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
Heartland Payroll Solutions
Score 5.3 out of 10
N/A
Heartland Payroll is an HR management solution offering online access to payroll data and employee information. In 2025, the solution was acquired from Global Payment Solutions by Acrisure. It will be part of Acrisure's portfolio of business solutions going forward.
N/A
Pricing
Gusto
Heartland Payroll Solutions
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
Gusto
Heartland Payroll Solutions
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Gusto
Heartland Payroll Solutions
Features
Gusto
Heartland Payroll Solutions
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
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.
We changed payroll companies from Paycom to Heartland this year at the recommendation of our insurance agent who insisted they would integrate with the EASE system, which tracks employee benefits and deductions. However, 8 weeks into it, I regret my decision, since the setup hasn't been completed yet. The lack of responsiveness in some cases is astounding and often we have to ask 3, 4, and 5 times for something to be done. I hate to think what will happen after we are "handed off" from the payroll implementation team to the regular schmucks. We still are not able to track PTO and time off and we have been begging for the self-service feature to be turned on for employees so they can change addresses, bank account info, etc. Their training is NONEXISTENT and their manual is abysmal. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!!! I wish I could go back to Paycom!
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.
Cheap payroll processing but [in my opinion] you get what you pay for
[In my experience] great ability to frustrate their customers
Geat for the economy because [I feel] they hire so many different people and [in my experience] they don't hang around [so] you don't know who your rep is
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.
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.
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.
I never have trouble reaching customer support. They always are able to assist with fixing any problems that arise. There honestly haven't been many issues at all. Only ones I've created :)
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
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.
Only Paylocity has comparable technology but costs way more. The customer support at all 3 of these companies is a nightmare. This isn't news to anyone who has been in business for a while. If you're a broker, ADP and Paychex are going to try and steal your clients every day.
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.
