Gusto vs. PeopleGuru™

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

I'd say PeopleGuru is well suited for most businesses -- a more significant (200+ employees) company may want to use something with a sleeker design. This provider is willing to work with cannabis businesses, which is unusual for payroll providers now.

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

• AdHoc Reports
• Applicant Tracking System(ATS)
• Flexibility in Performance Reviews
• Ability to manage company set-up and reporting
• Ability to customize standard company forms in PG for usage

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

• Recruiting module is very clunky and not streamlined. I've worked with recruiting platforms that are more efficient.
• Job changes are a multi-step process that feels like it could be one screen asking all the necessary info regarding pay rate, date, labor, etc. whereas now you have to go through multiple tabs and screens to change someone's position.
• Labor mapping seems to be a custom request every time when the pay rate is different for two different jobs. Feels like there is a lot of back-end work that needs to be accomplished before it pulls correctly into labor.
• Would like to see an app with supervisor/time manager functions. At least to approve punch correction or time-off requests.
• Advanced scheduling available to certain job roles instead of all or nothing.

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.

The software is cost-effective and exceeds our needs compared to the previous software.

Incentivized

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

Some processes are cumbersome and the help guide does not offer all solutions.

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

The customer service is great for the most part. There are a few issues with tax filings but overall I am pleased with the customer service provided by PeopleGuru.

Incentivized

The trainer was difficult to understand.

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

The implementation process was cumbersome and stressful. It took an extremely long time to complete this process. We had to learn a lot on the fly because this was the first implementation for all of us. The process would have been a lot easier if there was a third party that could assist with a lot of the work required to transfer and verify data.

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

PeopleGuru is better than other cannabis-friendly payroll systems, like CheckWriters or MyPaperlessOffice (companies so small they were not available in your dropdown). It is not as good as bigger companies that are not cannabis-friendly, like ADP or Paylocity. ADP is super expensive but given the choice I would be with Paylocity over PeopleGuru.

Incentivized

• 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

• Cost is reasonable
• User experience has gotten worse
• Report writing had become much easier & less limited with variables that we can use

Incentivized