Cooperly vs Shapes
Cooperly stores and activates what a team needs to know about how to work together. Shapes centralises what HR knows about employees and automates HR processes. Choose Cooperly when a founder-led company needs living working context before another HR operating layer.
30 days free. No card.
Cooperly knows how your team really works.
Cooperly turns the people context founders keep in their heads into a living operating layer for your team — so ownership stays clear, friction shows up early and managers know when to act. Automate noticing, remembering and preparation. Never human judgement.
Notice the pattern
Profiles, Fundamentals and Pulse bring working preferences and recent signals into the same context.
Prepare the conversation
Use that context to ask about a handoff, decision or pressure before assigning a cause.
Keep judgement human
People agree what changes next. Roadmap keeps the action and follow-up visible.
Shapes vs Cooperly: features and fit
Cooperly is built for founder-led companies before management becomes an HR programme. Compare that job with the one Shapes is designed to do.
| Dimension | Cooperly | Shapes |
|---|---|---|
| The job you are buying for | Help an owner and their teams understand the working relationship behind a delay, conflict or repeated escalation. | Shapes centres the purchase on employee data and HR operations. Cooperly centres it on the people and agreements behind the work that keeps getting stuck. |
| Understanding people | Coop Profiles give the team shared language for communication, decisions and working preferences. | Shapes profiles and org charts organise employee records, reporting lines and custom data. Cooperly profiles help prepare how to work with a specific teammate. |
| Team feedback | Pulse and Fundamentals connect regular signals and a deeper team check to working context. | Shapes supports targeted surveys, anonymous reporting and AI analysis of responses. Cooperly brings a signal beside working profiles so the next conversation has context. |
| Follow-through | Roadmap connects a suggested action to an owner and a follow-up with the people involved. | Shapes workflows assign tasks, forms and reminders through HR processes. Cooperly makes the follow-up about a team agreement, such as who accepts the next handoff. |
| HR administration | Focus on teamwork without making leave tracking, employee documents or attendance part of the purchase. | Shapes includes leave, attendance, documents and process automation. Cooperly can sit beside an existing HR system when those records already have a home. |
| AI inside the product | Use profiles and current team context to prepare conversations and choose the next action. | Shapes agents handle administrative tasks, while Vibe Views creates tools and dashboards from prompts. Cooperly provides a ready team workflow for understanding friction and following up. |
| MCP and external AI | Give ChatGPT, Claude and approved MCP clients selected, read-only profiles, signals, goals and team memory. | Shapes also supports MCP and carries user permissions into external AI. Cooperly's distinction is the working-relationship context it supplies, rather than exclusive access to MCP. |
| What the AI needs to know | How these people work, what changed recently and which agreement needs another conversation. | Shapes demonstrates questions about headcount, compensation and attrition using live people data. Cooperly supplies context for delegation, handoffs and conversations with the team. |
| Pricing scope | Profiles, Pulse, Fundamentals, Roadmap, MCP and approved integrations are included in both team-size plans. | Shapes uses a base plan plus separately priced apps such as Surveys. Cooperly includes the team-feedback workflow in its flat team-size price; the packages cover different jobs. |
The job you are buying for
- Cooperly
- Help an owner and their teams understand the working relationship behind a delay, conflict or repeated escalation.
- Shapes
- Shapes centres the purchase on employee data and HR operations. Cooperly centres it on the people and agreements behind the work that keeps getting stuck.
Understanding people
- Cooperly
- Coop Profiles give the team shared language for communication, decisions and working preferences.
- Shapes
- Shapes profiles and org charts organise employee records, reporting lines and custom data. Cooperly profiles help prepare how to work with a specific teammate.
Team feedback
- Cooperly
- Pulse and Fundamentals connect regular signals and a deeper team check to working context.
- Shapes
- Shapes supports targeted surveys, anonymous reporting and AI analysis of responses. Cooperly brings a signal beside working profiles so the next conversation has context.
Follow-through
- Cooperly
- Roadmap connects a suggested action to an owner and a follow-up with the people involved.
- Shapes
- Shapes workflows assign tasks, forms and reminders through HR processes. Cooperly makes the follow-up about a team agreement, such as who accepts the next handoff.
HR administration
- Cooperly
- Focus on teamwork without making leave tracking, employee documents or attendance part of the purchase.
- Shapes
- Shapes includes leave, attendance, documents and process automation. Cooperly can sit beside an existing HR system when those records already have a home.
AI inside the product
- Cooperly
- Use profiles and current team context to prepare conversations and choose the next action.
- Shapes
- Shapes agents handle administrative tasks, while Vibe Views creates tools and dashboards from prompts. Cooperly provides a ready team workflow for understanding friction and following up.
MCP and external AI
- Cooperly
- Give ChatGPT, Claude and approved MCP clients selected, read-only profiles, signals, goals and team memory.
- Shapes
- Shapes also supports MCP and carries user permissions into external AI. Cooperly's distinction is the working-relationship context it supplies, rather than exclusive access to MCP.
What the AI needs to know
- Cooperly
- How these people work, what changed recently and which agreement needs another conversation.
- Shapes
- Shapes demonstrates questions about headcount, compensation and attrition using live people data. Cooperly supplies context for delegation, handoffs and conversations with the team.
Pricing scope
- Cooperly
- Profiles, Pulse, Fundamentals, Roadmap, MCP and approved integrations are included in both team-size plans.
- Shapes
- Shapes uses a base plan plus separately priced apps such as Surveys. Cooperly includes the team-feedback workflow in its flat team-size price; the packages cover different jobs.
Why choose Cooperly as a Shapes alternative?
Start with the job you need the system to do.
A complete employee record does not settle a handoff.
