Employers enjoy a greater pool of talent and cost savings while employees get better work-life balance, flexibility, and time savings, just to mention a few. 

While remote work is booming, a lot of operations happen behind the scenes to make this possible. Think legal and compensation complexities, as well as dealing with human resource laws across multiple borders.

Remote.com is one of the best remote work management platforms solving these problems. Below, we take you through Remote.com, what they are building, and how your startup can use it to operate an excellent remote workforce. 

 

What is Remote.com? 

Remote.com is a global HR solutions provider helping remote-first companies hire, manage, and pay employees around the world. With legal compliance, compensation management, and integrations with different tools, Remote offers an all-in-one solution for any startup or company looking to streamline People OPs in a remote work environment. 

 

About the Company Remote and its Leadership

Remote operates a 100% remote workforce spread around the world. Founded in 2019, Remote’s mission is to help people and companies do their best work regardless of their location. At the helm of the affairs of this growing startup are Job van der Voot, CEO & co-founder; Marcelo Lebre, COO & co-founder, Kim Cook, Chief of Staff; Elisa Ross, VP of Growth, and hundreds of exceptional talent worldwide. 

 

Major Tools/Features of Remote 

Remote has many products built to meet different needs and for different use cases of remote companies. 

 

1. Global Payroll 

Remote’s Global payroll is a tool for remote companies to manage payroll. Some features here include:

⚖️ Compliance with local laws              ???? International Payments

???? Tax deductions and returns              ???? Expense Management

???? Payslip management                          ⏲️ Time off management and reporting

???? Benefit administration                       ???? Salary Calculations

 

2. Global HR solutions 

• Use Remote’s global HR solution to offer the following:
• Local benefits and perks
• Self-onboarding for your remote team
• Integration with your HR stack through a global employee API

 

3. Local expertise and entities.

Remote has full ownership and authority over its local entities in all the countries that it covers – over 170 countries.

 

4. Global Contractor management

Use Remote’s contractor management tools to create locally compliant contracts and manage and pay contractors globally. 

 

5. Employer of Record (EOR) services

Remote acts as the employer of record (EOR) for your remote company, helping you employ, manage, pay, and stay compliant with a remote workforce (as if you had a presence in those countries). 

 

6. Consulting services

Remote has an in-house team of experts who help remote companies manage employees around the world by helping with:

• Hiring remotely, 
• Deciding between a contractor and an EOR agreement, 
• Talent acquisition strategies, 
• Working with employees who are always on the move (digital nomads), 
• Visa and work permit advice

 

7. Remote IP Guard

Helps remote companies protect their intellectual properties that go beyond signing NDAs. 

 

Remote.com’s Extra Features/Tools

 

1. Remote.com’s Country Explorer 

It’s easy to find tools like Remote or its alternatives when searching for a way to manage remote employees. But it’s difficult navigating the legal implications that come with employing people from different countries. 

While remote may handle these complexities for your remote company, it’s still important to know what you’re up against before accepting employees. This is what the Country Explorer feature inside Remote is for. 

The Country Explorer provides remote companies with in-depth guides to explore the legal and regulatory landscape of hiring and managing remote employees in different countries. From Belarus and Costa Rica to Greece and Peru, there are many guides to help you get started on where to look for remote talent and the type of laws you are signing up for. 

 

2. Remote Partner Marketplace 

The partner marketplace is a platform made up of Remote.com’s partner organizations and startups. These partners, although they are their own products and offer their own services, help startups accomplish a lot of things in one place when used together with Remote. One good thing is that if you are a Remote customer who wants to use any of these partner services, you get a discount. Some notable partners here are:

• Wise (formerly TransferWise) – for paying remote employees.
• SafetyWing for handling health insurance of remote employees and more.
• Others include Mercury, Brex, BambooHR, Rippling, etc. 

 

3. Remote Talent Marketplace

While Remote helps you manage global talent and stay compliant worldwide, there’s one important thing it doesn’t do directly, which is talent search. And that is exactly why it has partnered with talent marketplaces, agencies, and recruitment firms to help your startup find and hire the greatest talent in the world. Some partners include:

• VanHack
• Lemon.io
• Hackajob
• Arc()
• Job for Humanity
• And more.

