Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Rippling is the best payroll provider if you have multiple companies that you want registered together. No other payroll provider we spoke to offered the multi-EIN feature that Rippling provides. We are a small company and Rippling works great for us at our size. I do not know how well the application scales, but I could see the systems being less than ideal for very large companies. Similarly, a very small company many not need all the features that Rippling offers and can get away with a cheaper payroll company. For example, a sole proprietorship with two employees probably should use
Gusto or some other option if they need a payroll company, but Rippling would still be a useful service for these companies vs. no payroll company at all. It is just a matter of price.
Read full review Pros Administrate individual 401(k) Understand the contributions accumulated in total and per year Understand the percentage of salary being contributed per pay period. Read full review Clean UI - there is no ambiguity about what function each button will perform. Very easy to navigate. It is not difficult to find what is being looked for. Single location for multiple functions. This is great for me as there is one central hub for all professional admin matters. Saving me valuable time that I can better spend on more pressing work matters. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Providing point of contact for different aspects of the program, we have a customer service rep, who is fantastic, but he is the only person I know to reach out to, and he generally has to follow up with me with information on which department/person I need to get in touch with to resolve my question. Their "help" section is a bit difficult to navigate, but I will say the team chat makes up for that particular shortfall. Their pricing is a bit all over the place. Everything is "al a carte," so the costs can add up quickly. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Rippling continues to innovate and amaze me with their new innovations and features. Product feedback is taken seriously so I always give it whenever I can and end up seeing results. Rippling is the new wave of HRIS that cannot compare against others in the industry just due to the fact they are super user friendly!
Read full review Usability Well thought out and intuitive user experience for employees and administrators. Educational documentation has been a plus
Read full review Rippling stands out with its dependable, transparent, and intuitive platform for HR management. It simplifies tasks like managing team details, payroll, and benefits, making them straightforward and efficient. This user-friendliness has been a game-changer for companies like Noticed, where it streamlined employee onboarding and Open Enrollment. Their features combine to create a positive and stress-free experience for HR professionals and employees alike. Rippling's focus on user-friendliness makes it a clear choice for companies seeking a streamlined and efficient HR solution.
Read full review Reliability and Availability I like that the availability in using Rippling at any given time is useful to me. Getting on the site freely when I need gives me security of knowing that I can be in control of viewing health insurance and hours information. I have yet to get any errors in using the Rippling app.
Read full review Performance Rippling's performance has been great, no errors or glitches yet so far. I am confident that Going from one page to the next and all its complexity usage does not lag or times out, it works effectively and efficiently. While using Rippling and other apps it does not tend to slow it down, works great. No complaints.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review The Rippling support team is INCREDIBLE. Their chat bot feature is very robust and if you need a live agent they are quick to hop on and a very helpful and friendly. Whether you need a Zoom call for a screen share or things are complicated and they need to make a support ticket, they will always work with you until you find a solution. VERY helpful! and Onboarding as a company/customer was great too.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Proof was much more convoluted and not easy to maneuver. Also all the platforms could not relate to each other and so nothing was streamlined in its approach. Also things seemed to lag and was not very up to date when it needed to be. I feel rippling has simplified their processes
Read full review Scalability I can go on here and see all my hours and pto plus health benefits. I like to have the work handbook handy to refer to legal things. How to work my role within it's limits. Being able to put in my hours and view when they are approved is a huge benefit for me.
Read full review Return on Investment Allow small employees to enhance benefit package Great recruitment tool for new employees Connection with payroll vendor allowed for less manual work Read full review The organization of information increased the business efficiency Employee can search for themselves, leaving HR to do the things they need to be productive Access 24/7 thru mobile app allows employee to function when they have the opportunity leaving the normal work hours for other business. Read full review ScreenShots