Dayforce is a people platform that simplifies HR operations. As a unified HCMS, it delivers HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management, talent, and analytics—helping organizations boost productivity, stay compliant, and make smarter decisions with embedded intelligence and personalized experiences.
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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
Paylocity
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Paylocity provides 24/7 access to your online payroll and human resource data management. Paylocity offers highly customizable payroll functionality, as well as HR, benefits administration, and time and talent management programs.
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Pricing
Dayforce
Gusto
Paylocity
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
Dayforce
Gusto
Paylocity
Free Trial
No
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
We migrated from ADP Workforce Now; the data was messy and not linked. All their modules were independent, so utilizing their talent modules was cumbersome and ultimately the performance module we had activated in the system was not utilized. I was a admin of Paylocity prior to …
Having Payroll, HR, Time, and Benefits all in a single application with Dayforce has significantly improved efficiency and accuracy. Unlike other solutions with third-party integrations, Dayforce eliminates data silos, reduces errors, and saves time by streamlining processes, …
In past systems, including ones that Ceridian offered themselves, I always hated exporting data from a timesheet system to import into a payroll system and then exporting again from that payroll system to a payment system to commit. You have scattered reports in each system …
While again, the user experience isn't perfect, the fact that employees and HR can manage all HR-related tasks in one spot, not having to switch between applications, is huge. It keeps our operations streamlined and ensures that no one is confused when it comes to payroll, PTO, …
The only difference that I have seen is that I no longer have to import the timesheets, although we do still import from a third party for one particular specialized group.
End users not adopting the product. Time is money in our industry and our employee base knows it. It is extremely important to reduce the effort and time required.
It's great having everything in one place, but we do have to have excellent coordination to avoid stepping on each other's toes. For example, backdating changes on the HR side has real-time consequences on the payroll side. It's wonderful - just be careful that all users are …
Verified User
Professional
Chose Dayforce
Increased HR operational efficiency. A simplified experience for managers and employees as well, since they can learn one system and get used to it for several different purposes.
The one platform has been instrumental in decreasing the time it takes for us to process our payroll on a biweekly basis. Less errors and typos have occurred, issues such as integration "glitches" are a thing of the past. We would not want to leave a single platform product …
Oh my - I LOVE having the single application for payroll. No more batch processing, no more mainframes, no duplicate deductions from benefits or incorrect loading of timesheet information. It's great for accuracy and timeliness and my sanity!
We've experienced a significant impact in Payroll in regards to being able to pay employees in real-time rather than having to wait for the end of the pay period to import data from a different system. We can process, audit and correct payroll at any time during the pay period …
Gusto
Verified User
Vice-President
Chose Gusto
In my opinion, Gusto cannot compare to Paylocity in terms of service or premiums.
Verified User
Employee
Chose Gusto
I've used both Workday and Paylocity for years and they don't even compare. Between the mobile app and the website, everything feels seamless, well thought out, and easy to navigate. I'm so used to the frustration of navigating these apps, even after years of working with them. …
UKG is just annoying and hard to navigate. Paylocity is more similar to Gusto but just not quite as user friendly - thought Paylocity DOES do Payroll processing a bit earlier. Workday is the most frustrating site in the world.
Dayforce was a little glitchy, it had more functions that I rarely used/didn't need. It also was harder to navigate. I was always a little unsure if my inputs when.
Gusto is much easier to navigate, find what you are looking for, and much more appealing to the eyes. Once you know Paylocity it is fine but Gusto has a lower learning curve.
Gusto is the easiest to use out of all the payroll programs that I have tried out at various companies. Manually entering time is less complicated and requires less time on gusto than on the others.
I could not understand the logic of these platforms and found myself constantly using the help articles, which were also not that helpful. They were very confusing, and I was often not sure if the things I had been trying to do were actually completed.
Our CEO selected Gusto after having some awful experiences with other payroll products. SO MUCH TIME was spent checking their numbers, fixing mistakes, sending info to employees because employees couldn't access things... ugh. Gusto has been a dream.
Comparable prices are overall with other payroll service companies. I can't do all the complicated payrolls like a few others, but overall good to work with 90% of our clients.
