When it comes to employee recognition and engagement, Bonusly and Nectar have become two of the most popular choices among organizations looking to build a positive company culture and boost employee morale. Similar to Matter, both platforms offer unique features designed to create seamless peer-to-peer recognition programs and reward systems. However, when you dive into the specifics, you’ll find that Bonusly and Nectar cater to slightly different needs, depending on your company's goals, size, and culture.
Whether your focus is on seamless integration with platforms like Microsoft Teams or offering customizable rewards to your employees, choosing the right employee recognition platform is essential for creating a high-performing culture. In this post, we’ll compare Bonusly and Nectar side-by-side to help you make an informed decision. We'll also highlight Matter as a powerful alternative, combining the best features of both platforms to offer a comprehensive solution for employee engagement and recognition.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Overview comparison
At first glance, Bonusly and Nectar seem like two sides of the same coin—both are top-tier employee recognition platforms designed to boost engagement, improve morale, and foster a positive company culture. But when you look a little closer, you'll find that they cater to slightly different needs.
Bonusly focuses on simplicity and fun, offering an easy-to-use peer-to-peer recognition system where employees can award points to one another. These points can be redeemed for rewards like gift cards, company swag, and charitable donations. Bonusly shines with its social recognition feed, where all recognition is public, helping teams stay connected, motivated, and engaged. Bonusly also integrates seamlessly with platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, allowing recognition to happen directly in the tools your team already uses.
On the other hand, Nectar emphasizes flexibility and customization. While it also offers peer recognition and rewards, Nectar goes a step further with milestone automation for work anniversaries and birthdays, helping companies celebrate important moments without manual effort. Nectar's rewards catalog is particularly extensive, featuring integration with Amazon for nearly limitless reward options, along with branded swag and gift cards. It’s ideal for companies looking to integrate recognition with their core values and HR systems, allowing for tailored recognition programs that fit the company's unique culture.
While both platforms are highly rated for improving employee engagement and retention, Bonusly is perfect for companies looking for a simple, social recognition system with minimal setup, while Nectar is better suited for organizations that want more customization and comprehensive reward options.
And if neither quite fits your needs, Matter offers a robust alternative, combining the best features of both platforms with even more flexibility and employee engagement options.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Features
Both Bonusly and Nectar provide a range of features designed to enhance employee recognition and engagement, but they approach it in slightly different ways. Bonusly emphasizes social recognition and ease of use, making it an excellent option for companies that want to encourage real-time peer-to-peer recognition. Nectar, on the other hand, focuses on flexibility and aligning recognition with core company values, offering more customization for businesses that want a tailored experience.
Here are some of the standout features of each platform:
Bonusly features:
- Social recognition feed: Bonusly’s recognition feed displays all recognition publicly across the organization, fostering transparency and celebrating achievements in real-time.
- Customizable rewards: Employees can redeem their points for a wide variety of rewards, including gift cards, charitable donations, or custom company swag. The platform also supports cash rewards through PayPal.
- Automated milestones: Bonusly ensures key moments like birthdays and work anniversaries are never missed by automating these celebrations and sharing them in the company’s recognition feed.
- Analytics and reporting: Managers can access in-depth analytics to track recognition patterns, identify top performers, and ensure fair distribution of recognition across the team.
Nectar features:
- Core values integration: Nectar allows companies to tie peer recognition directly to their core values, reinforcing company culture and ensuring that recognition supports broader organizational goals.
- Amazon rewards integration: Employees can redeem points for almost any product on Amazon, providing a wide range of personalized reward options.
- Custom challenges: With Nectar, companies can create custom challenges, like wellness programs or development goals, and reward employee participation, helping align recognition with company initiatives.
- Milestone automation: Similar to Bonusly, Nectar automates key moments like work anniversaries and birthdays, ensuring they’re recognized without manual intervention.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Integration options
When it comes to integrations, both Bonusly and Nectar make it easy for businesses to embed recognition into their existing workflows. Whether your team uses Slack, Microsoft Teams, or popular HR systems, both platforms provide seamless integration options to streamline the recognition process. Bonusly focuses on ensuring its employee recognition program is accessible within everyday communication tools, while Nectar offers a wide range of integrations that extend into HRIS systems, making it highly adaptable for companies with complex organizational structures.
