Guideline headquartered in San Mateo offers a cloud-based 401k management software for businesses priced on a per employee basis.
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Human Interest
Score8.7 out of 10
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Human Interest headquartered in San Francisco offers their cloud-based 401k administation platform for employers featuring flexible plan design and a dedicated account manager.
$80
per month
Investors Vanguard
Score9.9 out of 10
N/A
N/A
N/A
Pricing
Guideline
Human Interest
Investors Vanguard
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$80 + $5 per eligible employee
per month
Complete
$180 + $7 per eligible employee
per month
Concierge
$280 + $9 per eligible employee
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Guideline
Human Interest
Investors Vanguard
Free Trial
No
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
$499 one-time fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Employees pay a recordkeeping services and custody-related asset-based fee of 0.05% to Human Interest Inc., an investment advisory fee of 0.01% to Human Interest Advisors, plus underlying fund fees. Asset-based fees are deducted monthly from the employee’s account according to the HII Terms of Service and HIA Terms of Service. All prices are exclusive of applicable taxes. If the plan sponsor elects to hire an external investment advisor, the plan sponsors will pay such advisor as agreed between the plan sponsor and advisor.
All prices are exclusive of applicable taxes and are subject to a $499 startup fee. See Terms of Service for additional details. Refer to humaninterest.com/payrolls for a list of integrated payroll providers. For non-rollover distributions, shipping and handling fees may apply to requests for check issuance and delivery.
Contact vendor for pricing information
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Guideline
Human Interest
Investors Vanguard
Considered Multiple Products
Guideline
Verified User
Chose Guideline
We went with Guideline as it was more affordable than alternatives. I believe this ended up being a terrible mistake. Invest in a stronger 401k partner. Human Interest was the other provider we were considering. I don't know if closing an account would have been as …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose Human Interest
Plain and simple, Human Interest is easy to use and did not compare to the competition.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Controller in Finance and Accounting at Stillwater Management, LLC (Financial Services, 11-50 employees)
Chose Human Interest
We were switching payroll and 401(k) at the same time. We evaluated both ADP and Paychex for both solutions and, in the end, opted for a different payroll provider and the 401(k) only made sense if payroll was through the same provider. Vanguard has a nice platform, and it was …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I believe that the only thing more broken than Guideline's product is their customer support. From initial contribution dates to the disastrous account closure that cost us personally thousands of dollars, this has been by far the worst SaaS and customer experience I've ever had in my career. If only 1) Guideline's product or 2) customer support had individually been broken, we would not have ended up in this state. I sent dozens and dozens of emails inquiring about oddities I was seeing in the product, but Guideline's reps only gave more conflicting and what ended up being grossly inaccurate feedback and status updates. I hope this review reaches anyone who is thinking of closing their Guideline account. Be extremely wary of what Guideline says and does in the account closure process and exact for detailed and exact timelines (you'll have to follow up many times...). For those of you who haven't yet selected a 401k provider, I'd recommend staying as far away from Guideline as possible.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Actually you guys serve a lot of variety of clients that we have. So everything from simple clients on your 316 and then you got your 338 platforms to some more of the complex clients that want to carve out their own funds. You guys integrate well with financial advisors if they wish to use that, but a lot of times it's, those aren't necessary if clients want to save money.
Vanguard is a tried and true investment platform. They hold a large portion of people's wealth in the United States, so they have experience and the reputation to go along with it. Their customer service via phone is top-of-the-line, which is helpful for any retirement or investing-related questions. However, their website and app sometimes lack functionality, and it can be difficult to navigate. For users looking for an easy-to-use platform for investing, Vanguard might not be it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
So as a user of it, since I was being paid by these companies, being able to manage my level of risk, being able to manage how much I was putting in from a percentage standpoint was always super easy. Even in a situation where my last company was acquired, we had to go through transferring over to different solutions was super useful. The team was always very open, honest about, Hey, what can we do? How can we work with them? And accommodating in that way. I think as a provider it was so easy to get team members set up. I never had any complaints. I never had anybody worry. I never had somebody come to me and go like, I don't understand Human Interest.