The owner can see who is involved, how they prefer to work and what changed in the team. Use that context to discuss an unclear decision, agree an owner and return to the action on Roadmap.
Shapes helps centralise profiles, reporting lines and people data. Cooperly adds the working conversation: what these teammates expect from one another and which agreement they should test next. Source for A complete employee record does not settle a handoff.
Choose Cooperly when a repeated escalation needs a team agreement. Choose Shapes when scattered employee records are the problem you need to solve.
Both support MCP. The useful difference is the context.
Ask your existing AI to help prepare a difficult handoff conversation using approved profiles and recent team signals. Read-only access keeps the decision with the people involved, while making their context easier to use.
Shapes connects live people data to MCP clients under each user's permissions. Cooperly brings working patterns and shared agreements into that conversation. Evaluate the context your team needs, since both products can work with external AI. Source for Both support MCP. The useful difference is the context.
Choose Cooperly for conversations grounded in team relationships and recent signals. Choose Shapes when your AI needs the HR records and organisation data held there.
The onboarding checklist is complete. The work still comes back to you.
A new team lead has every document and account they need, yet colleagues still ask the founder to settle routine decisions. In Cooperly, review the team's context, discuss where authority is unclear and agree which decisions the lead now owns.
- Reach 70% AI-assisted coding across the team by the end of the year.
- Grow the messaging product's monthly revenue every month this year.
The overview measured the risk against these goals. Changed goals go into the next overview.
Decisions and priorities still flow through too few people. Adrian Cole and Serena Holt still settle most priorities and package the final feedback, so work waits for them.
Issues, opportunities and strengths
Roadmap 8
Sync with
Find the recurring escalation
Review the signal and the people involved.
Clarify decision ownership
Prepare the conversation with working profiles.
Follow the agreement
Track the next action on the team roadmap.
Give the same trusted context to the AI tools your team already uses.
Cooperly makes selected profiles, signals, goals and agreements available read-only through MCP. Use that context in ChatGPT, Claude or another approved client while Cooperly keeps the permissions. AI helps with preparation; people keep the judgement.
Context Cooperly gathers
Cooperly
People Context Layer
The AI tools you already use
Claude
Claude chat and code access
ChatGPT
Contextual chat and commands
AI Agents via MCP
Linear, Notion, and compatible clients
When to choose Cooperly
Cooperly keeps working profiles, team signals and next actions close to the work. Shapes centralises employee records and HR workflows.
Choose
Cooperly
- Your company has outgrown the founder's direct view of every team.
- Handoffs, unclear ownership or working relationships keep delaying delivery.
- You want profiles, team feedback and follow-up together at a published flat price.
Choose
Shapes
- Employee records, leave, attendance and documents need a central HR system.
- You want agents to run administrative processes such as onboarding.
- Your HR team needs to build custom tools and dashboards from its people data.
Shapes vs Cooperly pricing
Your plan stays flat as your team grows.
One flat price for this team size. Full Cooperly access included: up to 10 people at the Teams rate, then up to 50 people across five teams at the Company rate.
Cooperly
For Companies
per person / month equivalent
Shapes
Plus
Calculated for 30 people. Surveys extra; subscription minimum may raise the total.
Keep people context and the review rhythm connected across several teams as the company grows. Up to 5 teams, up to 50 people. MCP and approved integrations are included.
The calculator uses Shapes Plus at $12 per seat/month billed annually; Core is $8. At 30 people, Plus starts at $4,320/year before extras. Surveys is priced separately, and Shapes states that a minimum subscription applies without publishing the amount. Confirm both with Shapes for the full cost. Cooperly includes Pulse, Fundamentals, profiles, Roadmap, MCP and approved integrations in both team-size plans.
Official Shapes pricingCooperly gives you a known budget for the team-context workflow. The Shapes figure shows the published Plus base for your team size; add Surveys and confirm the subscription minimum to compare the full scope you need.
Prices checked .
USD estimates use the 4 September 2026 reference rate (£0.7391 per $1), rounded only for display. Taxes and optional add-ons excluded. Rate source
Questions about Cooperly and Shapes
Cooperly is an alternative when the purchase is about improving teamwork and reducing repeated escalations to the founder. It brings working profiles, team signals and next actions together. Shapes serves the wider HR-system brief; Cooperly does not replace attendance, leave or employee-document administration.
Cooperly connects the signal to working profiles and team context, then helps the people involved agree a next action. Shapes also analyses surveys and suggests actions. Try Cooperly with one recurring handoff problem and judge whether the team can turn the feedback into an agreement it revisits.
See the team workflowCooperly and Shapes both support MCP for approved external AI tools. Cooperly supplies selected team context read-only to tools such as ChatGPT and Claude. Shapes connects its people data using the user's existing permissions. The useful choice is which context the AI needs for your team's question.
Explore Cooperly MCPCooperly includes its team-feedback workflow in both team-size plans. The Shapes figure uses Plus at $12 per seat/month on annual billing, converted to GBP. It is the base-plan cost: Surveys is extra, and an unpublished subscription minimum may raise the total. Core is $8 per seat/month. Plus adds HR controls and support beyond Core.
See the pricing scopeCooperly uses two flat team-size plans. Up to 10 people: £240/year (£20/month billed yearly). 11–50 people: £948/year (£79/month billed yearly). MCP and approved integrations are included in both team-size plans. The Teams plan covers one team; the Company plan covers up to five. Within each plan's limits, another hire does not add a seat charge.
See Cooperly plansCooperly can be evaluated with one team while your HR system continues handling employee administration. Use the 30-day trial to review working profiles, collect a Pulse and agree one action. No card is required. This does not imply an automatic data integration with Shapes.
You don’t need more HR process. You need your team to stop rediscovering how to work together.
Try Cooperly with a real team.
30 days free. No card.
