The top 9 incentive compensation management software vendors, compared

The incentive compensation management (ICM) space is going through a renaissance.  

After years of legacy vendors, new incumbents have begun to disrupt with a fresh take on how to handle sales performance data, plus ore robust capabilities.  

In fact, if you go beyond ICM to think about sales performance management more holistically (the dependencies of all the interconnected data), today you no longer need to suffer multiple point solutions working in isolation, nor a plethora of Excel sheets that need manual updates daily.  

Modern ICM solutions can help you automate incentive compensation (a critical part of SPM), and—going one step further—SPM platforms exist to unify all territory, quota, and incentive-related data in a single platform, with in-depth data reporting and automation capabilities to handle repetitive tasks on your behalf.

But with so many ICM solutions to choose from, it can be difficult to decipher which option is not only worthy of your budget, but scalable and customizable enough to grow with your business.  

While we certainly acknowledge our inherent bias in the ICM space as a sales performance management software vendor ourselves, all the same we’ve prepared a comparison of nine different solutions below.  

We aim to share who each solution may be best suited for, plus some considerations for criteria as you choose the right compensation management software—so you can find the best ICM solution for your sales organization.

The importance of incentive compensation management software

To start, incentive compensation (ICM) software refers to the platform sales organizations (largely sales operations and comp teams) use to track, deploy, calculate, and report on variable compensation for the sales team. With one in place, you can automate and streamline the process of sales incentive plans, like:

• Forecasting the outcome of your incentive compensation plans before an official rollout

• Calculating individual and team-wide commissions  

• Automating financial reporting associated with sales compensation (i.e. capitalizing commission expenses, or calculating commission accruals)

• Automating payouts to improve accuracy  

• Creating real-time reporting dashboards to monitor sales performance  

And It’s not just sales leaders who benefit from one source of truth on this complexity—incentive compensation management software also gives sales team members a way to track their quota attainment, earned commissions, and short-term incentives.

In an ICM, sellers can view their potential commissions based on current deals, motivating them by letting them understand their true earning potential. They can see progress toward on-target earnings and how this compares to other reps on their team.  

Reps can consult their incentive compensation dashboard to check their commission structure, the criteria to become eligible, and when it’ll be paid out.

Overall, organizations need a place to manage and continually optimize sales incentives as such a massive organizational spend. As your organization matures, spreadsheets alone simply cannot cut it.

Today, too many organizations run a disconnected tech stack for managing their sales performance data, and with no source of truth for incentives, decisions can take forever. In attempting to unify all incentive data and workflows together, this is the primary reason enterprises seek out this software to alleviate administrative pain.

The top incentive compensation management software vendors for 2025

There are several incentive compensation tools to choose from—a quick Google search retrieves thousands of options. So where should you start?  

Whether you’re implementing ICM software for the first time or switching from another platform, we’ve ranked nine of the best options below, taking into mind the features on offer, pros, cons, and user reviews.

What's especially important to note is how ICM platforms are often steadily expanding to become more robust. We'll indicate below where some of the platforms are much more than an ICM—solving for a broader range of challenges related to sales performance management in general.  

1. Forma.ai  

2. Spiff (Salesforce)

3. Anaplan

4. Everstage

5. Varicent

6. Xactly Incent

7. SAP Sales Cloud/Commissions

8. Captivate IQ

9. Performio

1. Forma.ai

Best suited for: Enterprise orgs with a need to constantly evolve and adapt sales strategy in a highly agile way. Orgs that need a flexible solution that can handle any change easily, and are looking to merge incentives management with territory and quota management.

Forma.ai is a full-stack Sales Performance Management platform that unifies the design, execution, and optimization of sales compensation (territories, quotas, and incentive management) into one place. It's also the only SPM solution that rapidly accelerates rule-building with our library of rule templates—so users don’t have to be deep in the weeds of technical configuration and data architecture.

What's truly different about Forma.ai is that we connect data and workflows across your territories, quotas, and incentive plans. We bring together all of this connected data to help you extract insights and optimize faster, all from one location.

