Gusto vs. Namely

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.

Incentivized

Namely is nice because it has everything all in one place: performance, applicant tracking through Greenhouse, payroll, time off, hourly timesheets, and benefits. From the payroll side, Namely is especially helpful for remote employers who have employees in multiple states, especially Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. Namely will automatically update the payroll profile of the employee with the state and local tax for the work or home location, whichever the employer chooses. I have found a few mistakes with the local tax being assigned not matching the Ohio Tax Finder, but for the most part, it is accurate. It is also helpful that we can create multiple payrolls for multiple periods and they are included in the overall fee

Incentivized

• Gusto makes onboarding employees and ensuring their documents are signed very easy.
• The way you can integrate things like Google Workspace makes both onboarding new employees into the apps you use a breeze, as well as when you need to offboard them.
• Managing benefits is simple, because they take care of all the heavy lifting. I just have to review the options, make a selection, and they take it from there.

Incentivized

• Namely has helped with our COVID sick leave response. It has made a major difference both with the weekly payroll and the 941 tax filing
• Keeping track of our multiple PTO plans. Thank goodness for Namely, I have shredded my old PTO spreadsheets.
• Employees like the convenience of the cell phone app. As a payroll administrator, I like the Geo Tracking tool where I can see where some are when the clock is in or out.
• The flexibility inside of the payroll system both as you are finalizing an employee profile and when you are processing payroll is a major advantage.
• The reports I get out of Namely in Excel format work well for me.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• in my opinion, HORRIBLE performance review platform, we had a really hard time with it and would not recommend that you use this function
• In my experience, poor customer service, difficult to get ahold of them when you need support
• Capabilities are limited in comparison to other more robust HRIS systems

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.

Administrators and employees love Namely. It is very easy to use and streamlined. Employees stay engaged with news feed updates and enjoy all the self service options. The time cards are very easy to access and clocking in and out for non-exempt employees is a breeze. Namely is part of our family.

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.

Incentivized

It is very simple to use for myself, the HR team, and our employees. I find the payroll process very user-friendly. Reporting is simple to navigate and produce the required information requested. I know our employees enjoy the self-service feature and use it on a regular basis, which saves me time.

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

Unfortunately, in more recent years we've had a lot of difficulty with Namely as they've undergone a lot of internal changes. It took 4 returned emails saying the person no longer worked at Namely to find someone to help me (I finally called payroll) and it took a while to get connected with a direct source of help. Namely now has set up their "pod" feature of communication which works well for the most part, but is different. I felt spoiled when we first started with Namely, but now it feels very much like working with most large companies' help centers. There is a system to go through and you do have the option to click "urgent". In general the help is efficient, but it still takes a few days and it's hard to speak with someone directly. It is all done via online communications and is difficult to actually speak to someone on the phone. This works well for most cases, but I do feel frustrated more often than I'd like to with this type of communication. (2019/2020)

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

There were so many specialists in the implementation process; it would have been nice to have fewer people who had a more holistic understanding of the platform. Also, the onboarding meetings covered so much technical information that there was relatively little time for questions (though questions were invited). Eventually, everything worked out.

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

We had used Namely in conjunction with Wurk for payroll and Ease for benefits enrollment. Unfortunately the "fraken-system" was very cumbersome to manage. The fraken-system was used due to the limited options in the cannabis industry for providers who were willing to work with us. We eventually transitioned to OnePoint to have an all-in-one system but also left it because it was not able to scale with the organization.

• 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

• When we were over 100, it provided a huge benefit to us due to the accuracy of payroll, benefits integration and management, and org chart and performance tracking. Having all of that in one place was a huge improvement from the former disjointed user experience.
• When we dropped below 100 due to covid, our insurance rates went up 93% to offer comparable plans, and we had to move over to a PEO for benefits which meant we also had to move payroll. It was hugely disruptive, and now our employees have a bad experience when trying to manage their HR lives in multiple places. It is confusing and, again, disjointed.

Incentivized