Kudos vs. Motivosity [2025 Unbiased Comparison]

SlackMicrosoft Teams Logo
Photo by
Musemind Branding

In the context of employee engagement and recognition, Kudos and Motivosity have become two popular choices among organizations seeking to improve workplace culture and boost employee satisfaction. Similar to Matter, both platforms offer unique features designed to create seamless peer-to-peer recognition programs, enhance employee engagement, and offer rewards. However, when you take a closer look at each platform, you'll find that Kudos and Motivosity cater to different organizational needs depending on your company's goals, size, and culture.

Whether you focus on seamless integration with platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams or offering actionable insights to improve the overall employee experience, choosing the right employee recognition platform is key to fostering a positive workplace culture. In this post, we'll compare Kudos and Motivosity side-by-side, analyzing their features, pricing, and customer support to help you make an informed decision. We'll also highlight Matter as a versatile alternative, combining the best features of both platforms to offer a comprehensive solution for employee engagement and recognition.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Overview comparison

In terms of employee engagement and recognition, both Kudos and Motivosity have positioned themselves as top choices for companies seeking to improve workplace culture and foster employee satisfaction. Similar to Matter, both platforms offer unique features to create effective peer-to-peer recognition programs and boost employee engagement, but they cater to different organizational needs.

Kudos is designed to help companies build a culture of appreciation by encouraging employees to send recognition messages, eCards, and personalized awards. It emphasizes a social recognition approach, integrating seamlessly with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, making recognition a natural part of daily interactions. The platform also provides robust analytics that assists companies in evaluating the influence of their recognition initiatives on employee engagement and satisfaction.

On the other hand, Motivosity takes a more holistic approach, combining employee recognition, rewards, and engagement software with an emphasis on actionable insights drawn from employee behavior. Motivosity allows employees to recognize their peers with spot bonuses, badges, and milestone celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries. It also offers advanced tools like pulse surveys to help organizations measure and improve the overall employee experience, ensuring that managers and leaders have a constant pulse on team morale​.

Whether your organization needs customizable rewards and comprehensive analytics or a more integrated solution with engagement surveys and managerial feedback tools, choosing the right platform is crucial for creating a positive workplace culture. In this post, we'll provide a detailed comparison of Kudos and Motivosity, including their pricing, support, and features to aid you in making an informed decision.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Features

Both Kudos and Motivosity offer robust features that aim to enhance employee engagement, but they focus on different aspects of employee recognition and workplace satisfaction.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Kudos Platform
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Kudos Platform

Kudos features:

  • Social recognition: Kudos focuses on fostering peer-to-peer recognition, allowing employees to send customizable messages, eCards, and awards to celebrate achievements like birthdays and work anniversaries. The platform is designed to help businesses develop a culture of gratitude and connection among their staff, encouraging frequent, meaningful recognition throughout the organization​.
  • Analytics: Kudos provides powerful employee engagement analytics, giving HR teams actionable insights to track recognition patterns and assess the efficacy of their employee appreciation initiatives. This helps organizations continuously improve employees' experiences by identifying trends and areas that need attention​.
  • Custom rewards: The platform offers customizable reward options, such as digital gift cards and branded company merchandise, allowing companies to align their rewards with organizational values and employee satisfaction.
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Motivosity Platform
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Motivosity Platform

Motivosity features:

  • Integrated recognition and rewards: Motivosity offers a comprehensive platform integrating employee recognition, rewards, and engagement tools. It allows peer-to-peer recognition through spot bonuses, badges, and awards while providing customizable rewards like gift cards and company-branded merchandise.
  • Milestone celebrations: Motivosity automates the celebration of important milestones such as birthdays and work anniversaries, making it easy for managers and teams to celebrate employees in a personalized and impactful way​.
  • Employee engagement surveys: In addition to recognition, Motivosity includes tools like pulse surveys and feedback systems that allow organizations to measure employee satisfaction and draw actionable insights from the data. This helps managers and HR departments monitor team morale and make data-driven decisions to improve workplace culture.

Kudos emphasizes social recognition and detailed analytics to improve employee engagement. At the same time, Motivosity combines recognition, rewards, and engagement surveys into a more integrated solution that also focuses on drawing insights from employee feedback. The right choice will depend on whether your organization prioritizes social recognition or a more holistic approach to employee engagement.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Integration options

Kudos and Motivosity offer robust integration capabilities, allowing them to seamlessly connect with existing tools and systems to enhance employee recognition and engagement.

