Enboarder vs Shapes (2026)

Enboarder offers 120+ ATS and HRIS integrations out of the box and names about twenty eight providers across distinct classes.

They are HRIS and payroll (Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, UKG, Dayforce, BambooHR, HiBob, Personio, Gusto, Rippling, Deel, isolved, Employment Hero), applicant tracking (Greenhouse, Lever, SmartRecruiters, Workable, Recruitee, TeamTailor, JobAdder, LiveHire, Eploy, SnapHire, Gem), IT service management (ServiceNow), identity and cloud (Microsoft Azure), e-signature (DocuSign, Adobe Sign), CRM (Salesforce), employment verification (Equifax Workforce Solutions), document and compliance (SharePoint, Mitratech Tracker) and messaging (Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, email, SMS).

Beyond the catalog, the agents act. IT provisioning and operational tasks are triggered automatically on role and lifecycle events, documents are sent for signature at the right moment through DocuSign, and processes are synced into ServiceNow. Enboarder takes authenticated action inside systems it does not own, instead of only reading from them or handing a task to a person. It sits above the ATS, HRIS, compliance and IT platforms instead of replacing them.

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Payroll and finance connections cover ADP, PayFit, Moorepay, Staffology, Bright, Papaya Global, Deel, Remote, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, Oracle and Abacum. Identity connections cover Okta, OneLogin, JumpCloud and Microsoft Entra. Recruiting connections cover Greenhouse, Ashby, Workable, Lever, Teamtailor, JazzHR and Spark Hire.

Workplace connections cover Teams, Outlook, Google Calendar, DocuSign, Torii and Scytale. Shapes keeps a dedicated integrations page for this connected stack. Integrations and API access come with the Core plan. Attendance hours are calculated automatically for payroll, and the work flows to the connected systems.

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The platform is built in three layers. The AI layer holds a multi agent framework alongside AI Agents, AI Assistants and AI Journey Management. The workflow layer holds a Time & Logic-Based Workflow Engine, Activity & Task Management and Stakeholder Management. Journey Orchestration is a separate named product with its own page. The agents' work involves several participants by design.

They structure goals, sequence milestones, coordinate stakeholders and adapt workflows over time within boundaries HR defines, coordinating work across people and systems (HR, IT, managers and employees), generating structured 30-60-90 plans, monitoring progress and triggering cross functional actions. On the integration side, IT provisioning, compliance steps and document signature are brought into a single orchestrated sequence timed to lifecycle events. The participants are distinct people, systems and agents with different jobs, not one agent taking many steps.

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Customers compose multistep workflows and agents run them. The Workflows module puts processes on autopilot with AI generated workflows built and run in a few clicks, from onboarding to offboarding to maternity leave. Agents run entire people workflows end to end, including onboarding, reporting and answering employee questions. A team can also describe how it works and have Shapes AI build a workflow around it.

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Enboarder offers both continuous data synchronization and event driven triggers, with key events instantly activating journeys and workflows the moment data changes in the system of record. ATS integrations launch onboarding journeys from the hiring system automatically. HRIS integrations continuously sync employee data so journeys adapt in real time to role, location and organizational changes.

The platform also has a Time & Logic-Based Workflow Engine, so schedules and conditions sit alongside events, and Multi-Channel Nudging carries the output. Channels include Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, email and SMS, so work reaches people where they already work instead of in a separate portal, with mobile first delivery for frontline populations.

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Work starts in two ways. Employees use self service to request time off or clock in from anywhere, and requests are routed for approval. Shapes AI also monitors the org continuously, surfacing patterns and flagging issues as they emerge, before someone thinks to ask. Webhooks come with the Plus plan, but Shapes does not say which direction they run. Shapes names no schedule, no events from connected systems and no channel beyond the application.

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Enboarder's AI designs complete best practice journeys from the customer's own job data, policies and internal content, and its AI Assistants answer role aware questions grounded in verified company content, returning guidance tied back to role expectations, journey goals and company policies.

That corpus is connected once and read continuously, across every journey, every assistant question and every recommendation's rationale, instead of assembled per request, and it persists as the customer's policies and content change. It is queryable by employees, managers and HR through the assistant. HRIS integrations continuously sync employee data, so journeys adapt in real time to role, location and organizational changes and the structure stays current. Enboarder does not disclose how retrieval works.

