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Comparison

Capstan and Zoho People

Zoho People is a serious product, and this page is not a scorecard. It sets out how each of the two is built, taking each side from how it is publicly positioned, and then gives you the questions worth putting to any vendor in this market, us included. Where Zoho People is the better buy, it says so, and it says where Capstan is the wrong choice outright.

What each one is built to be

Start here rather than with a feature list. Most of the difference between two HR products is decided before either one ships a feature, by what business the company is in.

Zoho People, as publicly positioned, September 2026

Zoho People presents itself as HR software inside the wider Zoho suite: attendance, leave, time tracking, onboarding, performance and employee self-service, sharing a login and a data layer with the rest of Zoho, from a company long established across India and worldwide. Payroll is published as its own Zoho product in the markets Zoho supports it in, and the shape of the offer is one affordable app among many that a company already standardised on Zoho switches on.

Capstan, published on this site

Capstan is an HR system of record for companies that employ their own people. It holds the roster, the employment, leave, attendance, documents and the workflows around them, with the module suite included on every plan for the rest. It is not an employer of record, it computes no payroll, and it runs as a self-contained stack in one EU region live today, data in Frankfurt and compute in Amsterdam.

Set out in full on the product page, with the residency model on security and every figure on pricing.

Three structural differences

One axis at a time, two published models, each stated as what it is. Nothing here says what Zoho People does not do: their model is theirs to describe, and if it moves, the line about ours still holds.

  1. Whether it is one app in a suite or a standalone record

    Zoho People, as publicly positioned, September 2026

    Zoho People is published as one application in a large business suite, and much of its value is the shared identity, data and low per-app price that come from already running Zoho for mail, CRM or finance.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan is a standalone HR system of record that assumes no wider suite. It holds people, employment, leave, attendance, documents, workflows, self-service and reporting, with all fourteen modules included on every plan, and it integrates outward through signed webhooks rather than by being part of a single vendor suite.

  2. Who computes payroll

    Zoho People, as publicly positioned, September 2026

    Payroll is published as a separate Zoho product, available and maintained with statutory content in the markets Zoho supports, and designed to connect back to Zoho People.

    Capstan, published on this site

    Capstan compiles payroll inputs into a documented export for your payroll partner and files the computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula anywhere, and files nothing with any authority.

  3. What the plan you start on contains

    Zoho People, as publicly positioned, September 2026

    Zoho People is published as a ladder of plans, with capability arriving as you move up the tiers, priced per employee.

    Capstan, published on this site

    The complete product is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees, all fourteen modules included at no extra charge. One thing changes when you pay: the cap lifts. Every figure is on one public page.

The six questions to ask any vendor, including us

Our answers are here in public with nothing rounded off. The slot beside each one is left open on purpose: Zoho People’s answers are theirs to give, and a comparison page that fills them in has stopped being a comparison. Ask them the same six, and set what you are told beside ours.

  1. Who employs our people, and who carries the liability?

    It decides who is on the contract of employment, who answers a labour authority, and what you are actually buying: a service that takes the employment on, or a system that records it.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    You do. Capstan is not an employer of record, never becomes the legal employer of anyone on your roster, and moves no payroll money. If you need a legal employer in a country where you have no entity, that is a different kind of vendor.

    Zoho People’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  2. Who computes payroll, and whose name is on the filing?

    Computation and filing are where liability sits. A vendor that calculates and files is taking that on. A vendor that prepares inputs is not, and you need the second half of the arrangement in place before you rely on either.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    Not Capstan, by design. It compiles joiners and leavers, pay structures, leave, attendance and adjustments into a documented export for your payroll partner, and files the computed results back onto the employee record. It holds no statutory rate, slab or formula, and files nothing with any authority.

    Zoho People’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  3. Where does our data live, and who inside the vendor can reach it?

