Zenefits Alternatives: 9 Platforms Compared

Most of the people who ask me about this are not shopping. They are reacting: the renewal conversation sounds different, the product has a different name, and the number on the quote has a different shape. This page compares nine platforms a US small business can realistically move to, matched to the part of the old product you actually used.

Somebody at your company signed up for Zenefits years ago because it was the cheapest way to get payroll, benefits, and onboarding in one login. Here is the short version of what changed. TriNet bought Zenefits and completed the deal on February 15, 2022. The product became the TriNet HR Platform, and the login page still says HR Platform, also known as TriNet Zenefits.

In its annual report covering 2025, TriNet then told investors it had decided to narrow its focus to its US professional employer organization (PEO) business and to wind down the software-only HRIS (human resources information system) product. Clients on that product are being migrated to TriNet's service-backed administrative services organization (ASO) offering instead.

The cheap software-only tier that made Zenefits famous is the exact thing being retired, so this is not the usual comparison where a vendor got slightly worse and you are weighing whether to bother moving. Every price here was read off the vendor's own site in October 2026, and where a vendor publishes nothing, the table says Quote, because three of the ten platforms below genuinely do not.

Why employers are leaving the TriNet HR Platform

Six reasons come up, and the first one is structural rather than a complaint about the software: TriNet has said it is retiring the software-only product. Three more are the familiar ones: the quote at renewal, a bundle that now includes service you may not need, and support that depends on which service tier you bought.

The last two reasons are about fit rather than price: you only ever used the records half, or the platform was really how you bought health plans. Contract terms nobody read closely sit underneath all six, because they decide when you can actually leave.

What TriNet actually said

TriNet put the wind-down in writing, in its annual report to investors. That filing matters more than any feature comparison, so it is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. It also explains why the timeline on your renewal may be shorter than a normal product sunset.

The same annual report says the 2025 move to the ASO offering came with a significant increase in services alongside a price increase, and that it raised attrition, meaning more of the old HRIS users left. The old HRIS still had about 18,600 users at December 31, 2025. TriNet's report for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 says the wind-down is still under way.

What was in the platform and what was extra

The next thing to check is what the bundle actually contains. TriNet now presents recruiting, learning management, performance management, and analytics as parts of the HR Plus platform, says HR Plus carries very few add-ons, and sells dedicated payroll and HR experts as named service tiers. Map that split against your own usage before you shortlist a replacement.

Read that table against what you actually log in to do. If you used onboarding, documents, time off, and payroll, you are replacing a fairly ordinary HR and payroll system and half this list will do. If you also relied on the recruiting or performance tools, your replacement needs to cover those too, and that narrows things considerably.

Price and contract terms

TriNet publishes no rate for the platform at any tier. Its pricing page describes a flat fee per employee per month with service plan options, and says pricing depends on your number of employees and the service level selected. That is a defensible way to sell a service business, and it is also why nobody in your position can benchmark their own renewal without collecting quotes from vendors who do publish.

The practical consequence shows up at renewal. When the number moves and you have nothing to compare it against, the only lever you have is a competing quote. Seven of the platforms below give you a published rate you can hold up in that conversation (Rippling's is only a starting price), which is worth something regardless of whether you end up switching.

Contract terms deserve the same attention as the price. Find the notice window on your current agreement now: if the term renews automatically and you miss that window, you can end up paying for another year of a product you have already decided to leave.

9 Zenefits alternatives at a glance

The first row is the product you are leaving, so the comparison starts from a real baseline. The nine below it are ordered by how often they solve the specific reason someone lands on this page.

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Position, department, type, manager and status for each person. People who have left move to a separate list.

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How we evaluated these alternatives

Every platform here is one a US small or mid-size company could buy and run without an implementation team on staff. We excluded enterprise suites, and we excluded anything whose pricing we could not confirm on the vendor site, either as a published rate or as a stated quote-only policy, because a price copied from a third-party blog is a guess wearing a decimal point.

The 9 alternatives reviewed

Each review below covers what the platform does, what it publishes as a price, and where it falls short, in the same order as the comparison table above.

#1

Gusto

Best when payroll and benefits at a published price is the point

Price

Simple $49/mo + $6/person; Plus $80 + $12; Premium $180 + $22

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

$109 / $199 / $349 on Simple

Terms

No contracts, free account setup, switch or cancel anytime

Gusto is the closest thing on the market to what Zenefits was originally sold as: payroll, tax filing, onboarding, time off, and a route to health benefits, at a price printed on a page. Every tier includes unlimited payroll runs; federal, state, and local tax filings and payments; payroll on autopilot; time off requests; and multiple pay rates and schedules. You do not pay anything until you run your first payroll.

