Avalara vs. CCH® SureTax®

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Avalara
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Avalara AvaTax connects to the software that businesses already have and delivers sales tax decisions based on precise geo-location in more than 12,000 taxing jurisdictions in the U.S.N/A
CCH® SureTax®
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
CCH SureTax is designed by tax experts to help businesses comply even with the most complex sale and use tax requirements. Always up-to-date on 100,000+ annual tax legislation changes, this cloud-based sales tax automation platform aims to ensure customers accurately calculate, collect, and remit taxes to the correct authorities every time.N/A
Pricing
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Considered Both Products
Avalara
Chose Avalara
We have a long standing partnership with Avalara. We value these relationships & know Avalara is a proven solution.
Chose Avalara
RSM already had a connector and CCH did not; we were also using RSM for SL2018 implementation.
Chose Avalara
Truthfully, it came down to the quoted cost/contracts/implementation costs, and that our point of sale system claimed it had done integrations with Avalara in the past and not with the other firms we were considering. I was not actually a part of the discussion and decision …
Chose Avalara
Avalara is doing a lot better in my eyes. Currently we're having to provide location (register agent) address and they do not calculate state we are not exempt in. If we want the service then we will have to add the states on our end and incur addition transaction charges.
Chose Avalara
Avalara was easily ahead of the competition. Their ease of integration and reporting put them ahead. CCH at the time had even fewer modules and integrations than Avalara did, which was a consideration as we try to be agile and did not know how long we would stay on our …
Chose Avalara
Avalara is vastly superior to the CCH product I used. CCH was manual, often made mistakes, and was not intuitive at all. Avalara is significantly better.
CCH® SureTax®
Chose CCH® SureTax®
Avalara has the best API but doesn't handle volume well
ONESOURCE is a custom solution, tailored to fit to each customer needs by team of integrators works great for large businesses
Sov0s if you don't have anything nice to say say nothing at all
Chose CCH® SureTax®
I recommended Avalara as an alternative, but our Corporate office had already paid some money for the SureTax product a few years before and then didn't move forward, and thought they could utilize that payment towards this project. As it turned out, they were not allowed to …
Chose CCH® SureTax®
CCH SureTax was more accurate and truly understood telecom tax and the challenges. This is still a newer item that Avalara is still developing.
Chose CCH® SureTax®
Avalara is a big name but fall short of expectation their software, got the attitude that they don't care and would not see through the implementation stage. They are not good for new comers.
Chose CCH® SureTax®
We start from Avalara by uploading data in specific format to Avalara and then downloading the tax result from Avalara. This is without application integration. Later we have more products and we need everything to be taxed in time and automatically. We found SureTax and tried …
Chose CCH® SureTax®
We decided on SureTax because of some prior relationships our CEO had. The technical implementation team had a much better impression of the advice and explanations and guidance we received from Avalara
Chose CCH® SureTax®
We researched them and had a few conversations because other areas of our company are using software from Avalara and we hoped to bundle but we couldn't meet their data deadlines at all so we had to keep looking around. There's really not much more I can say about it as that …
Chose CCH® SureTax®
I think Avalara is who we will eventually move to. We originally selected CCH® SureTax® based on the price and this is where it got us.
Chose CCH® SureTax®
We used Avalara from 2007 through 2012. We had continual connection issues with their system going down at least once a month. When your sales tax system goes down, everything within your ERP that uses sales tax also goes down. We are constantly entering quotes, orders, …
Chose CCH® SureTax®
100% better. Avalara is a self-starter kit where businesses are forced to create and develop their own bundles and product types. The support that you get from the AvaTax is not as user-friendly. SureTax is full of seasoned experts and full of industry leaders. Law firms that …
Chose CCH® SureTax®
regret using other, if it was not for the amount of time an resources invested i would switch
Chose CCH® SureTax®
CCH SureTax has better options for handling local sales tax jurisdictions including certificate management.
Chose CCH® SureTax®
The decision to use CCH was made before my time with the company. I believe the decision was based reputation and reliability.
Features
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Type of tax
Comparison of Type of tax features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
8.3
374 Ratings
6% above category average
CCH® SureTax®
7.4
62 Ratings
6% below category average
Sales and Use Taxes9.2368 Ratings7.962 Ratings
Cross-border Taxes8.581 Ratings9.01 Ratings
VAT / GST Taxes7.471 Ratings5.14 Ratings
Energy and Fuel Taxes8.330 Ratings7.66 Ratings
Tax Reporting & Compliance
Comparison of Tax Reporting & Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Avalara
8.5
393 Ratings
8% above category average
