HireDesk
A lightweight ATS for startups that hire without an HR department
Your whole hiring loop — pipeline, scorecards, scheduling, and offer letters — in one screen, for less than an hour of your time per month.
Set up your first pipeline in under two hours
30-day money-back guarantee. Month-to-month billing.
Most applicant tracking systems were built for companies that have a recruiter posting 20 roles, an HR coordinator scheduling panels, and a hiring manager who only shows up to interview. A lightweight ATS for startups looks different because the founder is doing all four jobs. You sourced the candidates, you scheduled the interviews, you collected feedback from the panel over Slack, and you are now writing the offer letter in a Word doc. The process works until it doesn't — usually around candidate seven in a three-role search, when someone falls through because their status lived in your head rather than a system.
Greenhouse quotes $6,000 a year and requires two weeks to configure. Workable is designed around HR workflows a 12-person company doesn't have. Both tools assume you have someone whose job is to manage the ATS. If that person is you, on top of your actual job, neither tool fits.
Why Standard ATS Pricing Breaks for a Founding Team Running Its Own Hiring Loop
When you hire without HR support, the cost is not the software. It is the hours. A founder managing three open roles spends four or more hours per week on scheduling coordination, chasing scorecards from interviewers over Slack, and tracking next steps across email threads and a spreadsheet. At $150 per hour, that is $2,400 per month in founder time spent on logistics a $59 tool should handle. The spreadsheet is free, but every hour you spend updating it is an hour you are not closing a deal, shipping a feature, or running the company.
Introducing HireDesk
When the recruiter, coordinator, and hiring manager are all the same person, the hiring tool should reflect that. HireDesk covers the full arc from posted role to signed offer — built for a team of three running five interviews a week, not an HR department running fifty.
What You Get — $59/month
Candidate pipeline board — A kanban view of every applicant across all open roles. Drag a candidate to the next stage; the system updates their status and queues the next action.
Scorecard builder — Build a scored rubric for any role. Each panelist fills in their own scorecard; all scores collect in one view so the debrief starts with data, not memory.
Panel scheduler — Share one link with the candidate that reflects real panel availability. The candidate picks a slot; every interviewer gets the calendar invite without a reply-all chain.
Offer letter generator — Enter comp, start date, and role title. HireDesk formats a countersign-ready offer letter, delivers it to the candidate by email, and files the signed copy on the candidate record.
Simple applicant tracking for small business roles — Post a role and share a link. Applicants fill out a short form; their answers and resume appear in the pipeline as they submit.
Role templates — Save the stage sequence, scorecard template, and job description for any role. When the same position opens again, one click restores the full setup.
Team notes and @mentions — Leave a note on any candidate and tag a colleague. They get notified; the note stays on the candidate card, not in a thread no one can find six weeks later.
Why $59/month
One month of HireDesk costs less than one hour of your time. If you are running three open roles and spending four hours a week on hiring coordination, the software pays for itself before the first interview. You are not buying a feature set you will configure for six months and half-use. You are buying back the coordination hours — scheduling, scorecard chasing, offer letter drafting — so the next hire moves faster and fewer candidates go cold while you were busy.
Who This Is For
You are the founder, CTO, or head of a function making your own hires at a 5–30 person company with no HR team.
You are running two or three open roles at once and tracking candidates in a spreadsheet that has become a liability.
You have two or three people doing panel interviews but no system for collecting their feedback before the debrief.
You are sending offer letters as Word attachments and waiting for a scan to come back.
You have hired the same role twice and rebuilt the pipeline from scratch both times.
If you are at a company with a dedicated recruiter managing the ATS, Workable or Greenhouse is a better fit.
The HireDesk Offer Guarantee
If HireDesk does not cut your hiring coordination time in half within the first 30 days, email the team for a full refund. The guarantee runs from your first role posted, not your signup date.
In 30 Days, You'll Have:
- Every active candidate at every stage visible on one screen without opening email
- Scorecards from your full panel collected before each debrief
- Panel scheduling handled by a shared link instead of a reply-all thread
- Signed offer letters filed on candidate records, not in a downloads folder
- Role templates for every position you hire more than once
- A hiring loop that moves fast enough that candidates do not go cold between rounds
Frequently Asked Questions
Is HireDesk a simple applicant tracking tool for small businesses, or does it have enterprise features I will never use?
HireDesk covers the stages a founding team uses: post a role, track applicants, run a panel, send an offer. There is no sourcing CRM, no compliance workflow manager, no custom reporting suite. If you need those, Greenhouse is built for it. If you need to hire five people this year with no HR team, HireDesk covers the full loop.
HireDesk vs. Greenhouse: what is the difference?
Greenhouse is built for HR teams managing dozens of roles simultaneously with a recruiter, coordinator, and hiring manager on every search. HireDesk is built for the founder who is all three of those people on a three-role search. Greenhouse costs $6,000+ per year and takes weeks to configure. HireDesk costs $59/month and takes an afternoon to get running.
How long does it take to set up HireDesk and post the first role?
Most teams post their first role within two hours of signing up. The pipeline stages, scorecard template, and job post form come with defaults that work without any configuration. You can customize everything, but you do not have to before you go live.
What happens to my data if I cancel?
Every candidate record, scorecard, and offer letter exports as a CSV and PDF from the account settings page. The export does not require a support request and is available until the moment the account closes.
What it is: A lightweight ATS for founding teams that hire without an HR department.
What you get: Candidate pipeline board, scorecards, panel scheduling, offer letter generator, role templates, team notes.
Price: $59/month (Starter) or $99/month (Growth).
Catch: Built for 5–30 person teams running founder-led hiring. Not a fit for companies with a full recruiting function.
Guarantee: 30-day full refund if it does not cut your coordination time in half.
Set up your first pipeline in under two hours