live support all the time, Multiplier slows down over the weekends. |
| Integrations | Good | Good | Both platforms integrate with roughly 10 HR, HCM, and payroll programs. |
| Data security | Excellent | Excellent | G-P’s platform is GDPR and SOC2 compliant and ISO 27001 certified. Multiplier is compliant with GDPR, PCS-DSS, and SOC 1,2 and 3 standards, and ISO- 27001, 27017, and 27018 certified. |
| International hiring (EOR) | Excellent | Excellent | Multiplier enables EOR and contractor hiring in 160+ countries. G-P offers the same in 180+ countries. |
| Recruitment | Good | Not offered | G-P helps you search talent pools and connect to recruiters around the world, while Multiplier doesn’t help with recruitment. |
| Benefits administration | Excellent | Very good | Both platforms manage standard benefits and also provide employee pensions and health insurance. |
| Payroll | Excellent | Excellent | Both platforms offer global payroll solutions for organizations that own entities around the world. |
Main Differences: Globalization Partners vs Multiplier
Globalization Partners (G-P) was founded in 2012 in Boston, while Multiplier is a more recent competitor in this field, having been founded in 2020 in Singapore. Both work with companies around the globe to enable them to legally hire employees and contractors internationally. Let’s start our review by looking at the main differences between these two providers.
In this industry, service providers usually take on one of two pricing strategies. They’re either very transparent with their fee structure, posting at least their starting prices online, or they keep their prices hidden and ask potential clients to ask them for quotes. G-P is one of the latter, revealing only its contractor price but none of its other fees. However, Multiplier isn’t much different. It gives its starting prices for EOR and contractor hiring but nothing else. Thus, Multiplier at least helps potential clients with their initial budgeting, but they’ll often need more information to accurately estimate the costs of employees around the world.
Another big difference between these providers is in recruitment. Multiplier doesn’t address recruitment at all, instead assuming that clients have already found the workers they want to employ and simply need a way to do it. G-P, however, recognizes that clients often need to source talent globally and offers access to searchable talent pools and connections to pre-vetted recruiters around the world.
In terms of support, G-P offers live chat support 24/7 and also offers add-on packages that allow clients to work with expert consultants or AI tools to help them solve their problems. In contrast, Multiplier only has live support 24/5. While it works with legal and tax experts around the world, your contact with them will be limited and you’ll generally speak to customer support reps on weekdays only.
Now that we’ve seen some of the major differences between these platforms, we’ll examine each in terms of its specific strengths and weaknesses.
Globalization Partners Pros and Cons
G-P uses a combination of human consultants, AI tools, and its cloud-based platform to deliver a range of services. The pros and cons of its specific offering include:
- Pros
Data security
G-P’s platform complies with SOC2, CCPA, and GDPR guidelines and is ISO 27001 certified. It also maintains data security and privacy through its MFA (multi-factor authentication) and single sign-on (SSO) features.
Recruitment help
G-P doesn’t employ recruiters to source talent for you directly. However, it does connect you with a global list of recruiters it trusts, as well as talent pools you can search by title and use to estimate salaries.
Extensive consultation
G-P offers not only 24/7 live support but also additional consultation packages from both human HR and payroll experts and its AI tool, Gia. Human experts can help clients with compliance around the world, while Gia helps prepare and check documents in 50+ countries and all 50 US states.
Easy onboarding
New employees can onboard themselves through G-P’s employee portal and stepwise onboarding system. They can quickly upload their documents and sign contracts and policies digitally to make the onboarding process highly efficient.
Mobile app
G-P lets both admins and employees access its platform through a mobile app called GoGlobal. Employees can check their payslips and make time off requests, while admins can use it to approve payroll and manage paid time off (PTO) for employees.
- Cons
Hidden pricing
G-P only gives its contractor management price ($39/person per month) online, while the rest of its various service packages are available by quote only. This requires potential clients to spend time and effort to obtain prices for their budget estimations.
Limited integrations
While it offers an API for customized integrations, G-P’s platform only integrates with about 10 software packages compared with the hundreds or thousands of some competitors.
No active recruitment
G-P doesn’t directly help its clients source talent.
Immigration and visa support
G-P helps employees obtain visas and work permits in case they need to relocate or work in countries where they’re not citizens.
Multiplier Pros and Cons
Multiplier’s global employment platform focuses on EOR, contractor, and global payroll services. The pros and cons of partnering with this provider include:
- Pros
Mobile app
The Multiplier ESS (employee self-service) app lets employees access Multiplier’s platform through both iOS and Android devices. It allows them access their personal information, leave management, and payroll information and make it available directly to administrators.
