{"id":62961,"date":"2025-07-09T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crazyeggblog.wpengine.com\/?p=62961"},"modified":"2026-01-06T15:12:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:12:58","slug":"gusto-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crazyegg.com\/blog\/gusto-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Gusto Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gusto<\/a> is a user-friendly payroll tool that helps small businesses automate the essential payroll tasks for both employees and contractors. It makes onboarding new employees an easy process and helps you avoid manual errors. With its user-first approach to payroll management, it\u2019s the tool you want in your corner to ensure your payroll workflow runs smoothly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compare Gusto to The Best Online Payroll Services<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

People who have used clunky and complicated payroll services absolutely adore Gusto. It’s easy to use for employees, which means employers have to answer fewer questions, track down less paperwork, and so on. And you don’t have to be a payroll\/HR specialist in order to run payroll or offer benefits. You can manage everything with point and click. All of the tax calculations are taken care of for you and automatically filed each pay period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can vouch for Gusto because it\u2019s the tool we rely on to ensure each of our employees is paid accurately and on time every time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it’s not the tool for everyone, especially large businesses and employers with full-time employees overseas. Here’s where Gusto fits in among the top options in a crowded field:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Rippling<\/a> \u2013 Best online payroll service for most<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. BambooHR<\/a> \u2013 Best for an employee-first solution<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Deel<\/a> \u2013 Best for automating multiple payroll tasks<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Remofirst<\/a> – Best for receiving payroll analytics<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. TriNet<\/a>\u2013 Best for payroll services for SMBs<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Paycor<\/a> – Best for payroll compliance<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Gusto<\/a> \u2013 Best user interface for payroll<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. QuickBooks<\/a> \u2013 Best for knocking out payroll & accounting in one step<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. ADP<\/a> \u2013 Best for avoiding payroll growing pains<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. Deluxe Payroll<\/a> \u2013 Best way to attract more talent<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. SurePayroll<\/a> \u2013 Best worry-free guarantee for small business taxes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  12. Payroll4Free.com<\/a> \u2013 Best feature-rich free-forever online payroll service<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  13. Remote.com<\/a> – Best for global hiring and payroll<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Gusto: The Good and The Bad<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"Gusto<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The Good<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Full-service payroll<\/strong>: Gusto\u2019s full-service approach to payroll ensures you\u2019re equipped with the tools you need to manage payroll with a few clicks while taking advantage of its automated features. Besides helping you manage employee payments, it also enables you to take care of crucial HR tasks, manage employee benefits, and minimize incorrect tax filings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Automated tax filing:<\/strong> Whether you work with a fully remote, in-house, or hybrid team, Gusto makes sure your state and federal tax filings stay up to date and accurate with its automated tax filing process. It lessens the risk of error-prone manual filings and stays up to date with any changing tax laws, so your business avoids those dreaded IRS fees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Manages employee benefits for you<\/strong>: Needing to manage medical, dental, or vision insurance along with 401(k)s and health reimbursements? Gusto can easily help you onboard employees to a benefits plan that you put together according to your team\u2019s budget and size. If you already offer benefits, Gusto will move your plan over for you. Once the employees are on board, Gusto will auto-deduct from your payroll for easier benefits administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Offers time tracking<\/strong>: Gusto\u2019s time tracking features come in handy if you work with remote or hourly employees. Its employee time tracking tools ensure everyone\u2019s time is recorded and automatically calculated into payroll. You can also make use of Gusto\u2019s accounting integrations with tools like Xero or Quickbooks for an easier time job costing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Robust hiring and onboarding tools<\/strong>: Gusto doesn\u2019t just stop at payroll calculation. It makes hiring and onboarding less of a time-intensive process with the ability to create onboarding checklists, send offer letters, and the ability to sign and store all your onboarding documents online. You can say goodbye to all the old-school onboarding paperwork once you configure your onboarding workflow so that it works with your HR team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Employee self-service portal<\/strong>: Gusto cuts your HR team some slack by empowering your employees with its employee self-service tools. Once onboarded, employees can hop online to see their