Gusto vs. PurelyHR

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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.
$496
per month
PurelyHR
Score 8.3 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
PurelyHR is leave management software for small to medium-sized businesses. The software allows you to track your staff’s leave requests and approvals, as well as streamline your company's diverse time off policies and hierarchies. According to the vendor, Time-Off will take care of your accruals, carry-overs, banked time and all other confusing calculations, so you can focus on what most important, your people. This time off solution has evolved throughout the years…N/A
Pricing
GustoPurelyHR
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GustoPurelyHR
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsGusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GustoPurelyHR
Features
GustoPurelyHR
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
Gusto
9.2
Ratings
11% above category average
PurelyHR
-
Ratings
Pay calculation9.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for external payroll vendors8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Benefit plan administration8.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct deposit files9.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Reimbursement management9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
User Ratings
GustoPurelyHR
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GustoPurelyHR
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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PurelyHR helps to manage our timeclock with 19 locations that are spread over Middle TN/KY. Supervisors can approve request for time off, view a consolidated calendar showing all PTO scheduled. There are settings to block too many request in one day per our own guidelines. Time punches can easily be approved by the employee and then by a supervisor. PurelyHR helps make the timesheet process easy to manage and get reports for processing payroll in a timely manner
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Pros
  • 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.
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  • Timesheet reports available through PurelyHR are exactly what we need
  • PurelyHR makes PTO request and approvals easier to manage
  • PurelyHR has an easy to use timesheet approval system
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Cons
  • 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.
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  • Changing employee settings (auto lunch) can be tedious
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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Usability
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.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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We have used Paychex Flex and found that PurelyHR provides a better fit for our team. It was important for our company to find an easy to manage PTO request and tracking system and a time keeping system with certain reports. We also like that PurelyHR has a feature where documents can be uploaded for employee review and sign off.
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Return on Investment
  • 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.
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  • PurelyHR has saved our employees and supervisors valuable time (an average of an hour each pay period per employee to manager their time keeping and approval) from the old way of using manual timesheets along with emailing or faxing copies.
  • PurelyHR has solved our PTO tracking needs, offering an easy to use request and approval system
  • The PTO calendar shows all employees' schedule PTO on one calendar, this is a time saver for Operations Managers
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ScreenShots

Gusto Screenshots

Screenshot of Gusto's automated payrollScreenshot of the time-off tracking interfaceScreenshot of the source of truth for HR data

PurelyHR Screenshots

Screenshot of Imagine. Everything you need to know about your staff, all in one place! Secure and easy for your employees to self-manage.Screenshot of Watch year after year on how your company is doing in team
growth in any department or office.Screenshot of Secure, customize and share all your important HR documents! Backed up daily and accessible from anywhere!Screenshot of The ultimate leave management software to efficiently manage employees' pto, vacation, sick days or any other custom leave types.Screenshot of Monitor your employees' arrival and departure times, as well as their total work hours with breaks and meal times included!Screenshot of Track employee’s total number of hours worked in general, or on certain clients, projects or tasks.