I feel that the customer support was abysmal - In my experience, we were consistently given conflicting advice and statuses as we closed our account with Guideline. Despite many, many follow-ups attempting to clarify our current status and remaining steps to close the account, Guideline's reps continued to provide, I believe, misleading and inaccurate steps. This cost us thousands and thousands of dollars given Guideline was not able to appropriately pull the funds before closing the account.
Guideline's integrations - I believe there is clearly a broken pipeline between Guideline and Rippling. In my experience, contributions were not funded as expected when we first opened the account, and when we closed our account, there was no communication between Guideline and Rippling. Guideline continued to expect contributions into perpetuity despite closure of the account
I feel that Guideline's product itself is just broken in critical places - most importantly, statuses of contributions were reflected incorrectly in the software (Guideline thought funds were transferred, but they were not and Guideline never attempted to pull the funds from our bank). This, combined with the terrible customer support, cost us thousands and thousands of dollars after we closed our account. There are many absolutely critical features that are broken -> to give just one of many examples, it was not possible to update the bank account information and no error message was thrown. I was told that our account ended up in an exceptional state given our last payroll contribution date and account closure, but these seem like very basic things a 401k provider has to get right if there are going to manage people's money.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The only thing I can think of right off hand is that there's a day delay when we look at our total. So for instance, we heard the other day that there was a rally in the markets on Friday and that everybody had supposedly recouped all of their losses from March. We actually had to wait the whole weekend until Monday to log in to actually see what those were. And I know real time is really, really hard, but anytime we could get something faster, that would probably be my only.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's really easy to get, well, first of all, they get enrolled automatically so they get added to the platform automatically. They get removed from the platform automatically and everything is really easy to understand for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience. And that's actually a lot of our employees have never had a retirement benefit before. They don't know anything about it. They really don't understand how it works. There's also a little bit of a fear factor with deducting money from their paycheck to be able to contribute to this. And so how easy it is for them to get it set up and then the information that Human Interest gives them about what the benefit is, how it works, all that, it's great
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The few questions that we've had have been answered quickly and helpfully. The implementation was a breeze and the onboarding contacts were really helpful. There was some stuff I had to learn about 401(k)s in making the decision to implement Guideline, but the Guideline team was helpful in pointing me in the right direction.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
So we had a designated rep and he was fantastic. I don't remember his name at the moment, but he was almost immediately responsive. And you guys also partnered with us for client knowledge webinars and he was great. Great at that too.
A key insight from our implementation of Human Interest is that early coordination across finance, HR, and leadership is critical. The platform itself is straightforward, but ensuring payroll integration, compliance documentation, and employee education are aligned from the start makes the rollout smoother and increases adoption. Another insight is that employees respond best when given clear, simple communication about how to enroll and the benefits of participation—this minimizes confusion and builds trust in the program. Finally, dedicating time up front to review compliance and reporting features helps avoid issues later and gives leadership confidence in the plan’s long-term stability.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
We selected Guideline due to their relationship with Gusto, our payroll service. However, we did review alternative options for our 401k program and found them very competitive as to price and quality. We were thinking about going with one of the bigger companies like Schwab, E*TRADE, Ally, etc., but found Guideline to be the best choice for us based on price and ease of use.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Insperity was horrible. Expensive, hidden fees at every corner, not communicative. They messed up my plan and didn't include the requested Safe Harbor provision and I had to pay the piper for their mistake. Nothing Insperity did was customer first, fiduciary, or even compliant. I have had the exact opposite experience with Human Interest and they cleaned up Insperity's mess without any complaints and dealt with Insperity dragging their feet on the conversion over a $1k offboarding fee I refused to pay after they screwed up my plan
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I thought I would need Vanguard Predictive Planning, but the robot-investor style tool like that didn't fit my current needs. I have availability to learn and explore so I took the plunge to handle it myself without predictive planning in place. I do review quarterly, but I didn't need a separate tool for that.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's been super positive because everyone wants payroll to be streamlined and not have to go into different systems. And I solved at Coastal, our platform is fully integrated with Human Interest and there's no fee to the customer for that. So that's definitely the best.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