pay stubs and important tax documents, request time off, and update their personal information when it changes. All of this translates into fewer emails from employees, who are able to accomplish most tasks on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Employee finance tools<\/strong>: With Gusto Wallet, employees can keep track of their payments with financial tools that help them save and track where they\u2019re spending every penny. Gusto even offers an optional employee debit card for faster and easier access to funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Varied pay schedule frequencies<\/strong>: Gusto isn\u2019t afraid to give you choices in the pay schedule department. You can create varied pay schedules for different employees on a weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Not many other payroll solutions on the market can boast the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Canned reports:<\/strong> With Gusto, you can easily download a PDF or CSV of your preferred report\u2014 whether that\u2019s a payroll report customizable by pay range, state, date, earnings, or job codes, or you want to take a quick look at your company contribution amounts with a benefits report. Additional reports include (but aren\u2019t limited to) agency payments, bank transactions, year-to-date reports, pay stubs, employee summary reports, contractor payments, and time-off balances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Straight-forward user experience:<\/strong> Robust tools that come with a lot of useful features can often be clunky to use and non-intuitive. Gusto\u2019s pages and dashboards are easy to navigate, intuitive, and don\u2019t slow you down with a crowded interface. This is true for both the payroll management side and the employee-facing features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Affordable:<\/strong> Though Gusto doesn\u2019t compete on price, it still offers relatively affordable plans for small to medium-sized businesses or even bigger. Once you pay a base price, you pay a small amount per employee depending on the features you want access to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Contractor-only version:<\/strong> What if you want to use Gusto, but you only work with contractors? You don\u2019t need to pay a base price for tools you don\u2019t need. Gusto offers a contractor-only plan that gives you access to unlimited contractor payments, contractor self-service, and the ability to create 1099 forms and file them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Integrates with popular business software<\/strong>: Gusto integrates with business tools you\u2019re probably already using. This includes Zero, ZipBooks, Sheets, Slack, Shopify, and Hubstaff, just to name a few.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Responsive customer support:<\/strong> Gusto doesn\u2019t leave you high and dry once you\u2019re onboarded into their systems. Regardless of the plan you choose, you get access to trained professionals standing by to help you troubleshoot and answer any questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Automated reminders:<\/strong> Managing payroll can be a lot to have on your plate, especially as your team grows. Gusto Payroll uses automation for some of its more robust features and sets up and sends you reminders when a deadline is approaching or something needs to get done. It will also automatically remind employees about important dates, such as benefits enrollment windows, so HR doesn’t have to hassle people themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Bad<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Limited performance management<\/strong>: There is not much in the way of performance and compensation management that’s built into Gusto. While startups and small business won’t miss these features, larger orgs will need to integrate other apps in order to manage performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No geo-tracking features<\/strong>: Geo-tracking is useful if you manage hourly field employees or work with remote teams. If that\u2019s you and you still want to use Gusto as your payroll tool of choice, you might have to look into integrating a tool that brings the geo-tracking factor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No mobile app<\/strong>: Despite Gusto\u2019s versatility, it has yet to offer a mobile app version for on-the-go payroll and employee management. Hopefully, this is something it rolls out soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    No global payroll for FTEs:<\/strong> While Gusto does support international payroll for contractors, it doesn\u2019t offer international payroll for full-time employees outside the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Some limits with integrations:<\/strong> Gusto does come with a number of different integrations for time tracking, payroll, accounting, and business operations. However, some users wish Gusto integrated with tools like Office365. In short, there are limits to what Gusto can integrate with. Make sure you check integration features to ensure Gusto works well with your existing systems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Gusto Pricing and Options<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"Gusto<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Gusto works with a flat monthly payment plan based on how feature-rich you want your Gusto experience to be. From there, you pay an additional fee per employee a month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It’s simple and straightforward pricing, as far as payroll software goes. And while it’s not the cheapest possible payroll out there, it’s affordable, and we like the value for startups and small businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here’s a rundown of those pricing tiers (note Gusto periodically offers discounts):<\/p>\n\n\n\n