Alternatives to Remote People
Real alternatives to Remote People range from full BPO providers like Outsource2india to project-based specialists like ARDEM, depending on whether you need EOR or managed operations.
Top alternatives to Remote People
6 providersBruntWork is a global remote outsourcing company offering full-time vetted staff from $4/hr across a wide range of business functions, with no lock-in contracts.
View profile →South helps U.S. companies hire top Latin American remote talent for 70% less, covering recruiting, vetting, compliance, and payroll.
View profile →Australian-based BPO building dedicated remote teams in the Philippines and Eastern Europe across tech, marketing, finance, and more.
View profile →QX Global Group is a BPM and outsourcing firm founded in 2003, specialising in finance, accounting, recruitment, and HR outsourcing for mid-market and enterprise clients.
View profile →Smart Outsourcing Solution offers Philippines EOR services and dedicated remote team building for startups and growth-stage companies.
View profile →Legal Back Office provides outsourced accounting, marketing, HR, IT, and consulting services exclusively to US law firms.
View profile →Why buyers searching for Remote People alternatives usually mean something broader
Most people who type this query are not actually shopping for another Employer of Record tool. They landed on Remote People (the rebrand of Horizons, not to be confused with Remote.com) looking for global hiring, and somewhere in the research they realized their actual need is operational: staffing a support desk, running back-office data entry, or managing accounting processes across a distributed team. EOR software solves a legal employment problem. It does not run your customer service queue, QA your invoice processing, or manage attrition on a 20-person offshore team.
This matters because the alternatives list changes completely depending on which problem you are solving. If you need compliant payroll and contracts in 80 countries, you want another EOR platform. If you need someone to actually run a process end to end, hire the agents, manage QA, and hand you a finished output, you want a BPO. I get a lot of buyer questions that conflate the two, and the vendors do not always clarify it either, because both categories use words like "global talent" and "managed services" in their marketing.
The table below reflects real alternatives across both categories, ranked by how closely their actual service lines overlap with what buyers evaluating Remote People are typically trying to solve: distributed team management, back-office processing, and customer operations support.
Remote People vs the alternatives: the real comparison table
| Provider | HQ | Size | Pricing model | Certifications |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remote People | Not published | Not published | Per-seat | SOC 2, ISO 27001 |
| TDS Global Solutions | United States | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Outsource2india | India | Not published | Not published | ISO 9001 |
| ARDEM Incorporated | New Jersey, United States | Not published | Project-based | Not published |
| Outsourced Staff | Australia | Not published | Per-seat | Not published |
| Outsourced | Manila, Philippines | Not published | Per-seat | Not published |
| Hire With Near | United States | Not published | Not published | Not published |
What actually differentiates each alternative once you look past the homepage
The single biggest differentiator here is delivery model, not price, because none of these vendors publish real rate cards. Remote People runs per-seat pricing tied to SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, which tells you it is positioned for buyers who care about data handling and information security controls, typical of an EOR/HR-tech platform selling into mid-market companies with a compliance checklist.
Outsource2india is the closest thing to a traditional full-service BPO on this list. It holds ISO 9001, a quality management certification rather than a security one, which signals its selling point is process consistency and output quality across a wide range of back-office and IT services, not data security theater. That is a meaningful distinction: ISO 9001 tells you a vendor has documented, auditable processes for how work gets done. ISO 27001 tells you about information security controls. A regulated healthcare or fintech buyer wants the latter; a buyer who cares mostly about consistent, error-checked back-office output should ask harder about the former.
ARDEM's project-based pricing is the outlier and the tell. Project-based pricing only works when scope is genuinely bounded, think document digitization, an one-time data migration, or a fixed-volume claims backlog. If your work is ongoing and variable (a live support queue, monthly bookkeeping that grows with your business), project-based pricing either gets renegotiated constantly or the vendor pads the estimate to cover the unknown. I would ask ARDEM directly: what happens to price if volume in month three is 40% higher than the pilot estimate?
