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BambooHR vs Gusto comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BambooHR
Ranking in Benefits Administration
8th
Ranking in Talent Management
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Cloud HCM (8th)
Gusto
Ranking in Benefits Administration
10th
Ranking in Talent Management
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of BambooHR is 3.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Gusto is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Benefits Administration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BambooHR3.2%
Gusto1.6%
Other95.2%
Benefits Administration
 

Featured Reviews

Ram-Mohan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Align Technology
Pre-built adapters simplify CI/CD processes but monitoring improvements are needed
If Bamboo can provide a dashboard with tool health, such as whether the master or instance has the required space, it would be beneficial. Sometimes, when I trigger a build, it ends with no space on the agent machine where the agents are installed. If Bamboo can create an internal monitoring mechanism and display the tool's health status on the landing page or homepage, it would help end users and DevOps Engineers like me.
PS
Founder at SelectSoftware Reviews
Provides time-saving solutions for small business payrolls
I would say, relative to another payroll solution, running payroll with Gusto probably costs half the price and saves us 5 to 10 hours a month. I would say Gusto is a really good payroll solution for small businesses. Running payroll with Gusto costs half the price and saves us 5 to 10 hours a month. My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. I was not offered a gift card or incentive for this review. I rated Gusto 9 out of 10 because of some customer support issues that kept it from being a 10.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I like the fact that the annual days are calculated automatically and that if annual leave is taken in the future, those days are put on hold. You know at every point how many days of annual leave are you left with and how many are on hold."
"This is a scalable solution. We have not experienced any issues."
"I can easily go to BambooHR to search for any staff member in the company."
"Leave management is the most valuable as they all started with leave management and then progressed to performance management. Of course, employee profiles are central to everything. It is also very easy to use. Customers get on board with it very quickly. One of the selling points for BambooHR is that they have a very wide partner network. There are lots of other partners that have integrations with BambooHR. They have an open API. This is one of the things that is driving its growth because lots of people and companies are literally just building integrations of BambooHR to ride the wave. If you have an integration with BambooHR, you get sales. People are more likely to choose your product because they've already chosen BambooHR. That's how it is happening. It is a cloud deployment, so there is only one version. They do the updates every month, and because of this, you are encouraged to send them feedback all the time. You never know. Your feature may be included in the next release."
"The solution's technical support is super responsive and helpful. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"It's very user-friendly and easy to train someone new. It was easy to implement and get someone onboarded on the system."
"The tool's most valuable features are the recruitment module, performance module, and document storage."
"The scalability of BambooHR is good."
"I like the payroll part. We also use documents and forms whenever we hire, such as a new hire form for each state, and we like that as well."
"Gusto is a really good payroll solution for small businesses."
"I appreciated the templates that they offered for new hires and onboarding."
 

Cons

"BambooHR could be improved by managing leave in a way that transfers remaining days at the end of the annual year to the following year."
"It would be useful to have the possibility to assign a task to the different users within the software."
"We cannot add more questions to the assessments if we want to."
"It would be good to include more options for approvals and workflows. They are deliberately not the most sophisticated version of anything that they do, but it is like 80/20. They hit the vast majority of all the needs, but I have started to run up against the limits of their functionality. It has forced me to start paying attention to the marketplace or sending feedback to BambooHR. Clients are still happy though. Timesheets is a new area in which they're slowly expanding. It is currently very limited, but it meets the needs of standard nine-to-five salary employees who just want to be able to key in their time, have it approved, and then pushed off to payroll. It does not have any of the bells and whistles that an hourly employee or hourly worker might need. That is one area that is currently limited, but they have integrations with some of the best companies that do that."
"The performance could be improved. When you save some documents, it takes longer to store them in BambooHR's systems than it used to. Something needs to be upgraded or fixed in the code. Alow, we provide services to other companies, so Bamboo isn't able to help us in many areas because of the way we work."
"The only thing that could have been added is better integration with local payroll systems or a local Canadian payroll module."
"If Bamboo can provide a dashboard with tool health, such as whether the master or instance has the required space, it would be beneficial."
"The color palettes could be changed to make the solution a little more attractive and easier to use."
"Their enrollment e-signature, enrollment forms, and other documents need a lot of work. Once we fill in the information, we cannot go back and change any of that. It's a time-taking process. If there is any mistake in the document and if we need to go and change a specific field in the form, it's not possible. We have to redo the entire form."
"In the beginning, their support was top-notch. And then around the beginning of 2022, and end of 2021, their support tanked. We used to get responses in the beginning within one to two business days, and towards the end, we were getting responses in one to two business weeks."
"My experience with Gusto's customer support sometimes shows they're not responsive, and they have definitely made mistakes in the past."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was definitely cheaper than some of the larger systems."
"Price-wise, the solution is in the middle compared to other tools offering similar functionalities."
"We pay a monthly subscription to use the solution. The subscript model is based on how many employees we have active."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
30%
Educational Organization
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise3
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering BambooHR?
Organizations of all sizes, especially those that are experiencing rapid growth, want to have a way to effectively manage their HR operations. Our organization feels that BambooHR is an HR manageme...
What do you like most about BambooHR?
The tool's most valuable features are the recruitment module, performance module, and document storage.
What needs improvement with BambooHR?
If Bamboo can provide a dashboard with tool health, such as whether the master or instance has the required space, it would be beneficial. Sometimes, when I trigger a build, it ends with no space o...
What needs improvement with Gusto?
I wish Gusto's customer support was better for improvements. My experience with Gusto's customer support sometimes shows they're not responsive, and they have definitely made mistakes in the past.
What advice do you have for others considering Gusto?
I would say, relative to another payroll solution, running payroll with Gusto probably costs half the price and saves us 5 to 10 hours a month. I would say Gusto is a really good payroll solution f...
What is your primary use case for Gusto?
Our main use case for Gusto is for payroll, and we pay our US employees through it. Gusto helps with our payroll process because we use it for tax filings and benefits.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
ZenPayroll
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about BambooHR vs. Gusto and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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