Our ICM solution vastly accelerates incentive comp management with the ability to make rapid changes at speed. You get enterprise-grade automation, reporting, compliance, and rep dashboards, to help you handle everything from new hires to quota updates, and territory reassignments faster than ever. But the best part is your incentive data will finally 'talk' to the other interconnected data sets without all the manual work.

In other words: it’s a full-stack solution capable of handling all aspects of sales planning and bridges through to execution.

Forma.ai has managed $25 billion in incentives for brands like TrustPilot, Autodesk, and Stryker since its inception. Several Fortune 500 companies trust us with their core compensation processes because it's 4x faster, on average, to build, test, and deploy incentive plans.  

Notable capabilities include:

• Consolidates all SPM data for a holistic view of sales performance powering administration, planning, and analysis

• A game-changing new approach to rule building to configure incentive rules with our standardized data model. Simply select the rule blocks you need, defined your parameters, and watch Forma.ai compose the underlying rule logic.

• Territory and quota planning for easy design, modelling, and management of balanced territories and optimal quotas.

• Real-time performance reporting to monitor effectiveness, ignite the competitive streak amongst reps, and demonstrate the ROI of incentive compensation to both GTM stakeholders and leadership.  

• Integrations with 600+ ERPs, business intelligence, and CRM tools.

• Enterprise-grade security features including built-in controls for and SOX compliance and ASC606 adherence, as well as an immutable audit trail.

Pros:

Forma.ai is rated 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2—one of the highest scores on this list of vendors. G2 reviewers love that our platform is a full partner in sales comp transformation, the reporting capabilities, and incentive tracking features.  

One reviewer shares:  

“The speed and agility that it delivers for managers to view their teams' results. Leaderboards are updated daily and leaders can quickly search or drill into any detail. The displays are clean and provide both great summary high level performance data but also give tremendous detail if needed.”

On average, we've seen when sales leaders switch to Forma.ai, they've seen results like a:

• 87% reduction in incentive plan rollout timelines

• 91.7% reduction in calculation run-time

• 93.8% reduction in commission errors

Check out how organizations like Harry Rosen are completely transforming their sales performance management operations with Forma.ai implemented.

2.Salesforce (Spiff)

Best suited for: Small and mid-size businesses who want a simplistic ICM platform for simplifying the commission process.

Spiff’s incentive management platform was acquired by Salesforce in early 2024. Now under the CRM’s umbrella of sales tools, users are drawn to Spiff’s modern design and layout. Sales teams also appreciate the transparency into their commission calculations and the incentive compensation dashboard.

What’s unique about Spiff is that it’s a no-code incentive compensation tool. This admittedly offers its pros and cons: it’s easy for SMBs and mid-market companies who don't have a lot of complexity to use the platform, but it can lack the advanced features enterprise businesses may expect or need to manage larger scale incentive plans.  

Notable capabilities include:

• Native Salesforce integration

• Transparent commission reporting with incentive earning history

• Payroll reports to pass on to finance or HR departments  

• In-app commenting to handle commission disputes

• Currency conversion for international incentive payouts  

Pros:

• Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars on G2  

• Interface is incredibly easy to learn and use  

• More affordable than other ICM tools  

Cons:

As a formula builder (albeit an object-oriented one), there is a learning curve to building plans. Spiff can handle complex compensation plans to an extent, but you may struggle to build logic for multi-layered crediting rules without help from support in some cases.

Many reviewers on G2 noted that Spiff’s reporting capability is quite limited. Reports are limited in their customizability, difficult to understand unless you’re familiar with the formula-building process, and can be difficult to generate at scale.

3. Anaplan  

Best suited for: Compensation and finance teams with existing experience using Anaplan software and this ecosystem generally.  

Anaplan isn’t necessarily an incentive compensation software—rather it’s a business intelligence tool that has compensation plan functionality alongside supply chain, HR, and finance features.  

What’s great about Anaplan is the visibility that it offers. When all of your sales data is in one place, you’ll limit the risk of data inaccuracies when copy and pasting isn’t required.