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The Docs and eSign module keeps policies, handbooks, procedures and templates in one central hub, where employees find answers with the AI chat. The people directory is the single source of truth for employee data. Shapes AI runs on the customer's live data and permissions, so it has the full picture.

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A journey record is the application's own data model. Deleting it deletes the onboarding record itself, so it is a database, not a memory layer, however many agents read and write it. Adaptation works differently.

The platform continuously measures engagement and performance and adapts each step in real time, and underlying models and recommendation logic are improved from aggregated usage patterns and human feedback, which is absorbed learning, not memory. There is no memory layer with a stated scope or lifetime and no retention control over agent memory as distinct from customer data. The AI Assistants answer questions and surface guidance, with no conversational session state.

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Agents know your workflows and context, and Shapes describes AI that acts, learns and builds. That knowledge comes from the platform's own data and configuration. Shapes describes the learning only in general terms. It names no memory layer and gives no scope, lifetime or way to delete what agents keep.

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All AI outputs require human validation before use. Enboarder's AI does not make autonomous decisions about people, and humans review, approve and control all AI assisted recommendations and workflows. A second control sits alongside it. AI features are optional. Customers choose when and where AI is used, or run workflows entirely without AI, so there is a scope control and an off switch.

Agents operate within clear boundaries defined by HR teams. Together, validation of every output before use and the off switch make a review and approve surface Enboarder ships, not a decision merely reserved to a person. Bias mitigation adds a fairness control, with protected attributes excluded from prompts and learning signals.

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Requests and approvals come with the Core plan, so people processes such as time off can be approved, and workflows route the requests. Shapes AI agents know your workflows, flag what needs attention and take action. Shapes names no approval step, review queue or threshold before an agent acts, and no setting for what routes to a human.

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Access controls include strict administrative and role based access controls, role based visibility of personal data, fully configurable retention and deletion, customer driven redaction and automatic deletion of inactive data, audit trails, and a control to choose when and where AI is used or to run workflows without it. Enboarder's attestation claims disagree with each other.

Enboarder shows AICPA SOC 2 and ISO 27001 badges on its trust page, speaks of SOC 2 Type 2 controls and ISO 27001-aligned practices on its agentic AI page, and says in its Information Security Policy that the ISMS meets the requirements of both, not that it is certified against them. No certificate number, auditor, report or date is given, and practices aligned to a standard are not a certification.

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SOC 2 Type II covers security, availability and confidentiality under independent audit, and Shapes also holds ISO 27001 certification. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and a trust center at trust.shapes.co carries audit reports. ISO 42001 is a work in progress and is not yet held. For customers, custom permission roles come with each plan, two on Core and unlimited on Plus. Plus adds Okta and Microsoft Entra ID single sign on, with account data backup alongside. Shapes AI runs on the customer's live permissions.

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Every AI recommendation is presented with clear rationale tied to role expectations, journey goals, company policies and user provided inputs, and customers can see what the AI proposed, the inputs and assumptions used, and what humans accepted or changed. Enboarder presents this as support for governance and auditability.

Each proposal thus has a decision record with its reasoning and inputs attached, plus the human disposition, which shows why as well as what. Around it sit audit trails to support compliance and internal review, continuous system monitoring, logging and alerting, and clear accountability and policy enforcement under governance.

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People Analytics turns employee data into dashboards across retention, salary, engagement, performance and DEI, and Vibe Views builds any visualization from a description. Continuous audits and access reviews cover Shapes' own security posture. Shapes describes no log of agent actions, no record of what an agent did or why, and no run trace a customer can open. Agents take action, but Shapes does not say how those actions are recorded.

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Four separate regional instances run on distinct hosts, Asia Pacific at my.enboarder.com, Canada at ca.enboarder.com, Europe at eu.enboarder.com and Americas at us.enboarder.com. These regions are provisioned environments a customer is placed into, not an option stated only in prose.

Data retention and deletion settings are fully configurable, customers can redact personal identifiers and automatically delete inactive data, and Enboarder gives organizations flexibility to configure controls for their regulatory environment. GDPR and CCPA are legal cover, not residency. There is no VPC, on premises or customer tenant option.

