Empuls vs Bonusly: The complete guide to choosing the best Bonusly alternative

Building a highly engaged, motivated, and loyal workforce is essential. Companies are investing in employee engagement, rewards, and recognition platforms to create cultures where people feel valued. 

Two names that often come up during evaluations are Empuls and Bonusly. As businesses explore Bonusly alternatives and competitors, the comparison between Empuls and Bonusly becomes important. 

When it comes to truly engaging, rewarding, and retaining your employees, settling for a platform that only scratches the surface isn’t enough. While Bonusly offers a fun way to give peer-to-peer shoutouts, Empuls goes several steps further—uniting rewards, recognition, surveys, perks, benefits, and communication into one powerful, AI-driven platform.  

Empuls enables structured award workflows, a global reward marketplace, lifecycle surveys, tax-saving benefits, and a social intranet—all seamlessly integrated into your daily tools like Teams or Slack. It doesn’t just recognize effort; it transforms your entire employee experience strategy, something Bonusly simply can’t match. 

In this blog, we'll dive into what each platform offers, compare key features side-by-side, evaluate client ratings, and explain why Empuls could be the smarter choice for businesses seeking holistic engagement solutions. 

Deep dive: Empuls 

Empuls is purpose-built to help HR teams and people leaders create a culture of appreciation, feedback, and connection. It brings together all aspects of employee engagement into a unified, user-friendly platform. 

Built by Xoxoday, Empuls is an all-in-one employee engagement platform designed to drive motivation, connection, and loyalty across teams. 

Core modules: 

From celebrating everyday wins to running complex surveys and automating rewards, Empuls offers end-to-end tools. Its five core modules include: 

• Recognition: Peer-to-peer recognition, spot awards, jury awards, milestone awards. 
• Rewards: Access to 10M+ global reward options. 
• Surveys: eNPS, pulse, lifecycle, and 360° feedback surveys. 
• Communication: Social intranet, townhalls, newsfeeds, community groups. 
• Benefits: Perks, lifestyle benefits, early wage access, tax-saving benefits. 

Strengths in: 

Empuls is powered by "Em," its built-in AI assistant. Em drives engagement by sending smart nudges, enabling award automation, summarizing survey sentiment, and even mapping skills through recognition patterns. 

• Robust lifecycle and 360° feedback surveys to capture employee sentiments. 
• Expansive global rewards catalog with over 10 million options across 100+ countries. 
• Comprehensive intranet features including community groups and employee directories. 
• Gamified experiences with leaderboards, nudges, and memory books. 
• Seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, Slack, HRMS, LMS, PMS, and more. 

Empuls creates a unified engagement experience, integrating recognition and feedback into the everyday workflow. 

Deep dive: Bonusly 

Bonusly is a peer-to-peer recognition and rewards platform that focuses on encouraging frequent, small recognitions across teams. 

Core modules: 

Bonusly provides companies with a simple way to promote a culture of appreciation through microbonuses and social recognition. 

• Peer-to-peer recognition: Public microbonuses shared among employees. 
• Rewards marketplace: Gift cards, charitable donations, and custom rewards. 
• Celebrations: Automated birthday and work anniversary celebrations. 
• Basic analytics: Tracking recognition trends and employee engagement rates. 

Strengths in: 

Bonusly simplifies peer recognition and keeps teams connected with lightweight features. 

• Easy-to-use platform with a fun, social feed for recognitions. 
• Fast peer-to-peer recognition using emojis, hashtags, and public visibility. 
• Basic reward options including digital gift cards and donations. 
• Quick integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and select HRIS tools. 
• Gamified leaderboards encouraging friendly recognition-based competition. 

While Bonusly helps cultivate a culture of appreciation, it focuses primarily on recognition without extending into comprehensive engagement, communication, or wellbeing solutions. 

Empuls vs Bonusly: Comparing key platform features 

The following is the comparative table of features for both platforms. 