That said, while Anaplan is a good financial planning and analysis tool, its incentive compensation customizability requires a lot of technical prowess. You’ll need to pay additional costs to customize the platform if your needs are specific. Further, this may require more dedicated resources in-house to support with its customizability and conveying/managing these needs ongoing as the complexity of your calculation pipeline increases.

Notable capabilities include:

• Easily modify compensation plans at scale  

• Predictive modeling to assess the potential of adjustments to your incentive plan

• Quota management and territory planning

• Real-time reporting for stakeholders and reps  

• Resource planning features  

Pros:

• Rate 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2  

• All-in-one sales performance management software  

• Lots of customization options (though these do come at an additional cost)

Cons:

While Anaplan does have some positive reviews on G2, some users rate it poorly for the lack of features and functionality out of the box:

“Sometimes it can be challenging to get users to give up on Excel and make the switch to Anaplan,” one reviewer said. “There are some features long requested by the community that Anaplan has yet to implement.”

4. Everstage  

Best suited for: Small to mid-size companies looking for their first incentive compensation software.

Everstage is an emerging incentive compensation platform that’s best suited to SMB and mid market enterprises. It offers a no-code plan designer and prebuilt templates—ideal if you’re starting or rebuilding your incentive plans from scratch.

Everstage also integrates with tools like Workday and HubSpot to act as a central repository for your sales data. You can track sales by rep, award the commission they’ve earned, and schedule automatic payouts from the ICM platform.  

Notable capabilities include:

• No-code incentive plan designer

• Prebuilt templates for commission plans  

• Payout forecasting and live commission tracking  

• Detailed earning statements for reps  

• Slack and Microsoft Teams integration to send automatic incentive updates to reps  

Pros:

• Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2

• Very easy to use—no experience required  

• Intuitive payee experience  

Cons:

G2 reviewers say the biggest disadvantage of Everstage’s ICM solution is that it can be slow loading.  

One reviewer states:

“Sometimes, it's very slow and needs some improvement. Everstage.com could consider improving the user experience by making the platform more intuitive and user-friendly.”

5. Varicent  

Best suited for: Bigger enterprises with large teams with deep expertise to support the administrative effort.

Varicent’s Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) product can automate manual processes like data collection, compensation calculation, and commission statement distribution. It’s an enterprise-grade solution with enough flexibility and scalability to build complex compensation plans.

The vendor partnered with Symon.AI to bolster their data processing abilities and identify trends related to sales performance, seller churn, and customer attrition.

Notable capabilities include:

• Territory management, including mapping and balancing  

• Transparent, real-time incentive tracking

• Tailor compensation packages on an individual or team-wide basis

• AI-driven insights  

• Robust audit trail  

Pros:

• Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on G2  

• Very scalable and customizable

• Artificial intelligence capabilities built-in

Cons:

A steep learning curve is the biggest consideration of Varicent’s ICM software, according to G2 reviewers. Further, the sales crediting capabilities can slow down the calculation runs particularly with larger data sets and enterprise customers.

“The flexibility of Varicent makes it difficult to get right the first time,” one reviewer said. “We have been successful with our implementation, but we are now going back to fix things we didn't get right and I feel it will be another year before we have a solid foundation.”

6. Xactly Incent  

Best suited for: Mid-market companies without a great degree of change or complexity in plans.

Xactly Incent is a cloud-based incentive compensation solution that allows sales leaders to design, implement, and manage their compensation plans.  

Its standout feature is the ability to benchmark your sales compensation plans against other businesses. Pay is a huge driver for sales reps—this feature lifts the lid on what is “competitive” so you can retain top sellers.  

Although some users struggle with usability, Xactly's plan builder can manage most complex formulas, and the platform integrates with existing ERP, CRM, or HCM solutions.

Notable capabilities include:

• Integrates with HubSpot, Google Drive, and Microsoft  

• Personalized compensation statements for each rep

• Drag-and-drop functionality to edit sales team structures  

• Performance data to benchmark incentive compensation plans  

Pros:

• Rated 4.2 out of 5 stars on G2  

• Android and iOS mobile apps to track incentives on the go  

• Ability to benchmark sales performance against competing sales organizations

Cons:

Besides lower calculation speeds as you get into larger enterprises and data volumes, Xactly Incent also has a steep learning curve and loading issues as shared by reviewers on G2.  

