Gusto Review: Is It Right for Your Business?

Gusto is a full-service payroll software that many new and small business owners use to pay their employees. Besides providing automatic and unlimited pay runs, Gusto handles all your payroll tax payments and filings, including year-end reporting.

Its reasonably priced plans, solid HR tools, and user-friendly interface make it an ideal payroll software for small businesses. Plus, it is easy to set up—allowing you to start using it in minutes. Monthly fees start at $40 plus $6 per employee, and if you’re paying contractors (no W-2 employees included), Gusto will only charge you $6 per contractor monthly. In our review of the best payroll software for small businesses, Gusto earned an overall score of 4.71 out of 5.

Before you dive into the specifics, check out the video version of our Gusto review.

Gusto

Overall Score: 4.71 / 5

RATING CRITERIA	Pricing		5.00 / 5
	Payroll features		4.75 / 5
	HR features		4.38 / 5
	Reporting		5.00 / 5
	Ease of use		4.75 / 5
	Expert review		4.38 / 5
	Popularity		5.00 / 5

What We Like

• Reasonably priced plans with a low-cost contractor-only payroll option
• Full-service payroll with unlimited pay runs and tax filing/payment services
• Offers essential HR tools like employee benefits, hiring, onboarding, and performance reviews
• Handles international contractor payments in 95 countries

What's Missing

• Time tracking, hiring, and performance review tools are unavailable in the starter Simple plan
• Health insurance coverage isn’t in all 50 states
• Access to customer service with extended weekday hours and priority support is available only in higher tiers (the starter plan only includes basic support)
• International contractor payments not included in its contractor-only option; costs extra for other Gusto plans

Deciding Factors

• Ease of use:
  • Easy to learn and use, but you need basic knowledge of how to run payroll
  • If you need help navigating through its platform, how-to guides are available through its online Help Center
• Pricing:
  • Has three plans (Simple, Plus, and Premium) with monthly fees that start at $40 plus $6 per employee
  • Offers a contractor-only payroll package that costs $6 per worker monthly
• Software setup:
  • You can easily create a Gusto account online; its setup wizard will also guide you through the process of adding your company, employee, and payroll details
  • Those on the Premium plan get full-service payroll migration and account setup assistance
• Customer support:
  • Chat and email support; live phone support is available Mondays–Fridays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific time
  • Access to HR advisory services limited to Premium subscribers (costs extra for Plus plan holders)

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What We Recommend Gusto For

Aside from offering reasonably priced monthly plans, Gusto provides an intuitive payroll platform for employers and employees. Its features are easy to learn, and you can run payroll in a few steps.

Tax penalties are covered if Gusto ever makes a mistake, and year-end W-2 and 1099 preparation are included in all plans at no extra cost. Its direct deposit option is also a favorite for many users—they can switch between it and manual checks at any time, and there’s HR support.

In short, Gusto is best for:

• Mom-and-pop businesses looking for an affordable payroll solution: Gusto’s affordability is one of the reasons it is our leading payroll software for small businesses. Its starter Simple plan (priced at $40 plus $6 per employee monthly) comes with all the essential tools you need to process employee pay, manage benefits, and onboard new hires. Plus, you can run payroll, off-cycle payments, and bonus payouts as many times as you want.
• Businesses with 50 and more full-time equivalent employees: Once companies reach 50 full-time employees, they’re no longer considered a mom-and-pop business. Gusto, which also topped our list of best HR payroll software (scoring 4.66 out of 5), can help small employers streamline and automate payroll and basic HR processes. It enables you to provide employees access to onboard themselves via a self-service portal (all new hire documents are available), offer benefits (like health insurance, which is required at 50 full-time employees), and even electronically track employee work hours.
• Companies that use contract help: Gusto ranked No. 1 in o  ur best contractor payroll software buyer’s guide with an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5, primarily because of its contractor-only plan and year-end reporting. It waives the $40 monthly base fee it charges if you’re only paying contractors and costs $6 per month for each contractor. And, if you skip a month paying them, you don’t pay for the service at all. It also preps and files 1099 year-end reports (essential for contractors) and even submits new hire reports for contractors if this is required in your state.
• Self-employed business owners: Gusto is our top-recommended self-employed payroll provider for business owners or sole proprietors who only need to pay themselves. Running payroll for one employee costs $46 monthly (Simple plan, computed as $40 plus $6 per staff monthly) and includes full-service payroll, automatic tax filings and payments, and two-day direct deposits.