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Shapes is delivered as SaaS. No hosting region or residency control is published, and Shapes names no other deployment option or choice of environment. Its security posture is GDPR ready, built with European data protection requirements at the core.

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The adoptable pieces are ten named lifecycle solutions, each with its own page (preboarding and compliance, employee onboarding, frontline onboarding, employee transitions, offboarding, role based enablement, new hire ramp plans, new hire learning, M&A and reorganization), plus a Smart Policy Engine and built in US federal, state and local compliance content covering I-9, E-Verify and W-4.

These are use cases for one journey engine, not separate units a customer selects among, and the journeys themselves are generated, not chosen. Enboarder's pitch is that AI automatically designs complete best practice journeys from the customer's job data and policies, and ramp plans are personalized per new hire. A library the platform writes for the customer is not a library the customer adopts from. There is no browsable template catalog, pack or named agent set.

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Pricing has two base plans plus purpose built add on apps (Surveys, Performance and Compensation), each priced per seat, with Goals and OKRs coming soon. The add on apps are modules, and Shapes publishes no browsable catalog of prebuilt agents. Agents that know your workflows and take action are one horizontal capability. The builder creates tools from a description instead of offering prebuilt ones. Vibe Views also has a Vibe Hub.

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There is no model picker, admin model setting, provider list, routing description or bring your own model option. Enboarder refers to underlying models and recommendation logic without naming a provider, and builds agentic AI into the core platform architecture as machinery it operates, not something the customer selects.

Customers can control whether AI is used at all, choosing when and where it runs or operating workflows without it. This on and off control sets scope. Turning the AI off is not choosing which model it uses. The statement that customer data is never used to train public or shared models is a data handling boundary, not model flexibility.

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Under its Responsible AI commitments, Shapes never uses customer data to train off the shelf models and never shares it across tenants. The third party models and APIs Shapes works with are held to the same standards, so unnamed third party models run behind the product. Shapes names no provider, describes no routing and gives customers and admins no published choice of model.

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The Integrations add-on offers four routes. They are native integrations to 85+ apps, APIs and webhooks to automate data sharing between Enboarder and the customer's other systems, SFTP with encryption options for secure data and report upload, and iPaaS to connect Enboarder across the stack. So Enboarder names an API and webhooks for its own platform and states their scope. There is no developer portal, API reference, endpoint list, authentication guide or documentation subdomain behind them, and the route to the capability is a sales quote. There is no public SDK or MCP server.

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Outside systems can call Shapes through its own interfaces. Integrations and API access come with the Core plan, and the public API documentation is an Apollo GraphQL studio schema (DreamTeam-V1). Webhooks come with the Plus plan, and Shapes also offers MCP access, with its own page among its resources. Shapes AI works across any AI tools the customer uses, on live data and permissions.

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There is a real post deployment loop. As journeys run, the platform continuously measures engagement and performance and adapts each step in real time to improve outcomes, without rebuilding workflows or involving IT, and Enboarder reports early customers seeing higher completion rates. The object being tuned is the journey the agent designed, measured against a real outcome.

There is no controlled comparison, such as a holdout, deterministic assignment, scored test case or simulation, and no way for a customer to test a journey change before it runs on real employees. Continuous measurement with adaptive response is a live metric on operations, not a change under test.

Separately, underlying models and recommendation logic are improved from aggregated usage patterns and explicit human feedback, which is Enboarder's own model improvement practice, not something the customer runs.

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The Plus plan includes a sandbox account, a test environment for configuration. Shapes names no scored test set, readable result, release gate or metric on agent behavior, and no other way to test a change to the agents or workflows.

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There is no hosted or local browser, desktop session, or remote or local computer control. The nearest thing is integration work. Enboarder triggers IT provisioning and operational tasks automatically on role and lifecycle events, and coordinates document signature, compliance checks and employment verification across ServiceNow, DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Equifax Workforce Solutions and SharePoint.

Every one of those runs through a prebuilt integration, and Enboarder sits above the ATS, HRIS, compliance and IT platforms and orchestrates them. These are programmatic interfaces, the opposite of operating software as a user. Multi channel nudging over Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, email and SMS is channel coverage, not computer use.

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The agents work over the platform's own people data and connected systems, and the builder generates tools inside the product. Shapes names no browser, desktop or computer control by an agent, and no open research on each case at run time.

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