Recognition 

Empuls provides an extremely structured and versatile recognition ecosystem supporting peer, manager, leadership, and event-based awards. Bonusly primarily focuses on peer-to-peer micro-recognition, missing out on structured, large-scale recognition initiatives. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Core Value Badges	✅ (Upload or choose from 150+ badges)	✅
Peer Awards	✅ (Tied to rewards without approval)	✅ (Peer bonuses)
Spot Awards	✅ (Manager-driven, in-the-moment)	✅
Nomination-based Awards	✅ (Built-in workflows for nominations)	❌
Nomination-based Awards with Jury Panel Voting	✅ (Annual/Biannual exclusive awards)	❌
Long Service Awards	✅ (Automated milestones)	✅
Milestone Awards	✅ (Celebrate onboarding, promotion, exit)	✅
Employee Incentives	✅ (Tie rewards to KPIs, goals)	✅
Contests & Challenges	✅ (Wellness, productivity, CSR challenges)	❌
Wall Of Fame	✅ (Digital showcase for top performers)	❌
Yearbook	✅ (Memory book for service anniversaries)	❌
Public & Private Recognition	✅ (Flexible visibility settings)	❌
Recognition & Reward Programs	✅ (Fully automated, rule-based workflows)	❌
AI-powered recognition rephrase tool	✅	✅
Milestone-based rewards via gamified leaderboards	✅	⚠️ Limited
Appreciation reminders via Slack/MS Teams	✅	✅

Rewards 

Empuls enables full control over reward cycles, budgets, and modes of reward distribution.  Bonusly supports basic point-based rewards but lacks QR code rewards, gifting automation, and structured leaderboards. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Budget Distribution	✅ (Auto distribution monthly/quarterly)	✅
Redemption Wallet	✅ (Bill-on-redemption model)	✅
Point-based Rewards	✅ (Flexible budgets)	✅
QR-code based Rewards	✅ (For deskless employees)	✅
Gifting (Personal/Professional Milestones)	✅	❌
Custom Leaderboards	✅ (Define ranking criteria)	✅
Reward Cycle 3.0 with structured planning	✅	✅
Automated gifting based on data	✅	✅
Team budgets with balance/utilization reports	✅	✅

Perks 

Empuls doubles reward value by offering discounted gift cards, brand offers, and cashback savings — a feature Bonusly does not support. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Discounted Gift Cards	✅ (Across 6,000 brands globally)	❌
Brand Offers	✅ (Exclusive employee discounts)	❌
Exclusive Deals	✅ (Across dining, travel, essentials)	❌
Cashback	✅ (On most purchases)	❌

Benefits 

Empuls bridges engagement and financial wellbeing through flexible, tax-saving benefits and salary advances. Bonusly has no benefit administration features. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Tax-free Benefits	✅ (Meal, fuel, telecom, books)	❌
Company-sponsored Benefits	✅	❌
Fringe Benefits (LSAs)	✅ (Lifestyle Spending Accounts)	❌
Early Wages	✅ (Salary advance feature)	❌

Surveys 

Empuls builds a mature employee listening engine covering surveys, analytics, sentiment detection, and action plans. Bonusly offers only very basic survey functions.

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Engagement Surveys	✅	❌
Lifecycle Surveys	✅	❌
Custom Surveys	✅ (Full templates & editing)	⚠️ Limited
Personalized Conversations	✅ (Conversational AI for deeper insights)	❌
Survey Analytics	✅ (Detailed dashboards)	⚠️ Limited
Action Plans	✅ (Turn feedback into actions)	❌

Social intranet 

Empuls acts like an internal social media platform, while Bonusly is  limited to public feeds for recognition only. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Central News Feed	✅	✅
Social Recognition Feed	✅	✅
Quick Links	✅	❌
Posts, Polls, Quizzes	✅	✅
Videos	✅	❌
Ask Me Anything	✅	❌
Reactions, Comments, GIFs	✅	✅
Social Sharing (LinkedIn)	✅	❌
Pinned Posts	✅	❌
Wishboards	✅ (Birthdays, milestones)	❌

Employee profile 

Empuls lets employees manage profiles, history, and preferences, building a sense of ownership. Bonusly provides minimal personal management features. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Profile Page	✅ (Personal and professional details)	✅
Account Statement	✅ (Reward points history)	✅
Order History	✅ (Redemption history)	✅
Account Preferences	✅ (Security, notifications, language)	✅