Gusto generally wins on price compared to its competitors. Some organizations nickel-and-dime on billing with headcount, states filed, etc. while Gusto's bills are very easy to calculate and understand. Competitors generally will handle state registrations that Gusto won't do, …
While Dayforce is more robust than Gusto in some ways, Gusto is a nicer overall experience. We all enjoy using the product. It was thoughtfully designed and that shows in the way the information is organized. It gives our employees a central place to find the data they need, …
I love Xero, but the payroll product offered a couple of years ago was woefully inadequate. Xero has made great strides in improving their payroll product but I still prefer Gusto for small business payroll processing.
The other payroll products I have worked with, like ADP and …
This is much better than Paycom, and much simpler than Dayforce. Paylocity does have some limitations, and as we grow bigger we may run into some issues with it. For now, it works well. Some things don't make sense but I eventually figure it out. We will see scalable it is and …
Gusto is horrible, and Paylocity blows it out of the water. Paycom and Paycor and comparable, but for us it came down to the price, and the relationship that we established with our account manager and sales representative. Mike Vezzoli was excellent and was incredibly genuine …
I think Paylocity is robust. While it still has some kinks to iron out, it is building out over time nicely. ADP is a really nice system, but a bit dated. PeopleAdmin requires an immense amount of time to build ones system. BambooHR and Gusto aren't as robust in my opinion.
ADP and Gusto, those are all my least favorite products. As it relates to continuity and streamlining of different modules, some of them do not operate the best, in my opinion from my previous experience. I don't know what they're doing now because I've been with Paylocity for …
Patriot Software, ADP and ADP Run, Paychex, Gusto, Sure Payroll. When it comes to the Batch creation and Processing, Paylocity is great. And when it comes to customer service and reachability, Paylocity is Best of Class! Sometimes, the User Experience and navigation is hard for …
Paylocity is much more user friendly than Dayforce BY FAR. Reporting is way easier, payroll is so much faster and easier. Dayforce is also more expensive. Dayforce felt like you need to be a rocket scientist in order to figure out how to do anything or add a new module. …
Rippling and Paycor were close contenders when we evaluated a new tool, but ultimately, I feel confident we made the right choice in selecting Paylocity for our growing business. We had about 115 employees when we migrated, and we have 150+ today across 4 countries, and the …
Paylocity is better organized and way more robust.
Verified User
Manager
Chose Paylocity
very Compatible but both of the other companies can accommodate European & Asian Countries. Their modules also talk to each other. and their systems track arrearages for benefit deductions missed while out on LOA and tracks it on the employee record.
Products have a lot of the same functions, so I believe the key is to pick a product and stick with it - commit to learning how it functions, and train employees to do the same. Flip-flopping between products is the worst you can do.
We like Paylocity best. Overall we've found Paylocity's system to be more intuitive, flexible and full featured than some of these other systems. We also like their high level of support Paylocity provides, and proactive publishing of guidance when rules change around …
Paylocity was much cheaper and appeared to have a much more streamlined approach compared to these other systems. I actually was not at the organization during the Paylocity decision making process, but our major concern was cost and ease of use and Paylocity has not …
Paylocity stacks up a lot higher than these two platforms. We had to use two platforms and as we made the shift to Paylocity we now get everything in one place. We are slowly Integrating all aspects of the organization onto Paylocity, and hope to continue to adapt and utilize …
Those are the companies I've used in the past. I wasn't working at CNOB when Paylocity was chosen. But Paylocity is 1000 times superior to the two programs I used in the past! There are no secret codes for deductions or earnings; payroll registers are easy to read, and it's …
I think Dayforce is a great option for a large and/or Global organization. I do not think it would be the best fit for a very small company or business. It really shines for enterprise organizations with multi-locations. While a small business could use it, I would say it has too many bells and whistles that might feel overwhelming to a smaller organization.
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.
As a medium sized restaurant group, I think Paylocity has been really helpful in allowing us to streamline some of our processes. We are very seasonal and do a ton of onboarding and offboarding and Paylocity has made that easier. It also has great integration options and allowed us to eliminate systems we had before for a more all-in-one approach. With that said, there is always room for improvement and I think the biggest issue is the turn around time for some items, especially tax return amendments.