When Gusto Would Not Be a Good Fit

• Large enterprises: Businesses with 1,000+ employees may not find all the support they need under Gusto. HR needs tend to increase as companies grow, so a provider like ADP or Paychex, with plans that include payroll plus robust HR features (such as learning management and compensation planning), would be more suitable.
• International payroll operations: Gusto doesn’t support international employees unless they are foreign workers with valid SSNs and US bank accounts (for direct deposit payments) and are legally allowed to work and reside in the US. So, if half of your staff is overseas and the other half is scattered throughout the US, you will run into issues. A top international payroll provider would work best for those types of scenarios.

Looking for something different? Read our guide to the best online payroll services for small businesses to find a payroll service or software that’s right for you.

Top Gusto Alternatives

Visit QuickBooks Payroll	Visit Square Payroll	Visit Rippling
Best for: QuickBooks accounting small business users	Best for: Retailers, restaurant owners, and Square POS users	Best for: Tech-heavy businesses needing HR and IT tools
Base monthly fee from: $45–$125 plus $5–$10 per employee	Base monthly fee from: $35 plus $5 per employee	Base monthly fee from: $35 plus $8 per employee (pricing is based on a quote we received)
Read our QuickBooks Payroll Review	Read our Square Payroll Review	Read our Rippling Review

Also, check out our guide to Gusto competitors.

Gusto earned perfect marks for pricing, given its zero setup fees, reasonable and transparent prices, and multiple plan options. Plus, all Gusto pricing plans come with unlimited pay runs, which lets you process payroll (including off-cycle payments) as many times as you need in a month without having to pay extra.

Monthly fees start at $40 plus $6 per employee, and you get three pricing options: Simple, Plus, and Premium. All plans come with full-service payroll, tax payments and filings at all levels (federal, state, and local), basic new hire onboarding, employee benefits, and self-service tools. However, subscribing to higher tiers will unlock additional functionalities, like next-day direct deposits, multistate payroll, time tracking, paid time off (PTO) management, job postings and applicant tracking, performance reviews, employee surveys, priority support, and HR advisory services.

*HR advisory services add-on for the Plus include access to priority support

With Gusto, you can change your plan at any time. However, if you’re downgrading your subscription, the new pricing will only take effect at the start of the next billing period, which is the first of the month. If you’re upgrading your plan, the new pricing will take effect for the current month, and you’ll get instant access to the new plan’s additional features.

Contractor-only Payroll

Add-on Services

Gusto earned high marks (4.75 out of 5) in payroll features given its solid pay processing tools, tax filing services, and multiple payment options (such as direct deposits, paychecks, and pay on-demand). It didn’t get a perfect rating because its penalty-free guarantee only covers tax filing mistakes that its representatives might make. This is unlike QuickBooks Payroll, which offers a separate program for its premium plan subscribers, covering all tax filing penalties regardless of who made the mistake.

Gusto’s online pay runs follow a four-step process. (Source: Gusto)

Payroll Processing

Its pay processing tools can handle both single and multiple state payroll (although, you have to upgrade to at least its Plus plan to get multistate payroll). Gusto also allows you to set employees up on different pay schedules—some weekly and others on a semimonthly period. If you need to add a bonus, commission, or reimbursement payout to an employee’s weekly or monthly salary, Gusto’s payroll module has editable fields where you can type in the amount for payment.

With Gusto, you can also add short personal notes to indicate the type of reimbursement or additional earnings processed. (Source: Gusto)

You also have to manually input your hourly staff’s total hours worked—both regular and overtime hours—directly into the system. While this is manageable for those who only have a handful of employees, this isn’t advisable for small businesses with more than 10 staff. However, there are ways to avoid manual entry of time data into Gusto:

• Sign up for one of Gusto’s premium plans, which comes with time tracking tools.
• Use one of Gusto’s partner time tracking software (like Homebase and When I Work) that integrates seamlessly with its payroll solution.

