Employ
RecruitThera In-Depth Review
Thera Review Summary
Score 7 out of 10
Currency
150+
Monthly fees
$199+
Payment options
ACH/SWIFT
Thera is an “all-in-one payroll and payments platform for global teams,” offering modern HR solutions developed by a former Amazon engineer. Founded in 2021, the company has already secured over $4 million in seed funding, positioning it for success in the HR services market.
Thera Company Overview
Thera calls itself an “all-in-one payroll and payments platform for global teams,” which is as good a description as any for this HR service provider. While this company shares the name of a 9000-year-old Greek city, it’s a modern software-as-a-solution (SaaS) provider that uses cutting-edge technology designed by an ex-Amazon engineer. The company was founded very recently, in 2021, but has already received over $4 million in seed funding from investors expecting it to perform well in the HR services space.
As a service provider, Thera aims at startups and small and medium businesses (SMBs) that need to move money. That’s all of them. It provides help with hiring through its EOR or Employer of Record and contractor hiring services. It also manages payroll in the US, all 50 states, and globally. It’s also an AP/AR service, helping businesses manage their accounts payable and accounts receivable with its convenient software. Businesses that have limited HR and accounting departments and resources, or perhaps none at all, can benefit from this provider’s various solutions. Thera doesn’t post most of its prices online but claims to have the best prices in the industry.
In this review, we’ll look further into its pricing, platform, and services to help you choose whether partnering with Thera is your organization’s best choice.
Thera Key Features
1. Thera Employer of Record
One of Thera’s main offerings is its EOR or Employer of Record service. As an EOR, Thera can help companies who want to hire employees in other countries do just that, even if they don’t own entities there. How is this possible? Thera has a network of subsidiaries and partners around the world. When a client wants to hire an employee in another country, the partner there is the party that will actually enter into a contract with the employee. In doing so, it becomes the legal employer of the local staff while contracting the employee to work directly for the client. In this way, the EOR assumes the responsibility for compliance with all local tax and labor laws that apply to the employee.
Thera offers a streamlined solution for companies looking to hire employees in over 150 countries worldwide. With its platform, clients can easily manage highly distributed teams by sorting employees into groups for better organization. Here’s a closer look at Thera’s key features and benefits:
Global Hiring Made Simple: Thera helps clients hire employees in 150+ countries, allowing for seamless international expansion without the complexity of local regulations and entities.
Efficient Onboarding Process: Thera’s platform efficiently handles the onboarding of new hires, capturing essential information such as name, position, salary, benefits, and any required documents, making it easy to integrate new employees into the system.
Team Management for Distributed Workforces: Employees are sorted into teams within the platform, streamlining the management of highly distributed or remote teams and ensuring better organization.
Manual Time and Attendance Tracking: While Thera doesn’t offer a built-in time-tracking feature, clients are required to manually input time and attendance data for payroll processing each pay period.
Accurate Payroll Calculation: Thera ensures precise salary calculations, tax deductions, and benefit contributions (such as pensions and social security) for all employees, helping clients manage compliance and save time.
Affordable and Transparent Pricing: Thera’s EOR service starts at just $199 per employee per month, positioning it as one of the most affordable options in the industry. However, it’s unclear how many countries this rate covers. The company emphasizes flat-rate pricing with no hidden fees, offering transparency in its cost structure.
2. Thera PEO
Thera is set up much like a PEO or Professional Employer Organization which, similar to an EOR, manages all employee HR needs on behalf of its clients. However, PEOs work in countries where those clients already own entities so they don’t need to hire the employees directly like EORs do. Thera does not offer this service, however – instead, it only manages compliant payroll in all 50 states in the US without additional HR services.
3. Thera Contractor Management
Thera offers a comprehensive platform for hiring and paying contractors in over 150 countries and all 50 U.S. states, providing an easy, compliant solution for managing global and domestic contractors. The platform streamlines onboarding, contract management, invoicing, and payments, all while ensuring full compliance with local laws.
Global Contractor Hiring and Onboarding: Thera makes it easy to onboard contractors from anywhere in the world, including collecting essential Know Your Customer (KYC) information to meet regulatory requirements.
Flexible Contract Generation: Clients can create standardized contracts through the platform, with options for fixed-rate contracts, milestone-based payments, or pay-as-you-go contracts that require contractors to submit work and hours each pay period. All contracts are tailored to local regulations for compliance.