CCH® SureTax®
6.8
61 Ratings
14% below category average
Geolocation for Tax Assessment9.1217 Ratings8.945 Ratings
3rd-Party Software Integrations8.3291 Ratings6.343 Ratings
Tax Data Reporting8.7342 Ratings6.755 Ratings
Compliance Administration Management8.6253 Ratings6.641 Ratings
Tax Exemption Processing8.4258 Ratings7.643 Ratings
Tax Document Management8.8273 Ratings6.633 Ratings
Complex Tax Scenario Management7.4170 Ratings5.342 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Small Businesses
TaxJar
TaxJar
Score 8.1 out of 10
TaxJar
TaxJar
Score 8.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
LOVAT
LOVAT
Score 9.0 out of 10
LOVAT
LOVAT
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
ADP SmartCompliance
ADP SmartCompliance
Score 8.7 out of 10
ADP SmartCompliance
ADP SmartCompliance
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(471 ratings)
7.5
(63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(35 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(463 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.1
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.1
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.6
(24 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.9
(199 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.8
(8 ratings)
6.6
(5 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.8
(14 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.6
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.9
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AvalaraCCH® SureTax®
Likelihood to Recommend
Avalara
I find Avalara to work very well if you are using a software system that is integrated with Avalara, and it is set up to calculate the tax and file the returns. It is very streamlined and efficient. It doesn't work as well if the tax is calculated elsewhere and you have Avalara filing your returns; the options for getting the tax info into Avalara are very limited.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
I would put CCH® SureTax® at the top of the scale for any Telecom business or anyone with a known tax scenario that will be similarly sketchy. This software, while not always user friendly, can do amazing things to help you navigate the tax issues facing us all today. This would not be appropriate for a company just needing help gathering their sales tax information. There are plenty of other, friendlier solutions, possibly what they are already using for their accounting that will do it cleaner, easier and cheaper. You just have to ask an expert in that software.
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Pros
Avalara
  • Establishes the connection with the appropriate municipal entity,
  • Provides ample time for review of the sales and use tax liability,
  • Submits the returns in accordance with the requirements of the respective municipal entity.
  • Maintains historical record of each remittance.
  • Allows for easy retrieval of past returns.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
  • Maintains Nexus nationwide.
  • Implements all of the various sales tax rates nationwide automatically.
  • Clean website that is very user friendly.
  • Support is very quick to respond and always fixes any issues you may be having.
  • We have had this since 2013, and not one time has a sales tax rate been wrong. We used to have Avalara, where we had 12 different overrides in their system just to calculate the correct tax. It is nice not having to maintain those.
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Cons
Avalara
  • Avalara needs to be able to provide tax and legal advice, so we don't have to go to an outside source.
  • Some states we file in have more than just sales tax on the return. For example, Washington has B&O tax, tire tax, sales and use tax. It would help a lot if Avalara could report all of these taxes, so we don't have to file manually.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
  • We have participated in some prepayment testing so we know that functionality is being built out and what we saw looked really good. We're anxious to have that rolled out.
  • We'd like a cleaner way to export documentation of what was paid and EXACTLY what was paid. Currently web fees and some small balances are not shown by the website and that means making journal entries is a more manual process than hoped.
  • We've been working with folks at SureTax about discrepancies between CCH RADAR rates vs the rates which get used in SureTax. We have learned the 2 systems do not utilize the same data and we often find RADAR is more accurate.
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Likelihood to Renew
Avalara
Avalara is the best sales tax compliance product on the market. Avalara allows us to accurately comply with our sales and use tax obligations in an accurate and timely manner for a reasonable cost. Avatax is a versatile and helpful product. We also are looking forward to implementing the cross-border product.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
We switched our tax service from Avalara to SureTax years ago. Prior to this, we manually prepared the data and ran a report uploading and then got the tax result every time. With Suretax providing enough and flexable APIs, we redesigned and implemented our new application to communicate with SureTax seamlessly and automatically. This greatly reduced our workload, improves the system efficiency, and increased the data accuracy.
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Usability
Avalara