Outsourced Staff (Australia) and Outsourced (Manila) both use per-seat pricing like Remote People, but their geography tells you their real value proposition. Outsourced Staff, being Australia-HQ'd, is likely selling to Australian and APAC buyers who want a provider with local commercial and legal familiarity even if the delivery team sits offshore. Outsourced, based in Manila, is a straight offshore delivery play, likely competitive on cost for English-language voice and back-office work but with no published certification to point to for regulated industries. Neither publishes a certification, which is not automatically disqualifying, but it means you do the compliance verification work yourself rather than relying on a badge.
TDS Global Solutions and Hire With Near are the least transparent entries here, with no published pricing model or certification. That is not unusual for smaller or more customized providers, but it shifts the burden onto you in due diligence. I would not read "not published" as a red flag by itself; plenty of legitimate mid-size BPOs negotiate pricing deal by deal rather than publishing a card. I would read it as a signal to ask more direct questions before you shortlist them.
Which alternative fits which kind of buyer
The right pick depends entirely on whether you need legal employment infrastructure or operational delivery, and secondarily on how regulated your industry is.
- If you need compliant global hiring with security certifications as a checkbox for your own customers or auditors, staying with an EOR platform like Remote People or comparing it against other certified EOR SaaS tools makes more sense than any provider on this table.
- If you need a genuine BPO partner to run back-office processing, data entry, or IT-adjacent services at scale with documented quality processes, Outsource2india is the strongest fit among these alternatives given its ISO 9001 posture and broad service range.
- If you have a bounded, one-time or seasonal project (a digitization backlog, a data cleanup, a fixed-scope migration), ARDEM's project-based model can be more honest pricing than forcing a per-seat structure onto work that will end.
- If you are an Australian or APAC company that wants a vendor with local commercial presence but offshore delivery economics, Outsourced Staff is worth a call specifically for that geography fit.
- If cost is the dominant constraint and you are comfortable doing your own compliance and QA verification, Outsourced (Manila) represents a straightforward offshore play, but go in assuming you will build your own QA layer rather than inheriting one.
- If you cannot get clarity from a provider's public materials at all, treat TDS Global Solutions and Hire With Near as "call and verify" options rather than shortlist-ready, and do not assume silence on certification means absence of one.
The pricing model differences that actually matter here
Per-seat, project-based, and undisclosed pricing carry very different risk profiles, and the model matters more than the headline rate because it determines who eats the cost when reality diverges from the pilot. Per-seat pricing (Remote People, Outsourced Staff, Outsourced) is predictable for stable, ongoing headcount but can mean you are paying full rate for underutilized seats during ramp-up or slow periods. Project-based pricing (ARDEM) front-loads the risk into scope definition: get the scope wrong and you are renegotiating mid-project, which is friction you do not want with a live process.
| Pricing model | Best for | Main risk |
|---|---|---|
| Per-seat / dedicated FTE | Stable, ongoing volume where you want predictable monthly cost | Paying for idle capacity during ramp-up or seasonal dips |
| Project-based | Bounded, one-time or fixed-scope work (migrations, digitization) | Scope creep triggers renegotiation or hidden padding in the original estimate |
| Undisclosed / custom quote | Non-standard or highly specific process requirements | Harder to benchmark against market rate without multiple quotes |
Questions I would ask before shortlisting any of these
The questions that actually surface operating risk are rarely about price. They are about who runs the work day to day and what happens when something goes wrong.
- Ask Outsource2india: which specific team has run this exact process before (not a similar industry), and can I speak to that team lead, not just the sales rep?
- Ask ARDEM: if project volume or scope shifts by more than 20% from the estimate, how does pricing adjust, and is that in the contract or handled case by case?
- Ask Outsourced Staff: is the delivery team based in Australia, the Philippines, or elsewhere, and does the Australian entity carry any operational responsibility or purely commercial/legal?
- Ask Outsourced: what percentage of completed work is QA-reviewed, and what is the error rate on the last quarter, not just the SLA-met percentage?
