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BambooHR vs. Gusto

BambooHR is your one-stop shop for successful HR.

BambooHR is an all-in-one HR platform that helps you manage every step of the employee journey, gain strategic insight into your HR data, and build a purposeful employee experience.

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Gusto won't scale with you.

Gusto's main focus is payroll. While its compensation tools are well-developed, its general HR features aren't as robust, leaving you with gaps in supporting your employees and the growth of your organization.

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Let’s Compare Features

Recruiting

BambooHR: Our award-winning applicant tracking system gives you the power to:

  • Easily post to Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and Indeed
  • Collaborate on candidate evaluation
  • Automate personalized offer letters
  • Create candidate pools
  • Hiring mobile app: make hiring decisions on the go.

Gusto: Gusto doesn’t have an ATS, so you’ll need to find and pay for a third-party provider or do it all yourself using email or paper files. Either way, it's going to mean more time headaches.

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Data & Analytics

BambooHR: We make all your data easier to gather, access, and analyze--securely and accurately:

  • Over 40 standard reports, plus custom reports
  • Employee self-service access
  • Approval workflows for time off, hiring, and more
  • Report sharing with key stakeholders
  • Automated, scheduled reports

Gusto: Though it offers self-service and custom reports, Gusto's reporting capabilities are fairly limited even at higher price points.

  • Few reports means you have to build them yourself.
  • Basic features, like an org chart, don't come standard.
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Data & Analytics

BambooHR: We make all your data easier to gather, access, and analyze—securely and accurately:

  • Over 40 standard reports, plus custom reports
  • Employee self-service access
  • Approval workflows for time off, hiring, and more
  • Report sharing with key stakeholders
  • Automated, scheduled reports

Gusto: Though it offers self-service and custom reports, Gusto's reporting capabilities are fairly limited even at higher price points.

  • Few reports means you have to build them yourself.
  • Basic features, like an org chart, don't come standard.
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Employee Experience

BambooHR: Our intelligent engagement feature, BambooHR® Employee Satisfaction, replaces old-fashioned surveys with a simple, anonymous, two-part questionnaire and the proven power of eNPS®* scoring. Analytics include:

  • Top trending topics
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Top 5 Likes™ & Top 5 Dislikes™ smart reporting

Gusto: Gusto offers employee surveys, but it only tracks general trends over time, making it harder to understand and act on employee feedback.

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Onboarding

BambooHR: You get a beginning-to-end set of tools to give new hires a warm welcome, with time-saving features like:

  • A new hire packet with first-day, manager, and team info
  • Get to Know You questionnaire for new hires
  • Customizable onboarding checklists with automated reminders
  • Electronic signatures and preboarding features

Gusto: Since Gusto doesn't have a native ATS, you'll need to manually enter new hire information or double-check it synced correctly (if using a third-party integration).

  • There's no new-hire introduction to their team or vice versa.
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Payroll

BambooHR (U.S. only): Payroll in BambooHR is fast, simple, and easy, so you can:

  • Eliminate double entry with a single, secure database
  • Dig into your data with comprehensive payroll reporting
  • Give employees access to their payroll information
  • Leave federal, state, and local tax filing to us

Gusto: PCMag nominates Gusto as the "best all-around payroll website for small businesses." However, PCMag's editors only recommend it to "new payroll managers and very small businesses (1-10 employees)."

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“BambooHR's excellent range of intuitive features makes it indispensable, earning it our Editors' Choice designation for all-inclusive HR management systems.”
—PCMag’s BambooHR Review

Support

BambooHR: Our Support Heroes get rave reviews from customers—we're literally award-winning.

Stevie Award Winner
  • Get help via phone, email, or chat.
  • BambooHR® Learning: Stay sharp with 30+ free, interactive courses.

Gusto: Gusto customers complain about the poor quality of the support, frequently mentioning the following problems:

  • Slow response rates
  • Lack of knowledge from the representatives
“BambooHR's excellent range of intuitive features makes it indispensable, earning it our Editors' Choice designation for all-inclusive HR management systems.”
—PCMag’s BambooHR Review
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User Experience

BambooHR: BambooHR is consistently rated as one of the easiest-to-use HR platforms because of its friendly, intuitive interface.

  • BambooHR® Mobile app: Employees and managers have access to:
    • Signature Requests
    • PTO balance, requests, and approvals
    • Company documents and announcements
    • Company directory

Gusto: In their review of Gusto, PCMag editors point to sluggish page loads as a consistent problem in the user experience.

  • Wallet app: Gusto's employee financial and payroll app
BambooHR Awards & Accolades
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We're dedicated to helping HR be successful, whether that's by continually improving and adding new features or by making all our help and education resources available for free for all customers.
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