Kudos integrations:

  • Slack and Microsoft Teams: Kudos integrates smoothly with communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, enabling employees to send recognition and eCards directly from their chat platforms without disrupting their workflow. This makes recognition part of the daily routine, encouraging frequent, meaningful employee interactions​.
  • HRIS Integrations: Kudos can also sync with popular HRIS systems, helping businesses automatically update employee data, track milestone celebrations, and ensure accurate recognition efforts based on real-time employee information​.
  • APIs for custom workflows: Kudos provides APIs to allow for deeper, custom integrations, enabling companies to align recognition efforts with other internal systems and fostering a connected, streamlined environment for employee engagement​.

Motivosity integrations:

  • Slack and Microsoft Teams: Like Kudos, Motivosity integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams, allowing users to send recognition and post announcements or highlights from the Motivosity feed directly in these platforms. This seamless integration ensures that recognition happens in real time and is visible across teams​.
  • HRIS Integrations: Motivosity supports direct integrations with HRIS systems like BambooHR, Azure AD, Paychex, and Rippling, allowing employee data to stay updated and enabling automated recognition workflows based on employee milestones.
  • SSO and API: Motivosity offers Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality, allowing employees to use the same credentials they do for other systems. It also offers an open API, allowing companies to integrate Motivosity with other internal applications for custom recognition flows and enhanced automation​.

Both platforms offer strong integration capabilities with popular communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and HR systems. Kudos excels with its custom APIs for deeper workflow integration, while Motivosity stands out for its extensive HRIS and SSO options, making it ideal for businesses looking for secure, comprehensive integrations.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Pricing and plans

Regarding pricing, both Kudos and Motivosity offer scalable plans to meet the needs of organizations of different sizes, but their approaches to pricing differ slightly.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Kudos Recognition
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Kudos Recognition

Kudos pricing: Pricing is not listed on the website. You'll need to schedule a demo/sales call with Kudos to learn more about pricing.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Motivosity Recognition
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Motivosity Recognition

Motivosity pricing: $3,000 Minimum annual spend

  • Standard
  • Pro
  • Custom
  • Add-Ons: Communications, Spaces, Surveys, Meetings

Take a look at a more detailed overview of Motivosity's pricing and plans.

Kudos offers a custom pricing approach that adapts to specific company needs. At the same time, Motivosity provides a more structured, per-user pricing model with a minimum spend, making it accessible to organizations of various sizes. Both platforms offer flexible features, but the choice depends on your organization's budget and the specific functionality you need.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Customer support

Both Kudos and Motivosity offer a range of customer support options to assist consumers in maximizing the value of their platforms. However, each takes a slightly different approach to ensuring users can access assistance when needed.

Kudos customer support:

  • Live chat and email support: Kudos provides live chat and email support to assist users in resolving issues quickly, ensuring that their recognition programs run smoothly. This immediate support is especially useful for day-to-day troubleshooting​.
  • Help center: The Kudos Help Center is filled with resources, including tutorials, guides, and FAQs, allowing users to resolve common issues independently. This self-service option is great for those who want to troubleshoot independently or require quick answers.
  • Dedicated account manager: For larger businesses or those with more complex needs, Kudos offers a dedicated account manager who provides personalized assistance during setup and ongoing usage. This option is beneficial for companies that need tailored support​.

Motivosity customer support:

  • Help center: Motivosity has a robust help center filled with step-by-step guides and articles to help users navigate the platform's features, from setting up accounts to running pulse surveys and managing employee recognition programs​.
  • Live chat and webinars: Motivosity provides live chat support for immediate assistance and webinars that guide users on how to get the most out of the platform's features. Users highly rate these live training sessions for effectiveness​.
  • Custom support options: Motivosity also offers additional support options for complex inquiries, such as dedicated support channels, although some users have noted occasional delays in response for more intricate issues​.

Both Kudos and Motivosity provide strong customer support options. Kudos excels with its personalized approach, offering dedicated account managers for larger organizations, while Motivosity balances live chat, training webinars, and self-service options to assist users of all levels. The best choice depends on the level of support your company requires and how much hands-on help is needed during setup and daily use.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: 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 say about Kudos and Motivosity on G2, a trusted software review platform.

Kudos customer reviews

G2 review: Kudos holds a G2 score of 4.8/5 based on hundreds of reviews.

