Gusto vs. HiBob vs. TriNet

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.

Incentivized

HiBob is the most customizable, scaleable and flexible HR platform on the market today. It is ideal for medium and large organizations with operations across the globe while also being a great option for smaller organizations. The modularization of the platform allows each customer to select the elements that are most suited to their needs, while the base "Core" system has a huge amount of functionality and integration options right out of the box. In my opinion, there is no platform on the market that competes with HiBob's easy to use interface, control abilities and general functionality. All too often these days, systems are built on poor architechture with fancy packaging. HiBob delivers a system that is well built and looks great too!

TriNet is extremely knowledgeable and able to meet a wide variety of needs, such as handling K-1 employees and employees in Hawaii. It's challenging in the sense that pulling reports can result in blocks/barriers based on the number of employees one has.

Incentivized

• 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!

Incentivized

• Provides usable data via feedback surveys for managers and operations team to take quick action on.
• It helps us identify our Talent Groups and connect data to their satisfaction to prevent turnover.
• Simplifies and syncs every day HR tasks, saving loads of time and effort.

• Responds quickly and effectively to inquiries through both the chat or phone options.
• Customizes the payroll approval process to meet our needs.
• Offers a forum that allows us to connect with other small businesses in the TriNet network to crowdsource recommendations for a range of business issues.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• I'd like to be able to have flexibility in org charts so that there are options for matrix, flat. I'd also like a printable version of the org chart AND one where names were hidden so it could be shared with individuals outside the organization.
• In the Performance Reviews I would love to see a 9-box option including corresponding questions so we could plot individuals in the 9-box matrix.
• It would be ideal if, before a performance review period, managers were given the opportunity to choose 3-4 people they would want to include in a Peer Review of their employees AND where the system would flag if one person was being asked to do more than 2 Peer Reviews.

Incentivized

• Time Clock More User Friendly
• On Staff Admin ability to assist employees is slightly less than I'd like. I don't like being told to have the employee contact for platform issues. I'd like to advocate more for my employees.
• Expense Reimbursement better integrated with the payroll functionality.

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.

We will without a doubt be continuing to use Hibob, it is convenient, being engaged with and great value for money. A one stop shop for all things HR related to keep policies and safe financial information has been so beneficial to the business meaning less risk to GDPR breaches and somewhere for employees to refer back to in future has been invaluable

Incentivized

This is one stop shopping perse. They provide tools for Benefits and 401k. There reports are easy to read and the support given from Trinet support is awesome. Having everything in one place is best then having multiple places for things. Why change if things are working well? All the information is all there when needed.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It's a solid HRIS system, it's user friendly to employees and employers, but they've changed the user interface 2 times now in the last 2.5 years, so having to find where certain things are after the change can be tedious

The platform is highly intuitive and user-friendly, making it easy to navigate for both admins and employees when handling everyday tasks like payroll processing, benefits enrollment, and HR reporting. The flexibility in HR and payroll features does not require a need for extensive training. The mobile app stands out as amazing, with a great interface that enables quick access to employee related items

Incentivized

Yes they are always there when we need them. Fast response time too.

Incentivized

We had an issue with application errors - took TriNet 5 months to fix it, mean while we had someone manually tracking and keeping up with many requests and questions about the application error which affected time off. When we were all registering for Benefits during open enrollment there were lots of bugs that caused issues with registering for benefits or being able to see what benefits were available

Incentivized

Yes the system is fast and easy to use.

Incentivized

For the most part pages load quickly. Working for a software company we understand performance is everything, even a few seconds delay can feel like a lifetime, that being said, we ran into a few times where pages didn't load, information didn't load correctly, and an influx in users (like open enrollment) cause things to slow down

