Employee Onboarding Software

 

Why Most Employee Onboarding Is Broken (and What Actually Fixes It)

Here’s the reality most companies refuse to admit: their onboarding is broken. New hires sit through three weeks of disorganized Zoom calls, get dumped into a Google Drive graveyard of outdated PDFs, and then Slack their manager the same question 14 other people already asked. It’s slow, expensive, and it doesn’t scale.

The numbers back this up. According to Gallup’s 2024 workplace research, only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new hires. SHRM reports that organizations with a structured onboarding process see 50% greater new hire retention and 62% greater productivity within the first year. Meanwhile, the average company spends $4,100 per new hire on onboarding — much of it on live training time that could be recorded once and reused forever.

The fix isn’t another HRIS platform with a checklist module bolted on. What actually moves the needle is employee onboarding software that helps you show people how things work — asynchronously, on their own time, in a format they can rewatch. That means screen recording for onboarding: short, focused videos that walk a new hire through your tools, processes, and culture without requiring a single live meeting.

When I joined a 200-person SaaS company years ago, my onboarding was six hours of live Zoom calls across two days. Half the content was someone sharing their screen and clicking through a tool while narrating. That content could have been a set of 3-minute recordings I watched at my own pace — and then rewatched two weeks later when I actually needed it. That experience is exactly why we built Zight to solve async communication problems like this one.

In this guide, we break down the 7 best tools to create onboarding videos and build a scalable, async onboarding program in 2025. We evaluated each tool on ease of recording, sharing and organization features, team collaboration, pricing, and how well it fits into a real onboarding workflow — not just a feature checklist.

Let’s get into it.

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The Two Types of Employee Onboarding Software (and Why You Need Both)

Before we rank tools, it’s important to understand that “employee onboarding software” is actually two different categories solving two different problems:

1. Administrative Onboarding Platforms (HRIS)

These handle the logistics: offer letters, tax forms, benefits enrollment, IT provisioning, compliance training, and task checklists. Think BambooHR, Rippling, Workday, or Gusto. They answer the question: “Has this person completed all the required paperwork and been given the right access?”

2. Knowledge Transfer Tools (Screen Recording / Async Video)

These handle the actual teaching: showing a new hire how to use your CRM, navigate your codebase, run your sprint ceremonies, or process a customer refund. They answer the question: “Does this person actually know how to do their job?”

Most top-ranking articles about employee onboarding software only cover the first category. But after working with thousands of teams at Zight, we’ve seen the pattern clearly: the administrative checklist gets completed in 2–3 days. The knowledge transfer takes 30–90 days — and that’s where most onboarding programs fall apart.

This guide focuses on the second category because that’s where the biggest time savings and productivity gains live. If you also need an HRIS, we mention the best options below — but the real question for most teams isn’t “how do we track onboarding tasks?” It’s “how do we stop explaining the same thing on live calls every time someone new joins?”

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7 Best Employee Onboarding Software Tools in 2025

1. Zight — Best for Async Onboarding Video at Scale

Zight (formerly CloudApp) is a screen recording, screenshot, GIF maker, and async video tool built for teams that communicate visually. It runs natively on Mac, Windows, and Chrome, and it’s purpose-built for the exact problem most onboarding programs face: how do you explain a process once and make it available to every future hire, forever?

With Zight, you record your screen (with or without your webcam and microphone), and the moment you stop recording, you get an instantly shareable link. No rendering wait times. No uploading to YouTube. No attaching a 400 MB file to an email. You paste the link into your onboarding doc, Notion page, or Slack channel, and the new hire watches it at their own pace.

