OnPay Review (2024): Features, Pricing Pros & Cons

OnPay offers a straightforward method to run payroll for a company, which is one of the reasons Forbes Advisor named it the top payroll service for small businesses. Its dashboard is well-designed and easy to navigate. It’s a cloud-based platform, so you can easily pay employees or contract workers by logging in to your account from a browser—including from a mobile phone.

OnPay user dashboard

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1

OnPay

Benefits administration

Yes

Contractor payments

Yes

Base monthly price

$40 per month + $6 per user

1

OnPay

Learn More

On OnPay's Website

2

SurePayroll

Benefits Administration

Yes

Contractor Payments

Yes

Base Price

$29.99/mo plus $5 per employee

2

SurePayroll

Learn More

On SurePayroll's Website

3

Gusto

Benefits administration

Yes

Contractor payments

Yes

Base monthly price

$40 per month plus $6 per user

3

Gusto

Learn More

On Gusto's Website

4

Rippling

Benefits administration

Yes

Contractor Payments

Yes

Base Price

$35 per month + $8 per user

4

Rippling

Learn More

On Rippling's Website

OnPay is a cloud-based payroll processing system that charges a flat monthly fee plus a per-user fee for access to all its payroll, HR, time off and benefits features. OnPay automates your payroll process from start to finish. It also calculates, files and pays payroll taxes.

Employees have lifetime access to their self-service accounts in OnPay’s system, so even if they’re no longer working at your company, they can easily access their W-2 come tax season.

Plus you’ll get access to licensed brokers who may help you select and manage health insurance plans for your workforce. Additional features include a reports library and integrations with various apps for time tracking, HR compliance and more.

OnPay’s sleek interface and visually appealing graphics make it, on the whole, an easy and pleasant platform to use. For instance, from an employee’s perspective, we liked seeing the profile pictures of coworkers’ direct reports swirl outward when clicking on the coworker’s profile picture.

We also like the green, yellow and red labeling in the benefits module because it’s a quick visual way to indicate who has and hasn’t completed their benefits elections. The file audit is also a super useful feature to get an idea of who still needs to complete paperwork.

However, as we’ve noted in more detail below, adding employees, bypassing payroll alerts and syncing time off with payroll can be cumbersome or tricky.

Here’s a look at several of OnPay’s most noteworthy features.

Payroll

OnPay includes unlimited payroll runs and enables various pay schedules and rates for part-time, full-time and contract workers, so it’s capable of handling complex payroll structures. You also have the freedom to choose how you pay your employees, whether via direct deposit, paper checks or prepaid debit cards. Additionally, you may opt for pay-as-you-go workers’ comp plans and avoid large upfront payments.

Payroll information is front and center on your dashboard when you log in to your account. When you’re ready to process payroll, you simply click “Start Run.” The system takes you to a screen to review all paychecks to submit. Little orange icons indicate something that needs your attention, such as time off approval needed or that the paycheck amount is above or below what the employee has received in the past. We found it difficult to figure out how to resolve these warnings.

For instance, one employee needed vacation time approved. However, the system showed it had already been approved. Seeing this conflicting information was confusing. When we asked a customer service representative about this, we were told that this simply shows that the vacation time is already included in the payroll run.

Other times, when clicking on the time-off icon next to an employee’s name, the system would show “Approve & Include.” Then it was easy to click that button and get rid of the warning.

Sometimes you have to choose whom to include in the payroll run. For example, when running biweekly payroll, not all employees were selected, so be sure to check that all the right people are included. If needed, you can simply click on the “select all” checkbox to include everyone. Warnings aside, OnPay walks you through a three-step process to submit payroll. Once payroll is submitted, you receive an email confirmation to assure you that the run is completed.

Onboarding

OnPay offers self-onboarding for new employees, saving you time and hassle. Employees can log in to the software and enter their banking information and other important details you need to pay them. They may also use OnPay to request PTO and manage it. Plus, they’ll have lifetime access to their accounts so they’ll be able to pull their pay stubs and tax forms at any time, even after they leave your company.

We added a new employee and found the process somewhat cumbersome from the employer’s point of view. First, when adding a new employee you receive a code displayed in the system. Once you receive a verification email, it contains a link to click on where you have to enter that code, so it’s important not to close out that code window within OnPay; otherwise, you’ll have to restart the process.

