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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ellucian Banner

    Score5.2 out of 10
    N/AEllucian offers Banner educational ERP, including its student management system emphasizing control and reporting of process-oriented facets of education such as grading and attendance.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
    Ellucian BannerGusto
    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
    Ellucian BannerGusto
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Ellucian BannerGusto
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Ellucian Banner and Gusto
    Feature
    Ellucian Banner
    8.5
    8 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Gusto
    -
    Ratings
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.98 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Registration Management8.97 Ratings00 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting8.94 Ratings00 Ratings
    Roster Management8.56 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Customization8.16 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service8.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Student Data Security8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community Support8.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Class Scheduling8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting9.27 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance Support8.96 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application7.25 Ratings00 Ratings
    Payroll Management
    Comparison of Payroll Management features of Ellucian Banner and Gusto
    Feature
    Ellucian Banner
    -
    Ratings
    Gusto
    9.1
    611 Ratings
    10% 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
    Ellucian BannerGusto
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Patriot Payroll
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    APS
    Score5.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    ADP Streamline Payroll
    Score6.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ellucian BannerGusto
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.4
    (21 ratings)
    9.1
    (633 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (14 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.4
    (457 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    4.4
    (27 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ellucian BannerGusto
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ellucian
    As a SIS, Banner Pages is the full meal deal. There are multiple modules that integrate out of the box. Because Banner is all I've ever used as a SIS, I can't contrast it with another program. I can say, it gets the job done for us. I will also say that a tremendous amount of time goes into strategizing how to get new functions to work for us and there always seems to be some catch that requires even more work. In general, the university has been hesitant to build too many modifications into Banner because they take a lot of time to maintain. Inevitably, a new update (of which there are MANY for Banner) will break stuff that isn't "vanilla." This is unfortunate because we've had some great ideas for how to make Banner better for us, but also understandable. If you're looking for a highly modular system, this isn't it. Banner has lots of components, but the components work the way they work and that's that. Also, don't expect very quick responses to bugs or glitches. If the bug is major, yes, it will be addressed. But, little function issues seem to be regularly overlooked.
    Incentivized
    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
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    Pros
    Ellucian
    • I think it's great to use if you are tracking grades for certain classes, especially if you'd like to see how students do, comparing midterm to final grades. If you have the permissions, you can see both.
    • It's also good to track students individually. You can look up a certain semester, and see how they did in that particular time frame, but you can also see their cumulative gpa, or even look up their entire course history.
    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
    Ellucian
    • One thing I miss from the previous version of Ellucian Banner, is the control + page down. I struggle with alt + page down.
    • I love the Ellucian Banner favorites; however, it is a little difficult to navigate.
    • I can honestly only think of 2 things that could be improved. I use Ellucian Banner daily.
    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
    Ellucian
    We have no reason not to renew with Ellucian - we are in deep with the ecosystem, and have Ellucian providing us with information technology support. If anything, should the opportunity arise, we'd probably consider adding a different ellucian tools into the suite of applications we already have on board.
    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
    Ellucian
    You definitely have to learn it before it becomes easy to use. It's better than it was, but it's still not entirely intuitive. You can't just look at it and play around to figure out how it works
    Incentivized
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    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
    Ellucian
    It's pretty much up all the time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Ellucian
    Has gotten much better due to new hardware.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Ellucian
    Our department generally does not contact the support center for Banner but the IT department does. That being said, in the seven years that I have been here, I have not once needed to contact the support center; we have had no glitches on Banner's side that needed to be addressed.
    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
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    Implementation Rating
    Ellucian
    very satisfied, along with the IT staff and ellucian support the upgrades do very well and have minimum down time.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Ellucian
    PeopleSoft was more user-friendly. It also provided the ability to save and bookmark queries. PeopleSoft will allow users to use common names to search for queries. Overall, it seemed much more current than Banner. PeopleSoft provided enrollment data for specific sections which allowed one to spot trends of enrollment in a given class.
    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
    Scalability
    Ellucian
    being able to scale with hardware was easy and not cumbersome. We were allowed to user virtual machines which made things very scalable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Gusto
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Ellucian
    • There is positive ROI on the product overall. It had reduced or allowed us to focus our staff members on something which is very use and it does the job in the background.
    • The application has supported in a lot of ways in saving resources and utilizing them in very productive & efficient manner
    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

    Gusto Screenshots

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