Payroll is one of the most time-consuming and expensive aspects of running a business. Fortunately, plenty of payroll providers can take the task off your plate, some of them for as little as $19 a month. If you’re in the market for a solid payroll solution, Business.org reviews the year’s best payroll software for small businesses.
Best Payroll Software in 2021
2021's best payroll software for small businesses
Gusto: Best overall
- Automatic local, state, and federal payroll tax filing
- Unlimited payroll runs in every state
- Generally positive online ratings
- No accounting software integration with Basic plan
Gusto functions on a simple premise: when your employees are happy, your business is better equipped for growth. And one of the best ways to help employees stay jazzed about their jobs is to pay them the correct amount—on time, in the method they prefer, and with the right amount deducted so they don’t have to scramble to make income tax payments at the end of the year.
How does Gusto make sure your employees are satisfied with your business’s pay processes? By automating as many payroll tasks as possible to drastically reduce the chance of human error:
- Automatic state, local, and federal payroll tax filing
- Automatic W-2 and 1099 form filing
- Automatic new hire reporting
- Automatic payroll runs
- Automatic child support garnishments (not available in South Carolina)
Worried you won’t remember to run payroll on time? Set up automatic payroll processing so your employees get punctual pay without you lifting a finger. Nervous about distributing child support wage garnishments to the right parties? Gusto makes sure it happens. Not sure how to juggle hourly and salaried employees working on different pay schedules? Customize payroll runs to your team’s needs.
Of course, Gusto payroll services aim to make you happy too. With a clear interface, affordable pricing, and a full spectrum of tax filing assistance, Gusto ensures you have more time for your business while worrying less about potential payroll (and payroll tax) mistakes.
ADP: Best HR add-ons
- Full-service payroll tax filing
- Comprehensive HR services
- No transparent pricing
With more than 800K customers in 140 countries, ADP is one of the most popular payroll software companies in the world.1 And unlike most of its competitors, ADP has spent decades perfecting its process: Automatic Payrolls, the future Automatic Data Processing (ADP), was founded in the '40s and now runs payroll for one in six US employees.2
ADP's main perk is its thorough HR focus: even its cheapest plan includes onboarding help and new-hire reporting.
All four RUN plans take care of full-service payroll basics like direct deposit, automatic payroll tax filing, and W-2 submissions. Even the cheapest plan, Core Payroll, includes HR perks like employee onboarding, health care compliance forms, and a regular HR checkup.
Need more than the HR basics? ADP’s more expensive plans include employee background checks and ZipRecruiter assistance plus more comprehensive payroll help, like wage garnishments and state unemployment tax deductions.
Paychex: Best reporting
- Solid employer-facing app
- In-depth reporting
- Comprehensive HR add-ons
- No online pricing apart from Go plan
- No mobile app with cheapest plan
Paychex offers three main payroll plans, all of which include these essential features:
- Automatic payroll tax filing
- Automatic new-hire reporting (required by your state for W-2 employees and 1099 contractors)
- Thorough mobile app for running payroll on the go
- Direct deposit payment options
- Employee self-service access
- 24/7 customer service access via phone or online chat
Paychex charges you according to your pay schedule, whether you pay employees weekly, biweekly, or monthly. We couldn't verify if these prices are just for one payroll run per period or more than one, but we suspect it covers only one payroll run per period.
The Paychex Flex dashboard is incredibly intuitive and easy to read, and Paychex is one of the only payroll companies with an employer-facing mobile app. (In our opinion, Paychex also has the best payroll app of the extremely limited options—most payroll companies still lag in the mobile app game.)
Paychex payroll is also super scalable. If you start out with a basic payroll plan, you can add HR services to your initial plan with minimal hassle.
OnPay: Simplest setup
- Free professional account setup
- Easy PTO tracking
- Low base cost
- No mobile app
- One plan only
OnPay covers the payroll basics that some major players charge more for, such as garnishing wages, withholding state unemployment insurance, and giving employees multiple payment options (including paper checks). We particularly like that they’ll tailor their payroll services to specific industries—nonprofits, restaurants, and agricultural businesses, to name a few—at no extra cost.