Bonusly integrations:
- Slack and Microsoft Teams: Bonusly integrates directly into these communication tools, allowing employees to give and receive recognition without leaving their workflow.
- HRIS integration: Bonusly supports integrations with HR systems to help automate employee recognition and ensure that milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries are never missed.
- API and third-party integrations: Bonusly offers API access, enabling businesses to build custom integrations with their existing tools.
Nectar integrations:
- Slack and Microsoft Teams: Similar to Bonusly, Nectar allows employees to send shoutouts and recognize peers directly from Slack or Microsoft Teams, keeping recognition accessible in the flow of work.
- HRIS integration: Nectar supports popular HR systems like BambooHR, ADP, Workday, and more, automating employee data synchronization and recognition.
- Single Sign-On (SSO): Nectar offers integrations with SSO providers like Okta and Azure, making it easy for employees to log in securely without managing multiple credentials.
Both platforms excel at providing seamless integration options, but Nectar goes a step further with its HRIS and SSO integrations, making it an ideal choice for larger companies with more complex needs. Bonusly, on the other hand, offers simplicity and ease of use for companies looking to integrate recognition into their existing communication tools.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Pricing and plans
When choosing an employee recognition and rewards platform, pricing is often a major consideration. Both Bonusly and Nectar offer flexible pricing models that cater to businesses of all sizes, but they differ in their approach. Bonusly uses a traditional subscription-based pricing model, while Nectar offers a more flexible, pay-per-active-user model, making it an appealing option for companies that want to avoid paying for inactive users.
Bonusly pricing:
- Appreciate: $2/user/month, billed annually
- Connect: $5/user/month, billed annually
- Achieve: $7/user/month, billed annually
Here’s a more detailed overview of Bonusly’s plans and pricing.
Nectar pricing:
- Plus $5/user/month, billed annually
- Premium $6/user/month, billed annually
- Custom [Book Demo for Quote]
Have a look at a more detailed overview of Nectar’s plans and pricing.
While both platforms provide robust pricing options, Bonusly may be better suited for companies that want to commit to an annual plan with predictable costs, especially if they have a large, stable user base. Nectar, with its pay-per-active-user model, provides more flexibility for companies that may have fluctuating team sizes or want to minimize costs associated with inactive users.
For businesses seeking even more flexibility or specific customization options, Matter offers a competitive alternative that blends the advantages of both pricing models.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Customer support
Strong customer support is critical for companies seeking a smooth experience with their employee recognition platforms. Both Bonusly and Nectar offer extensive support options, designed to help companies with setup, integrations, and ongoing use. However, there are distinct differences in the support models of each platform that cater to different organizational needs.
Bonusly customer support:
- Help Center: Bonusly offers an in-depth Help Center with detailed guides and answers to common questions. Users can access articles on everything from setting up recognition programs to managing billing.
- Custom enterprise support: For larger organizations, Bonusly provides tailored support with consultation calls to ensure the platform fits the specific needs of the company.
- Email and live chat support: Bonusly offers live chat and email support for direct assistance, ensuring that users can resolve issues promptly.
- Dedicated resources for admins: Administrators have access to advanced tools and resources for account setup, including managing custom integrations.
Nectar customer support:
- Help center: Nectar offers a robust Help Center with articles covering all key aspects, from setting up the platform to integrating with HR systems.
- Personalized onboarding: Nectar focuses on personalized onboarding, helping companies set up the platform and ensure successful integration with tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and various HRIS platforms.
- Month-to-month flexibility: Nectar’s support team helps companies navigate the monthly billing model, providing flexibility without long-term contracts.
- Ongoing integration support: Nectar provides support specifically for setting up and maintaining integrations, ensuring that teams can operate smoothly within their preferred tools.
Both platforms offer strong customer support, but Bonusly stands out with its custom enterprise support for larger companies, while Nectar focuses on providing a flexible and personalized experience for smaller to midsized organizations. For companies seeking additional customization and dedicated customer service, Matter offers a tailored alternative, including integration with Slack and Microsoft Teams, automated recognition, and a streamlined support experience that helps companies scale their recognition efforts.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Customer reviews
Real-world experiences provide valuable insights when comparing employee recognition platforms. A great way to assess if a platform fits your company’s unique needs is by looking at reviews from real users. Here’s what users have to say about Bonusly and Nectar on G2, a trusted software review platform.
