Gusto vs. TribeHR (discontinued)

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 think it's great for small companies to manage their basic HR functions if they do not have a dedicated department. I'm unsure of the capabilities it holds for a large company with multiple teams to organize and how the calendaring functions across departments. But, for our team of roughly 20 folks it is simple and straightforward.

Incentivized

• 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!

Incentivized

• Ad publication
• process streamlining
• scalability

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

• I would like even more capabilities, but I think that has to do with how we are using the site.
• I would like to receive email notifications once a week with a summary of activity in TribeHR, including time-off scheduled by my team and any new documents or information that has been added.
• I'd like reminders if I am going to go over my time off that is allotted to carry over into the new year and other pertinent vacation, floating holiday, sick time notifications.

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 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

We evaluated Greenhouse but went with net suite because we were already using some of the other NetSuite. Greenhouse seemed a bit easier to use. The others were a bit too small, didn't have the stretch to scale.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• As I stated it has alleviated numerous back and forth emails with our CFO (who is only available PT) and CEO (who is often too busy to spend time on HR functions) - this has allowed for easy answers to basic HR questions.
• It has allowed us to track all employee time-off in one place, saving us time from checking each individual Outlook calendar for scheduling purposes.
• It has allowed us to direct all employees to one place for core HR documents and information, ensuring that folks are always getting the same answers to their inquiries.

Incentivized