But the main area where OnPay stands out is its setup. OnPay’s experts will set up your software for you for free, so if you’re looking for custom help at the reasonable starting price of $36, OnPay is a great place to start.
Looking for more reasons to try OnPay? Here are a few more perks of its cloud-based payroll software:
- Multi-state payroll at no extra cost
- Time-tracking and accounting software integration
- Tax filing accuracy guarantee
- Employee onboarding
- Employee self-service portal (available even if employees leave your company—they can still access tax documents and pay stubs for tax purposes)
Quickbooks: Best interface
- Full integration with accounting platform
- Unlimited payroll runs in every state
- Three full-service payroll options
- Higher prices than competitors
QuickBooks’ payroll software has a lot of perks. It allows you to make unlimited payroll runs, simplifies 24-hour direct deposit, and helps you deal with pesky end-of-year tax forms. But its main perk? It integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks Online, one of the most popular pieces of accounting software in the world.
If you already use QuickBooks Online, love the interface, and just hired your first employee, adding a QuickBooks Payroll plan to your accounting software subscription just makes sense. Plus, when you’re dealing with something as complicated as payroll, it helps to use an interface you already know and love with next to no learning curve—you have enough to deal with as it is.
QuickBooks scores big on user friendliness—the software’s point is to simplify accounting for non-accountants. It doesn’t matter how good (or . . . bad) you are at math: every small-business owner, from a freelance copywriter to a neighborhood grocer, can adjust to QuickBooks Online’s platform without much stress, and the same holds true for QuickBooks Payroll.
If you’re already using QuickBooks Online to calculate expenses, generate invoices, run reports, produce financial statements, and accept payments, setting up payroll for QuickBooks is the next logical move. If you choose the self-service plan, payroll numbers will automatically sync with your QuickBooks Online account, making e-filing taxes about as easy as possible.
Zenefits: Best mobile app
- Many automated payroll features
- Tools for special payroll situations
- Additional cost for payroll services
For small businesses with a few employees, we favor Zenefits. The Essentials plan starts at $8 per month per employee and includes a core HR program, complete with hiring, onboarding, and employee documents. To get compensation and performance management, you’ll want the Growth plan, which costs $14 per month per employee, or try the Zen plan for $21 per month per employee if you’d like built-in well-being assessments.
If you work with a Zenefits broker, benefits administration is included free in the monthly base price for all of the above plans. If you’d rather use your own broker, you can add benefits administration to any plan for $5 per month per employee.
Once you have employees, you’ll quickly learn how important it is for payroll to be accurate and efficient. Paying your employees, managing benefits, and filing payroll taxes can be difficult and time-consuming. And payroll-related mistakes and delays are potentially costly and damaging to your business.
Both full-service and self-service payroll help ease the burden of having to handle the minutiae of payroll yourself. And although you have to pay for payroll software, the return on your investment is worth it. By freeing up resources and avoiding legal pitfalls, you can focus your time and energy on growing your business and hiring great employees.
Is there free payroll software?
Yes, but the options are pretty limited. Our preferred free payroll software provider is Payroll4Free, which lets you run payroll for up to 25 employees, and there are a handful of other trustworthy choices out there.
In general, we don't recommend free payroll software for employers with more than one or two employees. Paying your employees the right amount—and withholding the right amount in taxes—is a big, complicated deal, and paid software is more secure and effective than free options.
Recap: What is the best payroll software?
Unless you’re willing—and can afford—to pay an in-house bookkeeper, we recommend most small businesses outsource at least some of their payroll tasks to a third party. Payroll software providers remove much of the hassle, cost, and risk from managing payroll and free you to do what you’re meant to be doing: growing a successful business.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a must-have for any business, large or small. And as companies around the world shift toward more remote work due to COVID-19, this rings even more true.
A good CRM software not only streamlines tasks, reporting, and information analysis for your employees, it also simplifies and even automates those tasks. These benefits free up more time for your teams to engage with customers one-on-one, brainstorm and launch new campaigns, and sort through real-time information updates to course-correct and plan for the future.
But what makes a good CRM? Take a look at our picks for the top CRM software, plus learn more about how it works and what to look for when buying new CRM software for your company.