Two structural notes before you assume the base number is your number. The first is about states: Simple runs payroll in one state only, so expanding into a new state means moving to Plus, and state tax registration is a separately priced add-on on all three tiers.

The second note is support, which is tiered. Simple and Plus come with basic support and a Priority Support add-on at $30 per month plus $3 per person, and only Premium includes a dedicated account partner as standard.

#2

Rippling

Best for HR, payroll, and IT on one employee record

Price

From $8 per user per month plus a $40 monthly base fee (small-business page); no rate on the pricing page

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

From $120 / $240 / $440 before other modules

Model

Per employee per month, some products add a base fee

Rippling is the most complete answer to the all-in-one promise the platform originally made. Payroll (with federal, state, and local tax filing), time and attendance, benefits administration, leave, and device and app provisioning all hang off the same workforce directory, so onboarding one person can create their accounts, ship their laptop, and set up their pay in a single action.

It also reproduces part of what you may be escaping. Rippling's pricing page publishes no rate: it is a form that asks which services you need and promises a custom quote, and it notes only that most products are billed per employee per month, with some carrying a monthly base fee.

Its one published figure is the starting price on its small-business page: $8 per user per month for payroll plus a $40 monthly base fee, before any other product you add. So if you are moving because a quote-only HCM platform (human capital management) is hard to budget against, Rippling gives you a floor but still prices your setup by quote, with more moving parts.

#3

OnPay

Best for one base plan with benefits administration included

Price

Payroll Essentials $49/mo base + $6/worker

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

$109 / $199 / $349

Add-ons

HR at $15 base + $2/worker; Live HR Support $65 base

OnPay runs one plan, which is the reason to look at it. Payroll Essentials is $49 per month plus $6 per worker and includes full-service payroll for W-2 and 1099 workers; federal, state, and local taxes; payroll in multiple states; unlimited pay runs; and benefits administration, with health, dental, and vision handled by licensed in-house agents.

Onboarding with e-signed I-9 and W-4 forms and state new hire reporting is in the OnPay base plan too. The HR layer is where the extra money sits. A $15 base plus $2 per worker add-on brings paid time off management, custom onboarding workflows, unlimited custom e-signature documents, an employee directory and org chart, and equipment tracking.

OnPay sells two optional enhancements on top: compliance resources at $10 base, and Live HR Support at $65 base for concierge access to licensed HR experts. With the HR layer, both enhancements, and OnPay's time tracking add-on, a 25-person company pays $454 a month at list price, or $380 on the bundle OnPay publishes for growing businesses.

#4

BambooHR

Best when payroll stays where it is and you need the records layer

Price

Core $10, Pro $17, Elite $25 per employee per month

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

$250 / $250 / $500 on Core at list price

Note

Teams of 25 or fewer pay a flat rate starting at $250/month

BambooHR is the most polished HRIS in the small-business segment and the obvious destination if the half of the platform you used was records, onboarding, time off, and reporting. It publishes per-employee rates at all three tiers, which is rare enough in this category to matter, and applies volume discounts automatically as headcount rises, with an extra 15 percent for registered nonprofits.

The structure inverts what you are used to. Payroll, benefits administration, time and attendance, and global employment are all add-ons rather than plan features, and their prices are not published. BambooHR does offer a 15 percent discount when payroll and benefits administration are bought together with any plan.

The small-team floor bites, too: a flat rate starting at $250 per month for 25 employees or fewer means an 8-person company pays roughly three times the headline Core rate per head.

#5

Justworks

Best when access to benefits pricing was why you were there

Price

Payroll $50/mo base + $8/employee; PEO Basic $79/employee; PEO Plus $124/employee

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

$130 / $250 / $450 on Payroll

Terms

No implementation fee; 24/7 support on the PEO plans

Justworks is two products sharing a brand, and the distinction decides everything. The Payroll plan is software at $50 per month plus $8 per employee, with multi-state payroll, contractor payments, and off-cycle runs, and benefits administration available as an $8 per benefits-eligible employee add-on. That is a straight software swap.

PEO Basic at $79 per employee per month and PEO Plus at $124 are something else: a co-employment arrangement. On PEO Plus, the relationship also brings medical, dental, and vision administration; health savings and flexible spending accounts (HSA and FSA); and mental health and fertility benefits.

PEO Plus is the move if the real reason you bought an all-in-one platform was to get large-group benefits pricing for a small business. It is also a structural change to how people are employed, not a software migration.

#6

ADP RUN

Best for tax compliance depth across jurisdictions

Price

Quote, no rate published at any package

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

Quote

Offer

Three months free payroll, terms published separately

ADP is the incumbent for a reason. Every RUN package includes multi-jurisdiction payroll, with ADP filing the taxes for people who work in more than one state or locality in the same pay period, and tax law changes reach its tax tables without anyone at your company watching for them.

