Empuls vs Reward Gateway: A Comparative Analysis of Two Employee Rewards and Recognition Platforms

Looking for a Reward Gateway alternative? Compare Empuls vs Reward Gateway across recognition, rewards, surveys, intranet, and AI. Learn why Empuls is the more scalable, flexible, and modern choice for employee engagement.

Written by Ganesh Ram, 8 May 2025

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Employee engagement has become a top priority for organizations seeking to retain talent and foster a positive workplace culture. Recognition, rewards, communication, and feedback now play a central role in shaping that experience.

Empuls and Reward Gateway offer solutions in this space, but their capabilities and approach differ. 

But Empuls outshines Reward Gateway. While Reward Gateway focuses narrowly on basic recognition and UK-centric discounts, Empuls offers a comprehensive, AI-powered engagement platform that brings together recognition, rewards, surveys, benefits, and communication in one seamless ecosystem. 

With intelligent automation, a 10M+ global rewards catalog, personalized nudges, and real-time sentiment analysis, Empuls empowers organizations to engage employees at every stage of the lifecycle—something Reward Gateway simply doesn’t offer. 

In this article, we will compare both platforms across key areas—recognition, rewards, automation, communication, and analytics—and explain why Empuls is a strong choice for businesses seeking Reward Gateway alternatives or exploring Reward Gateway competitors.

Deep dive: Empuls

Empuls is a unified platform for employee engagement, built to support recognition, rewards, feedback, and internal communication. It’s designed for global teams and integrates seamlessly with everyday work tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, UKG, and HiBob.

The platform stands out for its built-in AI assistant, Em, which drives engagement through smart nudges, award prompts, survey insights, and recognition suggestions.

Key capabilities include:

  • Recognition and rewards: Peer-to-peer, spot, milestone, and value-based recognition—automated and easy to manage.
  • Global rewards catalog: 10M+ options across 100+ countries, including gift cards, experiences, Amazon products, and branded swag.
  • Surveys and feedback: eNPS, pulse, lifecycle, and 360° surveys with analytics and sentiment insights.
  • Social intranet: Drives open communication, celebrates milestones, and connects distributed teams.
  • Perks and benefits: Tax-free and flexible benefit options, salary advances, and exclusive brand discounts.

Empuls is built to scale, supports white-labeling, and helps organizations drive consistent engagement across the employee lifecycle.

Deep dive: Reward Gateway

Reward Gateway is an employee engagement platform focused on recognition, communication, and employee discounts. It’s widely used in the UK and Australia, with strong retail partnerships that power its discounts offering.

Key features include:

  • Recognition and rewards: Peer-to-peer and manager recognition with points-based rewards redeemable for gift cards, experiences, and donations.
  • Employee discounts: A major draw, especially in the UK, offering deals and cashback across a wide range of retailers.
  • Communications: Internal blogs, announcements, and push notifications to share updates, though more functional than collaborative.
  • Surveys: Basic survey tools for pulse checks and feedback, with limited analytics.
  • Branding and integrations: Offers white-labeling and integrations with HR and communication tools.

While Reward Gateway is effective for recognition and discounts, it lacks depth in automation, AI-driven insights, and community engagement features.

Empuls vs Reward Gateway: Comparing key platform features

This detailed comparison uses the exact categories from your internal battlecard and integrates the most recent Empuls updates and differentiators. Each section clearly contrasts what Empuls offers versus what Reward Gateway delivers.

1. Recognition

Empuls delivers a complete recognition system with peer, manager, jury, and milestone-based awards—fully automated and customizable. Reward Gateway covers the basics but lacks advanced workflows, award diversity, and visibility controls.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Core value badges

Peer-to-peer recognition

Manager-to-peer recognition

Spot awards

Nomination-based awards

✅ (limited)

Jury-based awards

Long service awards

✅ Automated & tax-compliant

✅ Manual

Milestone awards

✅ With gamification engine

Performance-based awards

✅ KPI-linked award workflows

External recognition (clients/vendors)

Award automation (rule-based)

✅ Supports award cycles, approval workflows

⚠️ Limited

Wall of Fame (TV & interactive)

✅ TV & web mode, real-time feeds

Recognition personalization (AI-enhanced)

