CharlieHR

CharlieHR was built by startup founders for startup teams, and the product keeps that promise: it automates the people admin that lands on whoever happens to be nearest, usually a founder or office manager who has better things to do. New starters onboard themselves through checklists, time off requests route to the right approver, policies get published and acknowledged, and lightweight review cycles actually happen because the system chases them.

Pricing follows headcount at small numbers: from roughly 4 pounds per team member per month, about R95, with introductory discounts for the first months and the total scaling smoothly as the team grows. There is also an optional HR advice service where UK qualified advisors answer the awkward people questions small companies hit, though the advice is grounded in UK employment law rather than the LRA and BCEA, so South African companies treat that add on as irrelevant and buy the software alone.

The product suits distributed and remote first teams well, which is exactly how many South African tech companies operate, and the per person cost stays rational at ten or thirty people. The boundaries are real: no payroll, thin reporting, no SA statutory anything, and companies past a hundred heads will feel the ceiling. For a lean SA startup that wants people admin handled without an HR hire, it is a tidy, affordable answer with a 7 day trial to prove it.