Compare more Customer Relationship Management softwares here.
Less Annoying CRM: Great for businesses on a budget
Price: Starts at $10/user/month
Free trial: 30-day free trial
Type of CRM: Collaborative
Featured integrations: Mailchimp, Google G Suite, BilLiving, JustCall, LeadsBridge, MyRepChat, CreateForm
- Low cost
- Straightforward setup
- Web-based interface syncs with mobile easily
- Less functionality for large businesses
- Fewer integrations than other CRM software
With Less Annoying CRM (also called LACRM), your contact management lives in one place and is easily shareable across multiple teams in your company. The software aims to simplify lead prioritization by allowing users to record notes and attach files, emails, and sales pipeline information.
LACRM also aims to make collaboration less of a headache with in-depth user controls and the ability to add as many users as you want at any time for the same monthly price of $10 per user.
The web-based interface is especially helpful for teams who collaborate on-the-go. It remains fully functional even when accessed on a mobile device, so any sales reps out in the field or marketing managers attending a conference can still check contact details.
Though it comes in at a lower price point and offers several third-party integrations paired with a few in-house integrations, Less Annoying CRM doesn’t quite match the robust features Salesforce offers. Additionally, some users complained that its reports lack certain customization options, so it’s worth testing the reporting function if you give the 30-day trial a go.
Even so, Less Annoying CRM brings multiple features to the table that make it an easy pick for small businesses looking for a way to streamline customer management and company collaboration.
Pipedrive: In-depth sales automation and forecasting
Price: Starts at $12.50/user/month
Free trial: 14-day free trial
Type of CRM: Operational
Featured integrations: Zapier, QuickBooks, JustCall, Leadfeeder, Intercom, Click2Contract, Fireflies.ai, and Asana
- Live dashboards include revenue forecasts
- Unique Sales Assist AI highlights areas of improvement
- Web-based inGDPR-compliant plansterface syncs with mobile easily
- Limited email marketing functions in basic plan
- Features for sales teams only
Pipedrive’s operational CRM starts at one of the lower monthly rates available and offers an extensive suite of sales automation tools. Along with the ability to manage leads and deals, track calls and emails, and build contact history, Pipedrive’s four different plans offer additional components that can help your sales team stay ahead of the game.
Every Pipedrive plan includes access to a live dashboard that monitors deal progress, products sold, sales activity, and revenue forecasting. And the Professional plan and up gives your teams access to unlimited live dashboards with customized metrics, plus the ability to measure performance against set goals.
If email is a big part of your sales strategy, you’ll need to sign up for at least the Advanced plan. Unfortunately, the Essential plan is missing some key email features like custom templates and signatures, as well as tracking for email open and click-through rates.
And for companies who build and manage multiple email distribution lists, Pipedrive requires you to sign up for the Professional plan to create distribution lists and send group emails.
Freshsales: Tools for every stage of the customer lifecycle
Price: Starts at $12/user/month (additional free Sprout plan)
Free trial: 21-day
Type of CRM: Multiple
Featured integrations: Freshdesk, Freshchat, Freshcaller, Freshconnect, Twilio, Mailchimp, Segment, Zapier, G Suite, and Magento
- Integrates with the Freshworks product family
- AI-powered lead scoring
- Cheapest plan doesn’t include reports, automations, or user management
Freshsales is the CRM component of the Freshworks product family, which aims to improve customer engagement for companies of all sizes. A quick look at its interface tells you that it’s aimed at improving sales performance with a broad set of operational and analytical CRM tools.
Along with your usual sales pipeline and lead management features, Freshsales offers a few unique tools like the AI-powered ability to score a prospect’s engagement level. Utilizing AI in sales lead management can be a huge shortcut, and automating the analysis of a prospect’s email, website, and in-app actions give your salespeople better insight than ever before.
One potential issue for small businesses is that Freshsales doesn’t include workflow automations or automatic removal of duplicate leads in its Blossom plan. That means some of the manual lifting is still on your employees’ shoulders. And while that may not seem like a huge deal for small companies that are likely managing a smaller set of leads, don’t forget that fewer employees mean there are more hats for everyone to wear—and more tasks to juggle.