Why Zight Wins for Onboarding

Most employee onboarding software focuses on managing onboarding — checklists, task assignments, compliance forms. Zight focuses on the part that actually teaches people: the content. Here’s what makes it different:

• Record in under 60 seconds: Open Zight from the menu bar (Mac/Windows) or Chrome extension, click Record, walk through the workflow, stop. The shareable link is on your clipboard before you can switch tabs. The friction is so low that anyone on your team — not just L&D — can create onboarding content.
• Screen + webcam + annotations: Show your screen while your face appears in a bubble overlay. Add arrows, highlights, text callouts, and numbered steps to call attention to specific UI elements. This is critical for screen recording for onboarding because new hires need context, not just a cursor moving around a screen.
• Instant shareable links: Every recording is hosted in the cloud and accessible via link. Embed in Notion, Confluence, your LMS, or just paste into Slack. No file management headaches.
• One-click trim: Zight’s built-in editor lets you trim dead air from the beginning and end of recordings without opening a separate video editor. In practice, this saves 2–3 minutes per video — which adds up fast when you’re creating a library of 30+ onboarding walkthroughs.
• Collections for organization: Group onboarding videos into folders (Collections) by team, role, or week. New engineering hire? Here’s the “Week 1 — Engineering” collection with 12 walkthroughs. New sales rep? Different collection, same structure.
• Team workspace: Zight for Teams lets managers see all team recordings, control branding, and manage permissions — so your onboarding library doesn’t become another disorganized mess.
• GIFs and screenshots too: Not everything needs to be a video. Quick GIF of a two-step process? Annotated screenshot showing where to find a setting? Zight handles all three formats, so you can match the content type to the complexity of the task.
• View analytics: See who viewed your recording, when they watched it, and for how long. This is gold for onboarding — managers can check whether a new hire actually watched the training before asking follow-up questions.
• AI-powered features: Zight’s latest updates include auto-generated titles and AI transcription, which means every video you record is automatically searchable by content — not just filename.

Pricing: Free plan available (limited recordings). Pro plan starts at $9.95/month. Team plans with shared workspace, analytics, and custom branding available at zight.com/teams.

Best for: SaaS teams, remote-first companies, engineering orgs, customer success teams, and any company onboarding more than 5 people per quarter who needs to create onboarding videos without a dedicated video production team.

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2. Loom — Best for Quick Async Messages (But Limited for Libraries)

Loom is the most well-known screen recording tool and a solid option for async onboarding. It records screen + webcam, generates instant links, and offers AI-generated summaries and transcriptions. For a single manager sending a “welcome to the team” video, Loom works well.

Where it falls short for onboarding at scale: Loom’s organizational features are more limited than Zight’s Collections system. Videos live in a flat library, and finding the right recording three months later requires good naming discipline. Loom also doesn’t offer GIF or screenshot creation — so you need a separate tool for the quick two-step explanations that make up half of onboarding content. Its free plan was significantly reduced in 2024 (now limited to 25 videos of up to 5 minutes each), which makes it harder to build a library without paying.

Pricing: Free plan (25 videos, 5 min each). Business plan from $15/user/month.

Best for: Teams already embedded in Loom’s ecosystem who primarily need short async messages rather than a structured onboarding library.

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3. BambooHR — Best Administrative HRIS with Onboarding Checklists

BambooHR is the most commonly recommended employee onboarding software on HRIS comparison sites, and for good reason — it handles the administrative side exceptionally well. Customizable onboarding checklists, electronic signatures, new hire packets, and automated task assignments make the paperwork side of onboarding smooth.

However, BambooHR is an HRIS, not a content creation tool. It doesn’t help you record a walkthrough of your codebase or demonstrate how to process a refund in Stripe. You’ll still need a screen recording tool like Zight to create the actual training content — then link those recordings into BambooHR’s onboarding flow. The two tools complement each other well.

Pricing: Custom quote based on company size. Typically $6–$9/employee/month.

Best for: Companies with 50–500 employees who need a full HR platform with onboarding as one module. Pair with Zight for the actual training content.

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4. Rippling — Best for IT + HR Onboarding Automation

Rippling combines HR, IT, and Finance into one platform. For onboarding specifically, its standout feature is automated device and app provisioning — when a new hire is added, Rippling can automatically set up their laptop, create their email, provision Slack and GitHub access, and enroll them in benefits. All before day one.

Like BambooHR, Rippling excels at the logistical side but doesn’t create training content. The onboarding module handles task sequences and compliance, not “here’s how we use Figma on this team.” In our testing, teams that use Rippling for the administrative flow and Zight for the knowledge transfer get the best of both worlds.

