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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cornerstone Galaxy

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ACornerstone Galaxy is a cloud-based application for talent management. Cornerstone offers suites for recruiting, training, performance monitoring and planning, learning, and HR data management. It is scaled for enterprises.N/A

    Gusto

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AGusto 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
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    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
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    Considered Both Products
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    No answer on this topic
    Gusto
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    65 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    563 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    54 Answers
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    464 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    70 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    576 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    84%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    37 Answers
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    316 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    72%
    Implementation went as expected
    36 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    376 Answers
    Features
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    Onboarding
    Comparison of Onboarding features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    6.5
    134 Ratings
    11% below category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    New hire portal7.569 Ratings00 Ratings
    Manager tracking tools5.7116 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance tracking and reporting6.3127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Performance and Goals
    Comparison of Performance and Goals features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    8.4
    115 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    Corporate goal setting8.596 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subordinate goal setting8.099 Ratings00 Ratings
    Individual goal setting8.0107 Ratings00 Ratings
    Line-of sight-visibility8.595 Ratings00 Ratings
    Performance tracking9.0110 Ratings00 Ratings
    Performance Management
    Comparison of Performance Management features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    8.5
    122 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    Performance plans8.594 Ratings00 Ratings
    Plan weighting8.581 Ratings00 Ratings
    Manager note taking9.070 Ratings00 Ratings
    Performance improvement plans9.082 Ratings00 Ratings
    Review status tracking9.097 Ratings00 Ratings
    Rater nomination workflow8.064 Ratings00 Ratings
    Review reminders8.094 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow restrictions9.086 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple review frequency9.083 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting7.3116 Ratings00 Ratings
    Succession Planning
    Comparison of Succession Planning features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    6.5
    58 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    Create succession plans/pools6.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Candidate ranking5.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Candidate search8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Candidate development7.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Recruiting / ATS
    Comparison of Recruiting / ATS features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    5.8
    67 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    Job Requisition Management7.045 Ratings00 Ratings
    Company Website Posting8.041 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to Social Media9.038 Ratings00 Ratings
    Job Search Site Posting9.038 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customized Application Form8.040 Ratings00 Ratings
    Resume Management5.043 Ratings00 Ratings
    Duplicate Candidate Prevention5.040 Ratings00 Ratings
    Candidate Search6.041 Ratings00 Ratings
    Applicant Tracking6.041 Ratings00 Ratings
    Collaboration4.036 Ratings00 Ratings
    Task Creation and Delegation5.038 Ratings00 Ratings
    Email Templates4.560 Ratings00 Ratings
    User Permissions3.061 Ratings00 Ratings
    Notifications and Alerts3.556 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting3.564 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    7.4
    191 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    Course authoring7.7141 Ratings00 Ratings
    Course catalog or library7.4189 Ratings00 Ratings
    Player/Portal8.0176 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning content7.2151 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile friendly6.5138 Ratings00 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications6.0172 Ratings00 Ratings
    Assignments8.0185 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance management7.8166 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning administration8.0188 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics7.6187 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social learning6.7119 Ratings00 Ratings
    Payroll Management
    Comparison of Payroll Management features of Cornerstone Galaxy and Gusto
    Feature
    Cornerstone Galaxy
    -
    Ratings
    Gusto
    9.1
    611 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Pay calculation00 Ratings9.5587 Ratings
    Support for external payroll vendors00 Ratings8.58 Ratings
    Benefit plan administration00 Ratings8.7417 Ratings
    Direct deposit files00 Ratings9.7592 Ratings
    Salary revision and increment management00 Ratings9.0462 Ratings
    Reimbursement management00 Ratings9.0196 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Patriot Payroll
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    SumTotal (legacy)
