Gusto vs. TriNet HR Plus vs. Workable

Gusto is well-suited for small businesses looking for a one-stop platform for payroll, tax-related tasks, and onboarding. It has many automated features that make tasks related to running a business/running an S-Corp simpler. I have not tried any other similar platforms, so I am unsure how it compares, but the pricing Gusto offers feels reasonable compared to other providers.

Incentivized

I think as a small business owner, this system gives peace of mind. When I'm onboarding an employee I can automatically integrate the process with Gmail and Quickbooks. I feel like they are always doing work in the background and I don't have to keep checking up on them or verifying the work that's been done

Incentivized

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.

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

• Payroll services in all 50 states, including payroll tax filings
• Integrations with tools like QuickBooks, Google Workspace, Slack, and Human Interest (401(k))
• Simple yet powerful mobile app for employees to access information including paystubs, benefits, and time off requests
• Streamlined admin portal for People Ops professionals

• 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.

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

• Support doesn't exist once you are a customer
• Tax team has a 3-6 month response time
• Poor Menu/Navigation structure
• Fails to pay taxes on time, results in delinquency notices and fees
• Glitchy UI, sometimes you need to wait a day or two for a section to work again
• Feels like a perpetual beta product, nothing polished about it

• 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.

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.

We've already renewed after our first year with Zenefits due to the cost savings, ease of administration, reduction in overhead required to perform HR functions, and the employees happily embracing and liking the software. I've found employees generally hate anything new, but we've had no complaints about Zenefits outside the first few weeks of getting used to it.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Wonderful overall usability – especially for the new business owner. The user interface is clean and intuitive, so it's easy to find what you're looking for. They also have great explanation pages ingrained into the process, so if you get stuck knowing what to do next, there's a link right there to walk you through the process!

Incentivized

It's extremely user friendly and customer service is super helpful. The app needed help a while back but it has greatly improved. There were issues with files being cut off, and when I was onboarded, it actually cut my offer letter off hiding important information. Since then, it's been fixed so they are continually improving.

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.

We have not experienced any application errors or unplanned outages in the two years I have been using this app. Sometimes there is a lag in the time keeping/ confirming your location, however, it quickly resolves itself within seconds and more often than not is an internet connection error

Incentivized

This app always loads extremely quickly and in a reasonable time frame. Like I said, when we do experience lags from this app, it is more often than not an internet connection error

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

Not good at all. Basically I typically feel like they can solve the issue at hand. However, they take forever and it never feels like they really care. It can be frustrating that the agent will never speak with you on the phone or just give you their direct contact info so that you can continue to follow up on the same issue. Once they "close" the issue - you have to go back to the main customer service email or line again, even though it may be related to something you've contacted them about in the past

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Can't really say just because I would not know.

Incentivized

It went through successfully.

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

Unfortunately I do not have any insights on the implementation of Zenefits as I was not employed with this company when Zenefits was introduced. Based on how effortless it is to use Zenefits, I wouldn't image there would be many issues with the implementation of Zenefits

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

Zenefits has been a better tool for our purposes than Paychex Flex. While Zenefits is a fairly rigid tool without a lot of options for customization, Paychex has even fewer options for customization and their customer services is even more difficult to deal with

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.

Incentivized

It is very easy to use and does not require the end user to go to multiple sites to obtain many facets of HR/ Payroll information that the app offers

Incentivized

• I am not involved enough to know well, but I would say that Gusto has saved me about 1-2 hours in my onboarding process with my new company compared to my past experiences trying to onboard with ADP. I have also finished the process and am not frustrated like usual.

Incentivized

• California Meal Break Violations cost a full hour of each employees pay rate. If an employee clocks in 1 minute early it costs us at least 10.50 (minimum wage Ca, 15.00 in Los Angeles) which adds up quickly. We had 37 meal break violations when we first rolled it out. They need to add a feature that disallows them to clock in ahead of 30 minutes, or add a feature that shows them how long they've been on break.

• 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.

Incentivized