A Personio alternative you can self host

Personio is a strong HR suite for European companies that are happy living in someone else's cloud and paying per employee, per month, forever. Keanan takes the other path: the whole platform runs on your servers or ours, carries your brand, and is paid for once.

The short version

	Personio	Keanan
Hosting	Their cloud only	Your servers, or a managed private instance
Pricing	Per employee, per month	One time license (self hosted) or flat monthly (managed)
Data	Exports on request	The database is yours, full export any time
Branding	Personio branded	White label: your name, logo and colors everywhere
Core HR, PTO, time tracking, expenses	Yes	Yes
Mobile app for employees	Yes	Yes, points at your instance
Recruiting / ATS	Mature	Not included
German payroll integrations	Deep	Payroll records and exports, no direct DATEV pipe

When Personio is the better choice

Be honest with yourself: if you need a full applicant tracking system, a marketplace of prebuilt integrations, or a direct line into German payroll providers, Personio has years of head start there. Keanan does not try to win that race.

When Keanan wins

• Your works council, your lawyers or your clients require employee data to stay on infrastructure you control.
• You are an agency or consultancy and want to run people ops under your own brand for your clients.
• You would rather pay once than watch a per seat bill grow with every hire.
• You want the boring core done well: contracts, time off, time tracking, expenses, payslips, documents, meetings, all in one place with a clean mobile app.

What switching looks like

Export your people list from Personio as CSV, import it in the Keanan dashboard, and invite everyone by email. Most teams are through it in an afternoon. A free 14 day pilot environment gives you a private instance to try it against your real org, no card and no call.

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