  • Overview: Kudos is praised for its ability to improve employee connection and foster a positive workplace culture through social recognition. Users love its seamless integration with Slack and Microsoft Teams, and the ability to send personalized recognition messages and eCards. However, some users find the analytics and reporting features a bit challenging to navigate at first.
  • "Kudos is a great platform to provide appreciation to your colleague who has helped you in your work, but as its been not used by many employees of the company but if its used at full power by everyone it will really improve the efficiency of individual employee." - Nikita D., Software Engineer.
  • "It's possible that, if we had better internal communication channels, like Slack, we wouldn't need a platform like Kudos as badly to foster connections across locations and departments. Also, adding attachments like images is harder than it needs to be, and animated gifs are currently not supported, which is a HUGE missed opportunity in my opinion. - Kyle M. (Customer G2 Review).
  • "There are limited options for sending Kudos without the awards (only 4 categories) And the Low categories (ie "Thanks") are of very low monetary value and feel cheap to send and unimportant to receive. It is also unnecessary and annoying to have to choose qualities for each Kudos you send. Companies should be able to add additional gift cards to the gift card page, apart from the custom rewards which work in a different and less simple way. Adding business and cards to the regular page would be much better. Although the report sections are pretty comprehensive some of the options for showings things are not as simple as they could be and some of the option defaults don't make sense. The interface of the app online could be make this more unified and/or easy to navigate. I wish there was a native ipad app as our employees generally use Kudos on their ipads. The iphone app doesn't look pleasing to the eye on the ipad. - Paul-Philip M. (Customer G2 Review).

Motivosity customer reviews

G2 review: Motivosity holds a G2 score of 4.7/5 based on over 900 reviews.

  • Overview: Motivosity is highly rated for its employee recognition and rewards system. Users appreciate its ability to promote a sense of community through spot bonuses, digital badges, and customizable awards. The platform's gift shop feature, where employees can redeem digital gift cards, is especially popular. However, some users mention occasional navigation difficulties with the user interface.
  • "Letting people know what they do and who they are matter. Another password to remember and account to have." - Verified User in Hospital & Health Care.
  • "The UI is easy to navigate, this is very accessible to anyone end user of any skill level. The tool is mostly fluff. The useful parts of this tool (ie recognition and reward) already exist in either tools we use or other 3rd party tools, and anything unique about the tool is fluff, such as the personality matching." - Verified User in Computer Software (Customer G2 Review).
  • "That it always defaults to showing my entire company in stead of just my team. Also that the verification emails seem to take forever to hit my inbox; bot sure if that's a Motivosity issue or a server issue on our end." - Corbett S., Customer Service Representative (Customer G2 Review).

Both Kudos and Motivosity receive high marks from users. Kudos is appreciated for its customizable recognition features and its ability to integrate smoothly with daily communication tools, though its analytics have a learning curve. Motivosity stands out for its easy-to-use reward system and pulse surveys, but some users find the interface less intuitive. Both platforms are highly effective; however, your company's unique requirements determine the choice between them.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Which is the right tool for you?

Choosing between Kudos and Motivosity depends on your organization's specific goals and needs. Both platforms offer robust employee recognition solutions but cater to different aspects of workplace engagement and culture building.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Kudos Rewards
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Kudos Rewards

Choose Kudos if:

  • Your organization prioritizes social recognition and wants to create a culture of appreciation through peer-to-peer recognition, eCards, and awards. Kudos excels at making recognition seamless in daily interactions, especially with its Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations.
  • You need comprehensive employee engagement analytics to track your recognition programs' performance and identify employee satisfaction and participation trends. Kudos provides actionable insights to help organizations improve their recognition strategies and overall employee experience.
  • You value custom rewards: Kudos allows businesses to offer a variety of customizable rewards, including digital gift cards and branded merchandise, aligning with company values and employee preferences​.

Check out our Kudos vs. Matter guide for a full comparison.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: Motivosity Rewards
Kudos vs. Motivosity: Motivosity Rewards

Choose Motivosity if:

  • You're looking for a platform that combines employee recognition, rewards, and pulse surveys to gather actionable insights from employee feedback. Motivosity helps organizations measure and improve the employee experience through feedback and pulse surveys and provides easy-to-use recognition features​.
  • You want a more comprehensive reward system. Motivosity's gift shop allows employees to redeem digital gift cards from a wide range of vendors, making it a popular choice for companies that are committed to providing diverse and flexible reward options.
  • You're focused on improving team culture and fostering engagement through rewards like spot bonuses and badges, which help recognize contributions and build a sense of community within the organization​.

Check out our Motivosity vs. Matter guide for a full comparison.

Both Kudos and Motivosity are powerful tools for fostering a constructive workplace culture and enhancing employee engagement, but the best choice depends on your organization's focus. If you need a platform with strong peer-to-peer recognition and analytics, Kudos is the way to go. If your priority is a comprehensive reward system paired with feedback tools, Motivosity might be the better fit.