Incentivized

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

A lot of support is self-service from the users themselves, via a guide hosted on HiBob's website. I have found the guide helpful 10% of the time when I needed support. The support team is quite quick to reply, but not everyone is helpful unfortunately, and in many cases a lot of emails, messages and back and forth were needed to get to the bottom of an issue. When I pointed out that a video call would be a quicker way to tell people "this is how it's done", I was told that it's not the way they deliver support. I had to beg our account managers for a video chat with some skilled users to show me how to do certain things that (a) were nowhere to be found on the guide, and (b) the support team wasn't able to solve. Additionally, to find solutions, I was pointed to a forum where other users exchange tips on how they managed to solve problems - again, not really helpful as I would like to know this from Bob's team themselves since we're paying for the product, and I shouldn't rely on other users to tell me how they managed their way around a problem

Incentivized

The support overall is very good. There seems to be a good number of customer support staff and they are knowledgeable and pleasant to deal with and it almost all cases are able to resolve the question or issue very quickly. My only complaint would be having to wait in some cases as I'm based in the UK and the correct department may not be open 24 hours.

Incentivized

it's been awhile, but I recall them being helpful. I got through a lot of it and when I needed help, they can walk me through it over the phone. It's also pretty user friendly in general at a platform. I don't really know what else to type, but they came and helped me in person and also when there was something new, they came and talked to me. They have not done that since with the new model that I hate

Incentivized

It was fast and easy to learn with the trainer. Their staff was great to work with.

Incentivized

Since this was already implemented. I have another employee briefly train me. Then Trinet rep gave me some training as needed for things that came up. For one payroll preview report I figured it could be done, but I had asked the rep to be sure. One important training was when there was an employee leaving the company.

Incentivized

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

I really enjoyed the implementation being involved in a key piece of change management int he business was really exciting

Incentivized

not applicable as I implementation was done 5 years ago and have no recollection of the details of the process. Above it says to skip question if not involved in the process but it will not allow me to skip it as it states explanation requitred thus making this process extremely frustrating.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Hibob was ultimately more flexible and offered a strong customer support network which is why we selected it over others. It's also well-priced and while not "cheap", it was more inexpensive than other larger systems. Their sales team was so supportive the entire time and as we went into the implementation phase (which only took us 12 weeks for 1,000 employees!), it was clear that the support continued. Our implementation specialist was so incredibly helpful and while we worked at our own pace, we were still able to roll it out in 3 months. Having worked on a Workday Implementation before, I was blown away by how quickly we got this done. It's also great that as we are using the product, we can continuously make adjustments on our own and tweak it as the business changes. Workday is so complicated that it required a full-time team to work on it. It's just two of us overseeing the system and we are able to run things smoothly on our own! Of course, it's great having the support of our Account Manager when we get stuck.

Incentivized

I liked Rippling's software better than TriNet. However, the pricing on employee benefits was through the roof, and they don't offer many selections/options. If it was a software only decision, I would go with Rippling (the 2.0 version of Zenefits which TriNet offers). However, the software isn't a major need, compared to smooth payroll and benefits that I get from TriNet (and great service). I'm happy at TriNet long term as long as the health insurance rates aren't exhorbinant.

Incentivized

I was not part of the process

Incentivized

It is easy to use across the board for all departments in the company.

Incentivized

We are a small company, do we use it across departments and sites? Yes, we are all remote working, so there are as many sites as there are people. We also have our entire staff using TriNet, so every department from Accounting, Admin, HR, Development, QA, and Management are all using this. Can't say for sure how great the scalability is as we are only about 30 employees

Incentivized

Not sure it was used or not as the implementation was completed before I started working for the company

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• We were paying a third-party HR organization ~100K per year and were able to cut this from our budget by turning on the connections between our ATS, Hibob, and our payroll vendors.
• We are using the integration between CoMeet ATS, and it autogenerates the employee onboarding, creating a seamless experience for the employees. They used to have to reenter their data in 5 separate systems, now, it's all started in CoMeet, and upon hire, the onboarding data is collected in Hibob and distributed into all other connected systems.
• When changing employment status, the automation manages system access automatically. (But in cases where we need to override the information for special cases, we still have the option without "breaking" the API connections).

Incentivized

• We have saved money on benefits and been able to broaden benefit options
• It has improved our expense tracking processes
• It has made tracking time off so much easier for both employees and management
• It has kept us in compliance
• It has made employee reimbursement much easier

Incentivized