    Score7.9 out of 10
    APS
    Score5.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    PeopleFluent
    Score7.9 out of 10
    ADP Streamline Payroll
    Score6.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (262 ratings)
    9.1
    (633 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.9
    (37 ratings)
    10.0
    (14 ratings)
    Usability
    6.6
    (46 ratings)
    9.4
    (457 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.4
    (37 ratings)
    4.3
    (27 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    6.0
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.1
    (114 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.5
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.5
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cornerstone GalaxyGusto
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    Cornerstone Galaxy is a good solution for larger companies that focus on training and want to offer a variety of options to their employees and departments. It is highly customizable. It does require a tech savvy team to set-up, and maintain. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it system. From an LMS perspective, it wouldn't be my top choice for employees who only need a mobile-friendly approach.
    Read full review
    Gusto
    I think Gusto is well-suited for any business, big or small, to use for accounting purposes. It makes it easy to keep track of many things, such as pay stubs, benefits, paid time off, and much more. Where I could see it being less useful is maybe for enterprise businesses with way more employees.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    • Ability to provide multiple customizable access roles from general end user to full system admin and anything in between
    • Powerful reporting system in the LMS to track a plethora of data points within the platform (user data, training information, transcript information)
    • Great options to customize the look and feel of your "home page" to best meet your company's needs and goals.
    • Ability to customize the transcript view for learners (i.e. when Completed training will move to their Archived transcript, what to do with Inactive training on transcripts)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    • New employee/contractor onboarding - all the documents are stored and easily accessible (the same goes for off-boarding).
    • A one-click option for syncing hours worked with payroll.
    • The option to run payroll on auto-pilot.
    • Ensuring I'm tax compliant with the states we have employees in.
    • Always having digital records of payroll runs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    • Sometimes finding the right answer to your support question can be a bit more difficult than it should be.
    • I would like to see more OSHA related courses.
    • At times, the administrative interface seems to need to be updated, but the tradeoff honestly might be the absolute rock-solid stability of the platform.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    • Digital compliance tools for remote teams
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    As long as pricing stays reasonable, we will likely stay with Cornerstone for at least one more contract renewal. It would be a large task to migrate all of our content to a new system. However, the LMS landscape is diversifying with new startups that are showing some real innovation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    Easy to use, easy to learn, lots of support during the learning process. There are a few parts of the system we don't use and I'm hesitant to begin using because other clients have said they're difficult and cumbersome (certifications) or outdated (libraries)
    Read full review
    Gusto
    Gusto is pretty user-friendly, and the website is easy to navigate overall. They also offer good, responsive customer support and have helpful articles available when needed. So far, I have not had any major issues with the platform and am overall very happy with it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    I haven't really had any major availability problems. The service is practically impeccable but it is true that at times, due to server and latency problems, the application has been slower. But these have been specific issues that have resolved themselves.
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    I haven't seen many issues at all with load times. Sometimes learning assignments will take longer then expected but it is still reasonable. They have taken great effort over the last couple years to speed things up like reports and search results so I expect that effort to continue in the coming year.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    Its always important to have support when you are facing problems and when you are the main admin of the organization. Cornerstone Support is very supporting when you have not found the answer in the help guide. its very useful to have a team support to guide you.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    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
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    we use also to admin all our training in person events and sessions. Its easy to admin this kind of trainings and automatize some processes we have. Also de user experience and the integration with other systems helps to the employees to use more. All modules integrated oriented to develop people is the principal reason to have CSOD. The training administration is very complete and allows to automate many processes.
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    The online modules are pretty good. You can access them at any time, which we have done. You learn a lot in the beginning, but having the ability to retake short lessons when you are working on those items was very helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    The implementation was pretty difficult. We felt they (Cornerstone) didn’t properly allocate the resources to complete our implementation in the timetable we wanted.

