Paychex is an award-winning tool that offers versatile payroll and HR services. It pays one in 12 private-sector employees in the United States and helps businesses calculate and file their taxes on time.
The system is best known for its efficient payroll and insurance solutions. It keeps your payroll running smoothly, so your team gets paid correctly and on time, files accurate taxes, and offers compliance experts to help you navigate your payroll needs.
Who Needs Paychex?
Paychex is ideal for small and medium businesses. If you need a more efficient HR and payroll system, Paychex offers more flexibility. It has a more well-rounded solution that goes beyond payroll and gives you human experts that meet your business’s specialized payroll needs.
Large and enterprise businesses may not benefit as much from using Paychex. And if your small business only needs a quick and simple HR solution without the bells and whistles that come with Paychex, you might find this platform more confusing than helpful.
The #1 Best Thing About Paychex
The platform has a lot to offer overall, but its customer service and payroll experts make it even better. Customer support is available 24/7 to help when problems come up and offer valuable advice to work toward a solution. Customers love how Paychex support is always there to help resolve issues, which allows business owners to get back to what they love about running their businesses.
When it comes to the actual platform, Paychex’s flexibility makes its features shine. Its versatility makes it easy to work with once you learn how to use the system according to your payroll schedule. It keeps everything organized, improves payroll efficiency, and gives you easy access to reports, as well as payroll and business tax information.
Paychex Payroll Services
Features and Benefits
The Paychex Flex system makes it easy to file payroll and taxes on time. It keeps to your payroll schedule and offers a flexible system that conforms to your business.
Paychex has a Payroll Center that helps you manage pay periods, customize earnings and deductions, and lets you view everything you need in one convenient space.
The system comes with reporting and analytics if you decide to include them in your package, which helps you keep your business running longer and more optimally. This feature improves your payroll system accuracy and allows you to make changes based on what your HR systems need for better business.
The People View system gives you an employee self-service platform so that employees can complete necessary tax information and other important documents without jumping between platforms.
With access to experienced customer service representatives, you can take advantage of professional payroll knowledge. You always have a personal resource to help you when you have questions about the system or payroll processes. Paychex representatives can help you figure out what works best for your business, so you can grow it and free up more time for your team.
Paychex offers 24/7 access to customer support representatives, so you never have to worry about downtime or waiting for help.
The system gives you plenty of employee pay options, from paper checks to direct deposit. When entering payroll information, you have different payment options to optimize efficiency for your team during payroll processing.
Paychex sends you notifications if there’s a problem with your system. That way, you don’t overlook any issues and can sort out any problems quickly, minimizing payroll problems for your employees.
Pros
- 24/7 customer service
- 200 compliance experts to help with tax services
- Flexible platform for small and medium businesses
- Notifications for payroll issues
Cons
- Longer learning curve than other systems
- May be too complex for some businesses
Pricing & Plans
Paychex doesn’t list its prices or any general packages online for payroll services. If you want to find out more about the cost of its services, contact their sales representatives to determine what type of Paychex package works best for your business. They’ll personalize a package and price for your company.
Paychex Employee Benefits
Features and Benefits
Though it’s known for its payroll system, Paychex offers much more when it comes to HR services. It gives you employee benefits services, too, to ensure that all employees have the health coverage and other benefits they need to feel secure.
Paychex has licensed insurance agents to help you find the best group and individual health insurance providers for your business. They know the regulations and requirements for different plans and can help you find the right ones for your team.
Paychex agents also help you find vision and dental coverage services. Paychex goes beyond the basics for your employees and offers all the resources you need to keep them covered. It also has a health savings account (HSA) to help employees save during tax time.
With retirement specialists to help you create employee retirement plans, Paychex 401(K) experts have the knowledge you need to understand how these plans impact your employees. Paychex offers affordable plans to help your team prepare for their future.
Paychex has other tax-saving plans to combine with group health insurance, including a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and Premium Only Plans (POP).
Employee self-service tools make it easy for your employees to enroll in benefits through a convenient platform on desktop and mobile.
Pros
- Experienced retirement specialists available
- Licensed insurance agents help you find the best insurance plans
- Tax-saving plans available
Cons
- Benefits services could be more comprehensive
- Self-service platform can be confusing for employees
Pricing & Plans
Paychex doesn’t list its prices or any general packages online for employee benefits services. If you want to find out more about the cost of its services, contact their sales representatives to determine what type of Paychex package works best for your business. They’ll personalize a package and price for your company.
Paychex HR Services
Features and Benefits
Paychex offers both human and technological solutions for your HR needs. Their experts have an average of eight years of tenure to ensure that you get comprehensive advice. They can help you with compliance and managing HR for your team and work with you to make HR decisions for your business.
The system offers data-driven insights to help you look at trends and benchmarks in your company. You can see performance statistics and other analytics to help you figure out where your company is thriving and where it needs improvement.
Paychex Flex lets your HR team communicate with employees by giving them a space to ask questions, get answers, and submit reports and requests. At the same time, your HR team can report workplace injuries and illnesses and collect the necessary data for submitting their own reports, like workers’ compensation claims.
