ADP Payroll Pricing (2024 Guide) (2024)

What Impacts ADP Payroll Costs

Pricing for payroll software isn’t usually black and white, and it’s no different for ADP’s payroll costs. ADP separates its payroll services into two categories: small businesses (ADP Run) and mid-size businesses. Their small business payroll software comes with four different plan options, and the mid-sized business payroll software comes with three different plan options.

ADP doesn’t publicly disclose plan pricing on its website, and you have to contact a sales representative to get a custom quote based on your business and payroll needs. Several factors impact the price of ADP’s payroll plans, including:

• Number of employees: ADP creates two different payroll solutions catered towards small businesses (1-49 employees) and mid-sized businesses (50+ employees). Like most payroll providers, on top of a base monthly price, you’ll also pay an additional per-employee price per month.
• Payroll frequency: ADP offers options to align with a business’s preferred payment schedule, whether weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
• Desired features: Different packages are also priced differently depending on the features included in each package. A plan that includes simple payroll features and minimal add-ons will cost less than a plan that includes all the bells and whistles.
• HR additions: Some ADP payroll plans include additional HR features to provide a well-rounded payroll solution. Plans that include HR features will cost more than payroll-only plans.
• Processing method: The processing method chosen for payroll can significantly impact pricing. The processing method includes how the payroll data is input, calculated and managed, influencing the level of automation and resources required.

ADP Payroll Pricing Plans

ADP doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing for any plans. To get accurate pricing, you’ll need to contact a sales representative who will review your business and payroll needs to create a custom quote based on the plan that best suits your payroll needs, number of employees and desired features.

Our research team found that in a 20-minute conversation with an ADP sales rep, you can expect to discuss your current payroll and broader HR solutions, your budget, other brands being considered, details about your employees and your role within the company. After talking with a sales rep on the phone, you will receive an email with a personalized payroll quote.

ADP Essential Plan

The Essential plan is designed for small businesses and start-ups that just want to have simple payroll with a provider they can trust to do it right. The basic payroll features in the Essential plan include automated payroll processing, direct deposit, new hire reporting, W-2s and 1099s, tax filing, payroll delivery, multijurisdiction payroll and general ledger.

This plan also includes HR features, such as employee portal access where employees can view their pay history, manage their ADP retirement accounts and enroll in paperless pay stub statements. Other HR features in the Essential plan include new hire onboarding, employee discounts on brand-name products and local retailers and background checks.

ADP Enhanced Plan

The Enhanced plan is for businesses that want to access all of ADP’s payroll features plus the add-on for ZipRecruiter. With this plan, you have access to all the payroll features included in the Essential plan, plus job costing to track and calculate labor costs for jobs and projects, state unemployment insurance management and labor law compliance to automatically stay updated with labor law regulations. The ZipRecruiter feature can help small businesses grow their teams by posting job openings to over 100 online job boards.

ADP Complete Plan

The Complete plan is for businesses that want to add basic HR support to their payroll services. It offers all of the payroll services included in the Enhanced plan plus ADP’s basic HR support services including an HR help desk that gives you phone and email access to a dedicated HR support team to help you navigate any HR issues. Other HR features include an employee handbook wizard that helps you create a professional employee handbook based on federal employment laws, salary benchmarking to help you stay competitive in the job market, a library of HR templates, forms, documents, trainings, toolkits and access to HR tracking to track important employee information such as performance.

ADP HR Pro Plan

The HR Pro plan is for businesses that want the complete payroll and HR package. Prices vary based on unique business needs, but our research team received a quote for $453 per payroll for a company with 45 employees and a bi-weekly payroll frequency. Here’s how that quote is broken down:

The per-employee pricing starts when you have more than four employees. For smaller companies, we received quotes of $238.95 for one to two employees and $245.95 for three to four employees.

ADP also charges a $392.45 annual fee for year-end W-2 statements and $14.95 annually for W-2 delivery (rates are for 45 employees).

On top of including all payroll features and the HR features included in the Complete plan, the HR Pro plan also comes with additional HR features. These extra HR features include enhanced HR help desk support with access to a dedicated team of business advisors that provide support as needed and scheduled check-ins, extra assistance with creating employee handbooks, an applicant tracking system and a learning management system to assign and track progress for online courses and skills and professional development training.

