
Calamari
Modern HR management, online leave and attendance tracking
4,7 /5 (374 reviews) Write a Review!Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Features
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 3.0 /10
A good product at high price
Reviewed on 2021/03/15
I like the software technically speaking, but it seems to me expensive for what it does. A leave management and a clock in software should be so expensive. That's why I am looking for other alternatives like OrangeHRM.
Pros
- Easy of use and implementation
- Easy of customization
Cons
- Clock in and leave management have to be paid separately and are expensive.
- Industry: Media Production
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Other for Free Trial
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 1.0 /10
the sign-up system is faulty, and no one cares in "support"
Reviewed on 2017/08/20
Cons
i signed up. received the email, followed the link and only get a green screen asking you to "wait for a while".
and after a few HOURS ( you get it right, hours ), that so-called "while" is still there. refresh / quit browser do no help. same link goes to same screen with same words.
i received the mail at 0100, tried it on 0300, get the same result. so i contacted them via the webform.
i checked back on 0700. my mailbox got nothing - not even a acknowledgement of receiving my email, and surely nothing about why the while is still staying. and yes - same signup link still goes to the same page with the same words.
i'm still hopeful, so tried again on 1900 on the same day. now the best part arrived - the same link i tried said "my license expired and my account is blocked".
so, what Calamari suggesting, is that my signup license is "looking at their green screen and wait for a while" - but hey, i haven't looked at that for 14 days yet, why have my license expired SO SOON???
is Calamari a hoax for getting my email? the other "positive" reviewers sound SO TRUE, i just can't tell how can that be. i'm not suggesting fake accounts with fake reviews, but i doubt for this kind of performance and stability, how can i handle the attendance / leave management thing of my whole company to it ?
- Industry: Internet
- Company size: 501-1 000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Almost invisible and very flexible absences tracking tool
Reviewed on 2020/07/20
It takes a while to set up Calamari properly but after you do (and you can always reach out to their support and receive answers and detailed instructions in short time) it works on its own and you just invite new people as they join the team. We have switched from our previousOn a daily basis, I almost don't notice we use Calamari because no one reaches out to me with any issues or questions on how to use it.
Pros
- thanks to Calamari shared calendars being easily added to GCal we can automatically see any planned absences in the team (holidays, remote work, business trips, sick leave etc) directly in our GCals (previously we had to keep a separate shared team GCal for these and add absences manually)
- everyone is able to check their current entitlement anytime with just a couple of clicks and request their time off on the go
- no need to send emails to multiple people in the company to request time off and have it registered (this was solved with a customised approval flow)
- appointing the substitute can be done at the stage of requesting time off
- you can send all notifications to Slack and track status of your request from there
- multiple, customisable approval flows and absence types
- customised holiday calendars which can be linked to individual users or teams (very helpful especially in Germany)
- no need to track the absences manually: it takes a couple of clicks to generate absence reports and requests required for payroll
- very responsive and competent support
Cons
I only wish that we used Calamari on the company level. With other team being first to register for it, we can't fully integrate with GSuite and it takes up to 24 hours for the Calamari shared calendar to sync with GCal.
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Great Service!
Reviewed on 2018/12/05
Pros
I like that I don't have to think about it much, love the Slack integrations for my team and how easy it was to transition from our old process into Calamari. It's simple, clear, and for a small team it has everything I need. The customer support team has always responded promptly when I need anything, and we were even able to extend our trial period in the beginning and converted to a paying customer shortly after.
Cons
So the most annoying thing, and this is a small issue, is not being able to select a range of dates on the calendar by clicking on the days themselves. Again, it's a small thing, but it's something I'm used to in other situations, and so I frequently make the mistake of forgetting it's not possible on Calamari. I suppose the other thing is that it's not always immediately clear how to make use of some of the finer features, and so I simply haven't been bothered to find out if they're even there. For example, I spent a little while searching once for whether we could only make it possible for employees to request annual leave in the future if they will have accrued it by the specified date (and not just if they have already accrued it, if that makes sense), but it wasn't obvious how to do so or even if it were possible, so I just kind of left it. These relatively minor complications are the kind of thing that someone in a rush will just leave in the moment, because they've more important things to do, but will be annoying over time.
- Industry: International Trade & Development
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Brief after 6 months of use
Reviewed on 2021/03/15
Not that good, but not bad.....I see it as product which is developing, so will wait to see till end of the year are there any improvements.
Pros
Useful product with lot of integrations and useful features.
Simple and clean without crowded features icons etc.
Cons
USABILITY!
As a person who use various web applications on daily basis for decades, I find not that intuitive position of some buttons and especially on large screens my "pointer travel time" to reach click button is long.
Also, just by adding some minor improvements usability can be better.
