Gusto vs. Access PeopleHR

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

Access PeopleHR is easy to use for things like requesting Leave.. the system is easy to guide through and emails are sent to the correct managers (if setup correctly) I do find that the backend is quite outdated and clunky though, this could do with modernising a little as it reminds me of windows 95

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

• Complex reporting is made easy through the reporting capabilities of the system. We have been using reports for the past year and absolutely trust the accuracy of the data produced. The reports are generated easily through the system and can be exported into an editable Excel spreadsheet which is great.
• The self-service of data is great for freeing up HR time. Employees can update their personal information themselves quickly and easily.
• The App is a great feature of People HR. A large proportion of our employees work in our warehouse and as such don't have their own computer at work. The app allows those employees easy access to the system on the go.

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 applicant tracking system still has room for improvement with integrating with external job boards like Indeed / Jobsite.co.uk / Directgov etc.
• There is an option for creating forms with signatures but it doesn't allow for comments/feedback/changes/versions.

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.

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

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

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

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

People HR is easy to use, you don't actually need any training for that. The programme and functionality are excellent, and the support provided by Advisors when you click the help button to speak with them is always excellent. They are quick to respond to any questions and provide excellent customer service.

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

• As a result of the poor customer service approach we received because of an issue, we were forced to source an alternative HR system and incredibly short notice resulting in a huge amount of additional hours needing to be worked 'out of hours' to ensure something was in place in time. Very adverse impact on the business and the continuity for our employees.