BambooHR retires Essentials and Advantage for Core and Pro — and widens the flat-rate floor from 20 to 25 employees
BambooHR's pricing page swapped its two long-running packages, Essentials and Advantage, for Core and Pro. In the same window the small-company flat-rate band widened from 'companies with 20 employees or fewer' to 'companies with 25 employees or fewer', moving 21-to-25-employee buyers off the per-employee meter. Neither the plans nor the flat rate carried a published price.
Two packages named Essentials and Advantage in a feature matrix, with Payroll, Time Tracking and Performance Management in a separate Add-on column. Pricing FAQ: 'For companies with 20 employees or fewer, our HR software pricing is charged at a monthly flat rate.' No dollar figure anywhere on the page (archived 2023-12-05).
Two plans named Core and Pro, Pro badged Recommended, with Payroll, Benefits Administration and Time Tracking as Add-on Solutions and a 15% bundle discount for 'Payroll and Benefits Administration with the Core or Pro plan'. Pricing FAQ: 'For companies with 25 employees or fewer, our HR software pricing is charged at a monthly flat rate.' Still no dollar figure anywhere on the page.
BambooHR renamed its packaging and moved its small-company threshold in the same undated change, sometime between 5 December 2023 and 24 February 2024 — the two adjacent archive snapshots that bracket it. The rename is the visible half: Essentials and Advantage, the package names BambooHR had shown on its pricing page since at least August 2018, became Core and Pro.
The threshold move is the commercially significant half, and it is easy to miss precisely because BambooHR published no prices at the time. The pricing FAQ’s flat-rate sentence changed exactly one number: companies with 20 employees or fewer became companies with 25 employees or fewer. That is a 25% widening of the band that pays a fixed monthly fee instead of a per-employee rate, and it moved every 21-to-25-employee customer off the meter entirely.
With no published rate card in February 2024, the move was invisible to any price comparison — there was nothing to compare it against. The amount attached to the floor did not become public until September 2025, when the pricing page first quantified it as “a monthly flat rate starting at $250/mo”. At that figure a 25-employee company pays an effective $10 per employee, matching the Core rate BambooHR published later; a 21-employee company pays $11.90; a 10-employee company pays $25.
The February 2024 page also carries the bundle discount in its original narrow form — 15% off when Payroll and Benefits Administration are combined “with the Core or Pro plan,” US employees only. That scope was widened to “any plan” in September 2025, once Elite existed. The page’s social-proof line also steps up in this window, from “Trusted by 30,000+ companies” to “Trusted by 33,000+ companies.”
Dating note: the date recorded here is the first archive snapshot in which the new state is observed, not a vendor announcement date. BambooHR published no changelog entry for either the rename or the threshold move.
The repackaging and the floor move land in the same window: plan names change to Core and Pro, and the flat-rate band widens from 20 employees or fewer to 25 employees or fewer. Neither the plans nor the flat rate carries a published price.