Gusto vs Heartland

Gusto offers straightforward monthly plans with options starting at a monthly base fee of $55, plus an additional $6 per employee per month. If you don’t have W-2 employees, you can use Gusto to pay your contractors for just $35/month plus $6/month per contractor (only in the months you pay them). There are no hidden fees, you can cancel anytime, and our base price includes setup, tax filing, multiple payroll runs, reporting, and other essentials.

Heartland is notably more expensive, starting at $89 per month for 1–5 employees, but you’ll need to contact them for pricing if you have more than 5 employees. Their Essentials plan offers fewer HR essentials than the comparable plan at Gusto, and their time tools aren’t included in any of their plans. They also charge extra fees for many things that come loaded on Gusto’s Plus and Premium plans.

With Gusto, you can run your payroll in just a few clicks, or automate it for salaried employees with Payroll on AutoPilot. Unlimited payrolls are included at no extra cost, and all your federal, state, and local taxes are calculated, filed and paid every time you run payroll. Gusto can help you pay contractors, whether domestic or international, and we’ll handle your forms come tax time.

Heartland offers similar payroll functionality to Gusto including payroll taxes, W-2s and 1099s, but they don’t support international payroll, and their multi-state payroll is somewhat restrictive, according to reviews.

Gusto comes loaded with more than 9,000 small group health insurance choices, free benefits administration with Gusto-managed plans, workers’ comp, HSAs, FSAs, commuter benefits, and even free financial planning tools for your team. If you have a benefits provider you already know and love, we’ll handle the migration so you can easily manage benefits for your team, all from within the platform.

Heartland does not offer any benefits administration, though they do offer integrations with providers to sync up deductions. They also offer an ACA compliance service to help you understand your requirements when it comes to offering benefits to your team.

Where Gusto really shines is our suite of user-friendly HR tools. Our people-first recruiting, hiring, and onboarding tools are designed to help you find the talent you need while boosting employee satisfaction from day one. Time tracking includes geofenced clock-ins, integrated scheduling, as well as our time kiosk that turns any tablet into a centralized clock-in location. And our performance management suite includes goal setting, 360 reviews, and happiness surveys to make sure your team is engaged and on track.

Heartland offers a basic set of recruiting, hiring, and onboarding tools in their higher-tiered plans. They have an ATS, candidate screenings, background checks and basic HR help such as job descriptions and an employee handbook builder. But overall, their offerings are severely lacking compared with Gusto. Their time tools aren’t included in any of their plans, and they don’t offer any performance management tools.

All of Gusto’s plans come with full access to our friendly sales and customer support teams via phone, email, and chat Monday through Friday. And our FAQ and Help Center are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Companies with more than 10 employees also benefit from our dedicated onboarding support team.

Heartland offers live phone, email, and chat support from 7am—7pm CST, Monday to Friday as well as a knowledge base. Members of the Complete plan also have access to a dedicated HR specialist. However, Heartland’s customer service could be described as “middling” at best. There are reports of poor customer service, a faulty website and app, and frequent errors in processing payroll.

Gusto offers built-in integrations with nearly 150 popular business tools across accounting, time tracking, point-of-sale (POS), expense management, and more — including platforms like QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, and Homebase. These integrations are easy to set up, don’t require developer support, and come included at no extra cost. We also have support for custom APIs.

Heartland advertises integrations with benefits providers and time tracking tools, but they provide no details on which providers or platforms they integrate with.