Gusto vs. isolved vs. Justworks

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

I have not yet run into a scenario that isolved is not appropriate. There have been a few specific functionalities that isolved couldn't accommodate, such as paid PTO plans. If employees frequently switch between different legal companies with different EINs, isolved really isn't built to handle that, and we've had to come up with creative solutions.

Incentivized

Justworks is a competitively priced product for small businesses and start-ups and, in my opinion, offers a better product and better customer service than larger PEOs competing in the same small-buisiness space (ex. ADP). I believe Justworks would work well for companies up to 200 employees; after that, I believe a bigger PEO may provide an enterprise solution better suited for a larger company (and their HR reporting needs)

Incentivized

• 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

• The payroll processing has been a huge benefit in keeping our weekly payroll process on track and accurate.
• The COBRA services are very beneficial and we do not have to do any tracking. I appreciate this process is no longer on my duty list.
• I would say the third id probably the timekeeping. The system is effective for daily tracking and timecard review. The access to the time clock is exceptional with multiple access points. The adjustments for additional pay on holidays has been helpful.

• Onboarding employees on their first day. We use Justworks to set up the employee calculate the first payroll, and perform the I9 employment verification. The process is seamless and all can be done electronically and automated which makes it very simple
• Payroll processing. Justworks automatically calculates the payroll earnings, related taxes and withholdings and will automatically withdraw and deposit the funds. This is a seamless experience
• Customer Service. Justworks is incredibly responsive and helpful. HR related issues can be a nightmare but Justworks make it easier and more efficient since they are always on call to answer your questions and make life easier.

Incentivized

• 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

• Reminders/Notes to staff through the app that they have to read to be able to move forward to clock in or out.
• More key words to search in the library/help desk.
• Check boxes to delete Reports from the Que, rather than having to delete each one individually would be a nice enhancement!

• JustWorks couldn't accurately track our PTO. We use an accrual system that maxes out at 88 hours. We incentivise our employees with additional PTO hours based off of goals met. The JustWorks platform allowed our employees to accrue far more PTO than what was offered. They didn't have a feature that offered a Cap and accrual.
• When using the JustWorks reports for 401K, if not using their integrated 401K provider, the reports give you every employee regardless of whether or not they contribute. This makes it difficult when adding the contributions in separately.
• JustWorks tracks historical data for employees. Whenever there is a salary change made, it keeps track. However, it shows a salary adjustment made on the day they are entered into JustWorks which can be very confusing. We switched from another PEO mid year and it looked like I made salary changes on the beginning date. This made it difficult to differentiate an actual salary adjustment.

Incentivized

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.

I believe Isolved has helped with allot of our previous payroll and HR issues but I am not the sole person responsible for making the decisions. If it were my responsibility to make the decision I would say yes, my input does weigh heavily on the choices but it's not guaranteed.

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

It is very intuitive and user friendly. iSolved is always updating and improving things before they even become a problem. I like how they inform us of the new updates and provide us with the details of what is changing and how it will improve the usuage.

Justworks is a really good platform for payroll and even vendor payments. There are some areas of improvement that Justworks could make in the area of bulk processing, to decrease administrative time as well as reporting. There are no reports we currently use from the Justworks platform as we have not found them useful.

Incentivized

Payroll due dates and send to us at the beginning of the year, with email reminders for holidays. The support email address is fairly fast, within 24-48 hours. But if something is needed immediately, I can just call and they help me out right then.

Incentivized

We do not use the integration, so we have a csv file that I upload manually for payroll. That is our decision based on the software at our restaurants. Pages loaded fairly quickly, but reports to pdf lag about 15-20 seconds

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

They are very responsive and they have support for the specific issues. Clients receive a dedicated Support Representative with a back up dedicated support team. They also receive an Account Manager who follows up quarterly to discuss the company and future needs. They do have a support ticket hub, but it still needs a little work to fine tune it.

Justworks offers many different options for customer service. You can contact them via email, phone or Slack. They are quick to resolve issues and if your Account Manager is out of office, they have other Managers covering your account who are knowledgable and ready to support. They also have an office in New York, which makes their support even more localized.

Incentivized

All over the phone, but it was comprehensive.

Incentivized

We loved taking the course, we went through most of them before we went live and I believe that was very helpful. The online training helped us learn to navigate in the program. We still refer to the training and assign our managers and supervisors to it as well. I highly recommend using it. We have also been able to attend the Connect Conferences with are extremely valuable and we learn tips and tricks to help us better utilize our system.

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

The system was very cumbersome setting up as well as time consuming. There were times I just wanted to walk away and sometimes I did have to get up and walk away for a break and come back with a fresh perspective. The setup took me over a period of two to three months getting it to serve the purposes that we needed it two. I am very intuitive when it comes to computer software however getting all the right buttons checked in order for it to do what I needed didn't always work.

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

isolved provides a system and capabilities right at the sweet spot for our organizations. It is not overly complex and feature laden as to make it confusing and complex. On the other hand, it is fully functional and effective at the core requirements of HR and payroll without requiring additional work outside of the system. All of the systems we have previously considered or used were with limited on functionality or prohibitively expense and complex.

Incentivized

Justworks is a much simpler platform with better pricing. I remember ADP's cost was tied to a certain percentage of the total payroll, which is not ideal if you have highly compensated employees. Though ADP offered more ancillary benefit options and group employee discounts, we feel Justworks suffices and meets our daily HR needs.

Incentivized

Price increases do happen every year. I understand that the cost of living rises, but every year to us is a bit excessive.

We are a company of about 135 people at 9 locations in 2 towns. We were able to set locations and departments, and also have each location seperate so only that manager can see their employees.

Incentivized

All of iSvoled services are conducted very professionally

• 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

• When we had Paycom, we had 1/4 of our staff that were not logging in and using the system. That number is down to maybe 5% now
• Employees love having the ability to easily view and verify their timecards prior to payroll submission.

Incentivized

• We're still new to Justworks, but for nearly everyone on our team, this is the dealmaker. Benefits plans are worth more than salaries to the best hires.In fact, part of the process we used to choose Justworks was to send their offering, in advance, to our team to approve of, first.
• Dealmaker for great hires!
• Financial security for their families!
• Compliance management.

Incentivized