Proposals:
- implement possibility that user choose font (or change font, it might be personal taste, but existing one is so 2010)
- number of records per one listing / page. I am currently running small company ~20users and I frequently need to change pages to load more results for list of employees lets say. maybe somewhere in settings you can allow admin to select number or rows per page.
- maybe replace tabbed navigation with accordeon, sometimes is useful to see multiple values from different tabs selected
and at the end - creating accrual rules its complete nightmare, your support team (kudos to [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]) saved you for leaving this product. He really set up everything for me.....but.....user should be able to do it by himself, right?
so...very very hard to set it up

- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Great, easy and very helpful product! Now I can not imagine how we actually
Reviewed on 2017/11/30
Pure market analysis
Pros
Calamari helps my company handle holidays. It allows me to easily control, monitor all absences and what is really helpful helps me to decide if I should accept holiday request, when someone in my team had requested and this request has been already accepted! That is the core functionality for me :)
I really love integrations that Calamari provides me!
At first: GSuite (by Google) - I do not have to worry about creating new accounts and I can see all of absences in my Google Calendar (this is my favorite) .
Another huge integration is with Slack, which is main messenger in my company. I can just accept and decline requests without login in into Calamari!
On the other hand I really like is Calamari support, those guys (especially Hubert) are fast as lightning, very thoughtful, proactive and they for sure will help you configure your instance. Communication with them is pleasure :)
Once Calamari is configured is maintenance-free, and very very comfy!
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Easiest Software to use
Reviewed on 2016/12/12
I do enjoy using Calamari. It is easy to learn how to navigate around the system and all employees know how to use it with ease.
It is very self explanatory, pleasant layout and I can adjust employees holiday settings or absence requests very quickly.
Support is excellent and always available for me to contact him.
I like the calendar which gives a simple but quick overview of my company whereabouts.
It doesn't take much admin time to set up a new employee or archive an employee.
Pros
However, Kamil is a great help, very patient when I suddenly get called into a conference meeting and is always willing to support and understand your needs.
Cons
The only down side is that it only has holiday and absence on there and nothing else.
It would be brilliant if Calamari explored the market and expanded the systems functionalities such as adding a performance management section, recruitment section and incorporated all HR jobs into one system.
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Tracking Leaves made easy
Reviewed on 2021/02/27
Leave Management has been made really easy by Calamari, both for the employer and the employees.
Pros
Calamari has been a great tool for managing the leaves of our workforce. It's been a pleasant experience using it! The support team is also excellent and promptly solved all the problems that we faced in the beginning. Pretty flexible to accommodate all leave types.
Cons
Not much to say! I couldn't think of any suggestion for now.
- Industry: Hospitality
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Useful feature and prompt customer care support
Reviewed on 2019/05/27
We can precisely track the working hours and each employee can organize his/her time. We use it for holidays, home office, working hours, special holidays requests.
Pros
It covers many fuctions and it is flexible in case of special working hours conditions or special holidays requests. We use it for example for the normal holidays as well as for home office, unpaid holidays, sickness of the child of an employee, spcial days off due to a master or a course, etc.
Cons
If a contract of a employee changes during his period at our company (for example from a 40 hours contract to a 32 hours one), it is difficult to modify the terms in Calamari. It is possible though, so it is still fine.
- Industry: Computer Games
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
(Not an HR expert but...) Calamari is a very user-friendly and well-featured HR platform
Reviewed on 2020/07/21
We've found Calamari has met the needs of our business from being an easy thing to adopt as a start-up to being a well-featured product suitable for us now we've grown to 25-30.
Pros
Slick dashboards, good feature set, great customer support.
Cons
Tracking worked hours can get a bit messy with flexible working hours and lunches, especially in cases like booking half day holidays. It's a hard problem to solve though, I'm sure!
- Industry: Leisure, Travel & Tourism
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Such a great company to work with!
Reviewed on 2020/07/23
All great!
Pros
Ease of use is what really sold us! Also it works across different countries and keeps us all connected on when someone is out of office. There are so many customizations you can do to make it even easier.
Cons
The only thing I think that could improve would be more demos on using the product better.
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Calamari for Managing Employee Leave
Reviewed on 2019/03/05
We were finding that the administrative time required to track employee leave was becoming burdensome. So, we set out to search for a leave management system that would help us automate some of the processes and provide reporting as well. We are very happy with our transition over to Calamari. I have reached out to the support team with questions and always get a quick, friendly, helpful answer!
Pros
Calamari makes the entire process of managing employee leave much easier from an admin perspective. We can now refer to our Calamari team calendar and know which team members will be out of the office and when. Calamari gives us a more formal method of managing leave. Where before, we would search through emails to find out when a request was submitted and who approved it, everything is now in one place. The feedback from our team has been overwhelmingly positive with many employees saying that it's so much easier for them as well!
Cons
I have not found anything that I don't like about this software.
Response from CHROBRUS
Thank you Laura, it's a really valuable review.