Pricing: Starts at $8/user/month. Custom pricing for larger orgs.

Best for: Companies with complex IT provisioning needs (multiple tools, devices, security requirements) who want onboarding automation beyond just HR forms.

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5. Trainual — Best for Documenting Processes as Playbooks

Trainual sits between an LMS and a wiki. It lets you build structured “playbooks” that combine text, video embeds, quizzes, and checklists into step-by-step training modules. New hires work through assigned subjects at their own pace, and managers can track completion.

The limitation: Trainual is the container, not the content creator. It doesn’t include a screen recorder. You’ll record your walkthrough in Zight (or another tool), then embed it into a Trainual subject. If your team already has a documentation culture and needs an organized place to house training, Trainual is excellent. If you’re starting from zero, the activation energy of building out Trainual subjects can be daunting — it’s more effort than simply recording a Zight video and dropping the link into a Notion doc.

Pricing: Starts at $250/month for up to 25 employees. Scales with headcount.

Best for: Companies with 25–200 employees who want structured, trackable onboarding paths and are willing to invest in building out a full knowledge base.

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6. Scribe — Best for Auto-Generating Step-by-Step Guides

Scribe is a clever tool that watches you perform a workflow and automatically generates a step-by-step guide with annotated screenshots. Click through a process in your browser, and Scribe produces a numbered document with screenshots of each step, highlighted click targets, and auto-written descriptions.

For onboarding, this is powerful for creating quick-reference guides. The trade-off: Scribe doesn’t record video with voiceover, so you lose the human context that makes onboarding content feel personal. It’s also browser-only (no desktop app recording). We’ve found that Scribe works best alongside a screen recording tool — use Scribe for the “how to submit a PTO request” reference doc, and Zight for the “here’s how our sprint process actually works” video walkthrough.

Pricing: Free plan (limited guides). Pro from $29/user/month.

Best for: Teams that need to rapidly document browser-based processes and prefer text-and-screenshot guides over video.

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7. Notion — Best for Organizing an Onboarding Hub (Needs a Recording Tool)

Notion isn’t onboarding software in the traditional sense, but it’s where a significant number of startups and SaaS teams actually build their onboarding programs. A well-structured Notion onboarding template — with embedded Zight videos, linked documents, checklists, and role-specific databases — can outperform purpose-built onboarding tools for teams under 200 people.

The key limitation: Notion doesn’t create the content. It organizes it. You need a screen recording tool to produce the walkthroughs, and Notion to structure the experience. Zight links embed natively in Notion with a video preview, which makes the combination seamless.

Pricing: Free for personal use. Team plan from $10/user/month.

Best for: Startups and SaaS teams that already use Notion for documentation and want to build a lightweight onboarding hub without adding another platform.

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Employee Onboarding Software Comparison Table

Here’s how the 7 tools stack up across the features that matter most for onboarding:

Tool	Screen Recording	Webcam Overlay	Annotations	GIFs / Screenshots	Video Organization	View Analytics	Admin / HR Tasks	Starting Price
Zight	✅ Native	✅	✅ Arrows, text, highlights	✅ Both	✅ Collections	✅	❌	Free / $9.95/mo
Loom	✅ Native	✅	⚠️ Basic (emoji reactions)	❌	⚠️ Folders	✅	❌	Free / $15/user/mo
BambooHR	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	⚠️ Task completion	✅ Full HRIS	~$6–9/employee/mo
Rippling	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	⚠️ Task completion	✅ HR + IT	$8/user/mo
Trainual	❌ (embed only)	❌	❌	❌	✅ Subjects / Playbooks	✅ Completion	⚠️ Basic	$250/mo (25 users)
Scribe	❌ (auto-screenshots)	❌	✅ Auto-generated	✅ Screenshots only	⚠️ Folders	✅	❌	Free / $29/user/mo
Notion	❌ (embed only)	❌	❌	❌	✅ Databases / Pages	⚠️ Page views	❌	Free / $10/user/mo

✅ = Full support | ⚠️ = Partial / limited | ❌ = Not available

The takeaway: If your primary goal is to create onboarding videos and build an async training library, Zight gives you the most complete toolkit in a single app. If you need administrative onboarding (forms, compliance, IT setup), pair Zight with BambooHR or Rippling.

