What do you compare instead of price when a company with hundreds of employees shops for payroll software?

Summary

Mostly the quote itself, plus what vendors will hand over alongside it. ADP, Paylocity, Workday, UKG, and Paycom publish no prices for their mid-market and enterprise payroll, so the comparable pieces are the SOC 1 audit report, which ADP and Gusto release only under a nondisclosure agreement, and the implementation terms. None of the vendors checked here publishes an implementation fee.

Where published pricing runs out

For a sense of scale, Gusto publishes its top plan, Premium, at $180 a month plus $22 per person. At 100 employees that is $2,380 a month, or $28,560 a year; at 300 it is $6,780 a month. Gusto describes itself as a strong choice for "small and medium sized companies."

Above that, the numbers disappear. ADP sells Workforce Now to what it calls midsized to enterprise employers (50 to 1,000+ employees), and all three of its packages say "Get pricing." Paylocity segments buyers into small (1 to 99 employees), midsize (100 to 499), and enterprise (500+) and asks you to request pricing. Workday and UKG route you to sales, and Paycom's site shows no prices, only buttons to request a demo. Rippling is a partial exception: "Rippling starts at $8 a month, per user," but it builds a custom quote from the services you pick, and some products carry a monthly base fee. This site's article on published versus quote-only pricing sorts the full vendor list.

The SOC 1 report

A company that outsources payroll can ask the provider for a SOC 1 report. The AICPA defines SOC 1 as "an examination of controls at a service organization that are likely to be relevant to user entities' internal control over financial reporting," intended for the companies using the service and the auditors of their financial statements.

What the vendors say about theirs:

• ADP issues "SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 reports over select products and services," restricts them to prospective and existing clients who have signed nondisclosure agreements or contracts, and produces four bridge letters a year for SOC 1 only.
• Gusto maintains SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports, updated annually, available through its Trust Center "after filling out a nondisclosure agreement."
• Paylocity has annual independent SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II attestations but does not say how customers get them.
• Paycom has SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 reports, with the SOC 3 as a publicly available summary.

If your auditors need the report, the NDA step has to happen before you can read it, which puts it on the timeline alongside the quote.

Implementation and switching mid-year

The pages read for this article from ADP, Paycom, Paylocity, Rippling, UKG, and Workday give no implementation fee. Paycom gives a timeline: "most organizations are implemented within three months," with the first payroll typically run inside that window, and exact timing depending on pay frequency, data readiness, employee count, tax setup, benefits configuration, and multi-entity structure. Training for HR, managers, and employees comes at no added cost. UKG describes a milestone-driven process with a timeline set at the start of each project but gives no duration.

On switching partway through a year, Rippling says it picks up "right where your previous provider left off," importing year-to-date payroll data. Gusto includes payroll migration and account setup in Premium and says that for larger teams it can often handle the payroll data transfer itself.

Sources

• https://gusto.com/product/pricing
• https://www.adp.com/what-we-offer/products/adp-workforce-now.aspx
• https://www.adp.com/what-we-offer/products/adp-workforce-now/compare-options.aspx
• https://www.paylocity.com/pricing/
• https://www.workday.com/en-us/products/payroll/overview.html
• https://www.ukg.com/get-started
• https://www.paycom.com/
• https://www.rippling.com/pricing
• https://www.aicpa-cima.com/topic/audit-assurance/audit-and-assurance-greater-than-soc-1
• https://www.adp.com/about-adp/data-security.aspx
• https://gusto.com/security
• https://www.paylocity.com/company/protecting-our-clients/
• https://www.paycom.com/about/security/
• https://www.paycom.com/implementation/
• https://www.ukg.com/customers/experience/implementation

Related on this site

• Payroll vendors that publish prices vs quote only
• All payroll and HR software vendors, by published cost
• The payroll pricing dataset as CSV and JSON
• Do you need global payroll or an employer of record to pay someone abroad?
• Which payroll records do you have to keep, and what do you do when a filed Form 941 turns out to be wrong?