Best Payroll and Benefits Software Solutions in 2025

I appreciate Paylocity's integrated platform – it eliminates data silos and saves a lot of time. The self-service portal empowers employees and frees up HR for strategic work. The reporting and analytics are fantastic, giving us data-driven insights into our workforce.

We decided to implement Paylocity after struggling with a cobbled-together HR system. Our old setup involved separate tools for payroll, benefits administration, and basic HR functions. This led to a lot of manual data entry and siloed information, making it a nightmare to track things and ensure accuracy. Paylocity's integrated platform solved these issues by providing a user-friendly, intuitive system that offers valuable insights into our workforce. Overall, Paylocity has been a great investment for my client, and I highly recommend it to any organization looking to streamline their HR operations.

While Paylocity is a great solution overall, its robust set of features can be overwhelming for small businesses or those new to the platform. The pricing might be cost-prohibitive for very small businesses with basic needs. Some specific HR needs might require additional customization or integrations, which can add complexity.

The biggest advantage is Paylocity's integrated platform. It shines in user experience with a clean and intuitive interface. Many competitors focus mainly on payroll and basic HR, but Paylocity offers strong talent management tools as well.

Paychex offers a wider range of pricing options, potentially better for smaller businesses, though user experience might not be as smooth. For very large companies, Workday HCM is a powerful option, but it can be expensive and complex to implement.

Choosing an HR tool requires careful consideration. First, identify your company's core needs – basic HR or comprehensive talent management. Then, prioritize user-friendliness for both HR and employees. Finally, factor in scalability, cost (including implementation and support), and robust security for employee data.

Paylocity has adapted to meet evolving user needs by focusing on mobile, enhancing talent management resources, and increasing AI integration.

Paylocity caters well to mid-sized businesses (50-200 employees) and organizations prioritizing user experience.

• Deel is an excellent solution for organizations with international contractors, offering a smooth and simplified process.
• It provides EoR services in over 150 countries and includes additional features like onboarding and time-off tracking for international contractors.

I worked with a company expanding into two international markets as part of a tech stack selection project. My engagement lasted about six months and involved selection, implementation, and change management for onboarding.

Deel is a global payroll solution designed to streamline compensation operations for organizations. The company needed a system to manage international payroll efficiently while ensuring compliance across different regions.

• Deel is only worthwhile if you fit its niche. It can be expensive, and if you don’t have a high volume of international hires, the cost may not be justified.
• If you need a more streamlined international hiring process with lower volume, alternatives like Oyster, Remote, or Papaya may be better options.
• Customer support is lacking.

Deel is uniquely positioned to expedite international hiring, particularly for contractors, seasonal hires, or high-turnover roles. It outperforms most competitors in this area for the price. However, if your needs don’t align with this niche, Deel may not be the best choice.

• What does your international hiring strategy look like, and what types of employees are you hiring?
• What is your budget?
• What HRIS features do you need?

Deel’s primary strength is its extensive EoR services, which have expanded to meet user demand. The company has focused on increasing its EoR coverage in new countries to strengthen its niche. Additional onboarding and benefits features support this strategy, but overall, Deel has not evolved significantly beyond its core offering.

• Companies with high-volume international hiring can benefit from Deel, particularly for contractors or high-turnover roles.
• Organizations managing extensive international payroll and compliance requirements.
• Employers needing to sponsor immigration visas.

The pros of using ADP are having an HRBP and a Payroll Advisor who works directly with you. The HRBP has been great at ensuring that we are following the proper guidelines for our HR-related issues. Having a payroll advisor gives us direct 1:1 support while doing payroll. It has also been great for updating our employee handbook, I love the way they make sure our policies are up to date as new policies develop.

We have been using ADP since 2017. As a small nonprofit organization, it was important to find a PEO. This helped with lowering the cost of benefits for our staff as well as managing our payroll. It has also provided us with endless HR resources.

