Guideline headquartered in San Mateo offers a cloud-based 401k management software for businesses priced on a per employee basis.
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Gusto
Score 7.7 out of 10
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Gusto offers payroll, benefits and compliance capabilities. Gusto is scaled for small to mid-sized businesses, and emphasizes an easy to use interface.
$46
per month
Pricing
Guideline
Gusto
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Simple: A streamlined set of automatic payroll features and benefits integrations
$40/month + $6/mo per person
$12 per employee/contractor
Plus: Comprehensive payroll, benefits, and HR tools for employers building a great place to work
$80/month + $12/mo per person
Premium: Scalable payroll and benefits, expert HR, and dedicated support for the complex needs of growing teams
Exclusive pricing, contact Gusto
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Guideline
Gusto
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR, so you can choose the plan that meets your business needs.
We selected Guideline due to their relationship with Gusto, our payroll service. However, we did review alternative options for our 401k program and found them very competitive as to price and quality. We were thinking about going with one of the bigger companies like Schwab, …
Gusto has been my favorite option both as an end-user (ie. employee) and admin (ie. employer). It's easy to use, has all the features we need, integrates with Guideline (our preferred 401k provider), and priced well for great value.
Gusto is WAY easier to use and I have had zero issues. Other payroll software I've used had multiple issues and requires way too much time being transferred from representative to representative to get the issues solved.
We were manually processing payroll through ADP previously and we also acquired a business with another local payroll company. This acquired company also was paying 1099 contractors manually, so Gusto enabled us to consolidate all of our payroll for multiple entities into one …
I believe that the only thing more broken than Guideline's product is their customer support. From initial contribution dates to the disastrous account closure that cost us personally thousands of dollars, this has been by far the worst SaaS and customer experience I've ever had in my career. If only 1) Guideline's product or 2) customer support had individually been broken, we would not have ended up in this state. I sent dozens and dozens of emails inquiring about oddities I was seeing in the product, but Guideline's reps only gave more conflicting and what ended up being grossly inaccurate feedback and status updates. I hope this review reaches anyone who is thinking of closing their Guideline account. Be extremely wary of what Guideline says and does in the account closure process and exact for detailed and exact timelines (you'll have to follow up many times...). For those of you who haven't yet selected a 401k provider, I'd recommend staying as far away from Guideline as possible.
Gusto is especially well-suited for small businesses. Its down-to-earth support staff and simple-to-use platform without extensive training make it a no-brainer. Larger companies may need a more comprehensive program, but it is harder for me to judge as I work for small businesses. It's very versatile, and no company should worry about using it.
Timesheetsv were super easy to access and user friendly. You always know how many hours you worked and good reminders as well if you forget to clock in or out.
I liked how the app always had a countdown to payday. In my own weird way it was a good way to keep on top of my expenses
Expense breakdown in Gusto wallet. It is quite helpful.
The fact that you could print employee verification letters is a really good feature.
I feel that the customer support was abysmal - In my experience, we were consistently given conflicting advice and statuses as we closed our account with Guideline. Despite many, many follow-ups attempting to clarify our current status and remaining steps to close the account, Guideline's reps continued to provide, I believe, misleading and inaccurate steps. This cost us thousands and thousands of dollars given Guideline was not able to appropriately pull the funds before closing the account.
Guideline's integrations - I believe there is clearly a broken pipeline between Guideline and Rippling. In my experience, contributions were not funded as expected when we first opened the account, and when we closed our account, there was no communication between Guideline and Rippling. Guideline continued to expect contributions into perpetuity despite closure of the account
I feel that Guideline's product itself is just broken in critical places - most importantly, statuses of contributions were reflected incorrectly in the software (Guideline thought funds were transferred, but they were not and Guideline never attempted to pull the funds from our bank). This, combined with the terrible customer support, cost us thousands and thousands of dollars after we closed our account. There are many absolutely critical features that are broken -> to give just one of many examples, it was not possible to update the bank account information and no error message was thrown. I was told that our account ended up in an exceptional state given our last payroll contribution date and account closure, but these seem like very basic things a 401k provider has to get right if there are going to manage people's money.
I already think the app is streamlined, and I've had no complaints about using it.
Since [I think] people can get a Gusto account mainly through an employer organization, the only doubt I had is that I thought my employer could see all of my financial information in my account. But after a 2-minute phone call and reassurance that this fear would violate federal banking laws, I was relieved. Maybe a disclaimer could be included on the webpage or in employees' onboarding that would put people with that concern at ease.
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 gave this rating because it is really easy to access through my phone which is super helpful. The user interface is also simple to navigate and find where I need to go. Also the pig walking in space is a great thing to watch while waiting for the info to load.
The few questions that we've had have been answered quickly and helpfully. The implementation was a breeze and the onboarding contacts were really helpful. There was some stuff I had to learn about 401(k)s in making the decision to implement Guideline, but the Guideline team was helpful in pointing me in the right direction.
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.
We selected Guideline due to their relationship with Gusto, our payroll service. However, we did review alternative options for our 401k program and found them very competitive as to price and quality. We were thinking about going with one of the bigger companies like Schwab, E*TRADE, Ally, etc., but found Guideline to be the best choice for us based on price and ease of use.
Gusto has a glitch-free on-boarding process that surpasses all of the other systems that I have ever tried and used. Rippling is the only other platform that comes close to the Gusto online experience, but Rippling has its PEO/behind-the-scenes legacy system glitches, and it's not nearly as user friendly as Gusto. Gusto's reports are THE best compared with all the other platforms that I have tried.
After a recent glitch with the payroll processing system, employees were forced to accept paper checks for a few weeks while Gusto's technical support team figured out the problem. This led to some employees being forced to miss work and lose money while having to deal with an antiquated paper check process.