The overall usability has been good, but we just have some problems/issues with the integration, especially with NetSuite. I believe that this should be a simple fix but having difficulty with getting our problems/issues addressed. I do like the Avalara homepage and it being easy to navigate to different pages when needed.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
SureTax is very reliable in with the integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP. It provides accurate tax calculations in accordance with tax updates. SureTax also has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate. It is easy to add customers and also run reports on the website. The overall manageability of it is great!
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Reliability and Availability
Avalara
I have been using Avalara for years and do not remember ever having an outage during working hours. The service is accurate and dependable.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
No answers on this topic
Performance
Avalara
We do have trouble tying Avalara's reporting back to our POS, but we just got a new POS system and there are bugs we are still trying to work out within the POS system. I do not believe this is an Avalara issue
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Avalara
It does not [matter] how much you pay in support packages for Avalara, [from my experience] you will never receive timely response times. Additionally, [it seems to me] their support techs are not experienced and/or do not understand the nature of your issues. I have resolved the majority of my issues before the support team is able to.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
It has taken much longer than we would like to get certain issues - and problems - resolved. And the initial product support as we designed the implementation left much to be desired
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In-Person Training
Avalara
I wasn't here when they first started with Avalara.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Avalara
The documentation online we informative and helpful. The videos from the Avalara institute and the help tab if we have any questions and the search too were helpful. We like the ease of using the click here for more information tool about nexus and the information for the ECM Pro training were helpful. Whenever we have a question we normally get an email along with the tool as to where to find our answer. We also like that it shows information about nexus status of the states we maybe approaching and we can look more into it.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Avalara
The rating of a 6 was not because I was displeased with Avalara's service or implementation team. The implementation process and implementation team were great. The issue I had with implementation was finding the time of an implementation specialist to devote to our account. With the fast growth of Avalara, my specialist always felt rushed which made me feel I did not get adequate time or support.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Avalara
When I started with the company, they were using a version of CCH. This was my first experience with that program and I found it very cumbersome. It was unable to calculate multiple tax rates (this may have changed in the last 10 years) and while it filled out some of the tax returns for us, we still had to manipulate many and file them ourselves. Now we just verify that what we show in our system matches Avalara and hit approve and we are done for another month.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
100% better. Avalara is a self-starter kit where businesses are forced to create and develop their own bundles and product types. The support that you get from the AvaTax is not as user-friendly. SureTax is full of seasoned experts and full of industry leaders. Law firms that I have worked with in the past, as well as other CPAs, only recommend SureTax.
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Scalability
Avalara
It is usable across all departments
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Avalara
  • We have been able to keep staffing the same even though business has more than doubled.
  • Avalara filing my returns has cut down on my time spent by hours.
  • I hopeful our new integrations will soon help the rest of the sales staff as well.
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Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik
  • Previously we paid $5,200 per year for a standalone telecom tax calculation program. The overall cost of the combined solution that we have is just about the same as the cost of everything that we have before adding that cost in.
  • Once you add in the additional benefit of the API integration and the automation that's freed up employee time, I think it's fairly safe to say that as we've grown, the combined efficiencies have allowed us to operate with two fewer employees than we would have otherwise needed.
  • Over past 4 years we have yet to be notified of any errors in our submitted regulatory taxes.
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ScreenShots

Avalara Screenshots

Screenshot of the Avalara portal homepageScreenshot of returns, appearing in the Avalara portalScreenshot of transactionsScreenshot of reportsScreenshot of jurisdiction details

CCH® SureTax® Screenshots

Screenshot of Transaction level viewScreenshot of Nexus dashboardScreenshot of Exempt Certificate ManagerScreenshot of Reporting viewScreenshot of Returns dashboardScreenshot of A return screenshot