Gusto vs. TriNet

If you have a small company with a straightforward payroll, you could consider Gusto, especially if you want to be as hands-off as possible with a system that does most of the work for you. If you value responsive customer service and engaged benefits management, Gusto will not make the cut.

TriNet allows us to run our business without the distractions of HR management. It has been on cruise control since we began and ensures the "people" side of our business is run to a standard that any large company would use. As our needs grow, our use of TriNet will also grow, and it feels good to know there is plenty of room for expansion.

• The self-service aspect of the software is very nice. We rarely need to get customer service involved.
• For the first 2 years of our subscription to Gusto, customer service has been good when we needed it.
• We have also had good experience with third parties recommended by Gusto including a 401(k) administrator, R&D tax credit analyst, and background check software.

• Adding a candidate to the ATS by their resume.
• Being able to link our website (open positions) with the link given by TriNet to seamlessly send candidates to apply for positions through LinkedIn.
• Being able to find a candidate per job through the Trinet's ATS.

• Not enough flexibility with pay periods. For monthly payrolls in WA state, I'm required to pay the 1st-24th of the month by the end of the month. To have payday be the last day of the month, the pay period sometimes ends on the 24th, sometimes the 25th, and February there is no option to be in compliance as it pays up to the 22nd only.
• When an employee maxes their IRA contribution for the year, Gusto stops making employer contributions even though the company is required to pay a % of total income for the year, not only during pay periods in which the employee contributes.
• Gusto was not including all reportable earnings to our state family medical leave program. This caused my employee to be denied benefits over her maternity leave. Thankfully she appealed their decision and after I provided payroll reports the PFML program identified the issue with Gusto's reporting and approved her payments. This all took several months though and Gusto still has not contacted my employee to apologize for their error despite me asking them to do so on a couple occasions (and it being the least they could do!)
• A few years ago I started the process of having Gusto administer our health insurance benefits. The process was a nightmare and I ultimately decided not to have them do it, however without my signature they had already started changing it over.
• Customer service is awful. It's almost not even worth sending an email since it takes months to get a reply and then they often don't address the problem but say "let us know if you need anything else" in which case you will wait another couple months for a reply if you even get one.

• Ability to calculate Payroll By State For Some of the Reports I need to run.
• Lock IN Conversion Rate Earlier. It is always a problem when I run the payroll expecting one conversion rate and then find a different conversion rate when the payroll is actually run for Canada.
• I liked having an assigned person to my account. Debra Ford was amazing, but I know that TriNEt moved to a more decentralized model.

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 only reason this is not a 10 is that the PEO market is very competitive and as the President of the company I feel obligated to listen to other options. That being said, it will be very difficult for anyone to unseat TriNet as I ma veery pleased with them

The UI is clean and simple. It's incredibly easy to find what you need to find, and if you can't, a quick search of their help files will direct you where you need to go about 90% of the time. For that last 10%, a support e-mail will result in a quick answer. Almost any time I try to do something new I haven't done before with Gusto, I can do it in a few minutes.

The system itself is very user-friendly! From the staff who have very little experience with these types of interfaces, to the group with years of experience, the system is easy to use and navigate. It is really helpful to have a step-by-step guide in processes as well as continual reminders for items that need to be completed.

They used to be really good at this when I had a dedicated person. Now that it's a general customer service account, it's really gone downhill and I don't get responses at all sometimes

Pages load at a speed that isn't too fast or too slow. I never have to wait long, but it's not instantaneous

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.

The overall experience with TriNet has been excellent. From boarding to the daily questions/concerns: Our onboarding was extremely efficient. We had a very small window to switch vendors and TriNet was able to accommodate everything within the period we had. TriNet team is always available to help our company with questions or issues related to Payroll, Health Benefits, Retirement Benefits (401k), etc. TriNet also has a dedicated channel for our employees that can have their questions/issues solved via chat, phone, or email.

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

it was good, but now I haven't done much and since they changed their model, it's a lot harder to deal with. We're talking online training of the trinet platform and not the online training they provide, right? Their online training is ok, and is unfortunate that there is a totally separate model for training that costs extra when we would only watch one or two things. However, the mandatory sexual harassment training is actually pretty good, it was just a little clunky

Someone familiar with benefits and human resources should be in charge of the implementation. It is a human resource platform.

I have only used Gusto for my payroll needs for both of my businesses from the very beginning but I have heard from colleagues that Quickbooks payroll is much more time intensive and takes longer to input than the amount of time I spend in Gusto running payroll and onboarding staff with new hire paperwork and direct deposit.

Out of all of the platforms, I still think that Gusto is the most user friendly for employers and employees. However, they did not provide the support that I get with TriNet. In just a year, I feel that TriNet is listening to it clients and have already made changes to improve their system. TriNet, provides better support than any of the other companies I have used in the past. That is more important to me that the software.

For the size of our company, Trinet is perfect.

• Gusto has greatly simplified payroll processing for our company. It can be done quickly and easily since moving from our previous provider.
• Gusto is very affordable and has most of the features we require, without paying a PEO for features that we do not use.

• TriNet has allowed us to stay within budget and streamline our payroll and benefits to one primary vendor.
• TriNet has caused frustration in not being able to have all our information in one place (no ability to upload data) and costs are high for ancillary services (AAP for example).
• TriNet has given us access back to Jackson Lewis, a trusted resource for Employment Law.