Invoicing and Payment Tracking: Thera’s system helps generate and store invoices, track payment due dates, and facilitates payments with just a few clicks, streamlining the entire invoicing process.
Tax Documentation Management: The platform simplifies the collection and storage of W-9 and 1099 forms for easy tax reporting, ensuring clients stay compliant with U.S. tax regulations.
Multiple Payment Methods: Clients can pay contractors using various methods, including bank transfers, SWIFT, Wise, Payoneer, and more. Contractors can receive payments in 150+ local currencies or their preferred currency.
4. Thera Recruitment
Only a handful of EOR providers offer active recruitment services with recruiters who asses clients’ hiring needs and source talent to fill their vacancies. While Thera staff can recommend employees and contractors they’ve dealt with in the past, this provider doesn’t offer any formal recruiting.
5. Thera Payroll
While Thera is known for its global EOR services, it also offers a dedicated payroll service focused on the U.S. market, ensuring full compliance with both federal and state regulations across all 50 states. This service is especially beneficial for SMBs seeking an efficient, accurate, and cost-effective way to handle payroll without the need for an in-house team.
U.S.-Focused Payroll Services: Thera’s payroll capabilities are designed for clients in the U.S., where it manages federal and state compliance across all 50 states, offering comprehensive payroll solutions for businesses operating nationwide.
Manual Time and Attendance Tracking: Thera does not have an integrated time and attendance tracking feature, so clients must input this data from their own systems (e.g., HRIS) before payroll can be processed. However, once this data is provided, Thera handles everything else.
Automated Payroll Calculations: With time and attendance data, Thera automatically calculates gross salary, income tax withholding, and mandatory and additional benefit deductions for each employee, ensuring accurate pay calculations and full compliance.
Direct Deposit and Tax Remittance: After payroll is approved by the client, Thera processes direct deposits for employees and remits taxes and benefits payments to the appropriate authorities. Payslips summarizing the deductions and payments are provided to employees.
Independent Contractor Management: Thera also manages invoices for independent contractors, automatically processing payments alongside employee payroll when due.
Tax Form Management: To ensure compliance, Thera handles the generation and distribution of W-2 forms for employees and 1099 forms for contractors, as well as filing key employer forms like 940, 941, and 944.
Ideal for SMBs: Thera’s payroll service is an excellent solution for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with limited experience in running payroll. Outsourcing payroll to Thera can save both time and money, and it helps ensure compliance with complex regulations.
Affordable Pricing: Thera suggests that its payroll service starts at $10 per employee per month, making it an affordable option for SMBs seeking accurate and compliant payroll management.
6. Thera Accounting Services
While not related to its EOR and payroll service, Thera has other specialized services that require mention. These are its AP/AR services for bill payments and invoicing. Through Accounts Payable services, clients can keep all of their bills in one place, manage payment schedules, and make bulk payments by simply funding the system and approving these expenses. The same is true for Accounts Receivable. Clients are able to manage all of their invoices in one place and receive payments from anywhere in the world through multiple methods using Thera.
7. Thera Platform
Many competitors in the HR services space offer extensive platforms with enough functionality to be considered HRISs or HRMSs (human resources management systems). Thera’s cloud-based platform is certainly very straightforward and easy to use, though it has much more limited capabilities. It’s missing time-tracking, an applicant-tracking system, performance management, and several other features that would make it complete.
At the same time, however, it does offer integrations with HRIS apps like Namely and HRWize that allow it to share data easily. The platform also has a good range of integrations with accounting apps, including popular tools like Quickbooks, Sage, Square, Netsuite, and Xero, which help to transfer easily.
Thera has an extensive and comprehensive privacy policy stating its commitment to privacy and data security. It’s compliant with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA). However, it doesn’t display any certifications with standards like ISO 27001 or SOC2.
8. Thera Resources
Thera provides several free resources that offer valuable insights into HR, hiring, and payroll, making it easier for businesses to understand the company’s offerings and industry trends. These resources cater to both existing and potential clients, helping them navigate various challenges related to international employment.
Comprehensive Blog: Thera’s blog is filled with articles covering the latest trends in hiring, international employment, payroll, and accounting, offering valuable tips and updates for businesses of all sizes.
