Gusto Reviews 

horrible company: terrible customer service, difficult to reach them and solve easy problems, and benefits card does NOT work. tried to pay twice with the FSA card both time didn't go thru despite checking having enough amount. 2nd time I work in a small company using gusto and the experience is bad. Stay away with this under par company!

Gusto prepared three of my W-2's wrong. They do not match the total of the 941's. Extremely unresponsive. They just pass me from person to person and each person says they will escalate it. There is no supervisor to talk to and the staff is not competent enough to fix it after a month, 13 pages of email, and whited out W-2c showing exactly what the changes need to look like. Sadly, I will have to go outside of gusto to fix the W-2's because they clearly just don't care. This is probably the worst customer service of any company I have ever dealt with. Stay away from using them.

I have a small business and have been a Gusto customer for years. I got a regulatory tax notice that I needed Gusto's help with. It would have taken a few minutes for them to pull the relevant paperwork. But it has now been a MONTH and Gusto will not respond to my requests. I have repeatedly called, emailed, used the AI chat assistant, etc, but my inquiries just disappear into a black box. Gusto never forgets to charge their fees, but when you need their help, you will be on your own.

1. Doubled my monthly rate without notice.
2. Promised to put me back to my original rate through 2026. They did for 1 month and then went back to the double charge.
3. Sent another email, a week later, no response.
4. I suspended my account so they wouldn't charge me again yet they charged me again.
How can you trust a company that charges double of the agreed upon price and doesn't communicate. No wonder they have a 2* rating.

I'm giving these guys 5 stars for their idea. I think they could be great. I love the idea. But. But. Fidelity uses voice verify and I think that with this great idea that is Gusto voice verify would solve a lot of their problems. Still. Exciting ideas

I'm writing about an unresolved support experience that has dragged on for over a month. After my company switched payroll providers, one of our employees had a valid FSA claim (for a service dated within the coverage period) blocked by a system error — on a day that was still within the claim submission deadline listed on our own Gusto account. Our representative, Brett Moriarty, even confirmed in writing that the employee's coverage was active through that date.

The rep acknowledged the discrepancy and said he escalated it to the benefits compliance team on August 3. Since then, he has stopped responding entirely — despite follow-ups on August 18, August 24, and several since. It has now been over three weeks with no update, no resolution, and no acknowledgment of any of our messages. We've provided every piece of documentation requested.

The core issue is that employees may forfeit funds they were owed because of a technical error on Gusto's side, and the complete lack of follow-through has made it far worse than the original problem. I would caution other businesses to document everything and expect to escalate repeatedly to get support issues resolved.

You can't mess around with paying your staff. We submitted everything days ahead of time, but Friday rolls around and none of my baristas got their direct deposits. I had to pay people out of the shop's cash register just to make sure they could pay rent while support gave me canned answers and passed me between three different reps. Unreliable and stressful to deal with.

Title: Incompetent service caused a missed payroll and lost me an employee. Avoid Gusto!

Gusto completely failed our business and our team. They sent a critical account notification at 6:38 PM—well after banks were closed—giving us no time to react after hours. Following their exact instructions, we successfully wired the necessary funds before their 11:00 AM PT deadline the next morning.

We received multiple conflicting notifications: first saying it was late, then confirming receipt, and finally a concrete email promising our staff would be paid today. Gusto pulled the funds from our account, and their app explicitly marked the status as "Paid."

Instead, the money never arrived. After wasting an hour getting the runaround from their customer support, I was casually told the payroll was delayed until Monday. Gusto's sheer incompetence forced me to pay employees out of my own cash reserves just to keep them afloat, and the damage was so severe that one of my employees quit on the spot. They completely broke our team's trust and provided zero accountability. If you value your business and your staff, look elsewhere.

To make matters worse, their website requires you open an account to post a review such as this. I've been in business since '93 and this is the first time Ive missed a payroll, and due to no fault of my own. Terrible company to do business with.

I took a hardship withdrawal to help pay for my mother’s funeral expenses. On Friday, August 21, Gusto’s dashboard stated the funds had been sent to my bank account and that I should receive them today. This morning, however, I received an email saying a check was being sent instead, along with another notification saying I must verify my address before the check can be mailed. At the time I am writing this, I have an email saying a check was sent, another message saying I must verify my address before it is sent, a dashboard saying the money was sent by ACH on August 21 and should arrive today, and a representative telling me the ACH was only sent today. These statements are completely contradictory. I have called repeatedly simply trying to get one clear answer to the question: WHERE IS MY MONEY? Each time, I received more confusion. I repeatedly asked for a supervisor, was bounced around and placed on hold, and ultimately was told there were no supervisors. After multiple calls, a representative named Mikaela told me I had been calling all morning—which is true—and then said she would not help me if I “keep being a jerk.” I was not calling repeatedly for entertainment; I was trying to locate money needed for my mother’s funeral expenses because Gusto cannot provide accurate information about its own transactions. This is an unacceptable failure of customer service, communication, accountability, and basic problem resolution. Gusto’s systems and employees have provided multiple conflicting explanations while refusing to escalate the issue or provide a competent answer. I expect Gusto to immediately explain where my money is, when and how it was actually sent, why its communications contradict each other, and what it will do to resolve this matter. This is directly inline with Gusto's abhorrent customer service reputation. They desperately need supervisors.

