Deel: My experience
- Claire Baker
- Mar 14
- 3 min read
Deel is like if a pickup artist did payroll.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be doing a series about my experience with various well-known payroll and HRIS providers.
I have a special loathing for Deel, so pull up a chair. We might be here a while.
Deel is the stereotypical tech-bro, “move fast and break (your) things,” the-rules-are-for-thee-and-not-for-me, all-glitz-no-substance disappointment. It looks pretty in the demo, even if those fancy buttons and cool apps never work as expected.
I have never (and I mean NEVER) met a Deel user who is actually happy with their choice.*
* After posting this on LinkedIn, one brave user raised her hand to disagree. Your experience may vary, and I welcome opinions that are different from mine. Out of fairness, I am linking the original post and her comment. I hope that current, former, and future Deel users on both sides of this debate will weigh in with their experiences. We can all make better vendor decisions when we learn from each other.
🔨 Features are bolted-on
Some HR software systems develop their own features, following consistent software architecture, development practices, and operational processes. Deel took another path, acquiring dozens of small point solutions into a Frankenstein’s monster of features that are like a labyrinth to navigate and follow standardized processes only when they don’t make any damned sense.
I once spent Christmas morning on the phone with them because we had to go through a full KYC (anti-money laundering bank verification) process for a $3/employee/month PTO tracking Slack app. There was only one person in the universe who was authorized to sign off on it, and he was OOO until January 3. I'm glad he got to take a vacation to spend the holidays with his family.
But...
The day after we’d told people to start using it, the app was shut down for nonpayment. Because they wouldn't accept our credit card until we'd gone through the full bank verification they use for payroll. It was, to say the least, "too much."
🦹♂️ Noncompliance as a service
Deel has this one service called “Shield” that I swear to god is just contractor misclassification as a service. It works like this: If you have people overseas who look a lot like employees, you’re supposed to pay them as employees by withholding taxes and following labor laws.
But it’s difficult to set up your own entity overseas. EORs that let you “rent out” international business entities are expensive. Plus you have to pay for all those benefits and taxes. And figure out how to follow local laws. Who wants to do that?
Enter Deel Shield. It lets you hire people as contractors who probably should be employees, and for a fee, you can designate Deel to be the one that’s sued for contractor misclassification rather than you. No crimes here. Probably.
☹️ Unsupport
Deel’s “support” is objectively awful. They ignore open tickets for days to weeks, and sometimes come back with more non-answers. Often, they don’t respond at all.
If they do respond, you’ll get another email after 2 hours that says they’ll close your ticket for nonresponse if you don’t get back to them soon. This email often comes in the middle of the (US) night. By the time you get back to your keyboard, it’s closed and you have to start again.
The support team probably hasn’t heard about whatever feature you’re asking about anyway.
🙈 🙉 🙊 Who thought this was a good idea?
The product itself behaves like it was designed by someone who never even considered how people would actually use it.
For example: Someone submits an expense report at the beginning of the month for a trip that happened at the end of last month. The system looks at the dates on the transactions and immediately marks them as overdue, even if they were just submitted today for yesterday. It then emails every admin in the company calling them a bum.
And where are the invoices, anyway? Hell if I could ever find them, even though I had to look for them several times a month. Because, oh yeah, they’ll invoice you several times a month because each charge follows its own invoicing logic.
The better to overcharge you with, my dear.
🏃♂️ My advice to anyone considering Deel
Run away! Run away as fast as you can!
These systems are too critical, too expensive, too legally risky, and have too much influence on the employee experience to trust them to the Saul Goodman of HR providers.
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