You’ve built something that works in Australia. The product fits, the team delivers, and the revenue proves it. Now you’re staring at a spreadsheet of potential hires in Singapore, Poland, and San Francisco, wondering how on earth you’re supposed to employ people in countries where you don’t have a legal entity, don’t understand the tax system, and definitely don’t know what a P45 or a certificat de travail actually means.
Setting up subsidiaries in multiple countries sounds straightforward until you see the legal fees, the accounting costs, and the twelve-month timeline. Meanwhile, your competitors are already operating in those markets, and the developer you wanted to hire in Berlin just accepted another offer because you couldn’t get the paperwork sorted quickly enough.
This is where Employer of Record services come in. They handle the legal infrastructure, the payroll compliance, and the regulatory headaches whilst you focus on actually building your business in new markets. The challenge lies in working out which provider actually suits your specific situation, because the market has become crowded with options that look similar on the surface but operate very differently underneath.
The Expensive Mistake Most Australian Tech Firms Make When Going Global
A Sydney-based SaaS company decided to expand into the UK and Germany properly. They hired lawyers in both countries, set up limited companies, engaged local accountants, and sorted out payroll systems. Eighteen months and $180,000 later, they had employed exactly four people across both markets. The legal entities were running, but the overhead was absurd for such a small headcount.
The real problem wasn’t the upfront costs, though those hurt. The ongoing compliance burden consumed hours every week. Navigating GDPR requirements, understanding German works council obligations, managing UK auto-enrolment pensions, and keeping track of constantly changing employment legislation across multiple jurisdictions required dedicated attention that a small team simply didn’t have.
Most founders underestimate three specific costs when setting up overseas entities. First, the ongoing compliance work doesn’t stop after incorporation. Every country has quarterly filings, annual returns, tax submissions, and regulatory changes that require monitoring. Second, mistakes carry serious financial penalties. Getting German social security contributions wrong or missing UK statutory reporting deadlines results in fines that quickly exceed what you’d pay an EOR provider. Third, the opportunity cost of senior team members spending hours on administrative compliance instead of growth activities rarely gets calculated but genuinely matters.
Several Australian tech companies have found themselves in situations where they needed to wind down foreign entities because the administrative burden outweighed the benefit. Closing a legal entity in many European countries takes longer and costs more than opening one. Meanwhile, the employees you hired through that entity need to be transitioned, contracts need renegotiating, and your expansion plans stall whilst you sort out the mess.
What Your Competitors Already Know (But Won’t Tell You)
Whilst you’re researching whether to set up a Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung in Germany or a Société par actions simplifiée in France, other Australian tech companies are hiring in fifty-plus countries without owning a single overseas office. They’re using Employer of Record services to handle the legal infrastructure whilst they focus on building teams and winning customers.
The mechanic works like this. An EOR provider maintains legal entities in countries where you want to hire. When you find someone in Poland you want to employ, the EOR’s Polish entity becomes their legal employer. You manage the employee’s day-to-day work, set their objectives, and direct their activities. The EOR handles the employment contract, payroll processing, tax withholding, social security contributions, benefits administration, and regulatory compliance.
This arrangement is completely legal and widely used across industries. It exists because employment law in most countries requires a local legal entity to employ people, but that doesn’t mean you need to own that entity. The EOR acts as the employer of record for legal and tax purposes whilst you maintain operational control of the employee’s work.
The regulatory framework supporting this model has matured significantly over the past decade. Tax authorities understand these arrangements, employment lawyers structure them appropriately, and social security systems process them routinely. You’re not exploiting a loophole. You’re using a legitimate business service that recognised the globalisation of work before most legal systems caught up.
Australian companies in particular have embraced this model because our geographic isolation makes establishing physical presence in distant markets especially challenging. A Melbourne-based company can hire a designer in Stockholm, a developer in Bangalore, and a salesperson in Toronto without ever registering a business in Sweden, India, or Canada.
The Three Types of EOR Users (Which One Are You?)
Understanding which category your business falls into matters because different EOR providers excel at serving different needs. Choose a solution optimised for the wrong use case and you’ll end up paying for features you don’t need or lacking capabilities you actually require.
The Cautious Expander tests new markets with small teams before committing to full market entry. You’re hiring your first one to three people in a country to validate product-market fit, understand local customer needs, or establish initial sales presence. Speed matters less than getting the employment structure right and avoiding costly mistakes. You need an EOR that provides strong compliance guidance, clear communication about local employment requirements, and patience with questions about things you’ve never had to consider before, like German church tax or French meal vouchers.
