Easy HRM is a human resource management application built on ASP.NET Core 2.1 and Entity Framework Core 2.1, sold as a source-code package on ThemeForest for $40. It bundles employee records, attendance, leave, payroll and a small set of HR extras into a single .NET solution that a developer can open in Visual Studio, connect to SQL Server and deploy. It suits freelancers and small development shops building an internal HR tool for a client with roughly 20 to 200 staff, and it is a poor fit for anyone who wants a hosted service they can switch on without touching code. The vendor does not disclose sales figures, so there is no purchase history to weigh.
What the Easy HRM Database Abstractions Actually Deliver
The product’s real value sits in its data layer. Entity Framework Core is Microsoft’s object-relational mapper, a library that lets C# code read and write database tables through classes instead of hand-written SQL. Easy HRM ships that model already built, which means the tedious part of an HR system — deciding how employees, departments, designations, salary components and attendance records relate to one another — has been done. The Easy HRM Database Abstractions cover the entities, their relationships and the migrations needed to create the schema on a fresh SQL Server instance.
On top of that foundation sit five functional areas:
- Employee records. Staff are organised by department and designation, so the system supports a basic reporting hierarchy rather than a flat contact list. An administrator can add, edit and review personnel details from one place.
- Attendance tracking. Daily attendance is recorded per employee, which is the input the payroll module later draws on. This is the module that determines how much manual reconciliation the system saves.
- Leave management. Requests and approvals are handled inside the application, removing the email-and-spreadsheet loop that small businesses typically rely on.
- Payroll. Allowances and deductions can be attached to a salary, and the system generates payslips and salary sheets. A reporting view summarises the run.
- HR extras and user management. Holiday calendars, notices, staff awards and login accounts round out the package.
The stack is conventional: ASP.NET Core on the server, Razor views rendered with JavaScript and jQuery in the browser, and Microsoft SQL Server for storage. Nothing here is exotic, which matters for maintenance — any .NET developer can pick the codebase up without learning a proprietary framework.
Where This HR System Fits, and Where It Does Not
The strongest use case is an agency or in-house developer who has been asked to deliver an HR portal for a small or mid-sized employer and needs a credible starting point rather than a blank solution. Buying the source means the schema, the CRUD screens and the payroll logic already exist; the work shifts to branding, custom fields and deployment. It also fits an organisation with an existing Microsoft stack and a SQL Server licence already paid for, since the application adds no new infrastructure cost.
A second reasonable fit is a learning or prototyping scenario. A developer who wants to see how a real Entity Framework Core model is structured for a multi-table business domain can read this code far faster than building an equivalent from tutorials.
There are clear cases where it is the wrong purchase. A company with no .NET developer on hand should not buy it — there is no hosted version, no installer and no support contract mentioned in the listing. A business that needs multi-tenant SaaS architecture, complex shift rostering, statutory tax calculations for a specific country, or integration with accounting software will find the payroll module too thin and will end up writing most of that logic itself. And anyone expecting a turnkey product with documentation, onboarding and updates should look at commercial HR platforms instead.
What Setup Involves in Practice
The stated requirements are Visual Studio 2017 with the .NET Core 2.1 SDK, plus SQL Server or a local instance such as LocalDB. In practice the sequence is: open the solution, restore NuGet packages, adjust the connection string in the configuration file, run the Entity Framework migrations to create the database, seed an administrator account, and launch. A developer familiar with ASP.NET Core should expect a few hours to get a working instance running locally, and roughly a day to deploy to a server, wire up authentication properly and load real employee data.
Two prerequisites deserve emphasis. First, .NET Core 2.1 is out of support, so a production deployment will likely need the project retargeted to a current long-term-support release — a task that is usually straightforward but not free. Second, the vendor does not state whether documentation beyond the change log is included, so buyers should assume they are working from the code itself. Budget time for reading the solution structure before promising a client a delivery date.
Strengths and Limitations
Strengths
- The data model is complete and coherent, covering the entity relationships an HR system genuinely needs rather than a demo schema.
- Payroll, attendance and leave are connected, so attendance data feeds salary generation instead of sitting in a separate silo.
- Full C# source is included, which means no licence lock-in and no waiting on a vendor for custom changes.
- The technology choices are mainstream and well documented, keeping long-term maintenance costs predictable.
- At $40 the price is a fraction of the development hours required to build an equivalent schema and admin interface from scratch.
Limitations
- The target framework, ASP.NET Core 2.1, has reached end of life, so an upgrade is effectively mandatory for any live deployment.
- The listing describes an initial 1.0 release only; there is no evidence yet of a maintenance cadence, patch history or responsive support.
- Payroll handles allowances and deductions but the listing makes no claim about country-specific tax rules, statutory contributions or bank file exports — features most real payroll users need.
- No sales figures are published, so there is no track record of other buyers running it in production.
- Documentation is not described, and the change log is a single line.
How It Compares With the Wider Category
Buyers researching this space usually weigh three options: a hosted HR SaaS subscription, a free open-source HR project, or a paid source-code package like this one. Hosted services win on convenience — no server, no developer, automatic updates — but charge per employee per month and hold the data. Over a few years for a 100-person company, that recurring cost dwarfs a $40 one-off purchase.
Open-source alternatives cost nothing but vary wildly in code quality and often ship with incomplete payroll logic or abandoned repositories. A commercial package’s advantage is that someone was paid to finish it. Easy HRM sits in that middle ground: more complete than a typical GitHub sample, far cheaper than SaaS, but with the same trade-off every source-code purchase carries — the buyer owns the maintenance. Compared with other ASP.NET Core HR scripts, its differentiator is the Entity Framework Core data layer being fully realised rather than stubbed, which is exactly what the Easy HRM Database Abstractions name promises.
Frequently Asked Questions
What technology does Easy HRM run on?
It is built on ASP.NET Core 2.1 with Entity Framework Core 2.1, Microsoft SQL Server for storage, and JavaScript with jQuery on the front end. Development requires Visual Studio 2017 and the .NET Core 2.1 SDK. Because that framework version is no longer supported by Microsoft, most production users will retarget the solution to a newer release before going live.
Does Easy HRM include payroll and payslip generation?
Yes. The payroll module supports allowances and deductions against an employee’s salary, produces payslips, and includes a salary sheet report. It does not claim to handle country-specific income tax bands, statutory deductions or bank transfer files, so buyers needing those features should plan to extend the code themselves or integrate a separate payroll engine.
How many employees can Easy HRM handle?
The vendor positions it for small and medium businesses with roughly 20 to 200 or more employees. Actual capacity depends far more on the SQL Server instance and hosting than on the application code, since Entity Framework Core scales with proper indexing and query tuning. No benchmark figures are published, so capacity should be tested against real data volumes.
Is Easy HRM suitable for someone who cannot code?
No. It ships as a source-code solution that must be opened in Visual Studio, configured with a database connection string, migrated and deployed to a web server. There is no hosted version, installer or managed service mentioned in the listing. A non-technical buyer would need to hire a .NET developer for setup and any customisation.
Verdict
Easy HRM is worth buying for .NET developers and small agencies who need a working HR foundation for a client in the 20 to 200 employee range and are comfortable owning the code, the upgrade path and the deployment. The completed Entity Framework Core model and the connected attendance-to-payroll flow justify the $40 many times over in saved build time. It is not the right choice for organisations without in-house .NET skills, for anyone needing statutory payroll compliance out of the box, or for buyers who expect documentation and an active support channel. The author is credited only through the ThemeForest listing, and with no published sales history, the purchase should be treated as buying code rather than buying a supported product.