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How to Create an Async Onboarding Video Library (Step-by-Step)

Choosing the right employee onboarding software is step one. Step two is actually building the library. After helping teams at companies ranging from 15-person startups to 2,000+ person enterprises set up async onboarding, here’s the exact process that works:

Step 1: Audit Your Current Onboarding

Before you record anything, list every live call, document, and Slack message that currently makes up your onboarding experience. For each item, ask: “Is this the same every time, or does it change per person?”

Anything that’s repeated identically for every hire is a candidate for a recording. In our experience, 60–80% of onboarding content falls into this category. The remaining 20–40% (role-specific context, team introductions, project briefings) still benefits from async video but may need to be re-recorded per cohort.

Step 2: Map Videos to Onboarding Milestones

Organize your list into three phases:

• Day 1: Welcome message (webcam), company overview, how to set up your tools, where to find things
• Week 1: Team-specific workflows, key tool walkthroughs, communication norms, first small task
• Month 1: Advanced processes, cross-team context, “how we actually do X” deeper dives

Assign each video to the person best qualified to record it. This is usually NOT the HR team — it’s the engineer who knows the deploy process, the CS lead who handles escalations, or the PM who runs sprint planning. Zight makes this easy because the person doesn’t need any video production skills.

Step 3: Record Your First Walkthrough with Zight

Here’s the literal workflow:

1. Open Zight from the menu bar icon (Mac/Windows) or click the Chrome extension icon
2. Select Record Screen + Cam (or Screen Only if you prefer no face overlay)
3. Choose your recording area — full screen, a specific window, or a custom region
4. Click Record. A 3-second countdown starts
5. Walk through the process while narrating: “First, you’ll go to Settings, then click Integrations…”
6. Click Stop when done. Zight automatically uploads and copies the shareable link to your clipboard

Total time for a typical 3-minute onboarding walkthrough: about 4 minutes including setup. No rendering queue, no upload wait, no export settings.

Step 4: Add Annotations and Trim

After recording, click the video in your Zight dashboard to open the editor. Use Trim to cut any dead air from the start or end (the 3 seconds where you’re reaching for the mouse, the awkward “okay, let me stop this” at the end). Then use Annotations to add arrows pointing to key buttons or text labels explaining what a UI element does.

Step 5: Organize into Collections and Embed

In Zight, create a Collection for each phase and role:

• “All New Hires — Day 1” (5 videos: welcome, tool setup, Slack norms, org chart walkthrough, first-day checklist)
• “Engineering — Week 1” (8 videos: repo setup, deploy process, code review norms, sprint ceremonies, staging environments, feature flags, monitoring, CI/CD pipeline)
• “Customer Success — Week 1” (6 videos: CRM walkthrough, ticket workflow, escalation process, QBR prep, knowledge base navigation, customer comms templates)

Then embed the Collection links (or individual video links) into wherever your onboarding lives — Notion, Confluence, Google Docs, your LMS, or even a simple Slack channel pinned message. Zight links render with a video preview in most platforms, so new hires see the content without clicking through.

Step 6: Track Views and Iterate

This is where most teams stop — and it’s the step that separates good onboarding from great. Use Zight’s view analytics to check:

• Which videos get watched? If a video has 0 views after 3 hire cohorts, it’s either poorly placed in the flow or covers something no one needs.
• Which videos get rewatched? High rewatch rates mean the content is valuable but might need to be clearer — or it covers a complex topic worth reinforcing.
• Which videos generate follow-up questions? If every new hire asks the same question after watching a specific video, update the recording to address it proactively.

We’ve seen teams at Zight reduce their onboarding-related Slack questions by 40–60% within the first quarter of building an async video library. The key is treating the library as a living system — update recordings when tools change, add new ones when gaps emerge, and retire outdated content.

