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
HRdirect Smart Apps
Score 7.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
HRdirect Smart Apps is an HR Management software solution from HRdirect, a a division of ComplyRight, Inc., dedicated to developing and delivering “Solutions for Smart Employers” since 1985. The vendor says HRdirect supports business managers at more than 500,000 locations with essential employee management and compliance tasks. HRdirect Smart Apps aims to help users work efficiently and affordably. The vendor's goal is to simplify complex processes and free employers from compliance…
N/A
Pricing
Gusto
HRdirect Smart Apps
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Gusto
HRdirect Smart Apps
Free Trial
Yes
No
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.
NO PER EMPLOYEE PRICING, NO BUNDLED FEATURES. JUST $60 A YEAR PER APP.
Simple Pricing, No Matter How You Slice It
Only use the Smart Apps that best fit your unique needs and pay the same, low price for each one: just $60 a year. It's easy to add more at any time, too - either as your needs change or as our solutions expand.
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.
UPDATE 3/20/2020: I initially gave HRDirect a "0" recommendation due to all the issues we had with the PTO Module. However, since purchasing the Harassment Training Module ($90), this product is the best value for the money and puts us in compliance with mandated requirements. It is easy to use and well-presented. At this point in time, with the issues and frustration level of all our employees, managers, and payroll department, it would be difficult for me to recommend this app as suitable in any scenario. However, should HRdirect fix the issues and get the app to perform as it was originally designed, it would be a great product for a small to medium company that has limited resources yet wants a good product for the money. In our experience, the new hire portal did not appear to be functioning properly; our new hires were not able to access the blank documents. They could see them but not open them (PDFs).
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!
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.
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.
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.
Due to the fact that we were patient for more than 6 months with no resolution in sight, we decided to end our relationship with HRdirect for PTO tracking. 3/20/2020: We have purchased the Harassment Training Module. Excellent product with great value for the money.
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.
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.
Initially, HRdirect was proving to be an excellent tool, and we were getting a quick turnaround on small issues. However, the upgrade messed things up on our accessibility, with no resolution in sight.