If you’re paying salaried employees and don’t expect any changes to pay runs, you can set Gusto to run automatically. You can also do the same for hourly-paid staff, provided they have fixed working hours.

Automatic pay runs can be easily turned on and off through Gusto’s payroll settings. (Source: Gusto)

Payroll Tax Management

Gusto calculates, files, and pays all taxes (federal, state, and local), which is notable because some services require you to know which local payroll taxes you’re responsible for paying. It also promises to pay any penalties that are a result of its mistakes. And, to top it off, year-end tax forms come with each plan at no extra cost. This is unlike some of the payroll providers that charge you an additional per-employee fee to prepare and distribute W-2s and 1099s.

If an employee has an IRS levy or child support garnishment, Gusto can withhold the applicable amount from the employee’s payroll. It even sends the funds to all states, except South Carolina, at no additional charge.

A screenshot of Gusto’s “Tax and compliance” that shows helpful links to tax forms, tax credit claims, and important filing dates
(Source: Gusto)

In our evaluation of Gusto’s HR tools, the provider earned 4.38 out of 5 given its robust selection of both standard and non-standard employee benefits, including a solid set of recruiting, new hire onboarding, performance reviews, and employee survey tools. It would have received perfect marks in this criterion had it not been for the limited coverage of its health plans (unavailable in Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming as of this writing).

Employee Benefits

Employee benefits is an area where Gusto shines. Small businesses that otherwise wouldn’t be able to offer perks to their employees can easily sign up for one of the many benefits Gusto offers.

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• 401(k) retirement savings plans
• Commuter benefits
• 529 college savings
• Health and flexible savings accounts
• Financial management app called Gusto Wallet
• Early paycheck access through Gusto Cashout

Employers and employees can manage benefits online through Gusto’s one-stop-shop online portal. (Source: Gusto)

However, some benefits (like health insurance and Gusto Cashout) are limited to certain states. To help you confirm whether the state where your business is located is covered, check out the health benefits map below.

Time & PTO Tracking

Gusto has its own time and attendance solution that hourly employees can use to enter hours worked. Employees can also download Gusto Wallet, its free financial management app, as it has clock-in/out capabilities. However, as of this writing, your contractors won’t be able to use Gusto Wallet to track their time. Note that this feature isn’t included in Gusto’s Simple plan. You have to subscribe to its higher tiers to gain access to it.

The platform can also help track your PTO policies, making it easier to manage leave accruals and balances. If you want your employees and people managers to raise and approve PTO requests online, you have to sign up for either its Plus or Premium plans.

With Gusto, all approved employee hours automatically sync to its payroll tool for processing. (Source: Gusto)

Job Postings

Available to Plus and Premium plan holders, Gusto’s recruiting solutions are great for creating a company job board and sharing your job postings to attract qualified candidates. You can even share your job board across social media sites (like Facebook and Twitter) and add it to your company website.

If you want to reach a wider audience, Gusto offers sponsored job postings through its partner, Upward. For as low as $25 per campaign, you can select the job boards where you want your job posting to appear. Or, you can use Upward’s algorithm to identify where to distribute and publish your open job.

If you don’t want to pay extra to promote your job listings, Gusto can post your jobs for free to job search engines (such as Google Jobs) and more than 100 job boards (like ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn). However, you have to manually turn on Gusto’s “Free Distribution” option so that it can automatically post your jobs. You may opt to leave this off if you only want to distribute your open jobs via Gusto’s custom job boards.

Gusto’s job postings will remain live on job search engines and job boards for 30 days from the day you enabled the “free distribution” option for the job post. (Source: Gusto)

Creating job posts in Gusto is relatively easy, provided you have all the information you need, like the job description and skills required. While it allows you to copy job descriptions from another file and then save it directly in the job post, the process would be more efficient if the system offers sample job descriptions you can customize as you create the job post.

To automate hiring tasks, Gusto also allows you to add members of the hiring team (such as the hiring manager and other stakeholders) to job posts. Apart from serving as interviewers for the role, hiring team members can view applicant information, complete interview scorecards, leave comments on applications, and move candidates through the pipeline.

