Gusto vs Workday comparison

Gusto and Workday are both solutions in the Benefits Administration category. Gusto is ranked #22, while Workday is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Gusto holds a 0.8% mindshare in BA, compared to Workday’s 19.4% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Gusto users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Workday users who would recommend it.

Gusto

Read 3 Gusto reviews

247 Views
182 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Workday

Read 55 Workday reviews

6,622 Views
4,506 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Gusto

Workday

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Workday and Gusto are competing in HR and payroll solutions. Gusto's user-friendly design is preferred for smaller organizations, while Workday's integration capabilities favor larger enterprises.

Features: Workday offers robust analytics, extensive integration options, and advanced reporting tools. Gusto provides payroll management, benefits administration, and a seamless interface tailored for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Gusto is known for straightforward implementation and responsive customer service, easing onboarding for smaller organizations. Workday, with its complex features, requires detailed deployment, benefiting those needing custom configurations.

Pricing and ROI: Gusto attracts small businesses with lower initial costs and transparent pricing, offering quick ROI via affordable monthly fees. Workday's tiered pricing model and higher upfront costs align with its comprehensive capabilities, yielding potential higher ROI for companies with complex needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Gusto vs. Workday Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Gusto vs. Workday

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 850,028 peers since 2012

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

Gusto

Ranking in Benefits Administration

22nd

Ranking in Talent Management

38th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Workday

Ranking in Benefits Administration

1st

Ranking in Talent Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud HCM (2nd), Talent Acquisition (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of Gusto is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 19.4%, up from 19.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Benefits Administration

Featured Reviews

Mimi Evans

Owner/Operator at Fearless Bookkeeping Services LLC

Simple to use solution that offers a lot; gives employees the option to get cash advances

I think it's great that it syncs with QuickBooks Online and any payroll software that syncs with QuickBooks Online is great. My issue with their syncing was that every single account for a deduction went to a liability account, but not a lot of businesses run that way. As of September, they did not have the ability for me to put an employee's deduction for benefits in anything but a liability account; which made it not difficult, but added a manual step to the syncing of the entering of our payroll between Gusto and QuickBooks Online. I would also like for the tech support to be more responsive. Gusto also advertises their health benefits, but they don't do a good job of explaining why it's a better option to go through them. I think there's more communication that could be done on that. I also think that there are some HR benefits that they could be offering to these lower plans, without having to go to the Premium Plan. I think that that's something that they should consider in the future.

Read full review

Akash Nigam

Manager for enterprise Solution at PeopleTechGroup

User-friendly, well-organized, offering a structured step-by-step process for configuration

I would really like to see a more robust timekeeping solution in Workday. Currently, most organizations are using Kronos for timekeeping and Workday for HR data. They then integrate Workday with Dimensions to manage time-related activities and payroll processing. I think if Workday could enhance its timekeeping solution to match the functionality and flexibility of Dimensions, it would be a really good product. Another area for improvement is payroll. Workday payroll is not very extensively used in the North American market, but it is more widely used in Europe. There is a lot of complexity in payroll processing in North America, but I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in Workday. In the next release, I would like to see pre-built or predefined connectors for Dimensions and other applications. Currently, we have to use Boomi or another middleware application to integrate Workday with these systems. I think pre-built connectors would be very helpful, especially for Dimensions, which we do not currently have a connector for.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciated the templates that they offered for new hires and onboarding."

"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."

"First time users, understanding accessibility and consolidated data is fairly easy. The solution improves productivity for users and reduces the need to switch between different tools."

"It is fairly easy to set up"

"It's easy to set up."

"Workday is highly intuitive from a customer experience perspective. It was effortless for us to understand what to do even though we didn't have any related training. It was easy to use without guidance."

"It's a fully consolidated system. All the transactions and configuration are co-located in one fully in-memory system, so there is no need to go to different data sources (multiple DBs) to pull data; it’s all in one place."

"The platform itself is very robust and I generally like the reporting and analytics capability."

"Provides flexibility to integrate with the product. It has several tools, out-of-the-box, for integrations. It delivers pre-built interfaces for specific vendors, pre-built generic integrations to extract or push data into Workday through configuration."

"It's intuitive, a very usable tool and it's easy to find the data you're looking for."

More Workday pros

Cons

"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."

"Workday does have a community site where people can go on and off for suggestions. They call them Brainstorms, and you can vote them up. That is something that they do well, but oftentimes, they seem to be racing to deliver something based on what a competitor is delivering. For example, if they hear SAP has this new functionality and learning that's going to be coming out, they prioritize there, which makes sense, but unfortunately, some of these Brainstorms may get neglected where the product might not be improved as quickly or as needed for the customers. You might be waiting for a year or two to get a feature that you'd like released. They should pay more attention to customer feedback and ensure that customer feedback is an essential part of their product roadmap."