One reviewer said: “The reporting dashboard is not intuitive and hard to set up, as well as programming. We have to outsource for both of these and it would be great if we could easily do ourself.”

7. SAP Sales Cloud/Commissions  

Best suited for: Enterprises already using SAP software.

Formerly known as CallidusCloud Commissions, this enterprise commission management software was bought by SAP. It’s highly configurable and allows organizations to manage very complex incentive compensation processes.

The incentive compensation management platform comes with some pre-configured compensation plan logic, reporting, and analytics and allows for APIs to integrate with external systems.

Notable capabilities include:

• Interactive analytics and reporting dashboards

• Quota management  

• Support to manage compliance and onboarding

• Automated workflows  

• Plenty of integration options

Pros:

• Rated 4.1 out of 5 stars on G2  

• Extremely customizable

• Capable of processing large data volumes  

Cons:

Sometimes with SAP, cost is a concern amongst G2 reviewers—the second-biggest complaint was that the ICM solution is expensive. The software can be expensive, slow to run, and difficult to change and configure:

“Sure, they say you can tailor it to your needs, but unless you're some kind of SAP wizard, good luck with that,” one reviewer said. “We ended up having to hire a consultant just to set things up the way we wanted. There goes the budget.”

8. CaptivateIQ  

Best suited for: Sales leaders looking for an Excel-style interface from their incentive compensation software.

If you’re currently managing incentive compensation plans through Excel, the leap to CaptivateIQ won’t feel like too much of a challenge. The spreadsheet-style interface is great for sales leaders who are using an ICM solution for the first time. CaptivateIQ doesn’t require custom-coding or deep architectural knowledge.  

CaptivateIQ is also more flexible than other ICM solutions designed for small businesses, thanks to its calculation and reporting templates.

Notable capabilities include:

• Commission calculation engine

• Automated workflows

• Incentive reporting templates  

• Automated payouts  

• Scenario modeling to predict the outcome of compensation changes

Pros:

• Rated 4.7 out of 5 stars on G2  

• SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliant

• Lots of integration options  

Cons:

Reviewers say that the ICM software has missing features. One said: “It would be nice if it had some built-in logic to track performance over time both from a quota and earnings perspective. It can be difficult to go back in time to check this data manually.”

9. Performio  

Best suited for: Sales leaders at mid-market enterprises.

Performio’s incentive compensation software is best suited to sales leaders at mid-market enterprises. It syncs data from other apps into a single dashboard, helping you to track the impact of incentives on sales performance.

What’s especially great about Performio is that it has prebuilt formulas to design or overhaul incentive plans without extensive coding knowledge. Reporting features also let you compare predicted sales against your compensation budget to course-correct if profitability is a concern.

Notable capabilities include:

• Customizable sales rep performance reports  

• Netsuite ERP integration

• Expected incentive spend vs. budget comparison

• Customizable rep incentive breakdowns  

Pros:

• Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars on G2  

• Automatic commission calculations

• No coding knowledge required  

Cons:

Some reviewers say it takes Performio some time to sync data inside the ICM platform. As one reviewer put it: “I just wish they would improve the synchronization and real time update of commission numbers.”

Choosing the right incentive compensation platform

Before rushing into the first ICM solution you find, consider these elements to ensure it’s the best one for your sales organization. Changing providers later down the line can be a disruptive and expensive (yet avoidable) process.

The typical tradeoff between scalability and ease of use

Most (but not all) of the above incentive compensation management platforms put very few limits on how you build the logic behind the automation. This tends to deliver greater flexibility in theory, but large businesses often encounter a tradeoff here when it comes to balancing unlimited flexibility and ease of use.  

That is— today's legacy ICMs—while completely customizable—have endless possible permutations of how to change your plans.  

• This requires a high investment in expertise via external contractors or internal knowledge; it's costly and difficult to administer your SPM decisions or pivot fast, because of the degree of expertise required.  

