With Rippling, Crate found a true HR partner to scale their global workforce

Pain Points

The Challenge

Jisselle Baldwin-Todd, Head of HR at Crate, has a lot of experience building global teams—in fact, she calls it her “bread and butter.” Crate’s top priorities included staffing up its marketing, engineering, and GTM teams across multiple parts of the world, including the UK, US, France, Amsterdam, Trinidad & Tobago, and the Philippines. So Jisselle turned to Deel, a platform she had used at other companies, to help with Crate’s global workforce management, payroll, and, most importantly, comprehensive compliance in more than 100 countries. 

Jisselle soon realized, though, Deel couldn’t actually deliver on that promise—the platform was “super compliant for 40 countries,” but not the 100+ it advertised. She found glaring gaps in regions where she had employees and needed the support, like the Caribbean and Eastern Europe. Jisselle found herself having to rewrite contracts and navigate compliance issues manually, which not only consumed valuable time but also introduced risks that could jeopardize Crate’s operations. She was left with the stress of wondering exactly when she’d uncover the next time Deel had overpromised on compliance she’d need to urgently resolve a problem she thought was being handled for her.

“I felt like I couldn’t trust Deel’s compliance,” Jisselle said. “It felt like asking ChatGPT.”

Crate was also experiencing payroll delays, and Jisselle said getting them resolved was often a headache: “When we reached out, it would take days to hear back.”

She added, “We were on a package that provided us with a dedicated account manager, but my account manager was always MIA.” 

With Deel’s customer support difficult to reach and her account manager only available to schedule in an Eastern European time zone that didn’t overlap with her work hours, Jisselle made the call to switch EOR providers and move Crate’s employees to Rippling.

But once Jisselle notified Deel that she planned to transition to a new EOR, Deel introduced multiple unexpected costs. First, Deel unexpectedly charged Crate over $12,000—without prior communication or authorization—citing PTO and other payments for terminated employees. Jisselle tried repeatedly to get in touch with her account manager or anyone else at Deel’s customer support, account management, or escalation teams, but they largely ignored her concerns. Deel also required a 30-day waiting period for account transitions that pushed Crate into a new billing month during the transition to Rippling. Crate was charged for a full month of EOR fees—$1,200—even though they only “used” Deel for those 2 days, and only because the waiting period forced them to.

“Deel wasn't trying to be helpful,” Jisselle said. At the end of that experience, she was even more hungry for a platform that would be a true partner to Crate.

The Solution

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In Rippling, Crate found an HR partner that helps address their challenges, offers comprehensive global compliance, and streamlines their operations as they continue to grow globally.

The Impact

• 10 hours a month saved for all HR and payroll admin work around the world due to few errors and compliance fire drills.

• 21 seconds for customer support to respond to a live chat query at Rippling (See our live support status for yourself).

• Less stress and frustration due to a reliable and readily available account management team. 

• $1,260 cost savings per year on every UK hire.