Payroll is made pretty easy. I love that we have the ability to log into payroll, we just upload the information from commissions, things like that where there are exceptions to a regular payroll run. It may make it very easy to do that, just a quick upload. Additionally, when we're in the payroll grid, it gives us the ability to just make quick changes to people's pay or their tax schedule, tax withholdings, things like that without having to go through a lot of different screens. It's just very easy to access just for the click of a button. Love that.
We talked about performance reviews, talked about payroll with benefits administration, it allows us to utilize EDI feeds with our benefit vendors so it creates a seamless, but we just enter the information into Paylocity and then it seamlessly provides that information to our vendors. That's been really helpful. And adjusting benefits is also very easy within Paylocity. I love the recent edition of compensation analysis information, so I'm able to go into the compensation module and look for jobs that are similar to a job title at our company. I can enter the job description, I give them what state that the person or the job is in, and it pops out compensation data. It gives me different options, so titles that might be similar. So if there's not something that's an exact fit, I'm able to find something really, really close. It's been a huge upgrade because before that I was having to use a different vendor and paying $400 per job and now it's significantly less expensive to Paylocity and I'm still getting great quality data. It's been very helpful.
There have been a few instances of users being locked out of Ceridian due to recent upgrades. Not ideal when an employee wants to see their paystub and is suddenly have login issues.
Not the best for when an employee is transferred to another country as their employee number is locked to their SIN or SSN. And, we are required to create a new user record with a new employee number for the new country.
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.
I'd like to see a forum in which users could discuss the platform, raise both questions and concerns. I feel that changes are done without enough input from users.
Improving hold time recently with customer service.
Accuracy of new 'graphic' payroll report - the new report is not complete when payroll is done, so it is unusable from my perspective. I rely on the preprocess payroll register. This is one of those 'improvements' that have not been positive in my experience.
We are highly invested in Ceridian's Dayforce product. It give us the flexibility and scaling that our growing company needs. Its potential reaches beyond the basic HR functions to the decision making that our Management Team needs. Ceridian is always innovating the employee and employee experiences to offer cutting edge options.
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.
There are several technical issues we have experienced this past year with the employee onboarding process that we are still waiting to have resolved. Overall our experience with Paylocity has been positive, and we love how user-friendly and easy to navigate the system is. It has made all of our HR processes much more streamlined and efficient.
I think it's very usable for the employee. I don't think it is as easy for the HR/PR admins - especially if there is an issue. There are so many setup screens that need to be looked at to try to figure out why payroll isn't calculating properly, hours aren't feeding over correctly, or benefits are not calculating properly. For the most part, they can't do their own troubleshooting. The same is true for the managers. Our managers find it cumbersome to go into make any schedule changes after the schedules have been generated.
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!
I simply love Paylocity! We have run into some issues, but no company is going to be perfect. The flow of the modules is really nice, no double entry of data. The Time & Labor flows into Payroll nicely and Benefits flows into the employees Pay Setup which goes onto the employees paycheck with little to no issues.
Dayforce's high availability ensures that our HR processes are supported around the clock, which is critical for a global organization like ours. The platform is cloud-based, offering reliable access from any location at any time, allowing our employees, managers, and HR teams to stay connected regardless of time zones or geographic locations. This level of availability ensures that payroll processing, employee self-service, and real-time data access continue uninterrupted, even during peak periods or unforeseen disruptions. The system’s robust infrastructure minimizes downtime, which is vital for operations that span multiple regions. Additionally, having a centralized platform that’s always available helps keep our teams aligned, ensures compliance, and facilitates timely decision-making across all our locations.
Over the last 3 years, we've only had one major service issue that rendered Airbase unusable for us for about 24 hours. That said, they navigated the SVB bank crisis very well and made sure funds were available during that time.
We haven't noticed any slow-down due to the integration of Dayforce WFM with our Ceridian HPL products (HRIS and Payroll). The new HTML view of the timesheets don't load as quickly as the old Silverlight view - however, we have gotten used to the change.