• Plus the administration of SPM becomes delicate. Upstream changes can cause downstream things to break, so even external consultants are exceedingly careful in your software. Changes—even by experts—are exceedingly slow.

Ultimately, you end up running an ineffective SPM strategy for half a year, because adapting it is extremely cumbersome + costly.

When you’re attempting to debug a commission error while dealing with multiple layers of logic that someone else created, you hit roadblocks pretty frequently.

You can instead choose to move away from highly technical configurations.

In most SPM platforms there's no standardization (from how input data is mapped to how rule logic is created). Rules are built and configured from scratch by individual users every time changes are needed. With countless variables, this requires rigorous testing, and tedious calculation logic changes.

In Forma.ai, however, the way you plan and administer plans is fundamentally different (and faster!) thanks to the innovative way we're standardizing SPM data. Simply select the Territory, Quota, and IC plan rule blocks you need (the templates) and customize your inputs accordingly.

Now, there's no need to manually create rules every time you want to make changes to your SPM strategy. Instead, simply outline the parameters for the changes—with complete control over the rules and calculations selected.

What's provided surrounging analytics and reporting?

Incentive compensation plans are most effective when there are systems in place to track sales and award reps with the bonuses they’ve earned. Merge this with sales performance data, such as quota attainment and territory performance, to create 360-view sales compensation dashboards.  

Removing guesswork from this process enables you to set fair and equitable targets, while also protecting your profit. You won’t fork out too much in easily achievable incentives because the quota was too low, nor demotivate reps by offering overly ambitious targets that feel impossible to achieve.  

The best ICM solutions combine SPM data within a single platform. As Forma.ai’s Kyle Webster explains in SPM 101: How to (Actually) Measure Sales Comp Effectiveness, Forma.ai’s reporting features are a “great and very easy to understand visualization of sales performance:

“It’s something that’s very easy for leadership to digest, and it’s something that can be pretty easily updated on a recurring basis and gives a good summary of performance across different metrics.”  

Consider the user interface

It’s great to have an ICM software that can theoretically do everything you need. But if it’s difficult to do basic tasks, or you need to enlist help from a coding pro who can write custom code to get them working as intended, it bumps up the total cost of ownership. What originally looked like a good deal can wind up costing double the price.  

Friction from reps who can’t navigate the dashboard also puts another block in the way of implementation. Thus, you should prioritize ICM solutions with a user interface that is:

• Clear and intuitive

• Customizable and adaptable as your sales organization scales

• Efficient—like offering shortcuts to your most-used features

“[Forma.ai] has the true AI capabilities that other platforms today do not,” says Dr. Robert Bieshaar, Senior Director of Worldwide Incentive Compensation at Autodesk. “They're a few years ahead of others...that was the core reason we chose Forma.ai in the first place.  

Seek out considerable integration capabilities  

Many ICM tools weren’t designed to speak with multiple systems at the same time. As a result, data from CRM, ERP, HRIS, and other sources that feed the compensation system is merged asynchronously, leading to sales commission errors and long hours of dispute resolution.

Check that your shortlisted incentive compensation platform integrates with existing systems to prevent a complete tech overhaul during the implementation process. That includes:

• HRIS and payroll software like Workday

• Customer relationship management software like Salesforce

• Enterprise resource planning tools like Oracle Netsuite

• Business intelligence apps like Databricks

Forma.ai, for example, enables seamless connectivity between these apps with our proprietary data model. Feeds are real-time and prebuilt, so you won’t need to spend hours custom-coding connections and verifying that they work as intended.

Consider the customer support requirements  

Incentive compensation software isn’t for the faint of heart. Becoming a modestly competent administrator can require long hours of training.  

When the time comes to make complex plan changes, internal administrators often don’t have the experience to rebuild the system themselves. That forces organizations to hire expensive consultants or professional service providers to plug the expertise gap, bumping up the total cost of ownership.

Before committing to a new incentive software, evaluate the vendor’s customer support and training capabilities. Check out G2 reviews to ensure that others find the system easy to work with, and that support is available when needed.