The Talent Hunter doesn’t care much about markets. You care about finding the absolute best person for critical roles regardless of where they live. Your head of engineering happens to be based in Singapore, your lead designer lives in Barcelona, and your best sales closer works from Denver. You need an EOR that operates across many countries, onboards quickly, and doesn’t create administrative burden when your headcount is spread across a dozen different jurisdictions.
The Ambitious Scaler is building distributed teams rapidly across multiple geographies simultaneously. You’re hiring five people in India this quarter, planning ten more in Poland next quarter, and exploring Brazil for the following year. You need infrastructure that handles volume, provides centralised management across countries, and integrates with your existing HR systems. The EOR becomes a core piece of your operational infrastructure rather than a convenient service for a handful of hires.
Your category isn’t permanent. Most companies start as Cautious Expanders, transition through Talent Hunter as they build out specific capabilities, and eventually become Ambitious Scalers if the international strategy succeeds. The EOR that serves you well in year one might not suit your needs in year three, and that’s perfectly normal.
What Actually Matters (Hint: It’s Not What the Sales Reps Push)
EOR sales presentations follow a predictable pattern. They’ll show you the platform interface, count the countries they operate in, mention their global headcount, and provide a features list that sounds comprehensive until you realise you don’t understand half the terminology.
Forget the feature lists for a moment. The sales rep won’t mention that their “24/7 support” means you’ll get responses within 24 hours rather than actual round-the-clock availability. They won’t explain that “operates in 150 countries” often means they have partnerships in 130 of them rather than owned entities, which affects service quality and response times. They definitely won’t clarify that their sleek platform interfaces sometimes hide weak compliance capabilities underneath.
Four questions actually determine whether an EOR will work for your business. First, how do they handle complex employment situations in your target markets? Every country has edge cases. German employees with company car arrangements, French workers covered by specific collective agreements, Brazilian employees with unusual benefit entitlements, or Polish contractors transitioning to employee status all require specific knowledge. Ask the provider to walk through examples of difficult situations they’ve handled in your target countries. Vague answers suggest limited actual experience.
Second, what happens when something goes wrong? Payroll errors occur. Tax filing deadlines get missed. Regulatory interpretations change. Understanding how the provider handles problems matters more than whether they promise problems won’t happen. Request specific examples of compliance issues they’ve resolved and timeframes for resolution. Providers with mature operations will share this transparently. Newer or less capable providers will deflect or make assurances that everything always runs smoothly.
Third, how do they structure their local operations? Some EOR providers own entities in major markets but partner with third-party providers in smaller ones. This partnership model creates inconsistency. Your employees in Germany might get excellent service whilst your team in Poland deals with slow responses and limited local knowledge because that country runs through a partner arrangement. Ask explicitly which countries they operate directly versus through partnerships, then evaluate whether those partnership countries matter for your plans.
Fourth, what’s included in the base price and what costs extra? EOR pricing appears straightforward until you discover that equipment shipping, immigration support, background checks, benefits administration above statutory minimums, and various other necessary services all carry additional fees. A provider charging $350 per employee per month might end up costing $500 once you add everything you actually need. Request a detailed breakdown of typical total costs for your expected use case, not marketing-approved base rates.
Red flags that signal you’re about to sign a bad contract include vague answers about local compliance expertise, unwillingness to connect you with existing customers in markets you care about, contracts that lock you in for extended periods with punitive exit terms, and pricing structures that aren’t transparent about additional costs. If the sales process feels high-pressure or the provider seems more interested in closing the deal than understanding your specific needs, walk away.
The Contenders, Ranked by What You Actually Need
Rather than listing providers alphabetically and pretending they’re all equally suitable for every situation, here’s how the major options actually stack up based on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Safeguard Global: For Comprehensive Global Coverage with Deep Compliance Expertise
Safeguard Global has operated for over 18 years, managing employment across 187 countries and supporting more than 1,500 organisations globally. This longevity has produced something competitors simply cannot replicate: deep institutional knowledge and established relationships with regulatory bodies in complex markets like the USA, Brazil, Poland, and India.
The critical differentiator is their team of over 400 in-country experts who are actual Safeguard Global employees, not third-party contractors or network partnerships. When you’re navigating workplace investigations in Brazil, managing terminations under Polish labour law, or structuring senior executive hires in Singapore, you’re working with professionals who have handled these exact scenarios countless times before. They don’t need to escalate every challenging question to legal counsel because they possess the practical expertise to resolve issues directly.