When thinking about buying this tool, think about your company’s specific needs. Take into account the size of your company and what your expectations are. Be sure to have a budget that shows what your company will pay for benefits versus your employees. Think about what HR resources you are interested in (will you solely rely on ADP or will you also have in-house assistance)? Thinking about these things will help you when speaking with the representatives.

Over time we have been able to upgrade from Total Source to WorkForce Now. This has allowed us to have better reposting and made it easier on our accounts when submitting payroll. It has saved us a ton of time with spreadsheets. ADP is great at keeping you up to date on ungraded to their system. They have also evolved their MyLearning tool which provides a ton of training and now they have more live training and even in-person leadership training.

I feel like ADP can be useful for any size organization, it all depends on the needs. Whether it’s for part of the platform or the entire platform they have something to suit everyone’s needs.

• Easy Onboarding - Remote does make onboarding hires in remote locations quite easy.
• Online Portal - great to have all the hires from all international locations in one place.
• Expenses - easy for employees and companies to track/pay expenses.

With a shortage of talent in the U.S., our firm needed to hire in locations where we did not have an entity. Global EORs offer a way to do that without setting up a legal entity first. Remote was an up-and-coming player in the space that made getting setup much faster, less complex than traditional partners like Velocity Global. We have used the system for approximately 2 years now.

• Billing/Invoicing - Remote has had multiple billing errors in our invoices and their system is incredibly confusing for reconciling what is outstanding vs. the errors they have made.
• Management - Remote has changed management recently and they have changed terms & conditions from our original invoices and have taken away promotions by saying they were "introductory promotions" rather than the "negotiated terms" like we originally discussed.

Remote was a leader in simplicity when we first began using their services a couple of years ago. Now, I believe certain competitors have caught up and surpassed them.

• Cash flow - these services require upfront payment for payroll so be prepared to pay month end payroll by the 17th of that month.
• Terminating employees - Employment laws vary country by country. Remote is offering a service to make it easier on your company to hire elsewhere; however, terminating employees can be quite difficult.

Remote was very startup friendly 2 years ago. Their management has changed and their culture has changed drastically. It is no longer a customer-focused culture going above and beyond to win customers.

Remote is good for an established company in search of a way to explore hiring people in other regions of the world.

• Our employees find their interface user-friendly
• Employment taxes are filed without any effort from us (the employer)
• It's one of the only HR software suites that has functionality for hourly employees

We bought Paycor when we needed a payroll solution that would work with employees in multiple states. Paycor allows us to process multi-state payroll, and they file the necessary taxes in each state and municipality.

We decided on Paycor for these reasons, and our staff found the UI to be the easiest to navigate. We have been using the platform for 4 years.

A great many things, unfortunately.

• Support is practically non-existent
• The payroll workflow is jumbled and doesn't make sense. Instead of a seamless flow in which you approve time card and move on to payroll in the same workflow, you do these things separately
• Their punch clock isn't very intelligent. I have to manually fix several punches a week that shouldn't have been allowed in the first place (e.g. an employee has two punch-in records in a row, with no punch-out record in between)
• There are a lot of reports, which is great. But, ironically, I can never find a report for what I need.
• It's impossible to manage what I would consider basic configurations. For example, our office manager retired last year, but she remains the manager for all employees in Paycor because the setting cannot be changed, even though her Paycor employee profile is no longer active
• Did I mention that support doesn't exist? Send in a ticket and you're unlikely to get a response.

The biggest difference we found is that Paycor has functionality (or modules) for a wide variety of employment situations. In our case, it was one of the only suites that could accommodate hourly employees, meaning it has punch clock and scheduling features.

My staff believes their UI is better, too. However, I don't believe that to be the case from an employer standpoint.

Firstly, if needed, are you prepared to wait for a response from support that may never come? Because that is a reality of Paycor.

Secondly, what functionality do you need? There are a lot of HR suites, and Paycor was our choice because it had functionality that many others did not. If you don't need time management (punch clock) or scheduling, then you should take the time to compare all of your options. Paycor may not be right for you.