If you want to see all job postings, Gusto has a “recruiting” dashboard that shows your open jobs, including when it was created. It also provides the numbers of applicants who applied for each role and are moving to the interview process.

A screenshot of Gusto’s job posting dashboard (Source: Gusto)

Screening Questions

With Gusto, you can add application screening questions that require applicants to provide free-form responses and select an answer from multiple choices. While you can create your own screening questions, Gusto has pre-set questions that ask about the applicants’ years of work experience, desired salary, work eligibility in the US, and more.

Gusto’s screening questions are included in its job post creation process.
(Source: Gusto)

Applicant Tracking

Once applicants submit their applications online, members of the hiring team can view their resumes and track where they are in the hiring pipeline. Gusto also allows you to move candidates through various stages, such as “interviewing,” “hired,” “not hired,” and “dropped out.” However, only the system administrator can move candidates who passed the selection and interview process to the “hired” stage.

While job seekers can submit their applications through online job postings, you can manually add applicants and upload their resumes into Gusto—provided you’re a system administrator. (Source: Gusto)

Hiring Support Tools

Gusto’s hiring support helps set it apart from basic providers. Small businesses looking to manage payroll and taxes appreciate the paperless onboarding process they can use to bring on new hires. Once you set up the new employees in the software, Gusto will send an email prompting them to start their online accounts where they can fill out all new hire forms (including Forms I-9 and W-4). It even submits new hire reports to the state—all at no extra cost.

Aside from letting you add new hires into its system, Gusto’s “Hire & onboard” module shows the status of each employee’s onboarding tasks. (Source: Gusto)

While the Simple plan comes with standard offer letters and onboarding checklists, upgrading to Gusto’s higher tiers will allow you to customize these tools. You can even assign, delegate, and track tasks, which helps streamline onboarding processes. If you need other HR documents, its online resource center has job description templates, labor law policies, hiring best practices, termination requirements, and an employee handbook builder.

Email & Software Provisioning

Employee Surveys & Insights

With Gusto’s Premium plan, you can send out anonymous monthly surveys to help you understand employee sentiment, gauge staff happiness, and identify areas for improvement. It’s also a good tool for deploying surveys that tackle specific topics, such as learning and growth opportunities, benefits, morale and retention, and work autonomy. Gusto even lets you select the survey topics and questions for each month. Aside from getting insights on a variety of topics, this helps keep employees engaged and improve survey participation rates (because of non-repeating survey topics and questions).

A look at some of Gusto’s survey topics and questions (Source: Gusto)

Plus, all of Gusto’s survey topics include an “employee happiness” question or statement, such as “I recommended this company as a great place to work.” To respond to this statement, survey respondents can choose from five answers—from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” This is great for getting valuable insights into your employees’’ sentiments about work and your company.

For new Gusto users, the system will automatically release your selected survey the Wednesday after you turn on this feature. Then, it will automatically send new surveys every month following the same schedule as your first one. Your employees have a week to complete the survey. After the survey closes, you can view the responses through Gusto’s “Team Insights” dashboard.

Gusto’s “Team Insights” dashboard (Source: Gusto)

Employee Performance Reviews

Gusto’s performance review module (which is available for Premium plan holders) is designed to help you assess whether or not employees are meeting their goals at work. You can use it to identify your employees’ development opportunities and highlight skills they excel in. It also lets you create performance review cycles, track the progress of reviews in real time, share feedback, set completion deadlines, add manager review summaries, and gather insights.

Gusto has a question builder for creating simple employee self-evaluation and manager review templates. (Source: Gusto)

Third-party Software Integrations

Gusto earned perfect marks in this category with its built-in reports that tackle a wide range of subjects—from payroll summaries, tax forms, and workforce costings to contractor information, employee work hours, and benefits elections. It even offers an employee and payroll report builder that allows you to add filters and select the data you need. Creating report templates that you can customize is also very easy, plus you can choose the report file format (either CSV or PDF).