ADP Alternative Price Comparison

ADP is one of the most well-known payroll companies on the market. However, just because ADP is a top payroll provider doesn’t mean it will be the right fit for your company. When choosing a payroll provider, it’s important to research and consider all of your options and compare providers and plans to your budget, business size and payroll needs. Some of ADP’s top competitors to compare against include Gusto, Rippling, Paychex and SurePayroll.

Since ADP doesn’t disclose pricing, there’s also no clear answer on how you can reduce costs with ADP or available promotions without contacting a sales representative. For example, when our research team received a quote for ADP HR Pro, we also received a promotion for up to 12 months of free payroll with the purchase of a 401(k) plan with ADP.

Typically, payroll providers offer a discounted rate when you sign on for an annual contract and pay annually instead of monthly or may give a discount if you sign on with a large number of employees. ADP also offers a free trial for you to try out the software at no cost to you before committing to a contract. ADP’s typical free trial is for three months; however, some promotions state you can get up to a six-month free trial.

Setup Fees

ADP doesn’t charge any start-up fees to start with one of its plans. The cost to get started just includes the monthly and per-employee fees of the plan you choose. To get the most accurate estimate of how much it will cost for you to start using ADP for payroll, it’s best to contact a sales representative to get a quote for your business.

Roll by ADP Pricing Overview

Roll by ADP is an innovative payroll solution for small businesses. It’s a chat-based payroll mobile app for payroll management and HR assistance. This ADP payroll product is also transparent in pricing, costing $29 per month plus $5 per employee. You can also try Roll by ADP for free for three months. Roll manages many payroll functions automatically, including payroll processing, calculations, tax filing, paying all W-2 and 1099 workers via direct deposit or check, tipped wage support, Quickbooks online integration and unlimited live chat support.

The main benefit of Roll is that it’s made with small business owners in mind who want to manage payroll as quickly as possible without extra steps. ADP accomplishes this with its chat feature that allows employers to simply chat and send texts to the chat support to perform various payroll management functions automatically. This makes Roll a good payroll option for small business owners who have a very hands-on role in the day-to-day operations of their business, don’t have a payroll manager and need a quick and easy way to manage payroll on their own.

ADP’s other payroll plans and products would be better suited for small businesses that want more extensive payroll software with the ability to have access to HR features and either have more time to spend on payroll management or have a dedicated payroll manager.

Choosing the Best ADP Plan

When choosing the best ADP plan, it’s important to consider factors such as your budget, the size of your business and number of employees, plans for future growth, payroll features needed and whether you desire to have HR features included. Depending on these factors, certain ADP plans may or may not be best suited for you.

For example, if you’re a start-up that just needs simple payroll to pay your employees reliably and manage tax filing while you get up and running, then the Essential plan would probably be the best fit. However, if you’re a fast-growing small business that wants to also have HR functions in the same platform as your payroll, then the HR Pro plan may be the best investment for your business needs.

It’s also important to consider additional features you may need to add on, like benefits administration and time tracking. These add-ons will increase the cost of your plan, so if you want to add on features, you’ll want to make sure that the base cost of the plan plus the added costs of additional features is within your budget.

The best way to choose the right ADP plan for your payroll needs is to contact a sales representative who can give you pricing information and create a custom quote with a plan that will best suit your business and payroll needs.

The Bottom Line

ADP is a reliable payroll choice for small businesses looking for simple and trustworthy payroll with a provider that can scale along with them. The variety of different payroll plans allows for flexibility and customization to ensure you get the right plan that will fit your payroll needs and provide the features most important to your business. However, ADP’s lack of transparent pricing makes it difficult to quickly compare plans to competitors and determine if it’s the best choice without contacting a sales representative.

The best course of action when choosing one of ADP’s payroll plans is to request a quote from ADP, as well as a few other providers you’re considering, to conduct a full comparison and make an informed decision on the best payroll software for your business. When comparing and choosing a payroll provider, make sure to consider important factors like company reputation, costs, payroll and tax features, additional feature options and customer support.