RUN Powered by ADP® vs. Gusto

RUN Powered by ADP® is well suited for small businesses, especially when the person doing payroll can use time savings that maintain or increase quality of payroll duties. If the payroll person has more spare time, they can take on more than RUN Powered by ADP® and can shop around for a cheaper bare-bones payroll service.

Gusto is a great fit for small teams and startups that want a simple, reliable way to run payroll, manage tax filings, and give CPAs access without constant micromanagement. It’s especially useful for founders who need something that “just works.” The human support has been excellent—especially when forwarding confusing IRS mail.
That said, it’s a bit less intuitive when it comes to benefits and compliance for fully remote companies. For example, labor law poster distribution isn’t streamlined for digital teams, and setting up benefits felt more complex than it needed to be. Still, I’d recommend Gusto to any startup looking to get payroll right from day one.

Incentivized

• Has experts who are knowledgeable in all payroll related needs
• Allows you to quickly and easily make changes to individual employee data
• Is easy to use anywhere you are - whether on their mobile app or website
• Has several products that work well together - a one stop provider

Incentivized

• Gusto makes onboarding employees and ensuring their documents are signed very easy.
• The way you can integrate things like Google Workspace makes both onboarding new employees into the apps you use a breeze, as well as when you need to offboard them.
• Managing benefits is simple, because they take care of all the heavy lifting. I just have to review the options, make a selection, and they take it from there.

Incentivized

• I would like to see a change in the payroll processing so that when you have to save for later, you don't have to reenter all the information you have already entered.
• Make it easier for the employees to track their used vacation and PTO hours.

Incentivized

• Adding in previous time manually could be more accessible.
• Notifications for when employees manually change hours.
• We should allow 1099 users to use the mobile app instead of restricting them to the website, especially since they can just log into the full website on their mobile device.

Incentivized

The only reason there is contemplation of switching would be because the project management site we use, BQE, is now offering GUSTO built into the website at a lower monthly cost. We are waiting to see how it runs before making any decisions though as it's just left beta.

Incentivized

Unless they break it, I'm never leaving. It's just too easy. Gusto is also really affordable, and for what I pay, it's worth having the historical record within the system. I like that I can go back and pull up W2's for year's past. This sort of easy access reporting, has been helpful especially when getting reports for PPP loans.

I have been using this system for years and they have actually made it easier and easier. The system is always making great upgrades that don't necessarily require any additional information or training. I love when I log in and see a new feature or button that I get to use to make my life easier!

Incentivized

The overall platform and its speed of response are amazing. I would recommend this to any other business owner for ease of use and reliability. Email reminders are great if I’m super busy and have forgotten a few tasks. The price point compared to local payroll service is hands down a huge win.

Incentivized

I don't think I have ever encountered error codes or 404 error screens when trying to access RUN ADP. I run payroll for the company every other week and I have had no issues accessing the website, everything saves and updates when it's needed. Our employees use the app on their phones and they have not had any issues either other than just a basic update of the app occasionally

Incentivized

ADP Run loads a bit slowly at times, once I put in my credentials. However, that said, I think my perception of the time it takes is impacted by our "instant gratification" expectation of being able to get into everything quickly.

Incentivized

I appreciated having that issue finally take care of. it was extremely disheartening to see the issue had not been resolved. I also had my employees looking to me and thinking I was not trying to resolve the issue so it reflected poorly on my character. I do not know if i was because of a miscommunication, but nonetheless I was happy it was taken care of

Incentivized

Gusto's customer service has really deteriorated lately and they seem to have really changed their focus. It used to be when you called you were routed to an individual who knew about payroll, benefits, reporting, etc. but now you get someone who seems to have not received the correct training. My last call about a dismissal payroll took me over an hour of my time and the person still could not help me and finally transferred me to someone else.

Incentivized

they helped up with the 1st payroll after that we were fine - it is very user friendly- they wanted to be sure everything had imported correctly.

Incentivized

Our rep was on a zoom with us and one other person from RUN ADP showing us the layout and how to access everything. we mainly use it for payroll and reports so any questions we had they both were insightful and able to help us navigate the site. The training process was a success and we have had any issues since using.

Incentivized

The customer service team handled it very nicely. We had a rep that came to our office and helped with everything. It was a very easy process.

Incentivized

Reach out to support immediately if you are having trouble setting up Gusto. Rather than being confused and trying to figure it out yourself, it's much better to talk to someone who knows what they are doing. Save yourself time and frustration and reach out to support

Incentivized

We transferred over from Paychex back in 2018. Why? Why not? Although we had a personal payroll specialist, that person often changed. When we encountered tricky payroll issues due to new regulations, the administration process was cumbersome and unreliable. When we onboarded with ADP, the changeover was not only seamless, it was exceptionally easy. We were concerned that once this process was over, it might be challenging to work without a personal account manager. We gained so much all around. ADP has the expertise, tools, and products to help any small business thrive by handling the tough payroll stuff, so you can focus on your trade and growth. ADP was a game-changer in building trust with our staff, knowing their payroll was done correctly.

Incentivized

It's been a while since I used QuickBooks for payroll, but it doesn't even come close to it. Gusto is infinitely easier, allowing for employee time tracking, handling calculations and payments of payroll and payroll taxes, managing regulatory compliance in the background, and more. I had a lot of moments using QuickBooks Payroll where I thought, "Am I even doing this right?" — it felt like you had to have additional knowledge of HR regulations in your state to do everything correctly. Gusto has it ALL handled so you can focus your time on higher-impact tasks in your business.

Incentivized

Every summer, we hire three new college interns who have to be entered into the system. They can enter their information themselves, which takes a load off me. The onboarding is quite straightforward, and today's college kids are techy enough to be able to understand it.

Incentivized

• By using RUN Powered by ADP® I get at least 20 hours a week of my time back by not having to deal with the day to day research on new legislation, tax reporting, etc.
• RUN Powered by ADP® makes it easy to process payroll and I love Direct Deposit
• RUN Powered by ADP® allows me to stand apart from my competition by having access to 401k for my team
• I LOVE Workers Comp Pay by Pay - no surprises at the end of the year audit and it allows me to manage my cash better by paying workers comp each pay period

Incentivized

• I am not involved enough to know well, but I would say that Gusto has saved me about 1-2 hours in my onboarding process with my new company compared to my past experiences trying to onboard with ADP. I have also finished the process and am not frustrated like usual.

Incentivized