Matter: The best alternative to Kudos and Motivosity

While both Kudos and Motivosity offer strong solutions for employee recognition and engagement, Matter provides a flexible, easy-to-use alternative that integrates seamlessly with the tools your team is already using, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. If you are looking for Motivosity competitors and Kudos alternatives that are designed to foster peer-to-peer recognition, Matter stands out for its intuitive features, customizable kudos cards, and automated milestone celebrations, making it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes.

Why Matter is the best alternative:

  • Slack-first and Teams-first integration: Matter is specifically built to work within these popular communication platforms, allowing employees to send beautiful, customizable kudos cards directly within the apps they already use. This ensures that recognition is embedded into the daily workflow, encouraging frequent, meaningful recognition​.
  • Automated milestone celebrations: Matter makes celebrating important moments like birthdays and work anniversaries effortless. The platform automates these events, ensuring employees feel appreciated on special days​.
  • Feedback Friday: Matter's Feedback Friday feature encourages regular recognition by prompting employees to give kudos at the end of each week. This helps build a positive work culture and ensures no recognition opportunity is missed​.
  • Flexible rewards system: Matter offers various reward options, from digital gift cards to charitable donations, allowing companies to align rewards with their values and employee preferences. The weekly coin reset feature encourages employees to participate regularly in recognition​.
  • Quick and easy setup: Matter is designed to be installed in just a few minutes, with customization taking only 5-10 minutes. Once set up, the platform runs mostly on automation, making it a low-maintenance but highly effective tool for employee engagement​.

Matter combines the best features of both Kudos and Motivosity, offering seamless integration, customizable recognition tools, and a flexible rewards system. Whether your organization is focused on fostering social recognition or automating milestone celebrations, Matter provides a comprehensive solution that can scale with your company's needs.

Kudos vs. Motivosity: FAQs

Here are some frequently asked questions to help you decide whether Kudos or Motivosity best fits your organization's employee engagement software needs.

Q: How do Kudos and Motivosity compare in terms of features?

A: Kudos emphasizes social recognition and provides tools for peer-to-peer recognition and customizable awards like eCards, helping companies improve the employee experience. Motivosity, on the other hand, integrates employee recognition with additional tools like pulse surveys to help managers measure and draw actionable insights from employee feedback. Both platforms help organizations foster stronger connections between employees, but Motivosity stands out with its focus on feedback tools that solicit continuous input from employees to enhance the workplace​.

Q: Which platform is better suited for improving employee satisfaction?

A: Kudos is ideal for companies focusing on peer recognition and building a culture of appreciation through customizable rewards and recognition features. It's great for organizations prioritizing social connection and meaningful user interactions. Motivosity, with its employee engagement software and pulse surveys, is better suited for companies looking to actively measure feedback and gather actionable insights to continually improve the employee experience.

Q: How do Kudos and Motivosity handle reward distribution?

A: Kudos offers flexible, customizable rewards that align with the organization's needs, including digital gift cards and branded merchandise. Motivosity excels in offering diverse reward options through its gift shop, where employees can redeem points for various digital gift cards, making it a strong choice for companies that prioritize a reward-centric approach to employee engagement.

Q: Are there any alternatives to Kudos and Motivosity?

A: Yes, if you're looking for Kudos alternatives or Motivosity competitors, Matter is a great option. Matter combines peer-to-peer recognition with automated milestone celebrations, offering a flexible, easy-to-use system that integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams. It also includes feedback tools to improve the employee experience and help companies gather insights in real-time​.

Q: How do these platforms protect employee data?

A: Both Kudos and Motivosity prioritize security to protect employee information. They integrate with HRIS systems to maintain up-to-date employee records and ensure that only authorized users and managers can access sensitive data. Both platforms meet industry standards for data protection, making them suitable for organizations of all sizes.

When choosing between Kudos and Motivosity, it's important to consider your organization's specific needs, whether fostering a culture of social recognition with customizable rewards or gaining actionable insights through employee feedback and pulse surveys. Both platforms offer strong solutions for employee engagement and improving the overall employee experience, but each excels in different areas.

When searching Motivosity or Kudos competitors for versatile, easy-to-use alternatives, consider Matter. Matter integrates seamlessly with Slack and Microsoft Teams, offering a flexible peer-to-peer recognition system with customizable kudos cards and automated milestone celebrations. It's designed to help companies of all sizes improve employee satisfaction and build a positive workplace culture with minimal setup and maintenance. Get started with Matter for free today and see how it can transform your employee recognition and engagement efforts!

Recognition & Rewards all inside Slack or Teams
Free Forever
2 Minute Setup
No Credit Card Required
More in
Comparisons
Recognition & Rewards — Free!