If you're reading this, the story probably sounds familiar. You started using Pingboard a few years ago because it was a solid, fairly priced way to keep an org chart and an employee directory in one place. Then Workleap acquired it, and things began to shift — the pricing got steeper and harder to predict, some integrations got less reliable, and your account contact started steering conversations toward other products in the Workleap suite that you never asked about.

I run a competing product — OrgPlease! — so you should read this with healthy skepticism. But I've spent the last several months talking with people who left Pingboard or are thinking about it, and the pattern is consistent enough to be worth an honest write-up. So here it is: where Pingboard is still the right call, where I think the alternatives win, and how five different options stack up — including just using PowerPoint, and including the cases where you shouldn't switch at all.

The quick answer

If you don't want the full read, here's the short version of which alternative fits which situation:

Why people are leaving Pingboard

Pingboard had a genuinely good run. For about a decade it was the default "org chart plus directory" tool for companies in the 50–500 employee range, with a reasonable price and a clean product. The shift came after the Workleap acquisition, and from the conversations I've had, the frustration clusters around three things.

Pricing got higher and harder to read

Pingboard's published plans now start at $149 per month for the Basic tier, which includes 20 users, with additional users billed on top. The Essential and Pro tiers climb to $299 and $399 per month. For a 100-person company, the all-in number lands in the several-hundred-dollars-a-month range — meaningfully more than it used to be for what is, at its core, an org chart.

The sharper pattern, though, shows up at renewal. Through 2025 and into 2026, a recurring story has surfaced across review sites and competitor write-ups: customers opening their renewal notice to find the price had jumped well beyond inflation — in some accounts, multiples of the prior year — as the standalone org-chart tool was folded into a broader "employee experience" bundle that includes features (surveys, performance) many teams never asked for. We'd point you to third-party write-ups on the Workleap price increases and the most recent Capterra reviews so you can judge the pattern for yourself rather than take our word for it. If you're staring at a renewal that's a lot bigger than last year's, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone.

Integrations and reliability got shakier

Some recent G2 and Capterra reviews mention sync issues and occasional glitches that weren't there before. If your directory depends on a clean connection to your HR system, intermittent reliability is the kind of thing that quietly erodes trust in the tool. (We'd encourage you to read the most recent reviews yourself rather than rely on summaries like this one — yours or anyone else's.)

Support has felt more sales-oriented

Post-acquisition, some users have described support and account conversations as more oriented toward adopting the broader Workleap product line. That's a normal commercial motion for an acquirer, but it's grating when all you wanted was help with your org chart.

None of this makes Pingboard a bad product — it's still capable, and for teams that genuinely use the directory and engagement features, it may still earn its price. But for the narrower job of "I just need an accurate, shareable org chart," the value equation has tilted, and that's why people are looking.

The five real alternatives

1. OrgPlease! — for teams that just want the org chart

Full disclosure again: this is my product, so weigh this section accordingly. OrgPlease! does one job — turn a team roster from Excel or your HR system into a clean, shareable org chart in about 60 seconds — and deliberately skips directories, surveys, and engagement features.

• Pricing: Free up to 25 people; $19/month (50 people); $49/month (200 people); $99/month (1,000 people). Flat fees, no per-employee charges, monthly or annual billing.
• Best for: 25–300 person companies maintaining the chart in PowerPoint, Excel, or a diagramming tool today, who want a real tool without enterprise pricing.
• Trade-offs: Newer product with fewer reviews; no live HRIS integrations yet; no engagement features (by design).

2. Lucidchart — for occasional, manual charts

• Pricing: Free for a few documents; around $9/month individual; team plans roughly $10/user/month with a three-seat minimum.
• Best for: Teams that diagram lots of things — flowcharts, architecture, processes — and need an org chart only now and then.
• Trade-offs: Org charts are manual; every change means dragging boxes. There's no upload-a-roster-and-it-builds workflow. Per-seat pricing adds up.

3. ChartHop — for companies that have outgrown the simple chart

• Pricing: A limited Basic tier at a low per-employee rate; the main plan starts around $8/employee/month with a $9,000/year minimum.
• Best for: 200+ employee companies with a real people-analytics or comp-planning need and the budget for it.
• Trade-offs: Expensive; the entry tier is intentionally limited; implementation usually involves a salesperson.

4. OrgChart Now — enterprise-lean

• Pricing: Starts around $295/year for 100 employees and scales up with headcount; annual billing, 100-employee minimum.
• Best for: Mid-market HR teams that need HRIS integration but aren't ready for ChartHop's price.
• Trade-offs: Reviewers often describe the interface as dated; built for teams that already run a Workday or ADP.

5. PowerPoint or Google Slides — the honest baseline

A large share of companies under 100 people still keep their org chart in slides. It costs nothing extra and everyone knows how to use it. It works fine until you're rebuilding the same slide every month, can't tell which version is current, or the chart no longer fits on one page — which, for most growing teams, happens somewhere between 40 and 80 people.

A simple way to decide

Ask yourself three questions in order. Do you need engagement features — recognition, surveys, 1:1s — bundled with the chart? If yes, staying on Pingboard or its suite may make sense. If no: do you need live HRIS sync? If yes, look at OrgChart Now or ChartHop. If no: OrgPlease! is built for exactly this use case — flat pricing, monthly or annual, free up to 25 people. And if you update the chart less than once a quarter, honestly, PowerPoint is probably still fine.

What the numbers look like

Approximate annual cost to chart a 100-person company:

¹ Per Vendr aggregated pricing data, real-world OrgChart Now contracts average ~$8,100/year — the $295 entry price climbs sharply with headcount and isn't typically what customers actually pay.

My honest recommendation — including where I lose the sale

• If your Pingboard bill is modest and the product still works for you, stay. Switching costs time and isn't worth it for a tool that's doing its job.
• If your bill has climbed past a few hundred a month, your sync is flaky, and you're being pushed toward the suite — try OrgPlease! free for 25 people. Migration is a CSV export and a CSV upload.
• If you've never paid for an org chart tool and you're sizing up Pingboard for the first time — start with the OrgPlease! free tier and save yourself a few thousand dollars a year.

Bottom line

Pingboard isn't broken — it's just no longer the value play it once was for the narrow job of keeping an org chart. If that's mostly what you need, there are now several credible, far cheaper options. OrgPlease! is one of them, and I obviously think it's the best fit for the 25–300 person "just the chart" use case — but the honest answer for you might be OrgChart Now if you need HRIS integration, or even PowerPoint if your chart almost never changes. The one decision worth making is whether org-chart-only is what you actually need. If it is, you have good options that cost a fraction of where you are now.

Staring at a Pingboard renewal that jumped this year? Migrating takes about five minutes. Export your team to CSV, upload it to OrgPlease, get a working chart in about 60 seconds. The free tier covers 25 people and costs nothing — long enough to see if it fits before your renewal date forces a decision. Try it free →