Client Case Studies: The platform features case studies detailing real-life examples of how past and current clients have benefited from Thera’s services, helping potential clients see how the company can tackle both common and unique business challenges.
Country Guides: Thera offers country-specific guides for the 150+ countries where it operates as an EOR. These guides provide essential information on recruiting and hiring in each country, as well as summaries of local laws that employers need to understand and comply with.
Thera Pricing
| Plan | Price per employee/contractor per month |
|---|---|
| Thera EOR | Custom pricing |
| Thera Contractor Management | Custom pricing |
| Thera US Payroll | Custom pricing |
Thera Reviews
The average scores (as of the time of writing) were:
- Thera G2 = 4.9/5 (24 reviews)
Thera Pros and Cons
- Pros
User-friendly platform
Thera’s platform is very well-thought-out and intuitive for new users. It’s very simple to use and has a very manageable learning curve.
Global coverage
Some EORS offer to hire employees in only a handful or a few dozen countries. Thera lets employers hire both employees and contractors in over 150 countries, which gives it solid worldwide coverage.
Accounting services
While not strictly related to EOR services, Thera’s platform provides extensive features for AP/AR and connections to bookkeeping apps. These tools can be very useful in linking all accounting functions together.
- Cons
No fees posted online
We’ve uncovered some of Thera’s and starting prices, but its complete fee structure is not clearly presented on its website. This can make it quite a challenge to compare this provider with its competitors.
No recruitment
It’s not unusual for EORs to keep away from active recruitment services. However, Thera also doesn’t provide any relevant tools like an applicant tracking system or integrations with job sites that can help clients do their own recruiting more easily.
Limited integrations
Some competitors provide hundreds or even thousands of pre-built integrations with other software. Thera only provides users with a handful, though they do connect this platform to some very useful HR and accounting apps.
No mobile app
Many competitors offer mobile apps for iOS and Android devices to help employees and admins to access their platform conveniently. At present, Thera has no such feature.
Limited functions
Other platforms can stand alone as HRIS/HRMS packages. Thera’s is missing many features that would allow it to be used as the only HR management tool for small businesses.
Thera Unique Selling Point
Thera’s unique selling point is actually its simplicity. This is a provider with a limited number of services that are clearly explained and a platform that’s unfettered by heaps of features. This makes it an easy system to implement quickly and use on a daily basis.
RemotePeople Score for Thera
7/10
Our expert score for Thera
Our team came to this score by considering the following components in the following weightings:
Employer of Record features
25%
Payroll features
10%
HR features
10%
Compliance features
10%
Platform features
10%
Pricing
20%
User reviews
15%
For each component, Thera received the following score:
Employer of Record features
17/25
Payroll features
9/10
HR features
7/10
Compliance features
7/10
Platform features
7/10
Pricing
13/20
User reviews
10/15
Thera — Our Take
Thera is a new company that provides EOR hiring on a truly global scale. It offers limited services but that might be exactly in line with the needs of a certain cohort of SMBs that simply want to conveniently hire and manage teams of international employees at a low price. US-based companies that want help managing their multi-state payroll may also find Thera’s service offering to be exactly what they require.
Thera Alternatives
Horizons
Horizons is rated as the best global EOR in 2024, standing apart through genuine local expertise and customized solutions. Their pricing model is based on a per employee fee, which varies depending on the country and specific services required. Horizons EOR pricing starts from $299 per employee per month.
💡 Read our in-depth review: Horizons Review
Deel
Deel is recognized as one of the leading provider for managing global hiring, payroll taxes, and compliance risks. Deel’s pricing is also based on a per employee model, with fees starting at around $599 per employee per month. Additional services, such as benefits administration and visa support, may incur extra costs.
💡 Read our in-depth review: Deel Review
Globalization Partners
Globalization Partners specializes in helping businesses expand internationally by acting as an Employer of Record, enabling them to hire talent worldwide without establishing foreign entities. It handles payroll, benefits, and compliance, offering a smooth onboarding process for global employees.
💡 Read our in-depth review: Globalization Partners Review
Hire Globally. Stay Compliant.
- Hire in 150+ countries
- EOR from $199/mo
- In-house recruiters
- Humans, not chatbots
Switching from another EOR? We handle the migration for free.