Additionally, if you want advanced reporting capabilities that highlight sales activity, conversions, and revenue forecasts (to name a few metrics), you’ll need the Garden plan or better. And upgrading to the Garden plan gives larger teams access to more robust user controls, including the creation of up to 10 teams, territory assignment, and permissions.
Despite a few drawbacks, Freshsales brings additional capabilities other CRMs might be lacking thanks to its integrations with other Freshworks platforms. That includes a Freshcaller integration that lets your sales team engage with prospects and customers right through the Freshsales software.
HubSpot CRM: Comprehensive freemium tools
Price: Free
Type of CRM: Multiple
Featured integrations: Zapier, Outlook, Gmail, Mailchimp, WordPress, Slack, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Zoom, and SurveyMonkey
- Free CRM tools
- Easily scalable products
- Some unique features like chatbots and real-time notifications
- Upgrading to premium products is costly
- Limitations restrict certain features
HubSpot takes a wholly different approach to CRM software by offering its basic package for free. That’s a huge advantage for small businesses, startups, or small teams that don’t need all the features of Salesforce or don’t have the budget for a costlier CRM.
Of course, the sheer number of potential CRM solutions can make choosing the right Salesforce package feel overwhelming. And once you select a package, setting it up and learning how to navigate the numerous features also requires a steep learning curve.
But it’s this high level of customization that makes Salesforce perfect for growing companies—even ones already at the enterprise level. Its Sales Cloud CRM allows your teams to track sales activity, close deals, and log calls. Its Marketing Cloud CRM enables you to build data-driven advertising campaigns, engage with customers and prospects on social media, and A/B test email campaigns.
And Salesforce isn’t calling it quits on innovation. Its Einstein AI feature comes in multiple add-on formats, such as Einstein Analytics, to allow you further automation, data analysis, and personalization. We also like that Salesforce includes small-yet-thoughtful features like the Color-Blind Palette on Charts option.
With Salesforce, it feels like the sky’s the limit. Of course, that extreme number of features and customization options come at a price—one of the highest prices out there. But if your company and teams are growing quickly, Salesforce is the best CRM for scaling right along with your needs.
Zoho CRM: Extensive analytics for small businesses
Price: Starts at $12/user/month (free edition for three users available)
Free trial: 15-day free trial
Type of CRM: Analytical
Featured integrations: Google G Suite, Google Analytics, Zapier, Office 365, SalesIQ, Skyvia
- Highly detailed reports
- Highly detailed reports
- Rich data visualization capabilities
- Certain analytics features and integrations cost more
- Free basic support, but additional support costs more
If your company is struggling to organize and analyze massive amounts of data about prospects, current customers, and brand perception, then Zoho CRM is likely the solution you need.
With Zoho, you can import, add, and update all of your contacts, and then quickly and easily analyze data on the success of various touchpoints like email campaigns, sales calls, and even social media interactions.
Zoho’s robust reporting abilities let you compare the success of different campaigns, users, teams, or even territories. Similarly, the reports track critical information such as email bounce rates, brand mentions on social media, the average amount of time specific prospects spend on your website, and even how current sales trends compare to your projections.
The only downside is you’ll need to purchase a higher CRM tier to access all of these features, which can boost your monthly price to a maximum of $45 per user per month for the Enterprise tier, or $100 per user per year for the Ultimate tier.
Zoho CRM offers scalability in features for your business as it grows, meaning you won’t need to install and relearn a whole new CRM software if you outgrow your old one.
Salesforce: Complete customization and scalability
Price: Starts at $25/user/month
Free trial: 30-day free trial
Type of CRM: Multiple types
Featured integrations: Microsoft Exchange, Google G Suite, Zapier, Domo, Adobe Analytics, DocuSign, Mailchimp, Zoom, Slack
- Extensive features and systems
- Superb scalability
- Massive library of integrations
- Confusing product tiers may require sales consultation
- Steep learning curve
Salesforce is often touted as the CRM to beat, and when you discover how many types of CRM systems it offers, it’s easy to see why. From Analytics Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Marketing Cloud to App Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Small Business Solutions, Salesforce has a product for every business need.