If your company has people in several states and the thing that keeps you up at night is a payroll tax notice, that coverage is what you are trading for. The cost is opacity and buying process: RUN packages carry no published rate at any level, and every page ends in a Get Pricing button.

The only published offer is three months free for new clients with 1 to 49 employees who start by the offer deadline. ADP says you do not have to sign a contract and can cancel at any time, but add-on modules will be part of the conversation, so ask for the full monthly total in writing.

#7

Paychex Flex

Best for a hands-on service relationship

Price

Quote, four packages from Basic to Complete, none priced publicly

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

Quote

Note

A PEO sits alongside the software for teams wanting co-employment

Paychex sells a service relationship with software attached, which is close to what TriNet is now selling with HR Plus. If the thing you liked about the platform was having somebody to call when a filing went sideways, and the thing you disliked was the price of that access, Paychex is a direct comparison worth getting on paper.

Its small-business payroll now comes in four packages (Basic, Foundations, Advanced, and Complete), and none of them carries a published rate: every card on Paychex's package comparison page ends in a Request Pricing form rather than a number.

Paychex also runs its own PEO, sold alongside the software as an HR PEO plan, so the same conversation can end in co-employment if that turns out to be the better structure. Whichever route you take, ask specifically what quarterly and year-end charges apply before you sign.

#8

Homebase

Best for hourly and multi-location teams

Price

Basic $0, Essentials $30, Plus $70, All-in-One $120 per location per month

Annual billing

$24, $56, and $96 per location per month

Payroll

Add-on at $49/month + $6 per employee paid, on every plan

Homebase is the only platform here that does not charge per employee. Pricing is per location with unlimited employees on every paid plan, so a 45-person restaurant pays exactly what a 12-person one pays, and the free Basic plan covers a single location with up to 10 employees.

For a retail, restaurant, or clinic operator who bought an all-in-one HR platform mainly to run schedules and a time clock, pricing by location is a large saving.

The trade is depth. Scheduling and time tracking are the product rather than a module, payroll is a published add-on on every plan at $49 per month plus $6 per employee paid, and there is no benefits administration in the platform. Employee records and documents exist but are thin next to an HRIS. If your team is salaried and desk-based, most of what you are paying for goes unused.

#9

Paycor

Best for companies moving into mid-market HCM

Price

Basic $99/month + $5/employee for businesses under 50 employees; quote above

Cost at 10 / 25 / 50

$149 / $224 / Quote on Basic

Note

Paychex completed its acquisition of Paycor in April 2025

Paycor is the option for companies that outgrew the platform rather than got priced out of it. It covers payroll, benefits, time, talent, and applicant tracking in one system, with recruiting included in its small-business bundles from Essential up. If you relied on the recruiting and performance tools in your old platform, the consolidation argument here is real.

Two things to weigh. The first is price: Paycor publishes bundle rates only for businesses under 50 employees, from $99 a month plus $5 per employee on Basic, so a larger company still starts with a demo.

The second thing to weigh is ownership. Paychex completed its acquisition of Paycor on April 14, 2025, in an all-cash deal valuing the company at roughly $4.1 billion of enterprise value. Given that you are already living through the consequences of one acquisition, it is fair to ask directly what the roadmap and support commitments look like over the term you are being asked to sign.

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What each alternative costs at 10, 25, and 50 employees

This is the table that settles most of these decisions, and it is also the one that shows why the quote you are holding is hard to judge. Nine rows carry real numbers you can plan against, although the Paycor row stops short of 50 employees, and the Rippling row gives a floor from its starting price. Three are placeholders until a salesperson calls you back.

Three patterns are worth pulling out. First, the two closest functional replacements land in exactly the same place: Gusto Simple and OnPay both run $109 at 10 employees and $349 at 50. When two products converge on the same number, the decision moves to what sits inside the base plan, and there OnPay pays workers in every state while Gusto Simple runs payroll in one state, with multi-state payroll on Plus.

Second, Homebase sits outside the pattern entirely. A single-site business pays $24 a month at any headcount, which is either the best value on this page or completely irrelevant, depending on whether your team is hourly.

Third, the PEO row is not a software price. Justworks PEO Basic at $790 a month for 10 people buys co-employment, compliance support, and HR consulting, and comparing it to a $109 payroll subscription is a category error rather than a saving.

What switching off the TriNet HR Platform involves

A migration is four jobs: getting the field data out, getting the documents out, rebuilding the workflows, and timing the cutover so nothing important is mid-flight. The data is usually the easy part. The documents are usually where it goes wrong.

Field data exports cleanly from almost any HR system. Signed offer letters, I-9s, handbook acknowledgments, and benefits election records are files, and files come out one at a time or as a bulk archive with filenames nobody can map back to a person. Before you commit, ask both the outgoing and incoming vendor how document management transfers, not just how the employee records do.

