Gusto vs. WEX Benefits

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

If you are looking for a company that will be thorough in the substantiation process and will have the employee ready in the event they are audited, WEX is perfect. If you employees have a hard tolerating being asked multiple times to substantiate similar or same claims, this company is likely not for you.

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

• In my opinion, poor application of IRS rules
• In my experience, frequent denial of coverage to be later reversed
• In my experience, poor complain processing rules
• need PAPER checks to be sent if you need to reimburse them. PAPER! They don't accept credit cards. A credit card processing company that doesn't accept credit cards.

• 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

• In my experience, WEX has an inability to connect with other entities on the supply chain (bswift, internal benefits department).
• Slow support request turnaround (3-5 business days).
• Makes FSA substantiation unnecessarily difficult.
• Even when there’s a single itemized receipt for all charges, every charge must be substantiated with a separate upload.
• Even though doing so would satisfy IRS guidelines, WEX won’t accept third party explanations of services as FSA substantiation.

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

In my opinion, horrific website with poor design and usability. I think the company frankly does not care.

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

We never really had one place for all of our HSA, FSA and COBRA needs. We used multiple vendors and our employees a variety of vendors and banks they could set up their accounts with. WEX really help simplify and uniforms the whole process and help streamline all HSA, FSA and COBRA processes

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

• WEX Health has made administration of FSA, HSA, and COBRA so much easier
• I feel confident that WEX Health is compliant, as a company, and that they keep us compliant
• We are always able to call and talk to a knowledgeable representative when we have questions

Incentivized