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
Harvest
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Harvest is used to track time, gain insights from past projects, and get paid for work. Dedicated apps and integrations with popular tools like Asana and Slack allow Harvest to fit into a team’s workflow.
A selection of visual reports are offered to keep projects running smoothly and an organization's team supported. Harvest also helps to turn a team’s tracked time and expenses into professional nvoices and collect payment quickly with integrated online payments.
$13.75
per month per seat
Pricing
Gusto
Harvest
Editions & Modules
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
Harvest Pro
$13.75
per month per seat
Harvest Premium
$17.50
per month per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Gusto
Harvest
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
20% discount for annual billing on Pro and Premium plans.
Gusto is easier to use, more secure, and the mobile app offers the best user experience. The ability to use a Spending Account Card along with a Rainy Day Fund is a unique feature and enables staff to get paid and use their money faster in a pinch. It has a better UI overall.
Compared to Intuit (the only other tool I've used that is similar to Gusto), Gusto is much more fun and easy to use. It is also more affordable. Sometimes it doesn't provide as much detail, but that's something I don't care too much about as a young professional. For my …
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 …
Gusto is a great fit for small teams and startups that want a simple, reliable way to run payroll, manage tax filings, and give CPAs access without constant micromanagement. It’s especially useful for founders who need something that “just works.” The human support has been excellent—especially when forwarding confusing IRS mail. That said, it’s a bit less intuitive when it comes to benefits and compliance for fully remote companies. For example, labor law poster distribution isn’t streamlined for digital teams, and setting up benefits felt more complex than it needed to be. Still, I’d recommend Gusto to any startup looking to get payroll right from day one.
Harvest is ideally suited for a variety of scenarios, particularly in the realms of freelance or consulting work, where accurate hour tracking for billing is crucial. It excels in small to medium businesses managing team projects, allowing for effective resource allocation and time management across multiple concurrent projects. For budgeting and forecasting, Harvest provides valuable data, aiding in accurately estimating the duration and cost of future projects based on past data. It's also highly beneficial for remote or distributed teams, thanks to its cloud-based platform that facilitates seamless coordination. Additionally, its detailed reporting features enhance client transparency, fostering trust through clear communication of time spent on projects. However, Harvest may be less suitable for larger enterprises with complex integration needs or specialized industries requiring more niche features. Small startups or individuals on tight budgets might find the cost challenging, especially if they don't fully utilize all its features. Lastly, for those needing only basic time tracking, simpler or free tools might be more appropriate, making Harvest an unnecessary expenditure for basic needs.
Gusto really kills it on the simplicity. The app and website are very clear and straightforward.
Gusto also does a great job at being easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and logically posed.
Gusto communicates very clearly and provides just the right amount of communication.
Gusto makes the onboarding process very easy. I recently started at a new company and the process of filling out the necessary documents, filling out forms, and getting my benefit information input was soooooo easy!
Offers several options on using the tool, for example, you can use the app on your phone, the app for desktop, or simply have the website open.
The timer integrates with other platforms. For example, our team uses Asana as our project management tool. Now, in real-time, I can know which projects my team is working on and whether we're implementing good time management strategies to meet our goals.
The summary break downs are wonderful! You can view an individual's hours as well as project hours. There are even notifications you could receive when your team is getting close to reaching the allotted time for a client's project.
Adding in previous time manually could be more accessible.
Notifications for when employees manually change hours.
We should allow 1099 users to use the mobile app instead of restricting them to the website, especially since they can just log into the full website on their mobile device.
I’m still trying to figure out how tasks best associate to a specific project. There’s a couple different places to edit that and I’m a little confused as to best practice.
Does not integrate into basecamp which is our project management system
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.
The overall platform and its speed of response are amazing. I would recommend this to any other business owner for ease of use and reliability. Email reminders are great if I’m super busy and have forgotten a few tasks. The price point compared to local payroll service is hands down a huge win.
Again, just a minor compatibility issues using with other platforms such as Basecamp, but it does do everything promised. The only downfall we have found is having to create a job in both platforms and then connecting them later vs being able to create a project once and having them automatically connect.
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.
They're very responsive and do their best to answer whatever questions we've had. Sometimes, the question or request we've made is for a feature that doesn't yet exist, however in most cases those features have been built later and did eventually address our need.
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
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.
Harvest is significantly better than Jira. I think Jira's is not originally intended to be used as a time logging/management system, but we had been previously using it as that. It was much clunkier, and many employees had a difficult time using it as a user interface goes. Harvest is much more user friendly and has simplified the daily time-logging process for everyone in our office
For me, it is hard to quantify payroll software as having an ROI. It does save quite a bit of time per pay period, so perhaps we could assign a theoretical number to an employee taking that time. I'd say, at the least, it saves 30-60 minutes a pay period compared to a more difficult-to-use payroll software.