Once the system verifies that you’ve entered the right code, you have to manually enter the employee’s name, supervisor and email address. This can be tricky if they haven’t been provisioned with email access yet.

From there, you can check a box to assign the rest of the information to be filled out by the employee to save you time. This part can be a bit tricky too because when we thought we were done entering information, we tried clicking “Continue,” but the system required us to fill out more information below the checkbox, so we had to enter more information manually than we thought, including the employee’s title, compensation and more. The placement of the checkbox to assign the rest to the employee should’ve been placed after all manual entry fields to avoid any confusion.

At the end, before finally submitting the invitation to the employee to submit their personal information, it was very easy to set up the new hire checklist and assign them tasks such as reviewing the company handbook. You can also select whether you want someone to give a final review of the task once the new employee completes it.

Tax Filing

Much of the tax process is automated with OnPay. Employees can onboard themselves in the self-service employee portal, including their tax exemptions or deductions. OnPay automatically deducts what’s necessary, and at the end of the tax year, it files taxes for your company. Tax documents are available to employees in the portal. You can easily view previous tax year filings under the “Filings” tab of the main menu.

Benefits Administration

With OnPay, you can choose health insurance benefits for your employees and integrate them with your payroll. If you’re unsure of what you need, OnPay’s team of brokers that’s licensed in all 50 states can help you out.

In addition to dental, health and vision benefits, you may integrate with a low-fee 401(k) provider to provide retirement benefits. OnPay works with leading 401(k) providers, including Vestwell and Guideline, and can help you offer retirement benefits to your employees. Even though there’s no service fee, there is a monthly fee plus a participant fee. OnPay may also assist you with additional benefits such as PTO, life insurance and liability insurance.

From the admin perspective, the benefits dashboard presents a visually appealing, color-coded overview of employees who’ve finished, started or not yet started their benefits elections. These employees have a green, yellow and red dot, respectively, next to their names.

You can view currently offered plan details and see the pictures of employees who are enrolled in that particular benefit. While we like the visuals, it’s easy to lose oversight of enrollment when you have a bigger team than the test data we were working with during testing. We also would’ve liked a benefits report that displays the percentage of the workforce enrolled in each benefit as well as the current costs of all benefits offered.

From the employee’s view, it was very easy to access benefits enrollment from the dashboard. The system walked us through several steps and even allowed a side-by-side comparison of the various health insurance plans available. Once all benefits are selected, you just have to sign, submit and you’re done.

Time Tracking

If you have hourly employees and time tracking is vital to your business, you can integrate OnPay with time tracking software, such as Deputy and QuickBooks Time, for example. By doing so, you’ll streamline the payroll process and ensure accurate reporting. OnPay doesn’t currently have its own time tracking capabilities. Instead, you can integrate for free with QuickBooks Time, When I Work and Deputy.

Analytics and Reporting

OnPay offers a number of payroll and tax-related reports that you can customize with the dynamic report designer. If you find a report you need, you can also export it to Microsoft Excel and customize it there. The software allows you to save any report to a PDF as well. In addition, you can count on OnPay to report all new hires to the government on your behalf.

Integrations

There are 11 integrations available for OnPay to supplement accounting, time tracking, 401(k) management, HR compliance and even farming business needs.

Accounting

You can sync these accounting software solutions with your payroll data.

• QuickBooks Online
• QuickBooks Desktop
• Xero

Time Tracking

• QuickBooks Time: For time tracking, invoicing and more.
• When I Work: Imports workers’ hours into OnPay.
• Deputy: Provides time tracking, scheduling and more.

401(k)/Retirement

• Guideline: For affordable and easy-to-set-up 401(k) plans.
• Vestwell: Offers flexible retirement plan management.

HR & Compliance

• Mineral: Provides HR advice, training and more to keep your business compliant.
• PosterElite: Keeps your company on top of labor law poster updates.

Agricultural Profitability

• Magnify: Works with OnPay and Xero to support profitable farming and agricultural businesses.

Customer Support

OnPay is decidedly easy to set up and use, but if you get stuck or have a question, you have multiple options for seeking help from customer support. There’s a help center with guides for each OnPay tool, along with how-to GIFs and walk-throughs and a robust FAQ page. You can also contact someone by email anytime, or by chat and phone from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET on weekdays.