"The solution needs to be updated with generative UI."

"They don't have worker payroll in the product. We have to solve our payroll. I hope one day they will be able to have their own localized standard payrolls for all countries."

"It is good that much of the development is based on community input but often that can lead to details being ignored and small, nagging issues are ignored."

"My opinion is that this solution can improve the overall integrations and add more automation. I think anything that could be on a self-serve basis would work quite well."

"Reporting systems should be improved. If you want to report it on paper, if you want something more BI oriented, more high level predictive or more data-driven, it should be improved."

"They don't offer any backend database access. This is one limitation that I found in this product. Workday hasn't opened up about what kind of database they are into, which can make it easy for the technical team to emulate issues. It would be good if they can offer backend access to the technical team. It would be helpful if they can also provide a Troubleshooting Guide that we can use to troubleshoot issues. When we have an issue, there are very limited resources to refer to."

"If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."

"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."

"The solution is flexible in terms of pricing."

"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."

"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."

"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."

"It's very, very expensive."

"I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Benefits Administration solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

28%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?

Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...

See all answers

What do you like most about Workday?

I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?

If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...

See all answers

Comparisons

Namely vs Gusto

Compared 100% of the time

More Gusto Competitors

SAP SuccessFactors vs Workday

Compared 30% of the time

SAP HCM vs Workday

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle HCM Cloud vs Workday

Compared 11% of the time

UKG vs Workday

Compared 7% of the time

PeopleSoft vs Workday

Compared 6% of the time

More Workday Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Benefits Administration

April 2025

Download Gusto product report

Buyer's Guide

Workday

March 2025

Download Workday product report

Also Known As

ZenPayroll

No data available

Overview

Gusto provides payroll, benefits and HR to modern companies, by handling payments to employees and contractors and also electronically handling the paperwork necessary to help companies comply with tax, labor, and immigration laws.

Gusto

Workday is a cloud-based software solution that specializes in developing applications for capital and finance management applications. The system is built to work in global workforces and is adaptable. The global system ensures that users are up to date and can manage internal career-related information, and everyday business problems like timesheets, payrolls, and time off.

“A Pioneer in Software-as-a-Service”

Workday Human Capital Management tool is designed to simplify and streamline your work. It leverages machine learning to adapt capital management to a changing environment.

The Workday model is based on delivering a single system that uses a single source of data and a single security model to deliver a unique user experience. The system is user-friendly and ensures that employees and management can use it from any and all devices. Workday HCM integrates into a central system that includes financial management, payroll, recruiting, learning, and planning. Managers and employees can provide feedback to one another, too.

Workday’s features include:

Flexible framework that lets you organize your staff according to different criteria. You can group employees by function, hierarchy, or department.
Personalized career guidance: Knowledge management and career guidance that can be easily customized for each staff member and also done at scale.
Augmented reporting and analytics: Configure, change, update, and publish reports, scorecards, and dashboards. The system centralizes the transactional and analytical data so you can act on the data from anywhere.
Compensation tools: Compensatio, payroll, and time tracking are automated and simplified.
Workforce planning allows you to uncover and address talent gaps and get visibility of your staff.
Mobile-first ensign approach: Users can access all resources from any device, and they are always in sync.
Machine learning capabilities enable personalized enterprise experiences and faster business processes.

Workday smart platform consists of the following modules:

Human resource management
Business process management
Reporting and analytics
Benefits administration
Compensation management
Talent management
Survey framework
Employee and management self-service

Reviews from Real Users

Many organizations choose Workday because it provides an all-in-one modular solution for human capital and finance management. Our users say they like the ease of use for time-off requests, career and development segments, and overall HR management. The records and reporting capabilities are another popular feature.

"The solution was very good at reconfiguration and customization of their software. It helped us to meet federal regulations," said one user. Another said that the best feature is the optimization of the work day experience with a unified platform that can be applied across different business units. “You will never find a use case that cannot be covered," said a third.

Workday

Sample Customers

Farmgirl Flowers, Bevel, Pooch Pals, ALL MAVEN

AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!

Buyer's Guide

Gusto vs. Workday

April 2025

Free Report: Gusto vs. Workday

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Gusto vs. Workday report.

See our list of best Benefits Administration vendors and best Talent Management vendors.

We monitor all Benefits Administration reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.