Gusto vs. Paychex

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

It's better for larger businesses (50+) with various types of pay structures. Employees need to be comfortable with technology to take advantage of the self-service features. I've struggled with the default in the state tax section; extra steps must be taken when an employee lives in a different state than they work, and we don't know where they live until after completing their profile. So we have to go into the system and make the corrections, then notify the employee to go in and complete the state-specific withholding forms and follow up to confirm they do so.

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

• It provides a well account of Retirement Plan Account Information.
• Alerts are sent to email when there is new information to access.
• Employee access both online and thru app.
• Paperless options.
• Easy and quick access to paystubs and tax forms.
• Easy employee retirement management.

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

• When it comes to audit reports, Paychex Flex could improve on helping clients locate the correct reports for audit purposes more easily
• When a client receives a discount, it would be helpful if the discount were automatically provided each year, or if the Paychex rep proactively reached out to the client first, versus the client having to call and request that the discount continue.
• It would be helpful if the invoice was emailed to the client versus the client logging in to access invoices.

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.

there are a lot of competitors on the market such as BambooHR and Insperity. Paychex need to make significant improvement on their offline customer service in order to compete with the other guys. Everything is online now and timely response to customer's questions is vital. Customers won't enjoy being put on hold for 45 mins every time they have a question regarding their HSA problems

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

Some things could be streamlined. For example, we could do custom options for the "add items" tab which has so many options that we never use. "Medical Pay" could be something that the system remembers for the applicable employees. Salaried employees' salaries should definitely be auto-filled. Overall the system works well but I think it could be improved to be easier to use and read.

Incentivized

We have not experienced any difficulties with unplanned outages. Notifications are always made for outages, and they do not effect normal business operations.

Incentivized

Unless there is lag time within the internet, the Paychex Flex website loads exceptional fast, pages load quickly and reports that I need to print or download load quickly. If I need to create a specialized report, once I complete it I receive an e-mail telling me my report is ready to be downloaded. Changing between web pages is fast as well.

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

Neil Williams makes this entire system work - without our direct contact with our professional advisor - this would be just like any other platform and the relationship would not have the dimension that is has. Using chat or phone support with a new person every time you need support wastes time, as generally the person you are talking to does not have an intimate knowledge of our company. By having an assigned professional representative that knows our companies, this provides a level of confidence of caring coming from the Paychex side.

Incentivized

We did online training only

Incentivized

It was easy to understand and follow along. I do like the informational videos that we can utilize before we opt to call in for customer service support. It has made a difference since sometimes that resolves the issue I may have had and saved myself a phone call to Paychex support.

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

Implementation was very smooth. The most cumbersome task was entering the current employees into the system during initial set up, but Paychex staff handled most of that and verified against prior system reports as well as internal reports provided to ensure 100% accuracy.

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

In addition to the ones listed above, we also used BenePay, a local payroll company. We found Paychex Flex priced in the middle, with ADP the most expensive and too complicated, with many features that were unnecessary for us. We found that Paychex Flex's features and reporting to be sized right for our size (around 30 employees). Paychex Flex also offered a very reasonable service to apply for the ERTC

Incentivized

Employees can log in at home and get up to date information on their FSA balance and any medical bill reimbursements they may have uploaded. At renewal time they have the ability to make changes to their FSA or for new employees star the enrollment.

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

• With Paychex Flex we have been able to improve our compliance with required documentation for new/rehires
• Moving everyone to direct deposit and mobile clock in/out eliminated lines at punching stations and paycheck pickup stations
• Lost checks is a thing of the past

Incentivized