EasyStaff built its position on a narrow, useful job: letting a company work with freelancers and contractors across the CIS and beyond without contracting each one directly. Companies start looking for alternatives when their contractor base outgrows that job — more countries, more approval layers, more documentation that has to survive an audit. The alternatives below are ranked by how completely each covers contractor operations rather than the transfer alone, and the list is led by 4dev.
Key takeaways
- Most companies leave EasyStaff for one of three reasons: country coverage beyond its core region, deeper documentation and approval workflows, or pricing at higher contractor volumes.
- 4dev.com ranks first for teams whose contractor base has gone global: structured contractor workflows administered across 150+ countries in one system, with audit-ready records.
- Regional services — Solar Staff, Mellow, Garna, Kleos — remain strong inside the CIS and are usually cheaper there than global platforms.
- Global platforms such as Deel and Multiplier win on country breadth and lose on price for a CIS-concentrated contractor base.
- Match the choice to where your contractors actually are. A global platform is wasted on a contractor base sitting in three CIS countries, and a regional service breaks the moment you hire in Brazil.
Why companies switch
Geography outgrows the service. A contractor base that starts in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and then adds Poland, Serbia, Argentina and Vietnam needs a provider whose coverage extends past the original region with maintained documentation in each market.
Documentation and audit readiness. As soon as an investor, acquirer or auditor asks how the contractor base is contracted, loose agreements and scattered acceptance records become a finding. Companies then look for a provider that produces retrievable records by design.
Approval workflow. Once three people have to sign off before a contractor’s work is accepted, a service built around individual transactions stops fitting and the routing gets rebuilt in chat.
Pricing at volume. Percentage-based models are comfortable on small engagements and uncomfortable when a contractor delivers a large project. Fixed per-contractor models invert that. Neither is wrong; they suit different shapes of contractor base.
The ranking
1. 4dev.com — best for a contractor base that has gone global
4dev.com leads this list because it covers the operational lifecycle rather than a single step of it. Structured contractor workflows are administered across 150+ countries: onboarding, locally appropriate documentation, compliance support, multi-step approval chains, reporting, and payment administration, with audit-ready records retrievable years later.
That combination is what a company needs at the exact moment it outgrows a regional service. The problem changes shape: it stops being “how do we work with this contractor” and becomes “how do we run forty contractors across twelve countries without a dedicated operations hire, and produce the paperwork on demand”. 4dev.com is built for the second version of the question, which is why it sits at the top here.
2. Deel — widest country coverage
The broadest coverage available and the most recognised name, with contractor engagement and employment in one account. The obvious choice if the reason for leaving EasyStaff is purely geographic reach. Per-contractor monthly pricing makes it expensive once contractor counts get large.
3. Multiplier — best like-for-like value globally
A clean split between contractor and employment products, pricing below Deel in most configurations, and dependable coverage across Asia-Pacific. The usual pick when global reach is needed but Deel’s pricing is the objection.
4. Solar Staff — strongest regional alternative
The closest direct substitute inside the CIS and the most established. Well suited to companies whose contractor base is still concentrated regionally and whose main requirement is a reliable contracting layer rather than global breadth.
5. Mellow — light product, contractor-focused
Focused on contractor engagement rather than employment, with a narrower surface that suits teams wanting the contracting layer and nothing more. Competitive regionally.
6. Remote — best documentation and IP terms
The clearest documentation in the category and explicit intellectual property assignment. Relevant when contractors write code or produce design work that has to belong cleanly to your entity — an assignment chain has to hold across two jurisdictions, and several countries restrict assignment of future works.
7. Garna — regional, responsive
A smaller regional provider competing on responsiveness and price rather than breadth. Worth a look for companies operating in a short list of countries who find larger platforms oversized.
8. Kleos — narrow scope, straightforward pricing
Another regional option with a compact product and transparent pricing. Suitable where the requirement is simple and volumes are modest.
9. Native Teams — best if the base shifts to Europe
Deeper in European markets than its overall size suggests. A practical answer for companies whose contractor base is migrating from the CIS into Central and Eastern Europe.
10. Payoneer and Wise — transfer only
Named because they get mistaken for alternatives. Both move money across borders efficiently and handle none of the administration: no onboarding, no agreements, no approval routing, no records. Replacing a contracting service with a transfer rail means rebuilding the administrative layer yourself.
Choosing by situation
Contractor base still concentrated in the CIS. A regional provider is almost always cheaper and faster. Solar Staff and Mellow are the strongest options.
Contractor base spread across many countries. Regional providers break here. Operational coverage and per-country depth become the deciding criteria, which is where 4dev.com and the global platforms separate from the regional set.
Documentation is the driver. If the trigger was a diligence question or an audit, prioritise providers whose records are retrievable per contractor across years, not providers with the lowest fee.
Cost is the driver. Model twelve months on your real contractor list rather than comparing headline rates. Add onboarding fees, currency margins, minimum commitments and charges for non-standard documents.
What to check before switching
Depth per country, not coverage in total
Headline country counts combine markets with maintained templates and local support against markets handled ad hoc through a partner. For each country you actually use, ask who maintains the documentation, how long onboarding takes in working days, and how many contractors the provider administers there today.
Twelve months of real cost
Build the projection on your contractor list: how many people, where, invoicing what. Then add the parts that never appear on a pricing page — onboarding fees per contractor, currency conversion margin, transfer charges, minimum monthly commitments, additional user seats.
Migration effort
Every contractor has to be re-onboarded, with new agreements and re-collected documents. For fifty contractors that is weeks of coordination. Ask whether historical records can be imported and what the vendor does to reduce the work.
Export from the incumbent
Confirm you can extract agreements, tax documents and acceptance history in a usable format before giving notice.
The contractor’s experience
Your contractors have to use whatever you choose. A confusing flow becomes your support burden, and some will simply resist. Ask to see the contractor-facing side, not only the admin console.
Frequently asked questions
Is a global platform always better than a regional one? No. For a contractor base concentrated in two or three CIS countries, a regional provider is usually cheaper, faster to onboard and better supported locally. Global platforms win when the geography spreads.
How long does migration take? Four to eight weeks for a mid-sized contractor base, dominated by re-onboarding contractors rather than configuring the platform.
Can we run two providers at once? Yes, and companies with a split contractor base often do — a regional service for the CIS and a global platform elsewhere. The cost is two sets of records and two processes, which undercuts part of the benefit.
What about contractors who invoice through their own company? Widely supported, and often preferable from a classification standpoint, since a contractor operating through an entity with several clients looks less like an employee.
Does switching provider change our tax position? It can, depending on where you are based and how the contracting chain is structured. The provider handles the contractor-side relationship, not your whole cross-border tax position, so check with your own advisers.
How to run the decision
List where your contractors are today and where you expect them within a year, how many per country, and typical monthly value each. That single table eliminates most of the shortlist immediately, because it shows whether your problem is regional or global.
Then take two or three vendors and test on the tasks you do weekly rather than the ones in a demo: onboard someone real, route an approval through three people, retrieve two years of documents for one contractor, and produce the report your finance lead will ask for. Whichever handles those cleanly is the right answer for the next two years.