Community groups 

Empuls brings hobby clubs, knowledge forums, and project groups into one platform. Bonusly doesn’t offer a community building feature. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Types of Groups	✅ (Department, location, hobby)	❌
Group Use Cases	✅ (Upskilling, classifieds, onboarding)	❌
Content Moderation	✅	❌
Group Settings	✅ (Privacy, notifications, restrictions)	❌

User access settings 

Empuls gives admins deep access control and flexible user management while Bonusly offers only basic user setup.

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Access Controls	✅	✅
User Management	✅	✅
Admin Access Delegation	✅	✅
User Authentication	✅ (Custom SSO, standard login)	✅
notification Settings	✅ (Email, app, SMS)	✅

 AI capabilities 

Empuls's AI capabilities provide proactive nudges, feedback analysis, and content safety. Bonusly has no AI offerings. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Weekly Accomplishment Logging	✅	❌
Recognition Insights	✅	❌
Automated Award Creation	✅	❌
Automated Milestone Celebrations	✅	❌
Personalized Conversations	✅	❌
AI-generated Sentiment Analysis	✅	❌
AI-based Content Moderation	✅	❌

Reward catalog 

Empuls’s catalog is global, diversified, and customizable compared to Bonusly's narrower options. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Gift Vouchers	✅	✅
Experiences	✅	✅
Amazon Store	✅ (Full catalog via API)	❌
Brand Merchandise	✅	⚠️ Limited
Custom Swag	✅ (Company branded)	✅
Custom Catalog	✅ (Company-defined rewards)	✅
Travel & Entertainment	✅	⚠️ Limited
Donations to Charity	✅	✅
Prepaid Cards	✅	⚠️ Limited

Reports 

Empuls offers a full-stack reporting suite, while Bonusly's reports remain basic and ⚠️ Limited. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Individual Reports	✅	✅
Manager-level Reports	✅	✅
Account Status Reports	✅	⚠️ Limited
Engagement Reports	✅	⚠️ Limited
Department-level Reports	✅	✅
Quid Pro Quo Reports	✅ (Abuse detection)	❌

Personalization 

Empuls can be fully customized to reflect a company's brand identity. Bonusly offers limited visual branding. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Program Settings	✅	⚠️ Limited
Branding	✅	⚠️ Limited
Feed Card Background	✅	❌
Banners	✅	❌
Platform Theme	✅	❌

Security & compliance 

Empuls brings enterprise-grade security and global compliance, exceeding what Bonusly currently supports. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Security	✅ (VAPT, code audits, encryption)	⚠️ Limited
Data Privacy & Compliance	✅ (GDPR, SOC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA)	⚠️ Limited
Tax Compliance	✅ (Forms like 1099/W9)	⚠️ Limited

Enterprise capabilities 

Empuls scales better globally for distributed teams, with smarter financial controls than Bonusly. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
Multiple Currencies	✅	⚠️ Limited
Multiple Languages	✅	⚠️ Limited
Multi-region Deployment	✅	❌
Cost of Living Index	✅ (Fair rewards globally)	❌

Integration 

Empuls integrates deeply into all critical HR, collaboration, learning, and performance ecosystems, while Bonusly limits to basic communication tools. 

Feature	Empuls	Bonusly
HRMS Integration	✅	✅
Collaboration Tools (Slack, Teams, Outlook)	✅	✅
SSO Integration	✅	✅
Intranet Integration	✅	✅
LMS Integration	✅	❌
ATS Integration	✅	❌
PMS Integration	✅	❌
Health App Integration	✅	❌

Empuls vs Bonusly — Who delivers more? 

In the search for a recognition platform that actually moves the needle on engagement, Empuls emerges as the obvious choice. Unlike Bonusly, which offers limited features confined to micro-recognition, Empuls delivers an end-to-end engagement solution—complete with award automation, intelligent survey insights, lifestyle benefits, compliance-grade security, and extensive customization.