Safeguard EOR Review 2026: Key Features, Pricing, and Top EOR Alternatives

Key Features

Safeguard Global has worked in the HR services space for over a decade, and in this time, it has expanded its offering to include several key features and services. These include:

1. Employer of Record

One of the main services that Safeguard Global offers is its Employer of Record (EOR) service, which allows its clients to hire employees in countries where they don’t own business entities. This provider works in an impressive 187 countries around the world, giving essentially complete global coverage. It operates a network of entities that can hire employees on your behalf, contracting them to work for you while acting as their legal employer. In this way, Safeguard Global’s entities protect you from risk by taking on the responsibility of maintaining compliance with all local labor and tax laws that affect hiring in these different countries. 

As their legal employer, Safeguard takes care of onboarding, payroll, benefits administration, and contract management for your employees. It can normally onboard new workers in two days or less by giving them access to an employee portal on its platform, within which they can upload their important documents and provide information. Safeguard generates legally compliant contracts for you, enters into them directly with your employees, and keeps them on file for future reference. It adds new workers to your payroll, setting up a specific calculation for each, based on their salary, tax obligations, and benefits deductions. It also pays your employees their net salaries and remits their income taxes and benefits contributions to the appropriate authorities. This service allows you to hire employees anywhere and have their HR needs professionally managed. 

Safeguard doesn’t give all of its prices on its website, but through our research, we’ve found that this provider’s price for EOR services starts at $499 per employee per month. While this is above average for an EOR, Safeguard doesn’t assess any initial set-up fees, which would make its services more costly.

2. Contractor Management

If you don’t want to hire full-time employees, Safeguard gives you the option of hiring independent contractors instead. Doing so helps to reduce your administrative burden since you won’t need to manage taxes and benefits contributions for these workers. It can also be more affordable because you can hire workers only when you need them and pay much lower fees for Safeguard’s services. It assesses a highly competitive fee of $10 per contractor per month, and this drops to just $5 when you work with more than ten contractors. It doesn’t charge any extra payment processing fees like many competitors do.

Safeguard’s platform offers you a contractor management system that allows you to manage your contracts and contractors conveniently. With this system, you’re able to look at your contractors’ profiles, store their contracts, create milestones for their work, and track their deliverables. Paying them is also made easy through this system. You can approve individual invoices, then make a single payment to Safeguard to cover all your outstanding invoices at once. It then pays them through their choice of bank transfers or digital payment networks. Safeguard also protects you with contract templates and access to contract experts, which help to ensure that you avoid penalties for worker misclassification. 

3. Recruitment

Unlike many competitors in the HR services space who avoid recruitment, Safeguard dives right in with multiple options to recruit workers for its clients. 

It offers recruitment services for permanent positions in the 187 countries where it handles EOR services. This means that clients gain access to skilled employees no matter where they’re needed in the world, and Safeguard offers to replace them within 90 days if they don’t work out.

Safeguard also helps clients fill their temporary and seasonal needs through its temporary staffing service. This service gives them access to pre-vetted staff who can be hired on for short periods when extra hands are needed, though it’s only available in the US and some European countries. These staff are leased from Safeguard based on hourly rates.

Finally, Safeguard offers fractional hiring support to give you access to experts without the associated full-time hiring costs. 

Safeguard’s recruitment fees are only available to clients through customized quotes. It also provides access to an applicant tracking system (ATS) for an extra cost to clients who need a reliable system to handle large numbers of candidates.

4. Global Payroll

If you own entities in several countries, Safeguard can support you with its global payroll services, which consolidate your different systems into a single payroll. While your employees work in different countries with varied rules and regulations, Safeguard manages them all compliantly through a single platform. It incorporates each employee’s salary and other earnings with the tax obligations and mandatory benefits that must be deducted from their salaries. 

Because you’re their worksite employer, you’ll need to collect their time and attendance data regularly. Safeguard makes this easy with its built-in time-tracking tools that let you input their data, and even allows employees to clock in and out of work through their mobile devices. The Safeguard platform manages your calendar for each country so you don’t miss pay dates. For each pay period, it processes your payroll and presents its calculations to you for verification. When this is complete, it runs the payroll and pays your employees in their local currencies as required by law. While you need to track time and attendance, verify calculations, and fund payroll, Safeguard does the rest, significantly decreasing your administrative burden and increasing your payroll accuracy.

5. HR Services

If you already own entities in countries around the world, you’ll know how challenging it can be to manage HR for employees with different cultures, languages, and legal systems. Instead of maintaining your own HR department in each country, you have the option of outsourcing your HR functions to Safeguard’s expert teams. They handle everything from background checks and onboarding to terminations, with payroll, performance management, and HR planning in between. Your employees are given access to HR support people who speak their languages, understand their needs, and ensure they receive everything they’re legally entitled to. These services are currently offered in 67 countries.

Safeguard can also manage supplementary benefits for your employees, whether you hire them directly or through its EOR service. It lets you offer benefits like private health insurance, pensions, and equity, and administers these benefits on your behalf.

6. Accounting Services

Organizations that need help with their accounting and taxes can work with Safeguard Global’s professional teams and take advantage of their expertise. Its services include managing accounts receivable, accounts payable, and your general ledger. Safeguard also manages internal controls, reporting, and regulatory compliance. Experts can also help you create a financial strategy and manage compliance for your entities in 55 countries, and prices are provided by tailored quotes.

7. Entity Setup

When you decide it’s time to set up a new entity in a foreign country so you can hire employees and work directly in that market, Safeguard can help you with registration. This involves managing the paperwork, processes, and fees required to incorporate corporations, limited liability companies (LLCs), and other types of entities. These services help you get set up quickly and without mistakes that can lead to serious compliance issues in the future. This service is available in over 25 countries and is billed based on the country and specific client needs.