Employee Navigator is a benefits-focused HR system from the company of the same name in Maryland.
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Gusto
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Gusto offers payroll, benefits and compliance capabilities. Gusto is scaled for small to mid-sized businesses, and emphasizes an easy to use interface.
$49
per month
Pricing
Employee Navigator
Gusto
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Simple: A streamlined set of automatic payroll features and benefits integrations
$49/month + $6/mo per person
per month
Plus: Comprehensive payroll, benefits, and HR tools for employers building a great place to work
$80/month + $12/mo per person
per month
Premium: Scalable payroll and benefits, expert HR, and dedicated support for the complex needs of growing teams
$180/month + $22/mo per person
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Employee Navigator
Gusto
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Employee Navigator
Gusto
Considered Both Products
Employee Navigator
No answer on this topic
Gusto
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Gusto
I was not involved in the decision to select Gusto, but I do know that our companies use several different platforms and this is the final one selected.
We are very pleased with the change to [Employee Navigator] as it offers more what we needed. It's very customizable and has many features that can be added or taken away depending on business needs. I'd only say it would be less appropriate for a business quite smaller than ours who needed very little in comparison.
Gusto is a great fit for small teams and startups that want a simple, reliable way to run payroll, manage tax filings, and give CPAs access without constant micromanagement. It’s especially useful for founders who need something that “just works.” The human support has been excellent—especially when forwarding confusing IRS mail. That said, it’s a bit less intuitive when it comes to benefits and compliance for fully remote companies. For example, labor law poster distribution isn’t streamlined for digital teams, and setting up benefits felt more complex than it needed to be. Still, I’d recommend Gusto to any startup looking to get payroll right from day one.
Time off requests. These are easy to perform and track as an employee and user.
Time off approvals. Couldn't be easier. Time of approvals or denials are sent via email and are one-click tasks. Also can be performed in the web UI, but it's so easy.
Manager reporting. Managers can easily see reports on employee time off and make decisions based on that.
Gusto really kills it on the simplicity. The app and website are very clear and straightforward.
Gusto also does a great job at being easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and logically posed.
Gusto communicates very clearly and provides just the right amount of communication.
Gusto makes the onboarding process very easy. I recently started at a new company and the process of filling out the necessary documents, filling out forms, and getting my benefit information input was soooooo easy!
It is a great stand alone product. We would like it to tie into a more robust HR solution and communicate with payroll.
Initially there are a lot of features that are turned off, I like to know what a program is capable of so I can be more strategic in implementing a solution.
Having a broker in the middle is both good and bad.
Adding in previous time manually could be more accessible.
Notifications for when employees manually change hours.
We should allow 1099 users to use the mobile app instead of restricting them to the website, especially since they can just log into the full website on their mobile device.
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 overall platform and its speed of response are amazing. I would recommend this to any other business owner for ease of use and reliability. Email reminders are great if I’m super busy and have forgotten a few tasks. The price point compared to local payroll service is hands down a huge win.
So far, we have had very little reason to call in to Employee Navigator support. Our team who works with them have found it easy and simple to work with them when needed. They aren't able to work on much or divulge how the system works internally, nor what's on the roadmap, but it is still helpful to have timely confirmation.
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.
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
Most of the systems I've used for HRIS systems have been part of the payroll system. What stands out with Employee Navigator is the ability to key your benefit changes into one place, and all vendors are notified of the updates -- no more logging on to three or more sites to make an address change to an employee.
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.
We spent about half the time on open enrollment than we did in the last two years. Employee Navigator was much easier for staff to navigate and be able to complete their open enrollment independently
We've saved several thousand dollars in setup fees to link with insurance carriers since moving to Employee Navigator
For me, it is hard to quantify payroll software as having an ROI. It does save quite a bit of time per pay period, so perhaps we could assign a theoretical number to an employee taking that time. I'd say, at the least, it saves 30-60 minutes a pay period compared to a more difficult-to-use payroll software.