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What to Look for in Employee Onboarding Software

If the tools above don’t fit your specific situation, here are the evaluation criteria we used — apply them to any tool you’re considering:

Recording Speed and Friction

The number one predictor of whether your team will actually build an onboarding library is how easy it is to create a recording. If it takes more than 60 seconds from “I should record this” to “the link is shared,” your team won’t do it. Test the full loop: launch → record → share. Zight consistently clocks under 60 seconds in our testing; some tools require export, upload, and link generation steps that add 3–5 minutes.

Multi-Format Support

Not every onboarding explanation needs a video. A two-step process (click Settings → toggle the switch) is better as an annotated screenshot or a 5-second GIF. A tool walkthrough showing a 10-step workflow needs video with voiceover. Look for software that handles all three formats so you can match the content to the complexity.

Organization and Searchability

A library of 50 unsorted recordings is almost as useless as no library at all. You need folders, collections, or some organizational structure. Bonus points for search (by title, transcript, or content) and tagging. Zight’s AI-powered search and Collections handle this well; some competitors require manual tagging discipline that rarely holds up in practice.

Team Management and Permissions

Who can create recordings? Who can edit or delete them? Can you control whether recordings are visible to the whole company or just specific teams? For onboarding at scale, you need admin controls — especially when recordings contain sensitive information like customer data or internal metrics.

Analytics and Tracking

At minimum, you need view counts. Ideally, you want view-by-viewer tracking so managers can confirm specific new hires have watched specific training. Advanced analytics (watch time, drop-off points) help you improve the content over time.

Integration with Your Existing Stack

Where does your team already work? If it’s Notion, your onboarding tool’s links need to embed cleanly in Notion. If it’s Slack, the sharing experience should work natively in Slack. Zight integrates with Slack, Notion, Confluence, Jira, GitHub, Zendesk, and 50+ other tools via direct integrations and Zapier — check the full list on the Zight use cases page.

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The ROI of Async Onboarding: Why Screen Recording Pays for Itself

If you need to build a business case for investing in employee onboarding software, here’s the math we’ve seen play out across Zight customers:

Time Saved per Hire

A typical new hire onboarding involves 8–15 hours of live training calls in the first month. If even 60% of that content is converted to async video, that’s 5–9 hours saved per hire — not just for the new employee, but for every manager, teammate, and subject matter expert who would have been on those calls.

For a company hiring 10 people per quarter, that’s 50–90 hours of saved meeting time every quarter. At an average fully-loaded cost of $75/hour for the people involved, that’s $3,750–$6,750 per quarter in recovered productivity — from a tool that costs $9.95/month per user.

Faster Time-to-Productivity

New hires who can rewatch training on their own schedule reach competency faster than those who attended a live call once and are now working from memory. We’ve seen teams report 25–40% faster time-to-first-contribution after implementing an async onboarding library with Zight. The reason is simple: when you can rewatch the “how to deploy to staging” video the moment you actually need to deploy, you learn faster than hearing about it three days before you need it.

Consistency Across Cohorts

Live onboarding is inconsistent by nature. The person running it has a bad day, skips a section, goes on a tangent, or is out sick and delegates to someone less knowledgeable. Async video delivers the same quality every time. Hire #1 and hire #50 get the exact same walkthrough from the best person to deliver it.

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Who Should Use Zight for Onboarding (Decision Framework)

Zight isn’t the right choice for every onboarding scenario. Here’s a quick framework to help you self-qualify:

Zight is the right fit if:

• You onboard 5+ people per quarter and are repeating the same explanations
• Your onboarding involves walking people through software tools, dashboards, or browser-based workflows
• You’re a remote or hybrid team and can’t rely on “just sit next to someone for a week”
• You want subject matter experts (engineers, PMs, CS reps) to create content — not just L&D
• You need a fast, low-friction tool that doesn’t require video editing skills
• You want screen recordings, GIFs, and screenshots in one tool

You may need a different tool (or an additional one) if:

• Your primary onboarding challenge is compliance, forms, and benefits enrollment → add BambooHR or Rippling
• You need quizzes, certifications, and formal completion tracking → add Trainual or a traditional LMS
• You need polished, broadcast-quality training videos with professional editing → Zight’s editor is not a replacement for Premiere or Final Cut Pro; use it for authentic, quick recordings
• You’re a 5-person company onboarding one person per year → the free plan works fine; you don’t need the team features

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best employee onboarding software for creating training videos?