 

 

Who can use Remote.com?

Contracting internationally. Startups/companies that want to work with international contractors can use Remote to manage and pay their global contractors. 

Employing internationally. Startups/companies that want to have full-time or part-time employees in different countries can use Remote’s Employment of Record services to build a fully functioning remote team. 

Transitioning to a remote company. Startups/businesses that worked from the office, but now want to hire remote talent globally, can use Remote to simplify and streamline the transition. 

Global IP Protection. Companies that have employees in different countries and want a solution to manage IP and security can rely on Remote’s Global IP Guard and security solutions. 

 

Pros and Cons of Remote.com

Pros of Remote.com

Cons of Remote.com

✅ Easy to use interface ✅ Dedicated in-house team to take your new employees through onboarding (available on the enterprise plan). ✅ Discounts for special institutions,          including nonprofits, charities, refugee organizations, and startups.  ✅ Provide top-notch EOR services ✅ Available in more than 170 countries ✅ How-to articles and online guides to help companies navigate the platform better.  ✅ 27/4 email support

❌ It would be good to offer a dedicated support team for all paying customers, which is only available on the Enterprise plan. ❌ Pricing for Remote is not all that transparent, especially for its Global Payroll and HR solution.  ❌ There have also been some reviews on Trustpilot about Remote’s delay in response to some issues that remote companies face.

 

 

Remote.com Plans and Pricing

Remote has different pricing plans for different solutions. The contractor management plan is currently free and includes onboarding, paying, and automatically generating 1099s for US contractors.

Its employer of records offers, which allows companies to hire full-time employees in different countries, start at $299 per employee per month when billed annually and $349 when billed monthly. Remote is currently offering a free one year for the first employee you add (that’s if you pay annually).

Note, however, that the $299 per employee per month is for startups hiring remotely in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. If you have employees from any other country apart from the three listed above, plans start at $599 per employee per month for annual billing and $699 per employee per month for monthly billing. 

Both the global payroll and remote enterprise plans require startups and businesses to reach out for a quote. Prices depend on the number of employees you have and the size of your organization. 

Pricing for all the plans is shown below.

 

 

Remote.com’s Special Plans and Offers for Startups and Nonprofits

Remote has special offers for startups and nonprofits, reviewed below:

 

1. Remote for Startups

Remote.com gives startups its powerful Payroll, HR, and global compliance tools at a fraction of the cost through the Remote for Startups program. Here are the benefits of the program. 

1. 1st employee free: You pay $0 for the first employee for the first year.
2. Out of the 12-month subscription for the year, Remote gives you two months for free (so you only pay for 10 months). 
3. Onboard, manage, and pay contractors for free. 

 

But first, here’s how to be eligible:

To qualify, you must have raised pre-seed, seed, or Series A funding from a venture capital firm, accelerator, incubator, or other startup-enabling organization.

 

2. Remote for Good 

 This is Remote.com’s program that provides nonprofits with global HR, Payroll, hiring, and employee management tools to stay compliant and find great talent across the world. Here’s what nonprofits get:

1. First employee free: your first employee will be free for 12 months. 
2. 25% off global employment. Your nonprofit gets 25% off for Remote’s Employer of Records feature for up to 10 employees. 
3. You get to manage, pay, and stay compliant with global contractors for free.
4. Co-marketing opportunities: Remote gives nonprofits the opportunity to share their stories and causes on Remote (blogs, guides, social media, case studies, etc).

Eligibility

If you are a registered nonprofit, charity, trust, social enterprise, or benefit corporation with a mission to make a positive difference for social benefit, then you are eligible for this program.

For a social enterprise, Remote may look for the social impact to be funded wholly or partly by reinvestment of profits made by the organization to create social capital.

Summing up

Remote.com is a pioneer in the global hiring, talent management, and compliance space. But it’s also pretty new, just like the many remote work-focused talent acquisition and management tools out there. I’m sure there will be lots of glitches in the responsiveness of the team and the usability of some of its features. As we report these issues to the team and through review platforms, as well as express our gratitude for what works, let’s hope the team takes these problems and builds better remote working tools for the future of work.

 

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