Justworks Review, Pricing & Features

What is Justworks?

Justworks is a human resource software solution used by over 130,000 employees. It is primarily built for businesses with 2-200 employees.

Try Justworks Today

Table of Contents

Justworks Review Summary

Justworks was founded in 2021 by Isaac Oates. Since then, it has serviced over 86,000 employees and has become one of the largest players in the human resource software space. Justworks has around 620 employees and operates out of its headquarters in New York City.

Justworks’ best feature is its payroll. Payroll can be run for a variety of employee types in all 50 states. This is not true for alternatives such as Gusto or Zenefits. Justworks also includes strong benefits support and compliance assistance. Its biggest weakness is its limited expense management features. Note that Justworks also does not support job posting and distribution.

Justworks’ pricing starts at $49 per month per employee. It is more expensive than its two closest competitors, Gusto and Zenefits.

Overall, Justworks is a robust all-in-one human resource software tool that can run unlimited payroll, offer flexible benefits, and assist with compliance for your salaried, hourly, or contingent employees. In addition to its powerful suite of HR features, Justworks is one of the most user-friendly solutions we’ve analyzed in this space. This makes it especially ideal for newer businesses.

  • If you need software similar to Justworks, but want more app integrations and software onboarding assistance, consider Zenefits.
  • If you need HR software with greater expense management features, try Zoho People.
  • If payroll and pricing are both the main priorities for your business in choosing HR software, consider Gusto.

Justworks Pricing & Cost

Justworks’ pricing starts at $49 per month per employee. Pricing is split in two tiers, Basic and Plus. Note that the following plans are for businesses with less than 25 employees. Justworks is around 15% more affordable if you have anywhere between 25 and 99 employees.

Plan NamePrice per Month per EmployeeFeatures
Basic$49
  • Payroll
  • Tax filings
  • Vendor and contractor payments
  • HR consulting
  • Reporting
Plus$99
  • Everything in Basic plan
  • COBRA administration
  • Health advocacy services

Justworks Features

Below, we'll discuss Justworks’s key features. We include product screenshots to give you a sense of this solution’s interface and usability.

Payroll

Payroll in Justworks is feature-rich and takes a multitude of employee types into consideration. The user experience and breadth of features in Justworks is similar to Gusto and Zenefits.

Justworks Payroll

Justworks’s payroll dashboard gives you a high level view of which employees are being paid. You can see individual details regarding each employee and their pay through this view. Justworks supports running payroll for the following employee types:

  • Full-time employees
  • Part-time employees
  • Hourly employees
  • Contractors
  • Vendors

Justworks handles federal and state taxes for your payroll. Justworks can calculate, remit, and file your taxes for your business. Justworks also allows you to pay off-cycle payroll. You can run a number of off-cycle payments, including:

  • Contractor pay
  • Vendor payment
  • Bonuses
  • Commissions
  • Owner’s draw
  • Severance

Employee Onboarding

Onboarding in Justworks is guided and similar to Zenefits. You are guided through necessary onboarding steps upon hiring a candidate. This means that you can send onboarding documents, set their annual or hourly rate, and set permissions.

Justworks Onboarding

Seen above is the beginning of the employee onboarding process. As you can see, you can set your employee’s member type, salary, and exemption status. Justworks provides additional information on what certain employee types mean, what constitutes a manual worker, and how exemption statuses are defined.

Justworks’ standout onboarding feature is its ability to set permissions for your employees. This is not a feature that is available in Gusto. A typical use case for this is giving more access to accountants and human resource representatives than your regular employees.

Setting permissions allows you to house all your employees within Justworks’ system while still allowing them to access critical information for their job.

Time Tracking

Time tracking in Justworks is easy to manage. Creating paid-time-off (PTO) policies is a guided experience. Checking and approving timecards is equally easy to accomplish. This means that you can time track your hourly, salaried, or contingent workers and create unique PTO policies for your business.

Justworks Timesheet Example

As you can see above, you can drill down each employee’s timecard details in the "Timecards" tab. You can edit hours, add rates, add PTO, and calculate overtime. Once you’ve finalized your employee’s timecard, you can approve from the same menu.

Creating a PTO policy in Justworks is similar to Zenefits. It is guided and particularly helpful for newer businesses who need an introduction on creating PTO policies.

Justworks supports four policy types. Vacation, sick leave, and other options such as bereavement and jury duty are all available. Justworks additionally supports PTO policy creation for non-U.S. employees. This is unlike other human resource software systems.

Once you’ve chosen your policy type, you can select your annual PTO cycle, accrual structure, and number of PTO days.

Compliance Support

Justworks includes tools that help businesses stay compliant with state and federal policies. Justworks’ standout compliance features are managing your taxes and providing free online workplace training. Newer businesses that do not have experience with business compliance will find Justworks useful.