Zight is the best employee onboarding software for creating async training videos. It lets you record your screen, webcam, and voiceover in one click, then instantly generates a shareable link. Unlike HRIS platforms that focus on checklists and compliance, Zight focuses on the knowledge transfer that actually teaches new hires how to do their job. Try Zight free →

How do I create onboarding videos with screen recording?

Install a screen recording tool like Zight. Open the tool or workflow you want to demonstrate. Click Record with screen + webcam enabled. Walk through the process while narrating each step. Stop recording — Zight auto-generates a shareable link. Embed the link in your onboarding docs, Notion workspace, or Slack channel. Keep each video under 5 minutes and focused on a single topic.

What is async onboarding and why does it matter?

Async onboarding delivers new hire training through pre-recorded videos, documents, and self-paced materials instead of live meetings. It matters because it eliminates scheduling bottlenecks, lets new hires learn at their own pace, scales across time zones, and creates a reusable library that improves with every cohort. Organizations with structured onboarding see 50% greater new hire retention (SHRM).

How long should onboarding videos be?

2–5 minutes per video, covering a single topic or workflow. Engagement drops significantly after 6 minutes. It’s better to create 10 focused two-minute recordings than one 20-minute video. For very simple processes (click this, toggle that), use an annotated screenshot or GIF instead of a video — Zight creates all three formats.

Is Zight better than Loom for employee onboarding?

For building an onboarding library specifically, Zight has advantages: built-in annotations (arrows, text, highlights), GIF and screenshot creation, Collections for organizing videos by role, no per-video branding on team plans, and a more generous free tier. Loom’s advantage is AI-generated summaries and wider brand recognition. Both tools work for async onboarding — Zight’s multi-format approach (video + GIF + screenshot) better fits the variety of onboarding content most teams need.

Do I need an HRIS or a screen recording tool for onboarding?

Most teams need both. HRIS platforms (BambooHR, Rippling) handle the administrative side — compliance forms, benefits enrollment, IT provisioning, task checklists. Screen recording tools (Zight) handle the knowledge transfer side — showing new hires how to use your tools, navigate your processes, and understand your culture. The HRIS manages the checklist; the screen recorder fills it with actual training content.

Can I use free tools to create onboarding videos?

Yes, but with significant limitations. macOS has a built-in recorder (⌘+Shift+5), but it saves large local files with no cloud sharing, no webcam overlay, and no annotations. OBS Studio is free and powerful but has a steep learning curve and no instant sharing. Zight’s free plan gives you a practical starting point with cloud hosting and instant links — enough to test the approach before committing to a paid plan. Loom’s free tier limits you to 25 videos at 5 minutes each, which is tight for a full onboarding library.

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Build Your Onboarding Library This Week

Here’s the honest truth about employee onboarding software: the best tool is the one your team will actually use to create content. The fanciest LMS in the world is useless if it’s empty. The most expensive HRIS doesn’t teach anyone how to use your product.

What works is removing friction. When recording a walkthrough takes 60 seconds and sharing it takes one click, people actually do it. When the engineering lead can record a “how we use feature flags” video between meetings and drop it into the onboarding collection before lunch, your library grows organically.

That’s exactly what Zight is built for. Not a replacement for your HRIS. Not a Hollywood video editor. A fast, frictionless way to turn the knowledge in your team’s heads into reusable onboarding content that every future hire benefits from.

Start building your async onboarding library today:

• 📹 Download Zight free — record your first onboarding video in under 60 seconds
• 👥 See Zight for Teams — shared workspace, analytics, and branding for your onboarding library
• 🔍 Explore all use cases — onboarding, bug reports, design feedback, customer support, and more

Your next new hire shouldn’t have to sit through 15 hours of Zoom calls to learn how your team works. Record it once. Share it forever. That’s async onboarding done right.