Personio replaces Essential / Professional / Enterprise with Core and Core Pro plus an 'apps' catalogue

Personio dates this boundary itself. Its legacy help-centre article, since deleted from the live help centre and readable only in the Internet Archive, opens with: “This article relates to our legacy plans. These plans apply to all accounts created before the 8th of August 2023. If your account was created after this date, see the Overview of Personio plans and apps.”

That single sentence pins a packaging change Personio never announced on its blog. The replacement article, Overview of Personio plans and apps, was created in Personio’s Zendesk help centre on 2023-05-24 — roughly eleven weeks before the cutover — which is the first appearance of “apps” as a commercial category rather than a reference to the mobile app.

What actually changed is more interesting than a tier rename:

• Core Pro is a cap-removal, not a bigger bundle. The legacy Enterprise tier bought features (sub-company management, oAuth login, the personal-data API). Core Pro buys the absence of limits — unlimited legal entities against Core’s one, unlimited document storage against Core’s 5MB per employee, unlimited e-signature workflows against Core’s monthly allowance — with the API and OAuth carried along. The upgrade lever moved from capability to capacity.
• The Recruiting-only door closed. The migration FAQ Personio published a year later answers the question directly: “Why are you getting rid of the Recruitment only option? Personio is an HRIS … not just a talent management system.” Recruiting survives, but only as an app bolted to a Core subscription.
• The three “Plus” add-ons vanished as SKUs. The same FAQ explains that “with Productivity Plus, Automation Plus, and Customisation Plus included”, the Core packaging “streamlines HR operations into one product”. Three separately-priced upsells became included capability.
• E-signatures changed contractual home. Under the legacy line they were a Productivity Plus entitlement with “a contingent of electronic signatures available, depending on the size of your Personio account”. Under Core they became a plan entitlement metered against subscribed seats.

The terms moved on the same boundary, and Personio still publishes the superseded set at /terms-pre-aug-2023/ (German: /agb-vor-aug-2023/) — an unusually clean, first-party contract-diff baseline. That diff is where the commercially load-bearing changes live: the User Commitment ratchet and the suspension right are both new after August 2023, and the Fair Use test lost its numeric definition. See the pricing-evolution section of the Personio blueprint entry for the clause-by-clause comparison.