Bonusly is a continuous performance and employee recognition platform designed to bring recognition, feedback, check-ins, and 1:1s into the flow of work, enabling employees and managers to build consistent performance habits. Core Capabilities
Peer Recognition & Rewards: Value-tagged shout-outs with points redeemable for global gift cards, curated physical items, and nonprofit donations.
Continuous Feedback: Lightweight prompts and…
$0
per month (up to 8 users)
Gusto
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
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
Bonusly
Gusto
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
per month per seat
Team
$3
per month per seat
Organization
Custom Pricing
per month per seat
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
Bonusly
Gusto
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
Bonusly offers three tiers:
Free (free forever): Get started with core rituals like peer recognition and structured 1:1s—ideal for small teams building great habits from day one.
Team: $3 per seat/month (or $30 per seat/year with annual billing). Built for managers and teams who want to stay connected, build trust, and improve every day. Unlocks the full power of habit-building features across recognition, guidance, 1:1s, and check-ins.
Organization: Custom pricing upon request. Designed for companies that need scale, security, and analytics. Connect everyday culture to performance and engagement patterns, surface organizational insights, and prove impact with advanced reporting. A free trial is available for eligible tiers.
Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
Bonusly has provided us a formal space to post recognition. While face to face recognition still occurs, this is a place where staff can post publicly or privately, but a majority choose public. It has been incredibly popular since our implementation. Staff love the ability to earn time off through recognition. That customized redemption is our most popular reward.
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.
Moderation. The freedom to post anything for recognition can get out of hand depending on your tolerance/company culture. There are very little to no tools around better this.
Bonusly has not done much in the way of adding features. Hard to call it a con but other similar platforms have extended into allowing more directed involvement from the organization. In other words: Bonusly is a little TOO hands-off in some ways.
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.
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.
Bonusly is easy to use and intuitive for anyone familiar with technology and using websites. There is a page where posts are made, and a page where rewards are redeemed. It is very straightforward.
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!
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
the cost was [the] main factor for us. I think the platforms are very similar. Bonusly is one focused on just employee recognition which is great and concise. BlueBoard offers a lot more by way of experiences and gift-giving for recognition but on the pricier side.
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.
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.
