PiHR Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

PiHR is a cloud HR and payroll platform built specifically for Bangladeshi companies. It bundles attendance, leave, expenses, shift scheduling, payroll and local tax compliance into one dashboard, priced by headcount. Best for: small and mid-size Bangladeshi firms moving off spreadsheets. Price: Free plan: no; from BDT 3,000/mo, roughly $25/mo. Rating: 6.6/10.

What is PiHR?

PiHR is a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) and payroll platform delivered as cloud software. Its defining trait is focus: it is built for the Bangladesh market, not adapted from a global product. That means its payroll, tax calculations and salary slips are tuned to local regulations, which is exactly where generic international HR tools tend to fall short for Bangladeshi employers.

The platform consolidates the everyday HR workload into one place. Attendance (including face recognition and fingerprint), leave management, expense tracking, shift scheduling, a digital notice board, task management and tax management all live in the same system. The target is organizations of every size, from small teams of 5 to 25 up to enterprises over 100, that are still running HR on spreadsheets and paper. We dug into how it is sold, and the company leans on customization, local support and implementation training as its main selling points. That local focus is the whole argument for PiHR over a cheaper global tool. A small business in Dhaka does not need a payroll engine built for US 401(k) rules; it needs one that understands Bangladeshi salary structures, festival bonuses and local tax filing, and that is the gap PiHR is built to fill.

What Are PiHR’s Key Features?

Attendance management

PiHR handles attendance with both face recognition and fingerprint tracking, so employees clock in with biometrics rather than manual logs. This feeds directly into payroll, which is the practical payoff: hours and presence flow into salary calculation without rekeying. For factories and offices with shift-based workforces, accurate biometric attendance is often the single biggest reason to adopt HR software. Manual attendance registers are easy to fudge and slow to total, and a single miscounted month of overtime can cost a company real money. Biometric capture removes the buddy-punching problem and turns attendance into clean data that payroll can trust, which is exactly what a growing company needs as headcount climbs past the point where a manager knows everyone by sight.

Payroll with local tax compliance

Payroll is the core. PiHR automates salary calculation, generates salary slips and applies tax rules aligned with Bangladesh regulations. This local compliance is the feature that justifies choosing PiHR over a cheaper global tool, since getting Bangladeshi payroll tax wrong creates real liabilities. The payroll engine pulls from attendance and leave data to produce monthly runs. Because attendance, leave and payroll share one system, a half-day of approved leave automatically adjusts the salary calculation without anyone re-entering it. That end-to-end flow from a fingerprint at the door to a compliant salary slip is the all-in-one promise actually working, and it is where a company recovers the hours it used to spend reconciling spreadsheets every month.

Leave and expense management

PiHR replaces paper leave forms with a digital request and approval flow, and adds expense management for tracking business spend. Employees submit, managers approve, and the records stay in one system. It is unglamorous but high-value: leave and expense are where spreadsheet-run HR teams lose the most time and accuracy. A digital approval trail also settles disputes, since there is a clear record of who requested what and who approved it, instead of a paper form that went missing. For expenses, capturing claims in the same system the company uses for payroll means reimbursements can be tracked and paid without a separate process.

Shift scheduling and team tools

Beyond the core, PiHR includes shift management, a digital notice board for announcements, task management and employee tracking. For a small or mid-size company, having scheduling and internal comms inside the same HR tool reduces the number of separate apps. These are supporting features rather than headline ones, but they round out the all-in-one pitch. Shift management is genuinely useful for businesses with rotating rosters, where building a schedule by hand and then matching it against attendance is a weekly chore. The notice board and task tools are lighter touches, but for a company that has never had any internal system, having announcements and assignments in one place is a clear step up from group chats and printed memos.

How Much Does PiHR Cost?

PiHR prices by employee count, in Bangladeshi Taka. Package-Tiny is BDT 3,000/mo for 1 to 25 employees, Package-Small is BDT 5,000/mo for 26 to 50, Package-Mid is BDT 9,000/mo for 51 to 100, and anything over 100 employees is custom pricing through sales. In rough USD terms that is about $25, $42 and $75 per month for the three published tiers.

Against the local market, that pricing is competitive. Industry guides put HR payroll software for sub-100-employee Bangladeshi companies at BDT 3,000 to 5,000 per month, which is exactly PiHR’s band, and 10,000 to 15,000 for larger headcounts. So PiHR sits squarely at market rate rather than undercutting or overcharging. Local competitors like Jibika Plexus, LinesPay and PeopleDesk price in the same neighborhood, which means the decision rarely comes down to price alone. With everyone clustered in the same range, what actually separates these tools is the quality of support, the smoothness of the interface and how well the payroll engine handles your specific salary structure, which is why a demo matters more than a price comparison here.

The fine print matters. Prices exclude VAT and tax, installation charges apply on every tier, and the entry Package-Tiny requires a six-month advance payment. So the real first-cheque cost is higher than the monthly figure suggests, and there is no published free trial to test before you commit.

Who is PiHR Best For?

Use PiHR if you run a small or mid-size company in Bangladesh and you are still doing HR and payroll on spreadsheets or paper. The headcount-based pricing fits SMEs cleanly, the biometric attendance and automated payroll save real hours, and the local tax compliance is something global tools simply will not match for you. The bundled support and implementation training help teams that have never run HR software before.

Skip PiHR if you operate outside Bangladesh, since its core advantage is local compliance that does not travel. Skip it too if you need to trial software extensively before paying, because there is no free plan and the entry tier wants six months upfront. And very large or multinational employers may need a heavier global HRIS with deeper analytics and integrations.

Best PiHR Alternatives

Jibika Plexus

Jibika Plexus is a well-regarded Bangladeshi HR and payroll platform with a user-friendly interface and a strong emphasis on data security and automatic backups. It covers attendance, payroll, leave and employee data, with fast attendance and payroll processing. It prices in the same local band as PiHR, so the choice often comes down to which interface and support team your team prefers.

LinesPay

LinesPay is an all-in-one HR and payroll platform that runs the full cycle from onboarding to leave management, including payouts with tax compliance and manpower planning. It is a direct local competitor pitched at companies wanting end-to-end HR rather than just attendance and payroll. Worth comparing if onboarding workflows matter as much as payroll to you.

PeopleDesk

PeopleDesk offers a full HR package from onboarding to retirement and is frequently ranked among the top HR tools in Bangladesh. It leans toward broader HR lifecycle management. If you want a single vendor to cover the entire employee journey, not just operational HR and payroll, PeopleDesk is the one to shortlist against PiHR.

Final Verdict: Is PiHR Worth It?

PiHR earns a 6.6. It does a focused job well: affordable, headcount-based pricing, a complete HR and payroll feature set, and the local tax compliance that makes it a better fit for Bangladeshi SMEs than any repurposed global tool. For a company stuck on spreadsheets, it is a reasonable, fairly priced step up with support and training included.

It lands in the mid-6 range because the friction is real: no free plan, no published trial, a six-month advance on the entry tier, plus installation charges and VAT on top of the headline price. The product is solid but unremarkable next to equally capable local rivals that compete on the same features and roughly the same price. Nothing here is broken or overpriced; it simply does not stand out in a crowded local market. Our take: if you run a Bangladeshi SME and want local-compliant HR and payroll, shortlist PiHR alongside Jibika Plexus and LinesPay, and ask for a demo before committing the advance. Since none of these tools publishes a free trial, the demo is your only real chance to test the workflow against your own payroll before you pay, so use it seriously and bring your actual salary structure to the call.