We were impressed with OnPay’s customer service, particularly over the phone. While it took longer to hear back through the chat function, we were able to reach someone in just a few minutes over the phone. The OnPay representative who helped us provided a clear answer to our question and asked us if we needed anything else. We felt like the company was genuinely interested in helping us rather than selling anything.

There are no tiers of plans with OnPay—you pay one base rate and then a flat fee per person on your payroll or in your company. The base rate is $40 per month, and then you pay $6 per person per month, so OnPay for a company with 100 employees would cost $640 per month. As you lose or gain employees, you pay a little less or more. OnPay doesn’t offer a traditional free trial, but if you sign up for the service, you’ll get the first month free. Use those first 30 days to test everything out to see if it’s right for your company.

Starting Price	$40 per month plus $6 per user per month
U.S. Payroll	Yes
Global Payroll	No
Onboarding	Yes
Tax Filing	Yes
Benefits Administration	Yes
Time Tracking	No
Expense Management	No
Workflow Automations	Yes
Mobile Apps	Yes, iOS only
Reporting and Analytics	Yes
Third-Party Integrations	Yes
Error-Free Guarantee	Yes
Customer Support	Yes

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Every business with employees needs a payroll service, but if you aren’t sure how to choose payroll software, you might want to consider some of these additional features that OnPay provides that make your HR team’s job easier.

HR Features

In addition to payroll processing, OnPay offers several HR tools. You can send offer letters and collect electronic signatures directly in OnPay without using any third-party software. We found it super easy to view and edit existing templates or create our own from scratch.

Employees can set up their own profiles and go through the onboarding process on their own. Only employees can initiate changes to their profile information, such as last name or address, but admin must approve these changes. On both ends of this process, we found it very easy to initiate and approve changes to an employee’s profile. Employees also have access to a portal that stores their pay stubs, W-2 form and other important documents.

There’s also a place for them to track their paid time off (PTO). PTO tracking and approval are also built in, which makes it easy for employees to request and managers to approve from the app. While we did find this feature quite easy to use on both the admin and employee ends, it was more difficult to figure out how time off appears in payroll and in employees’ profile information.

For example, when we included an employee’s paid time off in their payroll run, the approved time off wasn’t always reflected in their employee profile, nor did it necessarily appear in the Employee Time Off module. The payroll run still flagged an alert that time off needed to be approved for some employees, even though it had already been approved.

Compliance

Since OnPay calculates payroll taxes and files tax forms for you according to IRS and state rules, you can ensure compliance. It will also pay for any fees related to tax errors, offering you some much-needed peace of mind. In addition, OnPay will provide you with the appropriate reports you may need for a workers’ compensation audit.

Employee Engagement

OnPay features an employee engagement module where you can keep track of employees’ birthdays and work anniversaries and send them a card. We weren’t able to test out the card features, so we don’t know if this entails sending a postal or virtual card.

Within this module you can also prompt questions to help employees get to know each other better, such as “What’s your favorite movie?” Employees’ answers are displayed on their employee profiles. The only drawback here was that employees don’t see their coworkers’ fun facts unless they specifically seek out coworkers’ profiles on their own. In other words, this information isn’t shared or displayed company-wide to promote conversation.

Check out more options here: Best Employee Engagement Software

	OnPay	Gusto	ADP RUN	Paychex Flex
Starting Price	$40 per month plus $6 per user per month	$40 per month plus $6 per user per month	$59-plus per month, depending on company size and needs	$39 per month plus $5 per user per month
U.S. Payroll	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Global Payroll	No	Contractor only	Add-on or via integration	No
Onboarding	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tax Filing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Benefits Administration	Yes	Yes	Add-on	Add-on
Time Tracking	Via integration	Yes	Yes	Add-on
Expense Management	No	Yes	Via integration	No
Workflow Automations	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mobile Apps	iOS	Yes	iOS and Android	iOS and Android
Reporting and Analytics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Pro Plan only
Third-Party Integrations	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Error-Free Guarantee	Yes	No	No	No
Customer Support	Phone, email, chat	Phone, chat, email, service levels vary by plan	Phone	Phone, help ticket form
Learn More	On OnPay’s Website	On Gusto’s Website	On ADP Run’s Website	On Paychex Flex’s Website
Read Reviews	–	Read Gusto Review	Read ADP RUN Review	Read Paychex Flex Review

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OnPay vs. Gusto

OnPay and Gusto are priced the same so the ideal choice depends on your priorities. If time tracking is important, you’d be better off with Gusto as it lets employees track their time directly from its time tracking app but only in the Plus and Premium plans. However, if you’d like the peace of mind offered by an error-free tax guarantee, OnPay is likely your best bet.