    Residency is a property of where the database is, not of a promise in a policy. Support access is the same question from the other end: not whether staff would look, but whether the system lets them without you switching it on.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    One isolated region, the EU today: data in Frankfurt, compute in Amsterdam. It is a self-contained stack with no global control plane and no cross-region keys, so there is no runtime path out of the region. Staff hold no tenant of their own, and access exists only while you have granted a time-boxed consent, masked by default and audited on both sides.

    Zoho People’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  4. What do we get on the plan we start on, and what changes as we grow?

    This is what growing costs you. If capability moves between tiers, the upgrade you eventually buy is largely software you were already being shown.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    The complete core is on every plan, including the free one, which is capped at twenty active employees. Paying lifts the cap and includes all fourteen modules at no extra charge, billed month to month with no annual contract and no lock-in. Every figure is on one public page, so you can total your own number without a call.

    Zoho People’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  5. What happens to our data the day we leave, or the day a payment fails?

    Export is the price of leaving. Either it is written down before you join, or it gets decided at the moment you have the least leverage you will ever have.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    An owner can take a full export at any time: one archive of JSON and CSV, in open formats, with a documented manifest. Export deliberately sits outside the suspension check, so a workspace held for non-payment can still be exported. The export is not a dead archive either: it imports straight back into a fresh Capstan workspace, the people master proven to round-trip, which is the plainest proof there is no lock-in. Deletion is cryptographic erasure followed by hard deletion, with a residue scan.

    Zoho People’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

  6. Does any software judge our people, and can the person see why?

    Whether software scores, ranks or screens people decides who is accountable for the judgement, and whether the person it was made about can be shown the reason.

    Capstan’s answer, in public

    No AI scores, ranks or screens your people, and that is architectural rather than a promise: the agent capability registry is pinned in the database so it cannot hold a capability that evaluates a person, nothing of the kind is built, and the analytics engine can only ever narrow who sees what, with small groups suppressed. The useful AI is off until a workspace turns it on and is bounded by construction: an assistant answers from what the caller may already see, and an agent needs a named accountable human and an explicit human confirmation before it changes any record, can move no money, and can evaluate nobody. The one aggregate assistant that reaches out sends only non-personal figures, such as headcount by department, to our single AI sub-processor, OpenAI, which does not train on the data. No per-person or sensitive record is ever sent to an outside model or used to train one.

    Zoho People’s answer

    Ask them, and get it in writing.

If an answer of ours turns out to be wrong, it is a bug and we will fix the page. The same standard applies to anything here about Zoho People: tell us and we correct it or take it down.

Choose Zoho People if

This is the part of the page that makes the rest of it worth reading. If one of these describes you, the honest answer is that Zoho People is the better buy, and we would rather you knew it here than three months into an implementation.

  • You already run your business on Zoho, mail, CRM, Books or the wider suite, and you want HR in the same place, under the same login, sharing the same data. That consolidation is real and Capstan does not compete for it.
  • You want Zoho Payroll computed inside the suite in a market it supports, so one vendor holds both the record and the pay run.
  • A low per-app price inside a suite you are already committed to is the number that decides this, and the breadth of the suite is worth more to you than a dedicated HR product.

The part that costs us the sale

Where Capstan is the wrong choice

Not a softened version of the section above. These are requirements Capstan does not meet and is not going to meet, written down so you can rule us out in a minute rather than in a quarter. If one of them is true of you, nothing else on this page matters.

  1. You want a standalone HR record that does not depend on adopting or staying on a wider business suite. Capstan is deliberately one product, not a suite.

  2. You want your HR software to compute pay and produce your statutory filings. Capstan hands that to a payroll partner, in every country, by design.

  3. You need your data held in India or another region Capstan does not run yet. The EU is the region live today, and the footer list on every page is the whole of it.

That is the list as we understand it today. If you hit a limit that is not on it, tell us: a disqualifier we did not know about belongs here more than anything else on the page.

If nothing on this page ruled us out, run it yourself.

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