This has been the most unreliable payroll company I’ve ever worked with. When you reach out for help, you’re met with empty promises, and when you follow up, you’re often hung up on. Managers and support staff seem untrained and unable to resolve even basic issues. Their service is consistently ineffective and absolutely not worth paying for or partnering with.

We’ve had a very frustrating experience with Gusto as a payroll customer. When payroll issues came up, it was difficult to get timely, useful support, and we felt like we were left without clear ownership or resolution. Payroll problems are time-sensitive and affect employees directly, so slow or unclear support creates real operational stress for a business.

We expected better communication, clearer escalation, and faster help. Based on our experience, support has not matched what a payroll provider should deliver.

Not recommended. It is clear that their customer support system is set up as a firewall to ensure actual employees never have to interact with dissatisfied clients. The support reps function strictly as a go-between, passing messages back and forth without any real authority to fix the company's bad service.

They dont help employees. If an employer doesnt pay and payroll bounces they dont leave it to show it. Instead delete it and say "We cant see it since it wasnt run". Even though it was ran it just bounced

1 star is too many. Worst payroll company on earth! Payroll was submitted days ago. Its 2:30 pm on payday, still no deposits. They may even hold the money until Monday. How do they get away with being this terrible?

My paycheck is late and they say there is nothing wrong, but it will be deposited by 7 PM CT. Seriously?! Chatted with a rep who had a nonchalant attitude and said we never guarantee the checks will be deposited first thing in the morning. Yeah, when every other paycheck was deposited by midnight without fail and now all of the sudden, its not there, that causes US so many issues. Gusto does not care and with all of these bad reviews, they need to change their ways, or close the doors. People DO NOT have to accept this!

Very poor experience so far. We use Gusto for our small business because that's what the last owners used, but I am regretting the decision almost daily. I have almost no confidence that Gusto is filing the taxes properly because I get emails warning of errors, for example, that our L&I risk class codes are incorrect and they may not be able to file properly as a result. Except when I check our information, it is all correct and updated. The upshot is I have been having to file L&I taxes myself, which kind of makes me pissed about paying every month for gusto to NOT do their job. They also tried to withdraw over 2000 for "back taxes", which I was able to cancel but it makes me worry they are outright scamming customers because we were less than 3 months old at that time and there couldn't possibly have been that many back taxes. Customer service has been pretty easy to reach, but pretty useless. None of the people working there seem to have a clue how to fix the problems we are having, and will outright make things up to make it seem like they do. We will be shifting to a new company at first opportunity, and recommend any new folks to this to try a different payroll company even if it costs a bit more. You will sleep better at night.

Since Gusto has responded now, I want to refer people to their response to see how their customer service model works. No acknowledgement of any fault on their part. Again, I have been filing my own taxes and am doing just fine with it, and Gusto is failing to do so with the same exact information. I would be much happier with my experience if instead of customer service gaslighting, they would actually try and fix the issues.

If you’re considering Gusto for payroll, heed my warning: RUN.

When Gusto was trying to get my business and move me over from Paychex, they were fantastic. Phone calls, follow-ups, helpful people, constant communication — they couldn’t do enough for me.

Then I became a customer.

Since then, Gusto has basically become a missing kid on the back of a milk carton. Bigfoot has been spotted more often than Gusto customer support.

Try getting someone knowledgeable on the phone. Good luck. And when you finally reach someone, communication can be extremely difficult, and instead of getting your problem solved, prepare yourself for more questions than an FBI profiler interrogating a suspected serial killer.

The difference between the sales experience and the actual customer experience is unbelievable. They rolled out the red carpet to get my business and then seemingly disappeared once they had it.

I left Paychex because I thought their service was terrible. Gusto somehow managed to make me appreciate Paychex. I didn’t think that was possible.

For a company handling something as important as PAYROLL — people’s paychecks, deductions, taxes, and livelihoods — customer support cannot be an Easter egg you have to hunt for.

This has been one of the worst customer-service experiences I have ever had with a company. A full-blown dumpster fire.

If you can read this review before signing up, consider yourself lucky. Learn from my mistake.

Anything is better than this.

I closed my account with Gusto over 2 years ago. I calld them several times to delet all my informations and revoked all the permission from them and till today they still messing arround with my IRS and SocialSecurity accounts. Still reporting and file formations behalf of me without my approval or permission.
answer to Gusto: The primary admin means me, I DELETED! my company account. Revoked all the permission to file anywhere anything and report anywhere anything behalf on my company. I called you several times,your representative promised never happens again and voila, you still doing randomly,last time yesterday.

The onboarding process was a nightmare and it has just declined since then. It is impossible to be able to talk to a manager when you try to get things resolved. Take your business somewhere else. I'm going to

DO NOT USE GUSTO!! They do not acknowledge ANY of your own company forms to save to employee files. They force you to use their forms even though those forms dont work for your state. They will not run your payroll until you complete their forms.This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Customer service is a complete joke & dumpster fire.