6 Top Zenefits Competitors for 2021

Primarily focused on payroll, Gusto can process paychecks for both employees and contractors located in any US state. Similar to Zenefits, it can provide your staff with medical, dental, vision, life and disability, flexible spending account (FSA), and health savings account (HSA) plans. However, Gusto’s health insurance coverage is limited to 39 US states, while Zenefits’s insurance options are available in all 50 states.

Another reason Gusto is a good alternative to Zenefits is its customer service options. You can contact representatives by phone, email, or live chat, whereas Zenefits’s support is handled mostly through email—there is a tech support number, but when you’re able to talk to a rep, they usually tell you someone will contact you via email.

Pricewise, Gusto may not be as affordable as Zenefits, but with Gusto, you don’t have to pay extra for full-service payroll and health insurance administration. Both are included in its base plan (Core), which is priced at $39 plus $6 per employee monthly. Zenefits’ base HR plan (Essentials) costs $10 per employee monthly, and you have to buy payroll as an add-on ($6 per employee monthly).

For benefits, you must have your own broker to manage them, and it costs an extra $5 per employee monthly to activate. Benefits administration is included in all plans, but you have to pay the applicable premiums for health insurance and workers’ comp plans.

Justworks is a professional employer organization (PEO) that offers health insurance benefits, payroll management, compliance support, and HR tools (such as online onboarding, employee information management, and PTO monitoring).

As a PEO, the provider pools your employees along with thousands of other small business employees, so you get access to “big company health insurance options” at a low rate. Zenefits also provides health insurance, but it isn’t a PEO, so it doesn’t have the power of numbers working in its favor.

In terms of pricing, Justworks’ base plan (Basic) is more expensive than Zenefits’s Essential plan (even with the payroll and benefits administration add-ons). Despite Justworks’s pricey options, its Basic plan has a comprehensive feature set that includes payroll processing, payroll tax filing, HR consulting services, PTO management, workers’ comp, health and wellness perks, life and disability insurance, and a more robust employee self-service dashboard.

Rippling has an employee management platform as its base system that allows you to manage staff information and electronic documents. The advantage that Rippling has over Zenefits is its international reach, especially when processing employee salaries. This is ideal for employers whose staff and contractors are located globally. You can also use its job codes tool to monitor employee time and the cost of that time on a per location, client, and task basis.

However, unlike Zenefits, its pricing details aren’t all transparent. While the cost of its base platform is published on Rippling’s website, the fees for its add-on modules are custom priced and available only by request. Moreover, Rippling doesn’t provide tools for managing and tracking compensation and employee performance.

For pricing, you have to contact Rippling to get an exact price quote. It also sometimes runs discounts for which you may be eligible.

Paychex is an all-in-one payroll, HR, and benefits platform. Its features include online onboarding, time and attendance tracking, payroll and tax administration, workers’ compensation, and benefits administration. You also get access to a customer service team that’s available 24/7.

If you need payroll support, Paychex assigns a dedicated specialist to help with all of your payroll and payroll tax needs. The provider even offers several ways that you can pay your employees. Unlike Zenefits, Paychex lets you pay employees through direct deposits, paper checks, pay cards, and pay on-demand.

Another advantage that Paychex has over Zenefits is its learning management module. Apart from being granted access to a library of online courses, you can incorporate your existing training programs into its platform, as well as create custom videos, reminders, and quizzes.

In terms of pricing plans, Paychex has different packages to fit the payroll and HR requirements of small to enterprise-level businesses. The cost of its small business option, Paychex Go, is published on Paychex’s website. However, you have to contact its sales team to request a custom package for the Paychex Flex and Paychex Flex Enterprise options.

Similar to Zenefits, ADP also has performance, compensation, and attendance management solutions. It even offers a compensation benchmarking solution, called ADP DataCloud, that lets you access current market insights and analyze information (such as employee turnover, overtime, and pay data) from over 30 million anonymized employers. This is helpful as it enables you to assess whether or not your compensation package is at par with the market.

Depending on the size of your company, ADP offers flexible product options that are designed to support your business as you grow from five employees to more than 1,000 staff. Aside from full service payroll, it provides HR solutions that enable you to manage benefits, recruitment, and new hire onboarding.

Unlike Zenefits, pricing details for ADP’s full service payroll and HR solutions are not published on its website. Based on our quote of $14 to $15 monthly per employee, ADP is more expensive when you do feature-by-feature comparison, because time tracking, integrations, and some hiring options (like background checks) aren’t included in their base product.

Similar to Justworks, TriNet is a full-service PEO. It is optimal for businesses that want to outsource HR administration tasks like hiring, managing benefits, and paying employees and contractors. For benefits offerings, what Trinet does is pool all of its clients together with other small businesses, enabling it to offer premier health insurance plans at an affordable rate.

An advantage that TriNet offers over Zenefits is that it provides access to localized health insurance. So, wherever your employees are located, they can get good quality health insurance.

Aside from benefits, TriNet also provides full service HR and payroll solutions—from applicant tracking, attendance monitoring, and performance management to tax processing (federal, state, and local taxes) and electronic preparation and delivery of Form W-2s. Additionally, it has a learning management module that lets your employees access more than 500 courses that tackle business skills (such as accounting, business writing, and computer skills), workplace ethics, and compliance training among others.