Ashby's complex interface requires substantial training time, with basic workflows needing more clicks than competing ATS options. The Interview Scheduling section alone has 14 different settings tabs. Multiple reviews report teams taking 3-4 weeks to feel comfortable with all features, with one recruiting manager stating their team needed extensive training before becoming proficient.

Ashby gates its advanced analytics behind a separate paid add-on costing $6,800+ annually for a 200-employee company. Additional user licenses can raise analytics costs to $12,000-15,000. Many users don't realize until after signing that the most powerful customization and reporting features aren't included in the base ATS subscription.

Advanced sourcing features like email lookups, expanded sourcing capabilities, and AI credits all come with usage caps that require additional spending beyond the base subscription. Users report being surprised by overage charges when their recruiting activity exceeds the included quotas.

Ashby is positioned at the premium end of the ATS market with a minimum cost of $400/month. Dedicated recruiter seats range from $350-750/month depending on plan tier, while hiring manager elevated access costs $800 annually per seat. This makes Ashby one of the most expensive base-tier ATS options available.

Ashby caps monthly email lookups and limits bulk actions, creating bottlenecks for high-volume recruiting outreach. The Chrome extension cannot mass-select candidates for import, requiring manual entry of each profile. These restrictions significantly impact recruiter output for teams doing aggressive sourcing.

A Trustpilot reviewer reported being automatically refused for a position they were qualified for. When investigating, they found Ashby was running the recruitment process and the AI was making hiring decisions that blocked qualified candidates. External recruiting experts were confused why the software blocked them given their credentials.

Certain processes in Ashby are too rigid for smaller, more agile teams. For example, you cannot add a feedback form until an interview is marked as complete, which many users find inefficient. Limited workflow customization with single-stage approvals halts users' ability to tailor the system to their specific hiring needs.

Reviewers noted that the platform is less user-friendly for the line manager population compared to other ATS systems. While recruiters who use it daily can master the complexity, hiring managers who log in occasionally find the interface overwhelming and unintuitive.

Users report occasional errors in automated resume parsing that require manual fixes. When the AI misparses candidate information, recruiters must spend time correcting records, which defeats the efficiency purpose of the automation and creates data quality issues in the candidate database.

Users desire more robust job posting capabilities, including better job board integration and options for posting to a broader range of job boards. The current limitations require recruiters to manually post to platforms not integrated with Ashby, creating extra work.

The most common complaint is lack of live or customized customer service during implementation, which requires significant manual input. Users report only having video documentation available during setup, with limited access to hands-on support, making the complex onboarding process even more challenging.

The mobile app is missing key functionalities available on the desktop version. Users report frustration when trying to complete certain recruiting tasks on mobile, forcing them back to desktop. Basic candidate engagement features also lack more advanced communication tools on mobile.

Ashby currently only supports English-language interfaces and career pages as of 2025, which limits its effectiveness for companies hiring in non-English-speaking regions. Global organizations with multilingual hiring needs find this a significant limitation.

Hacker News discussions revealed concerns about Ashby's data practices. The platform allegedly allows companies to spam engineers by scraping their emails with no opt-out option. Ashby reportedly uses third parties for data collection and won't let engineers stop employers from obtaining their contact information.

In the last 90 days, Ashby experienced 9 incidents including 4 major outages and 5 minor incidents with a median duration of 1 hour 52 minutes. Users have also reported delays in reporting data updates, with one incident specifically affecting All-in-One & Analytics users.