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
OnPay
Score 9.8 out of 10
N/A
OnPay's payroll and HR is designed for people who want to spend more time running their business, and less on back-office tasks. The application aims to enable users to: • Run payroll • Automate taxes • Let employees do more themselves • Simplify HR processes • Offer benefits in any state OnPay starts at $49 plus $6 per person each month. The monthly fee includes integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, and time-tracking software, as well as all quarterly and…
$49
per month +$6 per month, per person
Workable
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Workable is a recruiting software with HR integrations and AI-powered candidate sourcing. It has SEO-optimized job descriptions and one-click advertising across popular job boards. Workable also features communication tracking, real-time syncing, reporting, and mobile accessibility for collaboration.
$359
per month
Pricing
Gusto
OnPay
Workable
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
Standard
$360
per month (starting with 1-20 employees)
Premier
$599
per month (billed annually) (starting with 1-20 employees)
Enterprise
$799
per month (billed annually)
Premier
$8148
per year (starting with 1-20 employees)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Gusto
OnPay
Workable
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
First month free, then $49 + $6 per employee each month.
20% discount for annual pricing on Standard plan. Buyers can also select add-ons for an additional fee.
I did not select Gusto, my client did. I add all new clients to OnPay. If a client has payroll previously and are happy with the provider, I do not force them to change even though I wish I could.
For payroll processing, Gusto has better software/interface, better reporting, and better support.
Verified User
Administrative Assistant
Chose Gusto
Gusto was affordable and worked the best for what our organization needed. We only have four employees, so we didn't want something expensive or hard to use. Gusto is easy and works for us!
Verified User
Partner
Chose Gusto
Gusto is so much better than anything we've found so far. I know QuickBooks does have a feature for paying people, but Gusto has so much more features that make HR a breeze. I highly recommend Gusto to anyone that is just starting their business. QuickBooks does not even compare.
OnPay is far superior. I would not recommend Gusto. It was a problem from the start. After only a few months we realized Gusto was unable to provide us with a payroll service we could use. Switching to OnPay has been an excellent move. With Gusto it was one major problem after …
OnPay is less expensive than the larger HRIS payroll platforms, and same cost as Gusto Solo. But OnPay has better peer reviews than Gusto and I was impressed with their speed to onboard.
We choose OnPay for their reputation for being small business and beginner friendly, competitive pricing, and their generally positive reviews. Going with QB Payroll would have been the "default" choice, but their pricing and customer service (we are QB accounting customer) is …
OnPay is just a lot more user friendly. It isn't bogged down by a million different features, it really just has everything you need and nothing you don't. It just makes everything really simple and efficient. It's my favorite payroll processing system to use out of several …
Onpay was a "no-brainer" . Implementation, training, and ROI, exceeded all the other platforms we reviewed. Plus their customer support is excellent. You always know who you're working with. Really appreciated all the help we received implementing clients, and great customer …
Compared to other websites that I have used to submit applications (including resumes and cover letters), workable stands out as one of the easiest to use. I had little to no confusion and I didn't need to replicate information that was already in my resume and cover letter. A …
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.
OnPay is well-suited for small nonprofits or organizations new to payroll that want clear guidance and responsive customer support. OnPay may be less ideal for large or highly complex organizations that need extensive customization, very advanced reporting, or deep integrations with a wide range of enterprise systems.
Workable is great at creating job posts and posting them to multiple job boards with a single click and also running paid campaigns on social media platforms to reach passive candidates as well. Workable has a friendly UI and has a very gentle learning curve. It is more appropriate for larger organizations where you need to hire thousands of people a year and need to always have a pipeline of great talent.
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!
Communication - From my first call I was so impressed at the level of care and compassion OnPay expressed. I was assigned specific employees who were available in the sign up process to walk me through each step and to answer all my questions. I know some of my questions were probably "stupid" but OnPay never minded answering them and I was always treated with respect.
On Boarding - The nightmare I had experienced with a competitor became a dream with OnPay. They said if I would authorize them to sign onto my account they would take care of the sign up process. And they did!!! They also did it correctly. All of the numbers and information was error free. The only information I was required was input was direct deposit bank information.