    For example, we worked on Workday and SSO integrations - work that we had specifically contracted for in advance. When we were ready to work on that project, they didn’t have the people ready to help us, so it took a lot longer than necessary. That was my biggest pain point.

    The implementation approach we went with was a self-led implementation. We would speak to the implementation manager once per week, and self-trained. We met with implementation manager to discuss issues, review things that we’d learned for 1 hour. We found that wasn’t enough. Other things would come up outside that one hour window that we couldn’t get answers to. We didn’t have anyone to ask about those things and we had to wait to ask during our weekly meeting.

    The advantage of the self-led implementation approach was that it was really inexpensive – significantly less than the implementation cost for the other systems that we looked at. I also liked that we could pace ourselves. There were however big roadblocks. We would have to make sure the right resources were available. We had an implementation/project manager with a lot of experience and felt that the person was knowledgeable but missed on a few things.

    In hindsight, I would still go with the self-led implementation, but knowing what I know now, I would ask for the integration person to be available more. I would work that into the contract. With single sign-on, we needed deep linking to build direct links through a Single Sign-On tool, e.g. when someone gets an email, it directs them to training. But it has to go through SSO to get them to the correct link. Deep linking wasn’t turned on in our system and they had to activate it. We encountered little things like that – sequencing pre-requisites which were problematic. We tried to troubleshoot ourselves.

    I recommend you consider contracting for some extra implementation hours and determine when they are going to be available. Work it into the contract that you have the ability to call tech support during implementation. In addition to weekly implementation meetings, they have technical webexes – 4 every week, but 2 didn’t apply to us – one as we were using SSO. The challenge is they were not always relevant – we had specific questions that didn’t fall into those categories
    Read full review
    Gusto
    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
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    The user experience is a lot better than using SumTotal as an admin CSOD makes working easy. Without having workarounds. Reporting is a lot better than both platforms. Reporting in CSOD is complex however easy to manage and create when you understand the data points collected
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    While I never actually got to the point of trying out ADP, I had several conversations with an ADP representative, and it seemed that they would be able to provide the same (if not less) level of service for a significantly higher price
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    It is important to be familiar with the terms and annual increases in licenses and other aspects of the contract. I recommend analyzing this from the beginning and the permanence is relevant because Cornerstone updates its modules and brings out new features that may allow you to leave a module to acquire another
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    It's a great product with some pieces that are set but many things that can be customized as needed for individual needs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    As I have said before, I have no doubt that the services of the Cornerstone sales people were very good. In particular, our salesperson spent a lot of time in contact with us to make the process go smoothly. Perhaps being a large company in some cases the times were slowed down but it is something normal to take into account.
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cornerstone OnDemand
    • We are in the process of trying to increase employee engagement through content expansion. We are in the early stages of this.
    • The Edge Import Tool, in conjunction with Reporting 2.0, has done a great job of helping to automate/semi-automate tasks for huge time savings.
    • Maintaining compliance. Achieved through dynamic/automated groups, assignments, communication, and reporting.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    • Time tracking + payroll calculations me 30-60 minutes every time I run payroll.
    • Integrated workers' comp, so I didn't have to find an outside carrier and get quotes—it's all taken care of in the same platform.
    • Improved employee experience with onboarding.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cornerstone Galaxy Screenshots

    Screenshot of A personalized, modern user experience and self-service capabilities to engage employees, ensure productivity, and centralize employee dataScreenshot of With Cornerstone Learning, go beyond compliance and training - truly develop an engaged and collaborative workforce.Screenshot of Cornerstone Recruiting takes care of all talent acquisition needs and provides candidates with an amazing experience.Screenshot of With Cornerstone Performance, benchmark your people's performance, align them with your strategy, and provide feedback that matters.Screenshot of Cornerstone HR offers a personalized, modern user experience and self-service capabilities to engage employees, ensure productivity, and centralize employee data.Screenshot of With Content Anytime, quickly deliver hundreds of eLearning courses covering key soft-skills such as communication, time management, leadership, teamwork, and emotional intelligence.

    Gusto Screenshots

    Screenshot of Gusto's automated payrollScreenshot of the time-off tracking interfaceScreenshot of the source of truth for HR data