Gusto vs. Sage HRMS

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

Sage HRMS might be great for a smaller company under 1,000 employees. I would not recommend it for larger companies. It becomes too burdensome because many processes still have to be manual and reports take forever to process if you have too many records in your system

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

• Reporting - there are three levels of reporting - 1. Standard Reports 2. Query Tool - users can create very simple list with some filtering functionality 3. Crystal Reports - user can create very simple to complex report pulling data from multiple table, calculated fields, etc.
• Benefit Tracking - benefit plans are setup utilizing rate tables therefore rate changes are updated globally
• Payroll - everyday payroll processing and tax filing that is very user friendly

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

• It is sometimes hard to identify parts of competency/compensation history. We built tables to store this data but it is not laid out well on the screen.
• Sometimes, even when you tell the system to "Add to History" it doesn't update so there is history missing. This impacts someone that relies on history for troubleshooting and reports.

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.

I do not work with this software anymore, and I am not involved with the renewal of it. However, if I were, I would still suggest using it unless something better was introduced

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

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

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

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

Sage HRMS is popular and it's used in most organizations due to the reputation of Sage in coming up with popular and reliable business softwares. The software is not that expensive and after learning how to use it, everything becomes smooth and perfect. It's ultimate strength lies in payroll management and helping in applicant tracking capabilities

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

• Sage HRMS allowed us to manage payroll in house.
• It was disappointing that we had to use an outside vendor to file and pay our withholding tax.
• Ultimately, the decision was made to outsource payroll after using HRMS for 3 years.

Incentivized