The free version of HubSpot CRM allows you to have unlimited users and up to one million contacts, but there are restrictions. You only get one team, your customizations are limited, and the included analytics may not dig deep enough to inform critical decisions. But as your company scales and your teams grow, you can upgrade to HubSpot’s paid marketing, sales, service, or CMS products, which start at $50 a month.
Despite some limitations, the free tool offers quite a bit of functionality for the cost. Your sales, marketing, and customer service teams will have access to reports and real-time dashboards that highlight detailed information about almost anything from sales activity to how long it takes to close customer tickets.
The free HubSpot CRM includes analytics that cover email open rates, website traffic, and conversions. It also allows sales teams to schedule meetings and develop detailed contact records. We also think the chatbot builder and real-time notifications for prospects are excellent features, especially considering the price.
What is customer relationship management software?
Customer relationship management (CRM) is software that helps you manage your company’s relationships with customers and potential customers. CRM software helps your team do the following:
- Gather and organize information about outside contacts
- Share the information with others in your company
- Use the information to care for your prospects and customers throughout the entire relationship lifecycle
But CRM software isn’t just for your sales team. It’s meant to help your entire company, including marketing, business development, recruiting, and more, manage all external relationships.
You might think your small business doesn’t need to spend the money on CRM software, but consider this: CRM software can log your customers’ contact information and track interactions those customers have with your company. Now that’s something a regular spreadsheet can’t easily do.
CRM software’s ability to streamline your relationship management improves your profitability through better customer communication, segmentation, and retention.
There are three main types of CRM software: analytical, collaborative, and operational. And while most CRM software incorporates features of all three types, some focus on a particular set of tools.
Here’s a quick look at what each type of CRM specializes in.
An analytical CRM uses data gathering techniques and analysis to identify ways in which your company can anticipate and take care of customer needs.
The data an analytical CRM analyzes usually includes contact information, and customer preferences and characteristics. Through this analysis, your company receives the following benefits:
- Targeted marketing campaigns
- Effective customer support
- Strategic sales initiatives
Analytical CRM software supports these initiatives through data mining, data warehousing, and online analytical processing (OLAP) tools
Unearths data patterns so your company can better visualize customer lifecycles.
Stores all current and past customer data, making it easier for your employees to retrieve and analyze that data.
Allow your company to analyze data from multiple viewpoints and validate potential strategies for customer interactions.
With collaborative CRM, your sales, marketing, and customer service teams can easily share customer information. This sharing of information helps the teams act in sync with each other when it comes to understanding, anticipating, and responding to your customers’ needs and requests.
To do this, a collaborative CRM uses both interaction and channel management.
- Interaction management: This process logs every interaction your company has with a customer through any means of communication.
- Channel management: Once all interactions are recorded, the CRM uses channel management to identify which communication channels the customer prefers.
If cross-department collaboration is a company goal and customer information is securely shared between teams, then collaborative CRM is a great choice.
If you’re looking for a CRM to help streamline your company’s processes—including lead generation, customer service, and customer retention—an operational CRM is a great place to start.
An operational CRM uses the following tools to help streamline your processes:
Speeds up and simplifies marketing strategies like email campaigns, content distribution, and sometimes even analytics.
Streamlines sales tasks like contacting leads, scheduling meetings and demonstrations, and logging sales.
Allows your customer service team to make one-on-one contact with customers and assign service tickets.
Even if you’re a small business, an operational CRM can provide extraordinary benefits by assisting your employees with otherwise time-consuming tasks. That’s a huge boon, especially if your teams wear many hats and juggle multiple tasks each day.
Large companies also benefit from freeing up employees’ time to give one-on-one, personalized support to your customers.
Recap: What is the best customer relationship management (CRM) software?
HubSpot CRM, Less Annoying CRM, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM all provide unique CRM toolkits for a variety of business sizes and needs, making them our top choices for the best CRM software.
That said, the most significant consideration when choosing the right CRM software for your company is whether or not your employees will use it, so ensure the CRM you choose comes with the necessary features at a reasonable price.