ATS RFP template and vendor scorecard
Seven sections, the twelve questions buyers most often forget, and a weighted scoring grid. Vendor-neutral on purpose - use it to evaluate us alongside everyone else.
No form, no email address, no follow-up sequence. The whole template is on this page.
Seven sections to send every vendor
Delete what does not apply and add what does. The value is in asking every vendor the same things, in the same order, so the responses can be compared.
1. Company and context
- Organisation name, industry and locations
- Who hires: in-house team, staffing agency, or both
- Current ATS (if any) and why you are evaluating
- Decision timeline and go-live target
- Named decision makers and their evaluation criteria
2. Scope and volumes
- Requisitions opened per month and per year
- Applicants per requisition (average and peak)
- Hires per year, by role type
- Number of full users and read-only users
- Number of locations, brands or business units
- Expected SMS and voice volume per month
3. Functional requirements
- Sourcing: job board distribution, career site, referrals
- Application: custom forms per job, knockout questions, mobile completion
- Communication: two-way SMS, email, shared inbox, templates, sequences
- Screening: resume parsing, AI ranking, AI phone screening, assessments
- Scheduling: calendar sync, self-service booking, interview reminders
- Offer: branded offer letters, e-signature, approval workflow
- Onboarding: document collection, task assignment, background checks
- Reporting: pipeline, time-to-fill, source effectiveness, per-location roll-up
- Compliance: EEO/diversity reporting, consent and opt-out records, audit trail
- Bulk operations: message, advance, reject and schedule across a filtered segment
4. Technical requirements
- SSO / SAML and MFA support
- Role-based access control, scoped by location or business unit
- Documented API and webhook events
- HRIS and payroll integration: pattern, field mapping, sync direction
- Data residency and hosting region
- Accessibility conformance (state the standard and provide a VPAT or equivalent)
- Mobile experience for recruiters and for candidates
- White-label scope: portal, application, SMS sender, offers, notification emails
5. Security and compliance
- Independent security certifications held, with dates
- Encryption at rest and in transit
- Penetration testing cadence and whether summaries are shareable
- Breach notification process and timelines
- Data retention and deletion policy
- Subprocessor list and where candidate data is stored
- Consent capture and opt-out handling for SMS
6. Implementation and support
- Time from contract signature to first hire made in the system
- What implementation includes, and what is billed separately
- Data migration: what is included, what is extra, what cannot be migrated
- Training provided, and for how many people
- Support hours, channels and response SLA
- Who configures ongoing changes: your admin or the vendor
7. Commercials
- Pricing model (per seat, flat, per employee, usage-based)
- Total 12-month cost at the volumes stated in section 2
- Implementation and migration fees
- SMS per-segment and voice per-minute pricing
- Integration or connector fees
- Seat minimums and what triggers a tier change
- Contract term, renewal price or cap on increases, and notice period
- Exit terms: what you can export, in what format, and who owns your phone numbers
Twelve questions buyers forget to ask
Most RFPs cover features thoroughly and commercial reality barely at all. These are the questions that determine what the next three years actually feel like.
- 01 What is the renewal price, or the cap on annual increases? Get it in writing before signing.
- 02 On the day we leave, exactly what can we export, and in what format?
- 03 Who owns the phone numbers our candidates reply to?
- 04 What are SMS and voice usage charges at our real monthly volume?
- 05 Is there a sandbox or test environment, and does it cost extra?
- 06 What is your accessibility conformance level, and can you provide documentation?
- 07 When a sync to our HRIS fails, is there a visible error and an alert to a human?
- 08 Can our admin change pipeline stages and fields without raising a support ticket?
- 09 What is the uptime commitment, and what is the remedy if you miss it?
- 10 Which features in this proposal require a higher tier than the one you quoted?
- 11 How many of your customers are our size and hiring shape? Can we speak to two?
- 12 What does implementation actually include, and what happens if we need help in month eight?
Weight it before the demos, not after
Agree the weights with your decision makers before any vendor presents. This is what stops a polished demo from quietly rewriting your priorities.
Score each vendor 1-5 per criterion, multiply by the weight, and total. If the winner surprises you, do not quietly re-weight to fix it - work out which criterion you actually care about more than you said, and be explicit about changing it.
How ATS Mako answers section 7
Since section 7 is where most vendors get vague, here is our answer up front: our pricing is published rather than quoted, banded by user count and messaging allowance, with a free trial on every plan. Current rates, inclusions and terms are on our pricing page, which is the single source of truth - we do not restate figures here, because a number copied onto a second page eventually goes stale on one of them.
On configuration, an admin changes pipeline stages, fields, forms, roles, templates and automation triggers without a support ticket. On exit, your data is exportable and your candidate records remain yours.
Put the same questions to every vendor on your shortlist and hold all of us to the written answers - including us.
Using the template, answered.
Why is there no email gate on this download?
Because a form wall would defeat the point. This template is most useful if it gets forwarded, adapted and shared - including to people who will never buy from us. Gating it would trade that reach for a handful of low-intent email addresses. Take it, edit it, remove our name from it, use it to evaluate our competitors. That is genuinely fine.
Do we actually need a formal RFP to buy an ATS?
Not always. For a small team buying a published-price platform, a formal RFP is overkill - a structured demo and a trial will tell you more. An RFP earns its cost when you have multiple stakeholders who need to agree, when the spend requires procurement sign-off, or when you are comparing three or more vendors and need answers in a form you can lay side by side. Even if you skip the formal process, the question list is worth working through.
How many vendors should we send it to?
Three is usually right, four at most. Fewer than three and you have no basis for comparison. More than four and the evaluation collapses under its own weight - responses arrive in different formats, the timeline slips, and the decision ends up being made on demo quality rather than fit.
How should we weight the scoring grid?
Set the weights before you see any responses, and get the decision makers to agree them in advance. This is the single most valuable discipline in the whole process, because it stops a strong demo from retroactively rewriting your priorities. The weights suggested here are a reasonable default for a mid-size team - adjust them to your situation, but adjust them before, not after.
How long should the evaluation take?
Four to eight weeks for most small and mid-size organisations: a week to define requirements and issue the RFP, two weeks for vendors to respond, two to three weeks of demos and trials, then a week for references, exit terms and negotiation. Faster than that and you are buying on a demo; much slower and everyone forgets why they preferred anything.
Is this template biased toward ATS Mako?
We have tried hard not to make it so, and you can check: nothing in the template above asks a question only we answer well. Several sections - integrated pay/bill depth, VMS submission workflow, wide integration ecosystems - are areas where other platforms will score better than we do. If the template were rigged, those would be missing. Judge it on whether it helps you make a good decision, including a decision to buy from someone else.
Note on vendor names and pricing. All product and company names are the trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify products a reader may be comparing. ATS Mako is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any other vendor referred to on this page. Nothing here is a quote, an offer, or a representation about any vendor’s pricing, features, performance or suitability - including ours. Confirm current pricing and terms directly with each vendor; our own current rates are on our pricing page. Content is general information current as of the last-reviewed date, is not legal, financial or procurement advice, and should not be relied on as the sole basis for a purchasing decision.
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