- Ask TDS Global Solutions and Hire With Near directly: what certifications do you hold, and can you provide a reference client in my industry doing the same process at similar volume?
- Ask Remote People or any EOR platform: does your security certification cover the actual data my HR/payroll process touches, or just the platform infrastructure?
The mistake I see buyers make when they widen the search from Remote People
The mistake is assuming every name that shows up in a "alternatives to X" search is solving the same problem X solves. It is not. A buyer frustrated with Remote People's per-seat EOR pricing sometimes ends up signing with a full BPO thinking they got a better deal on the same thing, when actually they bought a completely different service (managed labor, not legal employment infrastructure) and now has compliance gaps nobody flagged.
The fix is sequencing: decide first whether your actual pain point is legal/compliance (EOR territory) or operational delivery (BPO territory), then shortlist within that category. Only after that should you compare pricing models and certifications, because comparing a per-seat EOR quote against a project-based BPO quote is comparing two different products, not two prices for the same thing.
Frequently asked questions
- What are the best alternatives to Remote People?
- The best alternatives depend on whether you need EOR/global hiring infrastructure or full BPO delivery: Outsource2india is the strongest general BPO alternative given its ISO 9001 process certification, ARDEM fits bounded project work with its project-based pricing, and Outsourced Staff or Outsourced suit buyers prioritizing geography-specific delivery over certification depth.
- Is Remote People the same company as Remote.com?
- No, Remote People and Remote.com are different companies, and this confusion shows up constantly in search results. Remote People is the rebranded name of Horizons, an EOR and global payroll platform, while Remote.com is a separate, larger EOR competitor; buyers researching either should double-check which vendor's actual site and pricing they are looking at before shortlisting.
- Should I choose a BPO or another EOR platform instead of Remote People?
- Choose based on the actual problem: pick another EOR platform if you need compliant legal employment, payroll, and contracts across countries, and pick a BPO if you need someone to actually run a process (support, data entry, accounting) with hired staff and QA. These are different service categories even though vendors in both sometimes use overlapping marketing language.
- Why do so many BPO alternatives not publish pricing or certifications?
- Many mid-size BPO and outsourcing providers negotiate pricing deal by deal rather than publishing a rate card, because volume, process complexity, and location mix change the real cost more than a flat number can capture. Absence of a published certification does not automatically mean a vendor lacks one; it means you need to ask directly and get documentation before signing.
- What is the difference between per-seat and project-based pricing for outsourcing?
- Per-seat pricing charges a fixed rate per dedicated agent or seat regardless of output volume, which works best for stable ongoing work, while project-based pricing charges a fixed fee for a defined scope of work, which works best for bounded, one-time projects like a data migration or digitization backlog. Applying project-based pricing to ongoing, variable-volume work usually triggers renegotiation once real volume diverges from the original estimate.
- How do I compare BPO providers if none of them publish real pricing?
- Get at least three quotes for the identical, specific scope of work (same volume, same SLAs, same reporting requirements) so you are comparing like for like rather than trusting a published range. Then weigh the quotes against process fit (has this vendor run this exact process before), QA discipline, and reporting quality, not just the headline hourly or per-seat rate.
- Does Remote People offer BPO services or only EOR/payroll?
- Remote People is primarily an EOR and global payroll platform, not a full managed BPO provider, so it handles legal employment, contracts, and payroll compliance rather than running an outsourced process like customer support or back-office data entry with its own managed staff. Buyers needing actual process delivery, not just legal employment infrastructure, should compare it against BPO providers like Outsource2india or ARDEM instead of treating it as a like-for-like alternative.
- Which alternative is best for a regulated industry like healthcare or finance?
- Among this group, Outsource2india's ISO 9001 certification signals the most documented process discipline, but no provider here publishes a security-specific certification like SOC 2 or HIPAA compliance, so a regulated buyer should request that documentation directly before shortlisting any of them. Do not assume a quality certification (ISO 9001) covers data security requirements; they address different things entirely.