Item: Gusto
Rating: 1
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Look elsewhere. Gusto is being used by my employer to pay me as a W2, per Illinois regulations for interns working in clinical psychology setting. The experience I have with Gusto is terrible. After a year of employment and working as a W2, it was made known to me that Gusto did not take out Federal taxes, so I would be responsible for paying hundreds of dollars - as a complete surprise. The emails sent from Gusto to me said that federal withholding was taken out, but that was social security and Medicaid, not federal withholding. No one thought to contact me to let me know this error or thought this might be a problem, which it most certainly is. Gusto would not speak with me directly about any of the problems that this created, they would only speak with my employer. This perpetuated the problem needlessly. I was the person who suffered financially, and the person who clearly needed to change something that was unknown to me. Gusto would not work with me to solve this problem, which was confounding and cemented my distrust. The employee is important but was told the business leader who did not know how to manage this problem was the only person with whom they would communicate. Stay away from this company.

Pros and Cons

They bombard employees with endless emails about how they can make the employee money, which was not my experience.

Implement a system where the employee is made aware of withholding to insure $0 is accurate so they don't have to pay hundreds of dollars at the end of the year, support employees.
Communicate with the employees as well as the business owners so problems can be understood by all parties in a timely manner, and fixed in a timely manner.
Do not expect the business owners to be good at finances.

Return on Investment

The turnaround for Gusto to pay me from when my employer submits the information is 6 days. That's a long time. This results in a delay of my paycheck both because my employer does not submit in a timely manner and because of the delay in receiving my direct deposit.

Alternatives Considered

I did not select Gusto, my employer did.

Key Insights

Do you think Gusto delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Gusto's feature set?

Did Gusto live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Gusto go as expected?

Would you buy Gusto again?

Likelihood to Recommend

After my experience with Gusto, I cannot fathom an instance where I would recommend their services. Though I have an account and am an employee, they would not communicate directly with me. This resulted in second hand information given to me that was not clear as well as a financial burden for me that could have been easily avoided.

Products Replaced

Support Rating

Gusto only supports the business owners, NOT the employees who may directly be impacted by the negligence of missing information. If the employee is not informed of any potential problems at the time when it would be possible to avoid financial burden, oversights or problems cannot be addressed in a timely manner. Gusto took our $0 for my federal withholding, which was NOT desired and was expensive for me personally. This problem was not clear due to Gusto's emails saying federal withholding was being taken out - but that was not accurate.

Gusto Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	Slow Resolution Poor followup Less knowledgeable Problems left unsolved Not kept informed Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

I was the end user (employee), not the one who engaged the services (business owner).

Exceptional Examples of Gusto Support

No, I cannot describe a time when Gusto provided me with exceptional support. They will not communicate with employee, only business owner.

Do Not Trust Gusto

Overall Satisfaction with Gusto