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
Keeping track of vacation is a real pain! Calamari has really helped us in this task.
Reviewed on 2018/02/07
Pros
Calamari makes it very easy to keep track of vacation. They are very responsive to questions and are always updating the software.
Cons
Setting up your initial vacation protocol for employees can be confusing but Calamari is helpful and will set it up for you if you tell them what you want it to do.
- Industry: Staffing & Recruiting
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Great Product!
Reviewed on 2021/02/25
Excellent, we love using Calamari to manage our employees' PTO.
Pros
Easy to manage PTO from the administrative dashboard and simple for employees to request PTO.
Cons
The balance of time off can be confusing for employees the way it is laid out.
- Industry: Telecommunications
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
It could be a great product
Reviewed on 2019/07/29
This has been a very good product and it serves our needs but there are major shortcomings in the calculation of entitlement which has been frustrating and unresolved for many months
Pros
The GSuite and Slack Integration is a great addition and were part of the primary reasons for choosing this application. The interface is simple to use and the product is highly configurable to the business need.
Cons
Reporting of entitlement availability is only accurate when an employee has no future leave booked, otherwise the true amount must be manually calculated. It does not take into consideration what the future accrual will be when leave will actually be taken. Managers should also be able to see the entitlement breakdown for all of their staff at any point in time.
- Industry: Consumer Goods
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Excellent tool!
Reviewed on 2019/07/30
Pros
All functionalities are available, useful for usage for any country ! And what is most important - it is very intuitive! I recommend 100% !
Cons
Report - Changes vs. last month could be useful for payroll purposes :)
- Industry: Writing & Editing
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Review for Calamari
Reviewed on 2018/12/04
Our experience has been great with Calamari and the customer support has been very efficient and helpful.
Pros
I like that employees can simply clock in and out via slack or through the site. It allows them flexibility.
Cons
What I like least is the fact that we cannot edit the timesheet report before it generates and select which categories we'd like to pull into the report. Example: Hours worked, Breaks, & Overtime only. I also do not like that we cannot tailor our overtime calculation to be over 40hrs in a workweek vs what we have not which is over 8hrs in a work day.
- Industry: Medical Devices
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Great Time/attendance tracker
Reviewed on 2021/02/25
Great...no issues at all and continues to improve product!
Pros
Great value for the money and easy to use.
Cons
A little tricky at first to set up accrual policy
- Industry: Computer Games
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Friendly and easy to use
Reviewed on 2019/08/02
Pros
It is easy to use and intuitive. You can request absence without logging into the system.
Has integrations with the most popular software.
Cons
It's not translated completely - type of absences are still in polish. There might be a short description for absences.
- Industry: Hospitality
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Great Customer Service!
Reviewed on 2018/12/04
Wonderful! Our relationship with our representative, Ewelina, is beyond great!
Pros
I like that this program works across multiple countries and allows you to customize so much. Not every feature that we need has been able to be accommodated, but the Customer Service team has gone ABOVE and beyond to help us get to where we need to be or make suggestions to get it close.
Cons
Some functionality changes can take time, but that is a given.
- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Great for managing time off and remote work
Reviewed on 2019/07/29
We really like the software and it meets our needs. Will continue to use!
Pros
We have really enjoyed the ability to link the vacation calendar to our personal calendars. I can quickly see if someone is out on vacation or working remotely. This is a great feature that was one of the main reasons we picked Calamari.
Cons
Toggling back and forth between the timesheets and vacation sections of the software.
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
Absolute perfect!
Reviewed on 2017/07/31
Pros
Easy to use - covers every business-case for clockin and leave
Perfect support
a lot of integrations
There've been some problems, but they've been sold within minutes from the support
Response from CHROBRUS
Dear Bernhard, We love to hear such nice words. You just made our heart smile! :D Most warmly, Ewelina
- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Made my life in HR much easier
Reviewed on 2019/07/30
Pros
Ease of use and the fact that the support is very quick and to the point with their replies.
Cons
Sometimes its a little complex to set up the more advanced features like approval flows or employees from different markets.
- Industry: Management Consulting
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Easy to Use
Reviewed on 2019/07/29
We need to keep track of how many employees are in the office daily, weekly and monthly. Calamari has helped keep track of that.
Pros
It is easy to use! Overall, whatever you need you can find by navigating through the system.
Cons
I would like to pull reports for just one employee for the duration of the time that we have used the system. It breaks it down in weeks and that can be tedious. If I want a report, I want it to be fast and simple. Sometimes, the system will stop working for people and it does not clock them in at the right time. Not often but it has happened.
- Industry: Internet
- Company size: 11-50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Perfect
Reviewed on 2017/04/11
Pros
Everything works as it should. In the end is everything orderedNice contact with support. I have no objections. I recommend
Cons
I have no regrets. Everything is ok. Maybe I would have lowered the price gently....................