Paychex makes it easy to request and receive employee information through a single platform. It tracks dates and deadlines while keeping important documents up to date.
You can reach HR professionals through Paychex to assess your unique HR needs, create a service action plan for your business, keep you updated on changing regulations, answer your HR questions, and more.
Paychex also offers integrated hiring services and analytics to help with employee retention.
The system works well if you don’t have in-house HR. Paychex gives you better insight into your business processes with people who have years of experience when you need it.
Pros
- Live HR professionals help you with HR management
- Data-driven insights and analytics available
- Easy to connect and communicate between HR and employees
Cons
- Paychex Flex doesn’t come with all packages, and you may need to pay extra for it
- Sometimes challenging to integrate
Pricing & Plans
Paychex doesn’t list its prices or any general packages online for HR services. If you want to find out more about the cost of its services, contact their sales representatives to determine what type of Paychex package works best for your business. They’ll personalize a package and price for your company.
Paychex Business Insurance
Features and Benefits
Paychex business insurance covers many different areas of your business. You can get a business owners policy (BOP), commercial auto, general liability, cyber liability, employment practices liability (EPLI), workers’ compensation, and many other types of insurance when you need it.
Paychex advertises itself as a one-stop shop for business insurance needs. You can choose your insurance carrier based on your business’s needs.
The system allows you to manage compliance, deductions, and more. You can also integrate your insurance with your payroll system, keeping everything in one convenient space.
As a top 25 insurance agency with over 25 years of experience, Paychex offers comprehensive insurance options that keep your business safe on all fronts, from the internet to your physical store.
It ensures that you’re covered in the event of disaster, errors, and legal claims against your business, should those issues arise.
You might have a little less personal support for Paychex business insurance. They have representatives to help you, but they may not offer as much specialized knowledge with this service as with payroll or HR.
Any business should have business insurance, whether you have an online shop or a brick-and-mortar location. As an HR platform, Paychex makes it convenient to take care of the most critical parts of any business in one place.
Pros
- Many different types of insurance offered
- Can tailor insurance to business needs
- Extensive experience as an insurance agency
Cons
- Integrations don’t always work optimally
- Fewer personal resources for insurance information and selection
Pricing & Plans
Paychex doesn’t list its prices or any general packages online for business insurance services. If you want to find out more about the cost of its services, contact their sales representatives to determine what type of Paychex package works best for your business. They’ll personalize a package and price for your company.
What Do Users Think of Paychex?
Above all, users love Paychex customer support. They like how easy it is to contact representatives, especially the general HR representatives. However, they sometimes find it difficult to get in touch with and work with payroll experts, especially when it comes to resolving more in-depth payroll problems.
Almost everyone who reviewed the software said that Paychex representatives got back to them within hours, if not minutes. Customer support is accessible, making it easy to work with them to reach a solution.
Some users found it challenging to learn how to use the software. They said it’s complex at first, and its onboarding could be more user-friendly. However, once they understood it, they found it easy to navigate.
Most often, users had problems with parts of the software outside of the payroll sphere, like retirement benefits and HR solutions. Those aren’t Paychex’s biggest focus, so they may be a little more lacking than the payroll and tax features.
How Paychex Measures Up to the Competition
Paychex works well for many businesses, but it’s not suitable for everyone. Let’s look at how it compares to some of its competitors.
Gusto is easier to navigate and more user-friendly despite its services not being as comprehensive. It’s less overwhelming with a more straightforward user interface.
Both Gusto and Paychex are full-service platforms. However, Gusto offers more in terms of employee-centric services, whereas Paychex focuses more on the business side of things. For example, Gusto has Gusto Wallet, which helps employees distribute finances more independently.
Gusto also offers more HR features, whereas Paychex is stronger when it comes to payroll and taxes specifically.
While Paychex doesn’t publish its pricing, users have mentioned that it’s more expensive than its competitors. Gusto may be more affordable for small businesses at $40 per month base price + $6 per month per employee. Gusto offers more upgraded plans with more HR features and support for companies that need more than the basic payroll/HR bundle that comes with entry-level plans.
ADP, another competitor, specializes in both payroll and HR services, but it has something that many users have complained that Paychex lacks—integration. It’s also more versatile when it comes to business size. Where Paychex is best suited to small and medium businesses, ADP works well for businesses of all sizes.
The two are similar platforms, but Paychex is more complex and offers more human advice. ADP focuses on simplifying processes to make them easier for your team.
Like Paychex, ADP doesn’t publish its prices online, so you’ll have to contact a sales representative to compare pricing for yourself.
We’ve put together a buying guide for payroll software and services. Check out our top picks and see our full methodology for how we arrived at our recommendations.
Do We Recommend Paychex?
Yes. It’s definitely not our top pick, but it is a widely-trusted option that has served tens of thousands of companies for many years. Paychex is a comprehensive platform that offers flexibility along with technological solutions and human expertise for your business. It works well when you need support in your HR decisions and want to implement a payroll system that goes the extra mile.