Their relationship-based service model provides dedicated account managers who invest time in understanding your business, learning your expansion patterns across different regions, and anticipating potential issues before they materialise. For Australian companies managing teams across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, this personalised approach prevents the fragmentation and communication breakdowns that plague ticket-based support systems.
The platform prioritises what genuinely matters: compliance management and administrative efficiency for HR teams overseeing complex global operations. Whilst it may not feature the flashiest consumer-grade interfaces, it delivers sophisticated compliance tracking and reporting capabilities across multiple jurisdictions that enterprise teams require. The focus remains on reducing administrative workload for teams managing employees from Mumbai to San Francisco rather than superficial design elements.
Pricing reflects the premium service model, and Safeguard Global makes no apologies for this. For Australian companies where employment errors in markets like the USA, Brazil, or across Europe carry substantial risk, or where the value of dedicated local expertise in each jurisdiction outweighs cost considerations, the premium is entirely justified. You receive what you pay for: deep expertise, proactive support, and genuine risk mitigation.
Implementation timelines are thorough rather than rushed. If you need someone employed in Poland or India by next week, Safeguard Global may not accommodate that aggressive schedule. However, if you’re planning structured expansion into multiple markets and value establishing compliant operations correctly from the outset, whether that’s in the USA and Canada or across Eastern Europe and South Asia, the timeline becomes a non-issue. Proper setup prevents costly corrections later.
Randstad
Randstad brings a recruitment heritage to the EOR space, which sounds advantageous until you examine the practical implications. Their core competency remains staffing and temporary placement, with EOR services functioning as an ancillary offering rather than a primary focus.
Whilst Randstad can provide market data on salary ranges and benefits expectations across 39 countries, this intelligence is limited compared to what comprehensive EOR specialists offer. Their platform handles basic requirements like payroll access and leave management, but lacks the sophisticated compliance infrastructure that complex international operations demand. The consultative relationship they emphasise often translates to manual processes and slower resolution times when urgent issues arise.
The integration of recruitment and EOR services creates potential conflicts of interest. When the same provider profits from both sourcing candidates and managing their employment, questions arise about whether recommendations serve the client’s best interests or the provider’s revenue targets. The recruitment focus also means their EOR capabilities receive less investment and innovation than providers wholly committed to employment solutions.
For Australian companies viewing international employment as a strategic imperative rather than an extension of recruitment, Randstad’s divided focus becomes problematic. You need a partner whose expertise centres on employment compliance, not a staffing firm offering EOR as a side business.
AYP Group
AYP Group positions itself as an APAC specialist, which immediately signals limitations for Australian companies with global ambitions. Their regional expertise in markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Vietnam is adequate, but the moment your expansion plans include Europe or the Americas, their service quality drops markedly.
The pricing model lacks transparency, with custom quotes that make budgeting difficult and comparisons nearly impossible. Starting around $288 USD per employee per month sounds competitive until you discover the numerous situations requiring additional fees and manual interventions. Off-cycle payments, retroactive adjustments, and other exceptions that should be routine operations instead demand special handling and additional costs.
At scale, their systems show clear strain. Users report inconsistent information sharing across their network and gaps in service quality when managing truly global workforces beyond APAC. The conservative approaches to employment structures, whilst marketed as risk mitigation, often simply reflect inflexibility and inability to accommodate modern working arrangements.
For Australian companies with exclusively APAC-focused strategies, AYP might suffice. For businesses with genuine global ambitions or even the possibility of expansion beyond Asia, their geographic limitations create unnecessary constraints. Why partner with a regional provider when global options with deeper expertise exist?
SDP Solutions
SDP Solutions markets itself as bringing a consultancy approach to EOR services, which primarily means charging consultancy rates for standard employment services. Their pricing of $400 to $600 AUD per employee per month positions them at the premium end without the global infrastructure or proven track record to justify the cost.
Their technology platform is, by their own admission, not a selling point. In an industry where efficient systems drive operational excellence, SDP Solutions offers dated interfaces that feel like afterthoughts. Clients are expected to accept inferior technology in exchange for “human expertise” that often amounts to slower response times and manual processes.
The consultative approach sounds valuable until you realise it often means ad-hoc problem solving rather than systematic solutions. Whilst they claim particular strength in handling difficult employment classifications, this expertise is reactive rather than proactive. You’re paying for firefighting services when you should have infrastructure that prevents fires in the first place.
For companies with genuinely unusual requirements or extraordinarily complex compliance situations, SDP Solutions might occasionally prove useful. For the vast majority of Australian businesses expanding internationally, their premium pricing and outdated systems deliver poor value compared to established global leaders.