We had some minor hiccups throughout the year but they have all been fixable. Paylocity integrates well with our 401k provider, Principal, and our benefits, OneDigital. It makes it simple to house everything and have it all connected. It doesn't slow anything down to have Principal integrated. It makes it more efficient
Most of the time the support is great; it's not always super efficient but I always get the help I need. Occasionally it takes a lot longer than we had hoped or get conflicting responses. We had one ticket recently where we were told we would have to pay the service team to support us on the project and then another person called the next day with the solution to our query and was able to find a solution easily. Generally, though, the response is great and they either walk me though how to do something via a Zoom Meeting or they email step-by-step instructions on how to do it and say if I have questions we can set up a meeting to discuss further.
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.
It is very hard to get answers to your questions, you cannot speak to someone without days of requesting assistance or answers and then eventually can get a call back and then it is usually resolved fairly quickly. But NOT easy to get that help.
I didn't have in-person training, but I'm sure it was just as great as any other training/assistance Paylocity provides. Paylocity customer service is always available. You never have to be on hold and their answers are always accurate and timely. Documents in the help section are helpful as well. My in-person training was conducted y one of our employees who was involved in the initial set-up and training of all employees. She was excellent.
The courses are very interactive and informative. There are classes for every topic, which allows you to make the most of the system. There are also some "go at your own pace" course which is a great option for a busy schedule.
Our rep was very thorough and made sure we fully understood the software before turning us loose alone. Paylocity was very good to do periodic check ins to ensure we understood the features and answered any questions we had. The training reps are very well trained and are very patient with clients.
Have a strong internal team. Communicate with your implementation team - they are there to make it work for you. Take the time to really think about how you want the system to work for you - in some cases, you may need to rethink your own business practices to see if you are working harder when the system could do it for you
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 bumpy and Paylocity team not always available for next steps and/or questions. I feel like Paylocity could have done a better job in their fact finding as far as what we were currently doing, our payroll policies and needs, etc. so that we would have run into less issues as we moved forward.
I can't speak much to how it would be if we had all of these features separately since I started with Dayforce all being integrated and have no other experience, but having it all in one place has made the completion of all of these HR tasks seamless. We can direct all of our energies into the same system, and it makes it easier to field employee inquiries and to troubleshoot when we need to
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.
ADP was very similar to the way Paylocity is, but I seem to favor Paylocity to be honest. Miter was VERY difficult to use and set up. I wouldn't ever consider using that software ever again. I didn't like a lot of aspect Miter had to offer either. Paylocity would always be my choice.
Overall, we are extremely happy with the Dayforce WFM module. Our biggest pain point is concerning the twice annual software upgrades - which is the only reason I haven't rated them as a '10'. Because every customer is configured differently, the upgrades can sometimes have adverse effects on our current configured policies/rules. And although they roll-out the upgraded version in a test environment several weeks before go-live, not all testing is accurate in that environment. Some issues do not present themselves until you are working with live punches.
We have gone from a medium sized company to a larger company with no issues whatsoever with Paylocity being able to keep up or do what we need it to do for the size of our needs. In fact, it does more than we even use at this juncture
Some are knowledgable others not as much and sometimes instead of helping you fix the issue will just give you some directions and expect you to try to figure it out yourself. Also, when your Account Manager needs to escliate the issue to another group, it can take a long time for them to get to your issue and there's no commuication.
Performance Reviews/Comp used to be handled via paper and tracking/reporting was a nightmare - having all of that in the system is so much more efficient and provides huge ROI
Our organization used to have big problems with hiring managers going rogue and hiring positions that aren't approved by Finance - we built an approval workflow in the system that triggers before any req is approved which has completely solved this problem
Dayforce Wallet has been a huge perk for our employees - it's heavily used and our crew love it
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.
Paylocity has helped us with recruitment by streamlining the process and making it efficient. It is saving me time.
Paylocity has also helped us with compensation so we can create a fair and robust compensation plan.
I also like using the data insights feature, which helps me keep track of over time, payroll and benefits costs, and retention numbers. This also saves me time as it is all in one place.
