Built on-premise, on purpose.
Workstead runs on hardware we own and operate. We don't route your payroll data through a chain of third-party clouds before it reaches us. That's a deliberate choice — not a budget shortcut.
About the workshop
Built by an operator.
For operators.
Workstead is an HR and payroll toolkit built by someone who runs their own small team and got tired of paying enterprise-scale prices for tools that didn't fit. So we built the right-sized version from scratch, on infrastructure we own.
The problem
SaaS payroll was built for someone else.
The big players optimise for the sale, not the run. Onboarding takes a week. Support tickets go nowhere. Prices are hidden behind a demo call. The feature list is enormous; the features you actually need are buried under five tabs.
A small clinic or trade shop needs payroll done correctly, on time, for a handful of W-2 employees and a few 1099 contractors — and maybe a time clock that works when the Wi-Fi goes out. That's it. Not a HRIS suite. Not a performance management module. Not a DEI dashboard.
The answer
A workshop, not a platform.
We took the scope seriously. Payroll that runs in under four minutes. A time clock that installs as a PWA and queues punches offline. An onboarding wizard that gets a new hire paperworked and in the system before lunch. Reports you can actually read.
Nothing more. Nothing you didn't ask for.
How we work
A few things we don’t negotiate on.
Small-business payroll is a craft problem.
The tools that work for a 2,000-seat enterprise break a 12-person clinic in different ways. We built for the clinic. The operator who runs a small team and needs payroll done right — not sold at scale.
Honest prices. No tricks.
The pricing page shows what it costs. There's no 'talk to sales' tier hiding the real number. If you want a trial, you click a button, not a calendly link.
Security as a first-class concern.
Field-level encryption per tenant, MFA on every account, step-up re-auth for bank details. Not because an auditor checked a box — because payroll data is sensitive and we treat it that way.
The infrastructure
On-prem by design.
Workstead runs on hardware in a colo facility we manage directly. Tenant data is isolated at the database level — each workspace gets its own Postgres database, not just a row filter. Encryption keys are per-tenant, rotated on a schedule, and stored in a hardware-backed secrets system.
This isn't a marketing claim. It's how the system is wired. You can read the specifics on the security page.
Ready to pick up the tools?
Start a free 30-day trial. Full product from day one. No card, no sales call.