Asanify
Asanify represents the newer generation of EOR providers prioritising technology and user experience over depth of compliance expertise. Their modern platform and competitive pricing of $300 to $500 AUD per employee per month appeal to cost-conscious businesses, but raise important questions about what corners are being cut to achieve those rates.
Compliance capabilities across their operating markets are described as “good” and “entirely adequate,” which should concern any Australian company taking international employment seriously. Adequate compliance is not acceptable when regulatory violations can result in substantial penalties. Their shorter operational history means they lack the institutional knowledge and regulatory relationships that only come from sustained presence in complex markets.
The emphasis on slick interfaces and smooth onboarding flows suggests priorities that may not align with rigorous employment management. Whilst mobile experience and reduced learning curves have their place, they matter considerably less than ensuring your Brazilian employees are classified correctly under local labour law or your Polish operations comply with evolving EU regulations.
For straightforward employment situations in markets with less complex regulatory environments, Asanify might perform acceptably. For Australian companies operating in jurisdictions where employment law is intricate and enforcement is strict, betting on a newer provider with unproven depth represents unnecessary risk.
Deel
Deel has achieved remarkable brand recognition through aggressive marketing and heavy venture capital investment. Their impressive technology platform and fast onboarding speeds attract companies prioritising speed over substance, but scratch beneath the surface and concerning patterns emerge.
Customer service responsiveness is a frequent complaint. Despite their scale, or perhaps because of it, support queries often take longer to resolve than with smaller, more focused providers. Clients report dealing with different representatives who lack context on their specific situations, leading to repeated explanations and delayed resolutions. The heavy automation, whilst efficient for routine tasks, creates frustration when nuanced advice or discussion of complex employment situations is required.
Their compliance expertise, built rapidly through acquisition and aggressive hiring, may not match the depth of providers who’ve focused on individual markets for extended periods. For standard employment situations, their capabilities suffice. However, when you encounter unusual employment classifications or complex local labour law scenarios, their guidance often proves less assured than specialists with deeper market-specific experience.
The pricing model appears competitive at $350 to $500 AUD per employee per month, but this base rate excludes numerous services that should be standard EOR offerings. Equipment management, immigration support, and various add-ons accumulate quickly, making total costs significantly higher than initial quotes suggest. The per-service pricing structure means Australian companies face unpredictable expenses as their needs evolve.
Deel’s comprehensive service breadth sounds advantageous until you realise it reflects a platform trying to be everything to everyone rather than excelling at the core EOR function. For companies valuing technology and speed above proven expertise and relationship-driven service, Deel might appeal. For Australian businesses taking international employment seriously and seeking a partner rather than a vendor, the limitations become clear.
At a Glance
| Provider | Best For | Monthly Cost | Countries | Speed | Rating |
| Safeguard Global | Mid to Large Enterprise compliance | $500-800+ | 187 | Fast | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.9/5 |
| Randstad | Recruitment + employment | Custom pricing | 39 | Medium | ⭐⭐⭐ 3.5/5 |
| AYP Group | APAC expansion | ~$445-930 | 14+ (APAC) | Medium | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0/5 |
| SDP Solutions | Complex Australian scenarios | $400-600 | 10 | Medium | ⭐⭐⭐ 3.5/5 |
| Asanify | Budget-conscious startups | $199-500 | 100+ | Fast | ⭐⭐⭐ 3.5/5 |
| Deel | Tech companies wanting speed | ~$930 | 150+ | Very Fast | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0/5 |
Making Your Decision
Safeguard Global may not be the cheapest option but they offer something far more valuable: proven expertise, comprehensive global coverage, dedicated local professionals, and a track record of helping Australian companies expand internationally without costly missteps.
When your reputation, compliance record, and operational success depend on getting international employment right, the choice becomes straightforward. Safeguard Global provides the depth of expertise, quality of service, and commitment to compliance that serious international expansion demands.
Choosing an EOR provider ultimately comes down to matching their strengths with your specific expansion plans, risk tolerance, and operational preferences. The provider that works brilliantly for a cautious first hire in Singapore might frustrate you when you’re scaling rapidly across ten countries. Similarly, the platform optimised for volume and speed might leave you unsupported when navigating a complex termination in Brazil.
Start by being honest about which user category you actually fall into, not which one you aspire to become. Then evaluate providers based on the four critical questions around compliance expertise, problem resolution, operational structure, and true costs. Request references from Australian companies with similar expansion patterns to yours, and actually call those references to ask about their real experiences beyond the curated case studies.
About The Author