✅ Smart prompts, rephrase suggestions, award creation via AI

Quid Pro Quo prevention

Yearbook

Public & Private Recognition

Recognition & Reward Programs

Reward Program

Reward Cycles

Reward Scheduler

External Recognition

2. Rewards

Empuls offers a robust, pay-on-redemption rewards engine with a 10M+ global catalog, Amazon integration, custom swag, and gifting automation. Reward Gateway has fewer reward types, slower processing, and limited international options.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Budget control & team-wise utilization

✅ Customizable per team, with dashboards

Pay-on-redemption billing

✅ No upfront cost

Global reward catalog

✅ 10M+ options, 100+ countries

⚠️ Limited to fewer regions

QR-code-based rewards

Custom swag and storefront

✅ Fully automated with branded delivery

✅ (less automated)

Experiences and travel

✅ 100K+ experiences, curated by location

⚠️ Limited

Gift vouchers

✅ 8000+ brands

⚠️ Limited

Amazon integration

✅ Native integration

Gifting automation

✅ Birthday, anniversary, onboarding, exit, festival gifts

3. Perks

Empuls enhances employee savings through curated perks, cashback offers, and fringe benefit tie-ins across 50+ countries. Reward Gateway focuses largely on UK-centric retail discounts, with less flexibility and coverage elsewhere.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Corporate discounts marketplace

✅ Across 50+ countries

⚠️ Limited

Custom fringe perks via LSA

✅ Fitness, food, wellness, family care

Cashback and savings

⚠️ Limited

Salary advance

✅ Early access to earned wages

4. Benefits

Empuls stands out with its multi-benefit card for managing tax-free and lifestyle benefits, offering real-time dashboards and compliance support. Reward Gateway doesn't provide a structured benefits solution for tax savings or fringe allowances.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Tax-free benefits

✅ (Meal, fuel, telecom, books via card)

Multi-benefit card (fringe + tax)

✅ RBI-compliant, multi-wallet via RuPay

Real-time utilization dashboard

✅ Admin & user level

Flexible benefit configuration

✅ Company-defined benefit bundles

5. Surveys

Empuls includes eNPS, pulse, lifecycle, and 360° surveys—powered by AI for sentiment analysis and action planning. Reward Gateway provides only basic survey tools, without analytics depth or automation.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Pulse surveys

✅ Scientifically designed, auto nudges

eNPS surveys

✅ With industry benchmarks

Lifecycle surveys

✅ 10+ event-driven surveys (onboarding, training, etc.)

360-degree feedback

✅ Peer, manager, and direct report feedback

Sentiment analysis

✅ AI-based for open-ended feedback

Survey analytics and trends

✅ Heatmaps, department-wise insights

⚠️ Basic

Conversational AI for surveys

✅ Personalized, adaptive question flows

6. Social intranet

Empuls comes with a built-in social intranet featuring wishboards, AMAs, group discussions, and polls to boost internal communication. Reward Gateway supports top-down announcements but lacks collaboration-focused tools.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Newsfeed & announcements

Polls & quizzes

Celebrations (birthdays, milestones)

✅ Wishboards, spotlight modes

AMA sessions

✅ Ask leadership anything format

Social sharing

✅ Native integration

TV mode (digital signage)

✅ Lobby + event broadcasting

Pinned posts

Employee directory

Filters & “My Circle” personalization

✅ Location, team, department views

7. Employee profile

Empuls helps employees stay connected with rich profiles, skill tags, and a full org chart for easier collaboration. Reward Gateway does not support team mapping or detailed employee profiles beyond basic info.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Rich employee profile

✅ Includes hobbies, skills

Org chart

✅ Hierarchical + searchable

8. Community groups

Empuls fosters culture through hobby and work-based groups with content moderation, member controls, and engagement features. Reward Gateway does not offer community or interest groups as part of its experience.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Hobby, functional, and location groups

✅ With content moderation

Private/public group options

Activity notifications per group

9. User access settings

Empuls provides granular control with role-based permissions, admin delegation, and data visibility settings for HR, managers, and leaders. Reward Gateway offers standard roles with limited flexibility for enterprise-level governance.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Role-based access

