Gusto Pricing: Is It Worth the Investment
Gusto payroll services is a software platform that lets you automate the tedious task of generating and processing payroll for the employees at your company. It is one of the most recent software offerings and promises to make handling payroll processing, as well as onboarding and payroll tax processing easier for companies. It also has a promising Gusto pricing schedule, which comes with the total package, in terms of its advantages.
With all its features and benefits in check, here we will figure out if the Gusto pricing is worth it, or if you would be better off investing in another software.
Let’s get into whether the Gusto payroll pricing is worth it.
Gusto Pricing Plans
Gusto has pricing plans for most smaller to medium-sized companies. These pricing plans can also be upgraded progressively, as the company grows in terms of resources and workforce.
At the moment, Gusto has 3 pricing plans for HR and payroll processing services. These plans are the Core, Complete and Concierge pricing plans. Let’s get into the specifics of each and see what kind of company they are beneficial for.
Core Plan
Gusto payroll is for smaller companies or startups that are just getting around to expanding their teams. If you are on the market for a software with a simple and streamlined payroll system, then the Gusto core plan will definitely benefit you.
The plan provides coverage for all 50 states, and produces deductions for wage garnishments, creates digital copies of the end-of-year forms, allows for several schedules and pay periods, and even integrates with other software.
Other than the benefits mentioned above, the core plan includes:
- Administration of health benefits
- Workers’ compensation administration
- Employee profiles and self-service
- Paid time-off (PTO) policies
- Customer support
This plan is the most affordable, especially for companies with smaller teams who are looking for a basic payroll processing software with some features related to benefits management.
Pricing: A basic cost of $39/month and $6/month per employee
Complete Plan
This plan is the best for faster-growing companies who are looking to streamline compensation management for employees, while having full payroll features. Since the software is cloud-based, you can manage the benefits and all the other features without having to dedicate any extra time and effort to it.
While the basic Core plan has all the important features that a small company needs, your organizational needs may be greater.
The Complete plan contains all the features of the Core plan, along with:
- Permissions
- Built-in time tracking
- Employee surveys and directory
- Onboarding
- Time-off requests and PTO policies
These features are very beneficial to companies that are rapidly expanding their workforce and hiring more people. Also, for growing teams, the directory feature lets you make an organizational chart that contains fun facts and pictures, which is good for employee engagement.
Pricing: A basic cost of $39/month and $12/month per employee.
Concierge
The concierge plan is for small businesses that need help with payroll processing, as well as human resources management in general. This is good for businesses that don’t have adequate resources, both human and momentary, to dedicate to HR maintenance, and want an automated solution that can take over the payroll processing for them.
Startups are the perfect target market for the Concierge pricing plan, as they usually don’t have the time to create a dedicated HR department at the start of the business.
The Concierge plan offers all the features of the Complete plan, along with:
- HR compliance support
- Policies and JD templates
- Access to professionals with HR certifications
- Employee handbook templates
- Training plans for harassment prevention
As mentioned earlier, this plan is for any company that doesn’t have a structured HR team in place. Basically, it’s like outsourcing certain HR tasks, which is beneficial for startups.
Pricing: A basic cost of $149/month and $12/month per employee.
Understanding Gusto Pricing
As mentioned earlier, the plans are for smaller companies who are just growing but even established companies can take advantage of this and opt for Gusto payroll services. This could be due to a shift in organizational structure at bigger companies, or for further expansion.
Companies can use any of the plans free of cost for one month, and run a few payroll processing terms, to get a feel for the features on each plan.
Is Gusto Pricing Worth It?
The final verdict is, yes, especially once you factor in the free trial period, which can give you a taste of what the software can do. However, due to the lack of employee-first features such as a student loan refinance calculator, the pricing, even though it is smaller in comparison to some other software offerings, is not suitable for some businesses.
Ultimately, you need to evaluate your individual HR needs and invest in software accordingly.