Thirdly is the cost. In our second year, they changed their entire price structure. They gave us 30 days' notice. Our monthly costs went up, but we could do little as it takes many months to evaluate other options and several more months to facilitate the migration. The point being, we were stuck and had to deal with the rate change.

I would say very little during the four years we have used Paycor. They've made some UI changes but nothing impactful.

I am sure there is a scenario in which Paycor is a suitable solution for companies of all sizes. Their suite has a lot to offer and can accommodate a variety of employment situations. That said, based on my experience, I wouldn't think Paycor is best suited for companies with many employees. I have a hard enough time managing five employees in Paycor.

It's very intuitive, the UX/UI and design features are really amazing. It's also very well liked by our employees because of its ease of use. It's built to keep small companies in compliance -- Gusto really takes it a step further than most other Payroll platforms and gives you a bunch of compliance features and help. Gusto also has "next-day pay" features on some of the more premium tiers of membership; this is a really solid SLA and turnaround for payroll platforms, as this process (sending money to folks) isn't the easiest thing to do at scale.

We onboarded onto Gusto when the company first started back in 2016/2017. We didn't have a way to pay people, and Gusto offered an intuitive, small-business solution to pay employees, help us stay in compliance, and do all the heavy lifting for us in the Payroll and HR world. We've used Gusto for approximately 6 years and we still use it today to pay contractors, which is another benefit it provides.

Gusto is built for small companies so if your company grows quickly, it could easily outpace the features that Gusto provides. It doesn't integrate well/if at all with other softwares it doesn't already have a partnership with. It also has pretty limited reporting capabilities; the reports you can pull are nice, but there are limited types that you can choose from and building reports doesn't include all fields you might need.

It’s more intuitive, but not as scalable for large companies. I'd prefer the more intuitive tools to start with, and then once I wrap my head around how payroll works then I think switching to a larger, more scalable tool helps with understanding the big picture.

If you have a small finance/payroll/HR team, and want a tool to do a lot of the work for you, get Gusto. If you're a large team with a large company, I wouldn't recommend it.

For the most part, it's really improved its contractor payment system and also its compliance features. It still needs to work on allowing for more integrations with third-party tools.

Small organizations (1-100)

The hiring process was transparent and straightforward. I found Rippling's dashboard particularly helpful and user-friendly. The onboarding process became significantly easier, and the smooth integration between the systems was a major advantage.

I was working with a start-up where everything related to resume management, onboarding, and offboarding was done manually. Payroll was managed through QuickBooks.

Rippling was introduced because there were plans to expand the workforce, creating a need for a system that could streamline and organize processes efficiently without consuming too much time.

Rippling proved useful as it offered both an applicant tracking system (ATS) and tools for onboarding and offboarding. It also includes payroll options that can be leveraged in the future.

I felt that the customer service could be improved. The pricing was a bit high for our budget, but the company went ahead with the purchase based on positive reviews. After implementation, we realized that the payroll system might not be the best option for our future needs.

The company chose Rippling because of its positive reviews. I would prefer a system that includes an integrated payroll system in the future so everything can be managed in one place.

It is important to plan how the company will use the system in advance. Pricing should also be carefully considered, especially if expansion plans are uncertain, as was the case with the company I worked for.

I haven’t used it long enough to observe any evolution. It appeared to be the same during my time using it.

This tool is ideal for companies transitioning from manual processes in recruitment and onboarding to automation. I am unsure about its suitability for other features or use cases.

The interface is slick and easy to use. It offers flexible and expandable HR and benefits tools, meaning it can grow with the business. The streamlined and partially automated PTO with self-service is also good.

We bought OnPay to streamline our payroll process. Our HR and finance teams were too small and preoccupied with rapid growth activities to manage payroll, and as a result, mistakes were being made. The monthly payroll process was analog, without much automation, and quite inefficient and laborious. We wanted to have a more automated and online process, which OnPay provided.

