Auris, formerly Heartland Payroll, is a solution designed to serve as a single point of contact, where customers have online access to their payroll data and employee information.
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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
Namely
Score 7.8 out of 10
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Namely is an end-to-end HR, benefits, and payroll solution for mid-sized businesses. The cloud-based platform can be used to manage the entire HR process.
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Pricing
Auris
Gusto
Namely
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Auris
Gusto
Namely
Free Trial
No
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
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Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
Gusto is way easier to use and understand than other platforms. They just focus on what they're really good at without cluttering up the experience with other offers. The customer service is much better as well. Support is very responsive and helpful.
Heartland was cumbersome to load employee data into the system for the first run, took longer to adhere to direct deposit, and made it extremely difficult to fix a system error that resulted in incorrect payments.
We've used a variety of HRIS and payroll software in the past: ADP, Zenefits, Gusto, Namely, and now, Justworks.
Of all of them but, Justworks and Gusto are far and away the winners. Namely is just not competitive with them from a UX perspective, attractiveness of benefits …
Verified User
Contributor
Chose Namely
Namely was able to check all of the boxes in the most affordable way
I selected Namely because it offered the most functions and integration that I was looking for at the time (two years ago). It was not the most affordable option, but worth the extra features.
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!
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.
Namely is aesthetically very pleasing and navigates like other social media platforms which can be appealing to potentially a remote workforce who interacts more online than in person. Unfortunately, it did not serve our population well as we are primarily manufacturing where people are not as interested in utilizing the HRIS for interactions when they would rather connect in person.
Namely has helped with our COVID sick leave response. It has made a major difference both with the weekly payroll and the 941 tax filing
Keeping track of our multiple PTO plans. Thank goodness for Namely, I have shredded my old PTO spreadsheets.
Employees like the convenience of the cell phone app. As a payroll administrator, I like the Geo Tracking tool where I can see where some are when the clock is in or out.
The flexibility inside of the payroll system both as you are finalizing an employee profile and when you are processing payroll is a major advantage.
The reports I get out of Namely in Excel format work well for me.
Gusto upsold us labor law posters, but I later found them available for free online. Since we’re a fully remote team, I had to manually download and distribute them digitally. It would be much more efficient if Gusto offered free, auto-distributed digital posters tailored to remote compliance.
Benefits setup is unintuitive for startups
While our rep was helpful, navigating the benefits system felt complex and not tailored to early-stage companies. More guided flows or simplified options for small, remote startups would be a big help.
Limited dashboard customization for remote workflows
As a fully online company, we’d benefit from dashboard options that highlight relevant tools for remote operations—like compliance tracking, digital communications, or onboarding checklists.
No direct feed for Ohio Workers Comp (now a manual process on our end)
No option to place an employee on Leave of Absence and exclude them from payroll while they are "inactive"
No option to suppress certain deductions for certain pay types (i.e. allow 401K for commissions but block remaining deductions - also now a manual process to uncheck the suppress box for 401K for each commission check)
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.
Administrators and employees love Namely. It is very easy to use and streamlined. Employees stay engaged with news feed updates and enjoy all the self service options. The time cards are very easy to access and clocking in and out for non-exempt employees is a breeze. Namely is part of our family.
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!
It is very simple to use for myself, the HR team, and our employees. I find the payroll process very user-friendly. Reporting is simple to navigate and produce the required information requested. I know our employees enjoy the self-service feature and use it on a regular basis, which saves me time.
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 :)
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.
Namely platform has pretty good support: knowledgeable and relatively fast response times. Namely Payroll and Namely Benefits are very much depending on the quality of the support agent or CSM: we have had knowledgeable and attentive ones, but also ones that have provided erroneous information or failed to respond to urgent asks in a timely manner
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
Implementation was a bit complicated and our company had to carry most of the weight. It often felt like our implementation manager was giving us extra work that she did not want to do herself. It also took much longer than expected - I believe almost 2 months. I believe our company carried a bit too much of the weight.
I've considered moving payroll over to QuickBooks Online so that everything is in one place, but it would probably take too much work considering that our current system works really well. I think QuickBooks would confuse me, honestly. There are other systems that offer different user interfaces that are neat looking, but I haven't done too much research because Heartland Payroll offered me a really good deal for processing since we are a small company.
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.
The reason I continued to choose Namely at multiple employers is due to the continuity of employee experience. And the features have continued to grow since I initially onboarded in 2014. Also, through the years, I have had terrific benefits teams. The customer service has been the worst part of the experience outside of the benefits team.
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.
We were able to transition to a fully digital onboarding process which saved us hours in time per new hire and made the process smoother for the new hire.
Namely is our first HRIS and has helped the HR department to find data and information quickly.
Namely helped us digitize our performance management process which the company undergoes on an annual basis.
