Vincere ATS vs Spott

Vincere offers bulk CV parsing through Daxtra (a third-party service), and has a Chrome extension through Seha Solutions (also third party) that allows recruiters to add candidates from LinkedIn and Xing. Reliance on third-party tools means Vincere has no real control over its features, limiting customization options, and usually an incidator of slow innovation.

One significant drawback is that applications from Indeed and Vincere's own application portal don't parse automatically into the ATS, requiring manual addition.

Spott develops and maintains its own Chrome Extension from which you can import new candidates in bulk with LinkedIn Recruiter.

Mature recruitment professionals and staffing firms for executive search rely more on their existing database of talent than new candidates.

Vincere's database and search functionality relies heavily on manual data entry and tagging. You can search using hard-coded tags and advanced Boolean queries, but the system heavily depends on your team’s manual input accumulated over time. Their keyword search gives no context as to why certain candidates were selected.

A frustrated user on Trustpilot commented: "I spend several hours running the same search which would have taken me an hour or maybe 90 minutes tops before. I am now running behind competitors due to this. You cannot remove people from your search and rerun to see who is new."

While Vincere's map search feature is visually appealing, and its search UX is generally clean, the world of possibilities is much broader than that today.

Spott uses advanced AI applications to query your candidate pool with natural language - something no other ATS offers on the market today.

For example, you could ask, "Show me candidates with healthcare experience who have managed teams of 10+ people," and Spott will instantly identify matching candidates, score them based on relevancy to your query, and provide a text explanation for each selection (e.g., "Defano was selected because he led a 15-person nursing staff at St. Holwine Hospital for 5 years"). No need to manually flip through notes anymore.

Vincere has opted to compete against your native email client by offering a complete inbox directly inside of the platform. Sadly, it's not quite serving as a replacement for your trusted Gmail or Outlook client; your inbox only syncs once a day unless you manually refresh. In reality, you’ll be refreshing your regular inbox to make sure you’re not crossing mails – very impractical.

Vincere has opted not to build any outreach cadence technology (e.g. to set up a chain of automated emails or LinkedIn messages to get in touch with prospects). You need to purchase this functionality from a separate provider, and it will not be integrated.

Vincere does offer VinnyChat – their in-house Slack alternative for recruiters, and Vinneo – a proprietary video interview tool with HireVue-style pre-recorded interview questions, which is also the only video interview tool you can integrate with Vincere (you can still take Zoom calls from VinnyChat though, but you will need to rely on Zapier for other integrations like Microsoft Teams).

While Vincere automates low-value tasks through its acquisition of Elay.io (including automated LinkedIn outreach), its most prominent AI applications are focused elsewhere: customer service.

A Trustpilot reviewer pointed out: "Rather than using AI to enhance the user experience, Vincere opted to replace much of their customer service team with AI. Support is AI-first, and if the AI cannot assist, no human support is available on weekends.”

Perhaps the most consistent criticism of Vincere is its customer service, particularly after the Access Group acquisition. Multiple reviews cite poor communication, unresolved issues, and aggressive sales tactics. We have also heard several people complain about receiving significantly less support after declining their paid add-ons for extra training or customer service.

Other concerning practices include offering discounts for positive reviews. As one reviewer revealed: "They then offered me 50% discount to change my review to 5** which now lead me to change it to 1 star, and the discount, they can shove it. The reviews on Trustpilot are being manipulated by this company not giving other entrepreneurs an honest view of the services and the software."

This is one of three reviews we have found supporting these allegations. If this were to be true, some serious questions should be raised towards the truth behind their positive reviews.

Vincere's interface is visually appealing with color-coded pipelines and intuitive job stage visualization – which doesn’t come as a surprise, knowing the platform’s origins as a Bullhorn disruptor in the staffing software space. The map search function is particularly engaging for location filtering. Despite these strengths, the system suffers from slow loading times and requires too many clicks for basic tasks.

While Vincere is highly customizable for different recruitment types, this versatility compromises user experience. Vincere focuses on back-office tools like payroll and shift management for temp staffing, rather than improving their executive search offerings. This orientation makes it better suited for general staffing agencies than specialized recruitment firms.

Vincere has been criticized for its pricing structure and particularly for its contract terms. Users report inflexible annual contracts with long notice periods and automatic renewals.

Here is an example of one user’s experience with the customer service department: "Vincere is a functional recruitment CRM but we decided that we weren’t using a large amount of the back office functions and decided a change was needed. We knew that we were on an annual 'lock in' that ended in March 2025 so in December 2024 we asked to cancel. Thankfully, we did - because Vincere/Access automatically renews your contract if you don’t give three months’ notice on a 12-month agreement. Miss that window, and you could end up needing to give 14 months’ notice to cancel. Completely unreasonable.”

Vincere is also known for unjustified price increases, with no clear link to product improvements. The latest increase, set for April 2025, is 6.5%.

Vincere provides a comprehensive recruitment software suite that might work ok for staffing agencies focused on temporary and contract placements.

The software's reliance on manual data entry, boolean search and email integration issues make it less efficient than more modern alternatives. Widespread complaints about poor customer service, manipulative review practices, and restrictive contract terms are concerning.