Data security
Multiplier holds ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018 certifications and is compliant with GDPR, PCS-DSS, and SOC 1,2 and 3 standards to maintain a high level of privacy and data security.
Price
Multiplier’s prices, though not all listed online, put it at the more affordable end of the industry. It charges $40 for contractors and starts at $00/employee per month which is less than many competitors offering the same services.
User-friendly interface
Multiplier’s platform is highly rated for ease of use and implementation. Users say it’s easy to learn and provides a good level of support.
- Cons
Limited integrations
Multiplier integrates directly with some big names like Workday, Bamboo HR, HiBob, and Personio. However, it only offers around ten out-of-the-box integrations, while other competitors connect with hundreds or even thousands of apps.
Lacks features
Multiplier doesn’t deal with recruitment management, applicant tracking, analytics, and workflow features. While other platforms may offer these features, Multiplier’s is more limited.
Head-to-Head Comparison: Globalization Partners vs Multiplier Features
We’ve had the chance to look at some of the individual strengths and weaknesses of each of these two major competitors in the EOR industry. Now it’s time to put Globalization Partners vs. Multiplier head-to-head across several different criteria to see where each one is comparably stronger.
User-friendly platform: Multiplier Wins
While both platforms have been highly rated by users, Multiplier’s has garnered higher scores all around. User reviews reveal that Multiplier is easier to set up and implement for first-time users and generally easier to administer in terms of HR, payroll, and employee management. While support is more available from G-P, users have found Multiplier’s support services more useful.
Resources: It’s a tie
G-P offers its clients blog posts, webinars, podcasts, reports, and ebooks to help them find out more about payroll and HR administration. It also offers in-depth product demos to help them learn to use the platform effectively.
Multiplier also gives clients a blog, webinars, and events to help them improve their knowledge and skills. It provides product demos as well and lets clients use tools like employee cost calculators and employment guides for all the countries it works in.
These resources are extensive, and we don’t see any clear winner between these two providers.
Integration with other software: It’s a tie
Both platforms provide developers with access to APIs to help them create custom integrations. At the same time, they both offer a limited number of pre-built integrations that let clients share data seamlessly between these platforms and the software they’re already using. Both platforms would be greatly improved by adding more out-of-the-box integrations to popular HR, accounting, and communications apps.
International hiring: Multiplier Wins
G-P facilitates employee hiring in over 180 countries, while Multiplier is slightly behind and offers hiring in over 160 countries worldwide. G-P’s pricing isn’t known, but we do know that it offers additional benefits administration for an extra fee. Multiplier, however, charges a relatively low price of $400/employee per month and includes additional benefits administration, so we’re confident this is a good deal.
Contractor Solution: It’s a tie
Both providers offer contractor hiring in numerous countries, with G-P offering 180 and Multiplier 160. Their prices are essentially the same, as are the services they offer (global contractor payments, tax forms, and filing). For this reason, we’re not able to distinguish these providers, and we’re calling them ties in this category.
Employee Benefits: Multiplier wins
Both of these competitors take care of mandatory benefits like PTO and social security contributions when you hire them for EOR services. They also both offer to provide additional benefits packages for businesses that want to give more to their employees. Both will administer extra benefits like private health insurance and pensions, but Multiplier does this as part of its EOR package, while G-P charges an additional fee for this service as most EORs do.
Payroll Management: It’s a tie
If you own entities in multiple countries, you can take advantage of global payroll services from either of these providers instead of hiring with their EOR services. Neither provides its starting price for this service, however, so you’ll have to ask both for tailored quotes. Both work with teams of local experts to ensure compliance with local laws in the multiple countries where you work. Without pricing, we have to conclude that these services are equal.
Our Verdict: Globalization Partners vs Multiplier
Our Globalization Partners vs. Multiplier comparison has pitched these two major companies directly against each other to see which is going to be a better choice for your organization to partner with. In our estimation, these are the best instances in which you should use each of these providers:
When to choose Globalization Partners
If you’re running a small or medium-sized business, particularly a startup that needs to scale up quickly, G-P can be a great choice. It offers extensive options for human expert and AI-based consulting that can help new and inexperienced admins provide top-quality HR services that are compliant with laws around the world.
When to choose Multiplier
Multiplier’s basic fees are definitely toward the lower end of the EOR market and that means it can be a highly affordable provider of EOR and contractor hiring services. While you’ll need to source your own talent globally, Multiplier can help you manage their payroll and administer their benefits effectively.