ADP TotalSource is a professional employer organization (PEO) that provides strategic HR outsourcing. It includes services and technology to manage employee benefits, payroll, compliance, risk management, safety, and recruiting. Users have access to an online portal for things like self-service reporting, generating pay statements, and managing applicant resumes/interviews. Help from the service center and industry experts is available by phone.
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Gusto
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Gusto offers payroll, benefits and compliance capabilities. Gusto is scaled for small to mid-sized businesses, and emphasizes an easy to use interface.
$49
per month
Pricing
ADP TotalSource
Gusto
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Simple: A streamlined set of automatic payroll features and benefits integrations
$49/month + $6/mo per person
per month
Plus: Comprehensive payroll, benefits, and HR tools for employers building a great place to work
$80/month + $12/mo per person
per month
Premium: Scalable payroll and benefits, expert HR, and dedicated support for the complex needs of growing teams
$180/month + $22/mo per person
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ADP TotalSource
Gusto
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
[I think that] all other options are about 100X better than ADP TotalSource. [I also think] ADP TotalSource is too comfortable and thinks they don't need to improve to be competitive. However, the reality is, competition is eating up their market. Some ADP staff, in particular, …
Verified User
Supervisor
Chose ADP TotalSource
ADP TotalSource was selected over other competitors because it fit our needs when we were hundreds of employees. However, these days we have thousands globally and this number changes every day so it is quickly becoming a solution we can not rely on, especially compared to all …
Gusto has been my favorite option both as an end-user (ie. employee) and admin (ie. employer). It's easy to use, has all the features we need, integrates with Guideline (our preferred 401k provider), and priced well for great value.
Gusto generally wins on price compared to its competitors. Some organizations nickel-and-dime on billing with headcount, states filed, etc. while Gusto's bills are very easy to calculate and understand. Competitors generally will handle state registrations that Gusto won't do, …
I would not use this company for anything. [I believe my] employees [absolutely] hate the software and there are constantly glitches in the software which occur every payroll run, benefits enrollment, etc. [I have spent] large amounts of time on the phone with outsourced customer support[,] so think twice when comparing [the] cost to other providers. [I feel] you [will] need someone full time to deal with all of their issues. We are currently in the process of setting up another PEO company. The amount of money and time to implement ADP has been a huge loss.
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.
Gusto really kills it on the simplicity. The app and website are very clear and straightforward.
Gusto also does a great job at being easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and logically posed.
Gusto communicates very clearly and provides just the right amount of communication.
Gusto makes the onboarding process very easy. I recently started at a new company and the process of filling out the necessary documents, filling out forms, and getting my benefit information input was soooooo easy!
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.
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.
ADP is a great HR solution for most organizations. It is truly all-in-one. I rated it a 7, because of the issues we experienced during implementation and the high cost of service when issues do arise.
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.
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
At the moment, we have not investigated any of the products available in the drop-down list provided. However, we have evaluated some other (unavailable) products and have been intrigued by the potential decrease in fees along with the potential for a much more "rich" benefit plan. We can't speak to the level of customer service observed by current clients, only to apparent cost savings.
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.
It has cost us more money from a financial aspect and then taken away my main/other job duties because I have to focus all of my time on ADP TotalSource and basically fixing errors that happen weekly/every time an employee is added or terminated (which is more than the normal company due to the nature of our business).
For me, it is hard to quantify payroll software as having an ROI. It does save quite a bit of time per pay period, so perhaps we could assign a theoretical number to an employee taking that time. I'd say, at the least, it saves 30-60 minutes a pay period compared to a more difficult-to-use payroll software.