OnPay vs. ADP RUN

OnPay and ADP RUN both offer benefits administration. However, this feature is included in OnPay’s monthly price while ADP RUN requires you to pay extra for retirement, health insurance and workers’ comp selection and integration.

OnPay vs. Paychex Flex

Paychex Flex provides more customizable plans, while OnPay provides a one-size-fits-all benefits package. However, OnPay is more likely to meet the price point for small businesses, since Paychex Flex charges not only for benefits administration but also for each additional benefit you want to offer—retirement, group health insurance, business insurance. Paychex’s top tier also offers the option of adding COBRA assistance, Premium Only plans, flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts for an additional cost.

OnPay’s benefits pricing is more cost-effective and straightforward. Plus, it offers its own add-ons such as life, vision and disability insurance. So there is some room for customization.

If you’re a small business owner in search of a simple, affordable payroll solution, OnPay can be a solid choice. This is particularly true if you need guidance with benefits and taxes and appreciate an easy-to-use interface and exceptional customer service.

Ease of Use

To conduct our test drive of OnPay’s platform, we used the Google Chrome browser on a Windows laptop and an Android mobile device (no mobile app is currently available for Android). However, OnPay performs well in the mobile device browser for Android, though sections that have long menus, such as employee profiles, require clicks on a sideways arrow to navigate across.

Users haven’t reported many issues with OnPay’s iOS mobile app. However, two users had issues with it displaying the wrong employee information and with the inability for employees to modify their information.

OnPay’s interface is clean and straightforward, making it easy to navigate. After logging in, we landed at the user dashboard that includes at-a-glance information, such as team members, upcoming payroll runs, recent runs and whatever other tiles you’d like displayed on your main dashboard. We found the main dashboard and the HR dashboard pretty easy to customize.

We like the easy, three-step process to run payroll, but we found it difficult to get around the warnings. Time off data also doesn’t necessarily sync with payroll or an employee’s time off information in their profile.

OnPay’s benefits administration module delivers a pleasing user experience. Colorful visuals make it easy to see the status of employees’ benefits enrollment. More robust benefits reporting would make this part of OnPay’s platform even better.

The ability to create checklists of tasks for things such as onboarding is a great feature. Onboarding itself, though, is initially cumbersome to set up, given the different hoops and counterintuitive UX involved.

OnPay is one of the best picks for payroll processing for small businesses. It’s an affordable option for fast-growth companies because you won’t have to choose a higher-priced plan—only pay per new hire per month in addition to what you’re already paying. However, you may find you need more HR features if you run a larger business, and OnPay just doesn’t scale in that way.

Featured Partners

Advertisement

1

OnPay

Benefits administration

Yes

Contractor payments

Yes

Base monthly price

$40 per month + $6 per user

1

OnPay

Learn More

On OnPay's Website

2

SurePayroll

Benefits Administration

Yes

Contractor Payments

Yes

Base Price

$29.99/mo plus $5 per employee

2

SurePayroll

Learn More

On SurePayroll's Website

3

Gusto

Benefits administration

Yes

Contractor payments

Yes

Base monthly price

$40 per month plus $6 per user

3

Gusto

Learn More

On Gusto's Website

4

Rippling

Benefits administration

Yes

Contractor Payments

Yes

Base Price

$35 per month + $8 per user

4

Rippling

Learn More

On Rippling's Website

OnPay Is Best For:

• Small Businesses: OnPay makes the most sense for startups and small businesses that are seeking a robust, one-size-fits-all payroll system at an affordable price point.
• U.S.-Based Businesses: OnPay supports payments to employees and independent contractors working in the U.S.

OnPay Is Not Recommended For:

• Medium- to Larger-Sized Businesses: Medium- to larger-sized businesses that are looking for advanced features that support their growth, such as recruiting, compensation and performance management.