Guideline headquartered in San Mateo offers a cloud-based 401k management software for businesses priced on a per employee basis.
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Rippling
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. This enables users to manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system. For example, when onboarding a new employee, Rippling can take a new hire from anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party…
$8
starting price per user, per month
Pricing
Guideline
Rippling
Editions & Modules
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Recommended
$8.00
starting price per user, per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Guideline
Rippling
Free Trial
No
No
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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For additional pricing details visit the Rippling pricing page.
Guideline is useful to keep track of employee retirement portfolios and keep the information visible instantly for the employees. It handles contributions towards the retirement account.
I have not used any other product as I used to work in academia and the paperwork as dealt with by the H.R. /planning department. After using Rippling I can tell the impact that it has on H.R. effort and the easiness to access one own's information easily.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.