ATS for small business and startups
When one or two people run hiring alongside their day job, the ATS has to replace the spreadsheet and inbox threads without adding admin. Start with one real role.
At a glance
Plans
Free has no subscription fee, credit card or trial clock, for up to two operators (Admins or Recruiters) and five concurrent jobs. Basic and Growth, coming soon, add publishing, collaboration and insight when the team outgrows that.
Signs you have outgrown the spreadsheet
Small teams rarely need an ATS for its own sake. They need one when candidate details, feedback and next steps start living in too many places for the people doing the hiring to keep straight.
If a CV sits in email, the status sits in a sheet and the feedback sits in chat, list them. Each extra place is a step someone has to reconcile before a decision.
For each active candidate, ask who does what next and by when. If the answer needs a meeting, the process needs a shared record with an owner and a next action on the application.
If decisions rest on memory rather than written notes against agreed criteria, a job-level scorecard that every interview inherits will make the decision easier to explain later.
Choose one opening with a known process. Set up its stages, add a few clearly labelled sample candidates, and run it end to end before moving personal data from an existing tracker.
Free fits up to two operators and five concurrent jobs, counting draft, open and on-hold roles. If you already need more, or need a careers page, candidate email or a hiring-manager view, plan for Basic or Growth.
What a small team gets
Free is a plain applicant tracking system: the records and handoffs a small team needs to run hiring in one place, with the in-app help assistant on hand for questions about how TiLab works.
Create roles, add candidates and CVs, and keep each job-specific application and its stage attached to the candidate record.
Keep CVs, parsed profile fields, files, notes, source labels, ownership and next actions together, and hold promising people in the talent pool for the next opening.
Every job carries a scorecard and its interviews inherit it, so both operators record comparable ratings and written evidence.
Route offer approvals, build the offer, and track onboarding checklists on the same hiring record once you have chosen someone.
Fit in plain language
The right ATS for a small business is the one the people doing the hiring will keep up to date. Judge TiLab on what it supports today, not on what the paid plans will add.
A founder, operations lead or first recruiter runs hiring with one other person.
These capabilities are not part of Free. Basic and Growth are coming soon.
Common questions
It depends on how many places the hiring currently lives. If one person can find every candidate’s status and feedback in one sheet, keep the sheet. If two people keep reconciling email, chat and a tracker, a shared record is worth testing on one role.
The free page explains the Free plan and its limits. This page is about fit: whether a small team’s workload and roles suit a two-operator, five-job workspace, and how to test that on one role.
Yes, when hiring is run by a founder and one other operator. On Free, seats are for Admins and Recruiters; the Hiring Manager portal, which gives managers their own shortlist and feedback view, is part of Growth.
Basic removes the concurrent-job cap and is billed per operator; Growth adds the Hiring Manager and Candidate portals, candidate communications and analytics. Both are coming soon. See the pricing page for the current plans.
Plan the move first. The free spreadsheet-to-ATS migration kit helps you map columns, clean records and pilot one role before importing personal data.
A worked evaluation
A fictional twelve-person company is hiring its first Customer Success Associate. The founder and the operations lead share hiring. Candidate A, Candidate B and Candidate C are synthetic records; no customer results are implied.
List where CVs arrive, where status is tracked and where interview notes go. Pick three tasks to compare: finding a candidate’s status, naming the next action, and reading the reason for a decision.
Create the job with its stages, add the three sample candidates, move each through the pipeline and record a short scorecard from both operators.
Repeat the three tasks using only the workspace. Record anything you needed that Free does not include as a gap, and check it against the plan limits before moving more roles.
The pilot passes when both people can run the role, explain each candidate’s status and decision from the record alone, and accept the Free limits. Keep the original spreadsheet until the pilot is finished.
Explore the workflow
Create a free workspace for up to two operators and five concurrent jobs, and compare it with the way your team hires today. When you need publishing, collaboration or insight, Basic and Growth are coming soon.
Contact the team