An entity or an employer of record

Key takeaways

An entity means the customer employs the person. An employer of record means the vendor does.
Remote's page lists situations where an entity does not make sense, including a new region and a relocation.
Deel's page leads with no entity required. Oyster's page says the same for distributed teams.
I still ask which country is in the contract. The homepage count is not the country.

I split this purchase before I compare prices. One path is opening a legal entity and employing the person yourself. The other is paying a provider to be the employer in that country. A product can be a good HR system and still be silent on the second path.

The two purchases

Deel
Remote
Oyster

If I already have an entity, I am shopping for payroll and the employee record, which is the HRIS guide. If I do not have an entity, I am shopping for a provider whose page says they employ the person. I do not send the same demo script to both.

When Remote's page says to skip the entity

Remote's employer of record page says to employ through Remote when an entity does not make sense. It names staffing a new region, converting a contractor, employing an acquired team, relocating a person, dissolving an entity, and switching from another provider. I use that list as the situations I will recognize. I do not add a situation the page did not name.

How I file Deel and Oyster beside that

Deel's page says hire and pay employees globally, no entity required, and that Deel owns entities and a payroll engine in 130+ countries. Oyster's page says hire globally with no entities required, and a later answer says this helps a business manage distributed teams. The same page says 120+ countries are supported. Both go on the employer of record guide for those sentences. Neither page prints a price, so I do not invent a comparison with Remote's $599 starting rate.

The mistake I watch for

The mistake is opening an entity because a homepage listed a hundred countries, or refusing an employer of record because the HRIS already stores the person's name. The country on the offer letter decides which quote I am in. I write that country at the top of the notes before I let a seller bundle payroll, contractors, and employment into one platform fee.