Bonusly customer reviews
G2 review: Bonusly holds a G2 score of 4.7/5 based on over 1,000 reviews.
In general, Bonusly has received mostly positive feedback, with users praising its user-friendly interface, social recognition feed, and customizable rewards options. However, some users report occasional issues with the platform’s reporting features and reward fulfillment.
- “The service itself is very friendly to use and we've leveraged it in our company and individual teams for years. When it works it is clear to use, intuitive, and does the job. Too bad it has not worked properly in a while.” - Verified User in Marketing & Advertising.
- “We've used the service for years until it has slowly diminished in both quality and usability. We used to have a wider variety of rewards available, which has significantly shrunk to the point where we have one or to options available which are constantly in and out of service. At the time of writing the service is almost unusable and the Bonusly support team have done nothing in terms of informing or providing a clear path to a resolution.” - Verified User in Marketing and Advertising (Customer G2 Review).
- “Much like tipping, this system shifts the responsibility of compensation from the employer to someone else (patron for tipping, employee for Bonusly). I don't know the full details of the financials behind this program, but there's no way management would have gone for it if it were MORE expensive than handing out bonuses to everyone yearly. Instead of cutting or doing away with bonuses, ownership has now implemented social media, subject to the same whims and cliqueness found in standard social media, to take the place of direct financial compensation. Instead of people/families looking forward to little boost for the holidays etc, now you have to worry about office politics and how popular you might be with others to score some extra cash. And by extra, I mean a pitiful amount. 5000 nuggets will get you the same $500 bonus as before, which will take most people well over a year to acheive. And that's if you know to use the cash out option, which is buried amongst all the charitable contributions you can make or the gift cards you can redeem.” - Verified User in Hospital & Health Care (Customer G2 Review).
Nectar customer reviews
G2 review: Nectar holds a G2 score of 4.7/5 based on over 200 reviews.
Nectar is also well-reviewed by users, who appreciate its integration with Amazon and its flexibility in reward options. However, some users feel that the platform could encourage more organic participation rather than fostering competition.
- “The fact that I'm only reminded about it when I have points left to give since it isn't yet established as a resource in my routine. The criteria you need in order to complete a post (hashtags and such). The fact that giving points out to everyone in a single post has to be a set number, I bet that's fair, but if some help more than others in the same avenue then I have to make separate posts for varying point allocations.” - Verified User in Civil Engineering (Customer G2 Review).
- “It does feel like my work is devalued. I'll put in hours and hours of work on a product and the reward being equal to about 50 cents can be a little invalidating. Additionally, the feed allows you to see who managers have preference for which can also be discouraging” - Verified User in Government Relations (Customer G2 Review).
- “An encouraging way to connect with people. It seems like a way to just obtain a reward for sake of false encouragement.” - Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education.
Both Bonusly and Nectar are well-regarded by their users, though there are areas where each platform could improve. Bonusly excels with its fun, social recognition experience but has some minor issues with stability and reward fulfillment. Nectar is praised for its flexibility and easy navigation, but its competitiveness could sometimes lead to feelings of exclusion among employees.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: Which is the right tool for you?
Choosing between Bonusly and Nectar depends on your company’s specific needs, workplace culture, and the type of employee recognition program you want to implement. Both platforms offer valuable solutions for boosting employee engagement, but they cater to different business models and priorities. Here’s a breakdown to help you decide which platform aligns best with your business goals.
Choose Bonusly if:
- Your company prioritizes a social recognition feed to increase transparency and employee engagement across the team.
- You want an employee recognition platform that is easy to set up and integrates seamlessly with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
- You’re looking for a platform that automates milestone celebrations such as work anniversaries and birthdays, ensuring no employee is left unrecognized.
- Your company values customizable rewards, including personalized gifts like company swag, gift cards, or donations.
- You prefer employee recognition programs with a per-user pricing model and a quick onboarding process that requires minimal setup.
Check out our Bonusly vs. Matter guide for a full comparison.
Choose Nectar if:
- You need a flexible peer-to-peer recognition system that ties recognition to your company’s core values.
- Your business prefers a pay-per-active-user model, helping you manage costs effectively by only paying for employees who actively engage with the platform.
- Integration with HR systems such as BambooHR, ADP, or Workday is a priority, automating employee rewards and recognition based on real-time employee data.