Justworks does not have a compliance dashboard. Contrast this with Gusto, which clearly shows what compliance actions your company still needs to take through its dashboard. Justworks instead notifies businesses of compliance tasks through email.

Justworks can also withdraw, report, and remit the following taxes:

  • W-2
  • 1099
  • 940
  • 941
Justworks Training Courses

Seen above is Justworks’ online training dashboard. Justworks offers a number of free training courses for your employees. Courses are automatically compliant with the state your company is registered in. Here are the complementary courses Justworks offers.

CourseAdditional Notes
Harassment and Discrimination PreventionThis course is available for supervisors and employees. Helps eliminate workplace harassment and discrimination.
Inclusion in the Modern WorkplaceThis is the primary diversity course that Justworks offers. Provides strategies on workplace inclusion.
Managing BiasThis course is primarily designed for employees to educate them on biases and how they affect the workplace.

Benefits

Justworks allows small businesses to offer affordable health care and financial benefits to their employees. Setting up benefits for your employees is easy to do. Justworks, unlike Gusto, supports benefits in all 50 states with its base plan.

Justworks Benefits

In addition to medical, dental, and vision plans, Justworks offers a number of plans for the following:

  • Health care FSA
  • Health savings account (HSA)
  • 401(k)
  • Commuter benefits
  • Citi Bike
  • Life insurance
Justworks Benefits Overview

Finally, Justworks can generate a company benefits overview for prospective hires. This overview is an organized and well designed document that clearly lays out your company’s benefit plans. This is an effective way to persuade prospective employees to join your company.

Expense Management

Justworks has limited expense management features. This is because managers can reimburse employees and contractors, but employees cannot upload their receipts or track the reimbursements they require. This makes tracking reimbursements in Justworks much harder for managers.

Justworks Expense Reimbursement

Justworks’ expense reimbursement feature allows you to assign multiple payees. This means that you can reimburse multiple employees at once and therefore clearly organize your reimbursements.

Unfortunately, expense reimbursement requests cannot be submitted in Justworks’ system. This is a fault we’ve analyzed in many HR software solutions. Other than this flaw, we find that setting reimbursements is easy to do and flexible in options.

Analytics and Reporting

Justworks comes with comprehensive reporting. Here is an overview of some of the most common reports your company can benefit from:

CategoryReports
Benefits
  • Benefits usage
  • Retirement
HR
  • Company census
  • Headcount
  • PTO balance
Payments
  • Hours worked
  • Payroll
  • 1099 report
Justworks Report Creator

Creating reports is easy to do in Justworks. It consists of checking off boxes and exporting your report. Unlike Gusto and Zenefits, you cannot preview your report before exporting it. This is a slight hindrance to your otherwise streamlined workflows.

Integrations

Justworks does not offer as many native integrations as alternatives. Justworks primarily integrates with accounting software.

Customer Support

Justworks’s customer support team is quickly reachable through a variety of ways. They are available 24/7 through phone, email, live chat, Slack, and SMS.

Justworks also has a resource center helpful for small businesses. Its resource hub offers guides, industry updates, and HR FAQs. These are all effective resources to learn more about Justworks and HR software as a whole.

Customer Support ChannelsPhone, email, live chat, Slack, SMS
Other Support ResourcesResource hub
Application Status PageYes

Justworks Alternatives & Competitors

Justworks competes with a variety of human resources management solutions that offer similar functionality. The best choice for you will depend on your budget and feature preferences. It is most comparable to payroll tools such as Gusto.

Justworks's top competitors are:

Learn more about how Justworks stacks up against its top individual competitors:

For a full breakdown, read our analysis of Justworks Competitors.

Is Justworks Right For You?

Overall, Justworks is a robust all-in-one human resource software tool that can run unlimited payroll, offer flexible benefits, and assist with compliance for your salaried, hourly, or contingent employees. In addition to its powerful suite of HR features, Justworks is one of the most user-friendly solutions we’ve analyzed in this space. This makes it especially ideal for newer businesses.

  • If you need software similar to Justworks, but want more app integrations and software onboarding assistance, consider Zenefits.
  • If you need HR software with greater expense management features, try Zoho People.
  • If payroll and pricing are both the main priorities for your business in choosing HR software, consider Gusto.

If you're interested, you can try Justworks here.

Yousef Fatehpour

Yousef Fatehpour is a Junior Research Analyst at SoftwarePundit. He graduated from University of California, San Diego, where he studied Human Centered Design and Communications. His work at UCSD's Design Lab emphasized UX research and product management.

Yousef's primary areas of interest are software design, user journeys, and how user experience is handled across software markets. Yousef also has experience in product design and multimedia content production. You can connect with Yousef on LinkedIn.

Yousef is an expert in several software categories including:

  • SMS marketing software
  • Document management software
  • Human resource software
  • Applicant tracking software
  • Design software