Gusto’s report builder has data columns you can drag and drop to customize reports. (Source: Gusto)

Gusto received high marks (4.75 out of 5) in this criterion because of its easy-to-use software that small businesses can use to start processing payroll quickly. It also offers strong HR support through its HR advisory services and online help center, as well as access to a support team you can contact through email, chat, and phone. However, it lost points due to its limited customization options—you can’t rearrange its dashboard to fit your requirements.

• Intuitive dashboard
• Guided onboarding and setup
• Email and live phone support
• In-app chat
• How-to guides
• Online help center with HR documents and forms
• Priority phone support and access to HR advisers for Premium plan holders

You can completely set up Gusto in less than 24 hours if you have all of your business and employee information on hand, plus you can link your bank electronically. The way the dashboard is laid out makes its setup process easy to follow, but you can also read our guide on setting up and running payroll with Gusto. If you’re on the Premium plan, its customer representatives will walk you through the process for free and help you transfer your payroll data into Gusto so that your annual records are complete.

Gusto has an online wizard to help new users through the setup process. (Source: Gusto)

Gusto’s main dashboard is also user-friendly, with a menu placement on the left-hand side of the display that’s easy to follow. And, since Gusto provides the services that a small business would need versus trying to serve all employers, the interface is not overwhelming, and there’s no steep learning curve.

When problems do arise, it has an online help center with answers to frequently asked questions. Live phone support is also available from Mondays to Fridays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Pacific time)—although those on the Premium plan get a direct line for priority phone support with extended weekday hours (from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.).

In our expert evaluation, Gusto scored fairly well with ratings of 4.38 out of 5. Its solid pay processing tools and reasonably priced plans make it a great payroll software partner for a wide range of small businesses (such as restaurants, payroll accounting firms, and retail shops). It also has a feature-rich platform that not only handles payroll and payroll taxes but can also manage essential HR processes like hiring, time tracking, benefits administration, and performance reviews.

While Gusto may have these HR tools, its core platform is still payroll—which means that it lacks the advanced solutions that other HR software may offer. So, if you need to manage learning sessions and create compensation plans in addition to handling payroll and basic HR, you’re better off with more robust HR systems like Paycor and TriNet Zenefits.

Overall, Gusto payroll reviews on third-party sites are positive. It also earned perfect marks in our user popularity criterion, given its ratings of 4 and up on G2 and Capterra and the high number of average user reviews (more than 1,000).

Many reviewers said it has an intuitive and user-friendly interface that helps simplify payroll, tax filings, and onboarding processes. They also like that it is easy to set up and has payroll plans that provide the best value for money, given the wealth of features included in each package.

However, there are mixed reviews about its customer support. While many users mentioned that they received excellent service, several others are unhappy with Gusto’s customer support, mainly because of long wait times and some reps that aren’t always responsive.

At the time of publication, Gusto reviews earned the following scores on popular user review sites:

• Capterra: 4.7 out of 5 based on more than 3,500 reviews
• G2: 4.2 out of 5 based on 600+ reviews

How We Evaluated Gusto

When we evaluate payroll software for small businesses, we look at pricing and ease of use. We also check the provider’s customer support and whether it offers unlimited pay runs, multiple pay options, full-service payroll, and tax filing services.

Access to third-party integrations and basic HR tools like employee benefits and onboarding are also important. We even consider the feedback that actual users posted on popular user review sites.

Gusto meets most of our requirements, earning ratings of 4 and up in all of our evaluation criteria and an overall score of 4.71 out of 5. It lost points due to its limited customization options, health benefits plans that are unavailable in 11 states, tax penalty program that only covers mistakes that its representatives make, and the lack of advanced HR tools like learning management and compensation planning.

Click through the tabs below for a more detailed breakdown of our evaluation criteria:

Bottom Line

Gusto is a popular payroll software that’s accessible to the smallest of employers. It is a full-service provider and manages payroll taxes under all of its plans. Plus, the multiple payment options, online onboarding tools, and variety of benefits it offers give you some flexibility, helping you provide attractive perks to potential new employees. This makes your company much more desirable to work for.

While Gusto has several benefits that you can offer to your employees, the coverage of its health insurance is limited to 39 states. However, the provider has continued to actively expand its benefits coverage, meaning if it’s not in your location yet, it will likely be available soon.

Sign up with Gusto today.

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