Admin access delegation

Data visibility customization

10. AI capabilities

Empuls is built with AI at its core, offering skill mapping, award suggestions, sentiment analysis, nudges, and predictive insights. Reward Gateway lacks native AI functionality, limiting automation and intelligence in engagement programs.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

AI skill mapping from recognition

Predictive analytics on attrition

AI co-pilot for insights

Smart award creation (GenAI)

Content moderation with an inclusion coach

Recognition rephrasing, and citation improvements

AI usage insights and suggestions

Sentiment analysis on surveys

Nudges and prompts (Em)

11. Reward catalogs

Empuls features an intensely localized global catalog, covering 100+ countries and categories from gift cards to experiences, swag, and Amazon. Reward Gateway offers a smaller, slower-to-fulfill catalog mostly centered around digital gift cards.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Gift cards

✅ 8000+ brands

⚠️ Limited

Amazon products

✅ With API integration

Experiences

✅ 100K+ across 50+ countries

⚠️ Limited

Swag store

✅ Curated + on-demand distribution

Travel & entertainment

✅ 1M+ options including hotels, flights

⚠️ Limited

Donations to charity

✅ 10K+ orgs

Prepaid cards

✅ Visa, Mastercard

⚠️ Limited

12. Reports

Empuls delivers layered reporting for individuals, teams, and departments—backed by AI insights and recognition gap detection. Reward Gateway offers standard usage reports, but they lack actionable data and predictive analytics.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Individual-level reports

⚠️ Basic

Manager/team reports

Org-wide program reports

⚠️ Basic

Recognition abuse detection (Quid Pro)

13. Personalization

Empuls supports white-labeling, custom dashboards, award certificate designs, and feed configurations—fully aligned with your brand. Reward Gateway has limited branding options and minimal experience personalization.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

White-labeling

✅ Fully configurable

Platform theme and custom widgets

✅ Dashboard, leaderboard, feed

Custom award certificates

✅ Digital, downloadable

14. Security & compliance

Both platforms meet global security standards, but Empuls also supports multi-region deployments, tax-compliant reward workflows, and advanced access control for enterprises. Reward Gateway’s security controls are standard but less flexible.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

SOC2, ISO, GDPR, CCPA

✅ Compliant across all standards

⚠️ Limited

Multi-region data storage

✅ Configurable as per region

⚠️ Limited

Tax-compliant reward workflows

✅ With reports

⚠️ Limited

15. Enterprise capabilities

Empuls is built for scale, with multilingual and multi-currency support, cost-of-living indexing, and concierge onboarding. Reward Gateway offers enterprise plans but lacks the configuration depth and automation Empuls provides.

Feature

Empuls

Reward Gateway

Multi-currency, multi-language support

✅ 50+ currencies, 55+ languages

Cost of living adjustments

✅ For fair global reward distribution

Dedicated CSM and onboarding

✅ Concierge implementation model

16. Integrations

Empuls integrates seamlessly with HRMS (HiBob, UKG, SAP), Slack, Teams, LMS, and ATS tools—embedding engagement in daily workflows. Reward Gateway supports some integrations, but its ecosystem depth and automation capabilities are limited.

Integration Type

Empuls

Reward Gateway

HRMS (HiBob, UKG, SAP)

✅ Deep integrations

Slack and MS Teams

✅ With appreciation reminders

SSO, API, SDKs

✅ SAML 2.0, custom apps

LMS, ATS, PMS, Health Apps

✅ Extensive connector library

The Empuls advantage: Features that Reward Gateway just can’t match

When measured feature by feature, Empuls clearly outpaces Reward Gateway by delivering a more intelligent, flexible, and future-ready employee engagement solution. 

Where Reward Gateway stops at recognition and discounts, Empuls accelerates engagement with AI-driven award creation, predictive attrition insights, 360° feedback, tax-compliant benefits, and a globally localized reward experience. 

It not only empowers HR and people leaders with deeper insights but also brings employees closer together through interactive intranet tools and meaningful recognition. For organizations looking to go beyond the basics and build a thriving culture of appreciation, Empuls is the superior choice—built to scale, adapt, and inspire.

Looking for a Reward Gateway alternative? Book a demo with Empuls today.

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