- You’re seeking a wide range of reward options through Amazon Business, providing employees with personalized choices for recognition programs.
- Your company is interested in building custom recognition trends and running challenges that align with business goals, boosting employee morale and productivity.
Check out our Nectar vs. Matter guide for a full comparison.
Ultimately, both platforms are powerful tools for fostering a positive workplace culture and rewarding employees. However, the right choice depends on your company’s size, goals, and the type of recognition system you want to implement. If you’re looking for a Nectar alternative or Bonusly alternative for a solution that balances ease of use with scalability, Matter offers a competitive alternative, featuring a comprehensive recognition program designed to boost employee engagement and enhance company culture as your business grows. Here is a great comparison of Bonusly competitors that will help in your decision.
Matter: The best alternative to Bonusly and Nectar
While Bonusly and Nectar offer excellent solutions for employee recognition and rewards, Matter stands out as a robust alternative, providing unique features that combine automation, ease of use, and deep integration with workplace tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Matter is designed as a Slack-first and Teams-first application, making peer-to-peer recognition seamless for teams already using these platforms. Employees can send fun, customizable kudos cards, which can be personalized with company values or even inside jokes. This makes recognition more meaningful and relevant to your company culture.
One of Matter’s standout features is its ease of setup. The platform is mostly automated, with a 2-minute installation and 5-10 minutes of customization. After setup, companies can let the system run with minimal manual input, ensuring continuous engagement with little effort.
Matter also excels in automating celebrations like birthdays and work anniversaries, making sure these important events are never missed. The platform automatically prompts employees to input their celebration dates, or admins can upload dates through Excel, making the process quick and hassle-free.
Here are some features that make Matter a leading alternative:
- Feedback Friday: Matter encourages recognition by automatically prompting employees to send kudos at the end of the week, fostering a positive end to the workweek.
- Customizable rewards: Employees can redeem Matter coins for a wide range of rewards, including digital gift cards, donations to charities, or even custom-branded rewards like a vacation day or lunch with the CEO.
- Gamified participation: Matter encourages frequent, authentic recognition with a weekly coin reset system, which resets more frequently than many competitors, ensuring regular engagement.
- Automated surveys: Matter simplifies employee feedback by automating pulse surveys and delivering them through Slack or Teams, incentivizing participation with rewards.
Whether you’re looking for an intuitive, automated platform to streamline recognition or a flexible system to align with your company’s core values, Matter delivers a powerful combination of customization, ease of use, and impactful rewards.
Bonusly vs. Nectar: FAQs
Q. Is Bonusly or Nectar better?
A. It depends on your company’s needs and team size. Bonusly is ideal for smaller to mid-sized teams that value a simple, social recognition platform with customizable rewards and automated milestone celebrations. Nectar, on the other hand, is better suited for companies looking for flexibility in pricing and integration with HR systems, as well as broader reward options like Amazon gift cards.
Q. How are Bonusly and Nectar similar?
A. Both Bonusly and Nectar are employee recognition platforms that allow companies to reward employees, boost employee engagement, and celebrate workplace milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries. However, Bonusly focuses on social recognition with a public feed, while Nectar offers a more customizable experience with deeper HRIS integrations and a pay-per-active-user pricing model. If you are looking for more Nectar competitors, here is a complete guide for you to consider before making your decision.
Q. Is Bonusly the best employee recognition platform?
A. If your team values a social recognition feed and customizable rewards, Bonusly could be the best platform for you. However, if you’re looking for a more flexible solution with HR system integrations and unique reward options like Amazon Business gift cards, Nectar may be a better fit. For a balanced approach with easy setup and automated features, Matter is also a compelling alternative.
When it comes to choosing the right employee recognition platform, Bonusly and Nectar both offer excellent features tailored to different organizational needs. Bonusly excels in creating a fun, social recognition experience, while Nectar provides flexibility with its pay-per-active-user model and deeper integration options. However, if you’re looking for Bonusly alternatives or Nectar alternatives that combine the best of both worlds with seamless integration, easy setup, and customizable rewards, Matter is the ideal choice. Matter goes beyond just recognition, offering automated features that require minimal setup and continuous engagement, helping your team stay connected and motivated.
Ready to take your employee recognition program to the next level? Get started with Matter for free today and see how easy it is to create a positive, engaged workplace culture.