The retention line carries legal weight. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires personnel and employment records to be kept for one year, and one year from the termination date for anyone who leaves.

Payroll records run three years under the FLSA (the Fair Labor Standards Act), and Department of Labor Fact Sheet 21 sets out exactly which payroll and hours records that covers. Switching off the old system before those obligations live somewhere else turns a software change into a compliance problem.

How to choose a Zenefits alternative

Start from which half of the old platform you actually used, not from a feature matrix. Five questions cut nine options down to two in about twenty minutes.

Once the questions leave you with two names, slow down before you sign a multi-year term, because the HR technology decision you make now is the one you will be running through the next two hiring cycles.

Before you choose

FirstHR overlaps with the platforms above on one slice only: onboarding, employee records, documents, and training. Payroll and payroll tax filing, benefits administration, time tracking, and applicant tracking come from the products on this page, so if payroll or benefits is the reason you are leaving the TriNet HR Platform, one of them is your answer.

What we cover is the layer underneath: onboarding workflows that put the I-9 and W-4 on each new hire's first-day task list, e-signature on offer letters and acknowledgments, an employee directory with documents attached, and training assignments, at a flat $98 a month for up to 10 people or $198 for 11 to 50 rather than a rate charged per employee.

If the recurring failure is that paperwork goes unsigned and nobody is sure which handbook version people acknowledged, that is the gap we built for.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Zenefits?

TriNet completed its acquisition of Zenefits on February 15, 2022, and the product has been sold since as the TriNet HR Platform, with the login page still describing it as HR Platform, also known as TriNet Zenefits. In its annual report covering 2025, TriNet said it decided to narrow its focus to its US PEO business and is winding down the software-only HRIS product, migrating those clients to its ASO services, which it sells as HR Plus.

What are the best Zenefits alternatives?

It depends on which half of the platform you used. Gusto and OnPay are the closest like-for-like replacements at $49 per month plus $6 per person or worker. Rippling covers HR, payroll, and IT on one record. Justworks is the move if benefits pricing was the point. BambooHR fits when payroll stays elsewhere; ADP RUN and Paychex Flex when you want compliance depth and a service relationship; Homebase for hourly teams; and Paycor for mid-market HCM.

How much does the TriNet HR Platform cost?

TriNet does not publish a rate. What its pricing page gives you is the model rather than a number: a flat fee per employee per month, with service plan options, that varies with your headcount and the service level you choose. No prices are published for the Payroll Pro and People Pro service tiers either, and TriNet says HR Plus carries very few add-ons, presenting recruiting, learning management, performance management, and business intelligence as parts of the platform.

Which Zenefits alternative includes payroll and benefits together?

OnPay includes both in one plan at $49 per month plus $6 per worker, covering full-service payroll, multi-state filing, and benefits administration through licensed in-house agents. Gusto Simple is $49 plus $6 per person for payroll, and health plans bought through Gusto as your broker carry no administration fee. Justworks offers benefits administration at $8 per benefits-eligible employee on its Payroll plan, or bundled into PEO Plus at $124 per employee per month.

Is there a cheaper alternative to the TriNet HR Platform?

Probably, though you cannot prove it without a quote, since TriNet publishes nothing. On published rates, Homebase Essentials is $24 per month per location billed annually with unlimited employees, and both OnPay and Gusto Simple run $109 at 10 employees. BambooHR is the exception at the small end, where a flat rate starting at $250 per month applies to teams of 25 or fewer.

What is the best Zenefits alternative for hourly workers?

Homebase, in most cases. It charges per location rather than per employee, with Basic free for one location and up to 10 employees, Essentials at $30 per month per location, Plus at $70, and All-in-One at $120, dropping to $24, $56, and $96 on annual billing. Payroll is an add-on on any plan at $49 per month plus $6 per employee paid. The trade is a much thinner employee records layer and no benefits administration.

Do I have to move to TriNet HR Plus or the PEO?

No. HR Plus is TriNet's administrative services organization offering, and the PEO is a co-employment arrangement. Both are more service-heavy than the software-only product they replace, and nothing obliges you to stay inside the TriNet family. Get the quote, then compare it against the published rates above, and treat a PEO as a change to how people are employed rather than a software swap.

What should I check before switching HR systems?

Confirm the field-level data export, the bulk document export with files mapped to employees, benefits election history for the current plan year, year-to-date payroll figures if you are switching mid-year, your record retention position, and the notice window on your current contract. Personnel records must be kept a year and payroll records three, so the old system cannot be closed until those obligations live somewhere else. Time the cutover around new hire paperwork and open enrollment, not the renewal date.