OnPay is genuinely focused on small businesses. The interface is clean and simple, not overloaded with features like those found in big company payroll tools. It connects directly with our timesheets, allows staff to update their personal data, and has streamlined and mostly automated our payroll process. We have used this tool for a couple of years.

The design is a little boring and old-fashioned. The reporting section is a bit awkward to use. It doesn't have great support for international customers.

The design is a little boring and old-fashioned. The reporting section is a bit awkward to use. It doesn't have great support for international customers.

Can you also pay contractors through the system? Can you pay staff according to different pay schedules?

We haven’t used it long enough to answer this.

US-based SMEs without international offices can benefit from OnPay.

• User-friendliness is the main pro we find when using Quickbooks.
• It’s been very easy to train my HR employees how to send and receive invoices.
• It’s linked to our bank.
• It gives the option for people to pay via ACH when sending out invoices (easy for them to pay with a touch of a button).

When my organization was looking for options to help quickly get out invoices to our clients they thought Quickbooks would be the perfect solution. We have now successfully been using Quickbooks for 10 years for our invoicing needs as well as AR reporting which helps our HR team run smoothly.

• Sometimes it runs slow if more than one user are in the software at a time.
• Connectivity issues will happen at times which could make it frustrating to use when you are in a hurry.
• You have to add in other apps to be able to use all the functionality of Quickbooks and pay further pricing.

The only other software we have tried in the past was NetSuite, and we ultimately decided to go with Quickbooks due to its pricing and ease of use. NetSuite did have more functionality but overall we liked the way Quickbooks worked with our company’s needs.

They should figure out what they specifically want to use the tool for, and make sure they do their research and pick the correct type of Quickbooks so they can easily work through what they need to get done.

The website itself has changed over the years but in a good way! We feel it is super easy to navigate and works for our business needs.

Really any corporate type of business that needs to send invoices out to customers, our organization does staffing and recruiting and we rely on Quickbooks to be able to send out invoices to clients.

1. Reporting is great
2. Payroll is straight forward.
3. User friendly.

Printfly switched to Paycom following a brief stint with Namely. The switch was made because we didn't feel that Namely was robust enough for our organization. We switched to Paycom to enable the HRIS system, payroll, and scheduling.

1. Tax team is HORRIBLE. They are not customer interfacing and are not held accountable for their errors.
2. Problem tickets are not resolved quick enough.
3. If you have an issue and you need to call customer service, there is a 99% chance you are not connected to your dedicated rep. The rep you are connected to is usually clueless and cannot assist.

I've used Paychex, Intuit and Gusto in the past. I think that I like Paychex the best because they were easy to get in touch with to answer questions.

Price - It's a costly system. Time - The set up is annoying. You are shuffled around and really need to take the time to teach yourself the system.

Paycom has added things like "ask here" and it allows for users to more easily ask questions about paychecks or benefits. Paycom also launched Beti which pushes employees to approve their own timesheets to ensure that there are no missing hours.

Anyone that is tech savvy

• Real-time payroll processing.
• Friendly account manager.
• The  several integration options available.

I set up Paychex as a cheaper alternative to ADP with a feature that we liked. The feature was the ability to see the final payroll record in real time (as opposed to waiting for emails from ADP). We used it for 3 years, but ultimately had to find another vendor. We liked the Paychex system, but they were not equipped to handle our expatriate executive leadership overseas at the time.

• Issues with specialty pay situations (expatriates).
• Customer service did not always understand the issues.
• Reports were less reader-friendly than others.

PayChex is great for regular businesses entirely in the US. The system is easy to learn and does everything that you need.

You should consider many locations you have and special payroll situations to contend with. Also, how robust of a system do you need? Small businesses may benefit from smaller, cheaper tools.

Medium-sized businesses.

Pricing flexibility was great and affordable for smaller enterprises. The representatives and customer service staff were very knowledgeable and experienced, offering excellent guidance and a can-do attitude, which was very welcome as we had become bogged down in red tape. We liked that there were very relevant add-on services that could be used on an ad-hoc basis.