Resolving an Issue - I have only had one issue that needed to be resolved. The person I talked to had to check with another person for an answer but she stayed on the line with me to make sure the problem was resolved. Then I received a follow up email outlining exactly what action they had taken.
Ease of using the website - I can find what I am looking for! I like the verification code. And every time I sign on to my account the red heart by our company name makes me smile.
The platform allows us to implement a scorecard service through which it is possible to keep track of the quality of nutrition that each prospective employee could bring to the company, so that the decision to hire any of them is as profitable as possible.
Communication with candidates is very easy to track, so that it is possible to make sure that the results proposed by each employee in the recruitment area are totally adequate. This is useful to filter possible failures that may occur on the part of the recruitment team.
The platform works with recruitment funnels, whose structure allows us to purify the information of real utility for the company by the employees, and where we can even add databases with the information of all prospective employees that are kept in the recruitment process.
Using Workable in conjunction with the information provided by their online technical assistants results in a huge improvement in our labor operation, as they know the best strategies to leverage our hiring management. Workable's technical support is active most of the day.
Using Workable was no problem for our employees in the human talent development area, mostly because they, despite not having any experience with Workable, were able to adapt to the platform with incredible speed, thanks to the ease of use of Workable and the number of tools it has right out of the box.
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.
You can add additional additions or benefit items such as a car allowance. The process required me to contact a representative as that wasn't as easy to navigate.
The process for handling additional withholdings for pre-payed taxes required support to ensure the calculations were accurate.
Process for on-boarding is a little tricky if you don't start the process from the point of hire. You can add various things easily but it reflects differently in terms of completion of an Employee file.
The ability to schedule interviews via Workable was great, but it was unable to pull other items from your calendar, so it was easy to end up double booked for appointments if you weren't careful.
The reporting leaves a bit to be desired, there is not a lot of customization for what I really needed reports on.
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 have used OnPay for a few years now and we do continue to renew our annual use of OnPay. We are only a small organization and although OnPay provides a lot of additional services that larger organizations might ind useful, OnPay still meets our limited requirements of running bi-weekly payroll and submitting our quarterly state and federal tax documents, and at a price that we still find affordable.
It's become a part of the fabric of our hiring process and we are growing like crazy! Once we have a working platform in place the cost of the change management typically far out weighs the benefits derived from the change! It's especially hard to change a process with employees who are not key stake holders, they are alway hesitant to invest time in a new product they are only going to use once in a while. With that said if something else came along with benefits far and above workable that we would gain a clear lift in productivity and capabilities we would make the change, we've done it with other parts of our tech stack
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.
OnPay is very easy to use. The computer interface is setup very well. You can quickly add people, enter your Payroll, print reports, etc. If your Payroll doesn't change from pay period to pay period (example, salaried employees) it takes mere seconds to enter in your Payroll.
One thing, it just works as advertised. AI integration makes the work more easier, and we will be able to process the applications more faster with the help of AI.
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.
As mentioned previously, I appreciate the Chat feature and have used it several times. I've also used the help database and found it wonderful. And I've had many email support interactions. Every time I've interacted with many individuals from the support team including...(who has helped me a number of times). The interactions have been professional and courteous and extremely helpful. Often they're able to resolve my problems and questions very quickly. OnPay has provided great support to our team here at Strike Visuals.
I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this. I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this. I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this.I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this. I have never had to rely on Workable's support team so I cannot attest to this.
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.
OnPay is tremendously less expensive and technically superior to Quickbooks in my opinion. OnPay is less expensive and offered the ease of managing a restaurant payroll that was better in my opinion than When I Work. My experience when evaluating all of the payroll products that I felt the company could afford was that OnPay had a superior staff of professionals who knew their product and could explain how to use it most clearly.
Workable was an excellent tool for our start-up. It was cost effective but very user-friendly. It wasn't a difficult sell to ensure our hiring managers would utilize the tool, and I particularly liked the inbox feature to stay organized. I rated Workable very highly, though as our company grew exponentially, we did go in a different direction.
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.
Workable has a had positive ROI on our workflow management, as the basic pay-as-you-go feature for a single role is incredibly affordable ($50/month) for a 2-3 month mid-to-senior level candidate search.
The ease of use has helped us move candidates faster as well - our average time to close a role decreased by 22% after our first 6 months of using Workable.
