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.

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.

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.

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)

Patriot Software makes its family-owned, small-business roots abundantly clear. The Ohio-based company boasts about its 30+ years in business that have been chock full of challenges and averted failures. And in an unusual move for enterprise software, founder and CEO Michael Kappel uses the company’s official website to explicitly lay out his personal religious beliefs.

While we don’t recommend relying on a backstory to justify a large purchase, people often gravitate towards brands they can relate to on a deeper level. If this sounds like you, Patriot Software delivers a compelling, highly unique personal appeal.

Mobile-friendly interface

One of the most common complaints we hear from business owners is that their enterprise software titles are superb, but corresponding mobile apps fall short. This makes it an uphill battle to manage their operations on the go.

Luckily, Patriot Software takes a different approach to solve this problem. Rather than create a mobile app, the company provides an exceptionally mobile-friendly interface for its payroll platform, which is cloud-based and accessible via any internet browser. Not only does this grant access to every feature available on a desktop computer, but you’ll also never have to deal with glitchy or outdated apps on your smartphone.

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.

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.

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.

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.