We bought Papaya Global because we were expanding internationally. Our business meant that we had small offices and remote workers in many countries. It was time-consuming and error-prone to individually pay staff in so many countries. We needed a tool that could centralize global payroll and pay multiple international staff seamlessly and effortlessly, and Papaya Global did this. I used it for about a year.

It would have been good if they had a solution for 50 to 100 employees. We had to take the minimum 100-employee tariff even though we initially had fewer than 100 employees. Reporting could be improved; I found that the invoices were a little low on detail. It is a bit more expensive than the competition.

I have used other similar tools, and while a little more expensive, I found that this one has better global coverage and a more comprehensive service offering.

Consider global coverage, e.g., what countries they serve and if they have a depth of knowledge and expertise. Ensure it has a good and efficient global payroll service at its core, but also has the appropriate add-on services (like EOR, global payments, contractor payments) so you can quickly adapt to changing business circumstances.

I think the library and knowledge base have grown substantially, providing more on-demand information and advice about global payments.

Papaya Global is good for any international organization with employees in multiple countries.

1. User-Friendly Interface: Intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible for both HR staff and teams.
2. Integrations: It integrates payroll, benefits administration, and performance management, streamlining processes and eliminating the need for scattered Google Sheets.
3. Employee Self-Service: The self-service portal allows employees to manage their personal information, view pay stubs, and access benefits details independently, saving us time from routine administrative tasks. This is the future of HR, as automation should be adopted across the board.

At Impactable, we chose Namely because we were overwhelmed by managing too many HR systems that didn’t integrate well. It was challenging to keep up with payroll and benefits manually, so we needed a solution that could consolidate everything and simplify our processes, allowing us to focus on developing the new platform.

Namely turned out to be a great choice. It has a user-friendly interface that even the least tech-savvy among us can navigate with minimal training. The employee self-service portal was something we didn’t realize we needed, but it has been incredibly helpful in allowing the team to manage their own holidays and benefits without constantly contacting HR.

The analytics and reporting tools, while not initially a priority, have also proven useful. I’ve been using Namely for two years now, and overall, it has greatly improved our organization’s efficiency.

1. Customer Service Issues: The customer service can be slow and sometimes unresponsive, which is disappointing given the quality of the product.
2. Integration Challenges: It took time to get the integrations working correctly, and we had to invest considerable effort in training everyone to manage them.
3. Reporting Features: The reporting features are difficult to use and have limited customization options, which was a letdown.

Namely is much easier to use compared to other HR tools, with everything from payroll to benefits consolidated in one place. It has a sleek interface, and the employee self-service portal allows staff to manage their own information. Unlike some competitors, Namely offers solid reporting tools and continuous updates, keeping the platform modern and efficient. Overall, it simplifies HR tasks better than many competitors, although I haven’t used many similar tools recently, so they might have improved as well.

1. Ease of Use: Ensure the platform is user-friendly for both HR staff and employees.
2. Integration Capabilities: Look for seamless integration with existing systems such as payroll, benefits, and other HR tools you already use.
3. Customer Support: Check the quality and responsiveness of customer support, as effective support is crucial for resolving issues quickly.
4. Feature Set: Evaluate the range of features offered, such as employee self-service, performance management, and reporting capabilities, to ensure the tool meets all your HR needs. Avoid tools that require additional services to cover all necessary functions, as there are comprehensive solutions available.

The interface has improved, and integrations are smoother. However, customer service hasn’t seen much improvement.

Namely is particularly well-suited for mid-sized organizations with 50 to 1,000 employees across various sectors such as media, technology, and eCommerce. It's ideal for companies looking for an all-in-one HR solution that integrates payroll, benefits, and performance management. Businesses that require comprehensive analytics and reporting tools to make informed HR decisions will also benefit significantly from Namely’s features.