Auris vs. BambooHR® vs. Gusto

We changed payroll companies from Paycom to Heartland this year at the recommendation of our insurance agent who insisted they would integrate with the EASE system, which tracks employee benefits and deductions. However, 8 weeks into it, I regret my decision, since the setup hasn't been completed yet. The lack of responsiveness in some cases is astounding and often we have to ask 3, 4, and 5 times for something to be done. I hate to think what will happen after we are "handed off" from the payroll implementation team to the regular schmucks. We still are not able to track PTO and time off and we have been begging for the self-service feature to be turned on for employees so they can change addresses, bank account info, etc. Their training is NONEXISTENT and their manual is abysmal. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!!! I wish I could go back to Paycom!

For companies with a "complex" PTO policy, it's one of the easier solutions to use I have seen. By complexity, I mean having different reasons for your time off and different amounts of time you can request on that end. If you need simple file sharing, it will work as well. For people who require more robust training material, it might not be the best fit.

Incentivized

Gusto is well-suited for small businesses looking for a one-stop platform for payroll, tax-related tasks, and onboarding. It has many automated features that make tasks related to running a business/running an S-Corp simpler. I have not tried any other similar platforms, so I am unsure how it compares, but the pricing Gusto offers feels reasonable compared to other providers.

Incentivized

• Cheap payroll processing but [in my opinion] you get what you pay for
• [In my experience] great ability to frustrate their customers
• Geat for the economy because [I feel] they hire so many different people and [in my experience] they don't hang around [so] you don't know who your rep is

• Ease of use for established staff and admins, all the way down to brand new hires.
• Integrations, especially for posting and managing jobs during the hiring process.
• Making regularly occurring things like meetings and assessments easy to customize and to action easily.
• Being able to assign out tasks for onboarding and offboarding.

Incentivized

• Quarterly tax access for CPA
• Gusto makes it easy for our CPA to access quarterly tax data directly, which saves us time and ensures tax reporting stays accurate for our LLC.
• IRS support via human reps
• Whenever we get confusing IRS mail, I forward it to Gusto. A real human rep either walks me through next steps or handles it directly—huge peace of mind.
• Payroll automation
• Once payroll is set up, it runs smoothly and automatically with little effort on my part. It’s reliable, affordable, and a great “set it and forget it” solution for a small business.

Incentivized

• Sometimes I don't receive the email to remind me to process payroll.
• The local rep that helped with the setup is no longer with the company and I don't have anyone to contact locally if needed.
• I wish there was a one click button so that I could just repeat the same payroll as last time.

Incentivized

• The biggest issue is on performance assessments. We are not able to customize the reminder dates so the automated reminder dates shown to people and on the email reminders is often misaligned with our actual internal deadlines. This causes a lot of confusion each review cycle.
• Also on performance management, there is no way to push feedback to a supervisor for their direct report. The only way is if the manager requests the feedback from you. This limits the opportunity for people to give real time feedback throughout the half.
• I wish we had a way to track notes from employee 1:1s in BambooHR® so when we do our performance reviews we can track. That may be a module we didn't purchase but it would facilitate more continuous and comprehensive evaluation of people at review time.

Incentivized

• I honestly don't have any complaints about Gusto as it stands.
• Maybe add 2-factor authentication for security purposes. I haven't seen that being part of the login process yet.
• I think Gusto pushes its easy Gusto card payroll method a bit too much. I'd like to see direct deposit as the main method it suggests and the Gusto card as a secondary one.

Incentivized

There's nothing wrong with this platform. I would recommend it to any business starting with more than 10 employees. I will continue to use the program for as long as I need to, hoping they continue being tremendous and finding other ways to incorporate more technology.

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.

It is pretty intuitive and easy to use for most functions! This is helped by the clean and simple interface. The drop down filters and prompts are definitely strong points, and could be easily enhanced with more AI/automation features built in in future to make it even more efficient. I also like the playful icons, making it less dull as a HR tool :)

Incentivized

Wonderful overall usability – especially for the new business owner. The user interface is clean and intuitive, so it's easy to find what you're looking for. They also have great explanation pages ingrained into the process, so if you get stuck knowing what to do next, there's a link right there to walk you through the process!

Incentivized

Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.

Incentivized

I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.

Incentivized

I never have trouble reaching customer support. They always are able to assist with fixing any problems that arise. There honestly haven't been many issues at all. Only ones I've created :)

Incentivized

I have used their support team over a dozen times. They have chat agents available throughout the day. They have support ticket submissions. They have their own resources website with different programs to learn BambooHR®. They also have onboarding support.

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

I didn't have in-person training besides teaching my managers how to use the program. However, I couldn't omit this question (maybe a system glitch).

Incentivized

As far as I can recall, everything went well with doing it online and got questions answered. Was thankful to work with a dummy file to get used to some practices prior to getting our own domain within bamboo to then place our personnel information in the system, this helped a lot!

Incentivized

The Heartland team could care less about how difficult your experience is. In fact, I think they delight in seeing you struggle!

We implemented bambooHR in Fall, 2023 then implemented Payroll 1/1/24. A vital piece of information was not known or missed in that we are exempt from State Unemployment Tax and have a Reimbursement Set-up, so bambooHR did not send Payroll Reports to the State. Those reports need to be sent regardless if we are exempt or not.

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

Only Paylocity has comparable technology but costs way more. The customer support at all 3 of these companies is a nightmare. This isn't news to anyone who has been in business for a while. If you're a broker, ADP and Paychex are going to try and steal your clients every day.

These are the three that come to mind, and we use each program for different things. We stick to HR driven areas for Bamboo, as we haven't shifted to it for payroll or project management. I do find Bamboo to be the most user-friendly, with the smallest learning curve of all the other programs, though.

Incentivized

I think Gusto has much better marketing than the rest of their competition, and it has the assets to get in front of more people, like on live TV during a sports game, so I just knew about it before the others. When comparing, I think feature-wise and usability were big for Gusto.

Incentivized

There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.

Incentivized

• The price has been great. It was much cheaper than the other company we used (starts with an A).
• The onboarding has been a big time-saver. Positive ROI for that!
• Having a separate login for my CPA firm has been another big time-saver! The other company we used didn't offer that.

Incentivized

• improved onboarding- adding documents and due dates to tasks
• time expenditure- we had printed documents initially. BambooHR® has saved me so much time with the electronic documents that automatically save in the employee record
• streamlined processes- key features such as the signature documents, onboarding/offboarding tasks have streamlined my processes also allowing for increased time savings

• It saves me time and energy - I'm not worried about being compliant or having everything I need for tax season. It's all there!
• I don't wonder when my team is working- they can easily log in and out of the system.
• I don't have to handle updating information when an employee or contractor has changes - they have their own portal.

Incentivized