PEO Services Guide

Justworks is one of the two PEO services in this guide that publishes its pricing online. That makes it easier for you to compare costs and features before entering a sales process. Its transparency also signals predictable per-employee pricing as your team grows, which matters when budgeting for headcount at the early stages of building a business.

Large-group benefits access with wellness perks

Signing up for the Justworks PEO Plus plan adds medical, dental, and vision administration alongside COBRA administration and HSA/FSA accounts. Mental health services are also available through providers like Talkspace, including fertility benefits via Kindbody. 

This benefits depth is comparable to what you’d see from ADP TotalSource, but Justworks makes it available at a smaller employee threshold. For companies competing for talent against better-resourced employers, this levels the playing field in a concrete, measurable way.

For PEO, Justworks has two plans: 

• PEO Basic: $79 per employee, per month (PEPM)
• PEO Plus: $109 PEPM

Several add-on products are available if you want to enhance the functionality of the PEO plans.

• Time tracking: $8 PEPM
• Dedicated HR consulting: $30 PEPM
• US-based contractors: $8/paid contractor monthly
• International contractors: $39/paid contractor monthly; this lets you pay workers in over 60 countries
• Employer of Record: $599 PEPM; tools for hiring and paying global full-time employees

In addition to PEO, Justworks has a payroll-only product that costs $8 PEPM plus a $50 monthly base fee.

Risk-focused HR tools

ADP gives businesses more guardrails around the HR situations that can get expensive when handled informally, such as workplace safety, unemployment claims, workers’ compensation, and policy management. 

This is where ADP TotalSource feels different from lighter PEO services. It is not just helping you process routine HR tasks; it is helping you build a more controlled process around issues that can create compliance, financial, or employee-relations risk.

Full-scale, flexible payroll

ADP started in payroll, so its offerings are particularly robust in this area. TotalSource includes many competitive capabilities, like earned wage access capabilities, quick processing times, and flexible payroll schedules. If your employees prefer receiving paper checks, ADP also includes checking printing, signing, and stuffing services in its base PEO plan.

ADP TotalSource does not disclose its pricing details upfront, so you will need to contact ADP directly to get a cost estimate that’s tailored to your business’s needs.

Customized safety programs

Paychex PEO creates a tailored safety program to fit your business’ industry and training needs. Uniquely, Paychex assigns safety experts to review your company’s workplace to understand the challenges you face daily. These experts customize safety manuals for your needs, provide you access to training courses in more than 70 topics, and update you on important safety compliance changes.

If you are in a high-risk industry like construction, manufacturing, or roofing, this level of support can be essential for keeping workplace injuries low and preventing any OSHA investigations for unsafe practices.

Benefits and liability administration

Paychex’s benefits administration is highly customizable, including the following:

• Standard PPO and HMO coverage for health, dental, and vision
• Health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible savings accounts (FSAs), and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs)
• Section 125 cafeteria plans
• Retirement benefits
• COBRA administration

Paychex clients also benefit from access to various business insurance coverage options. For project-based companies, this can make it significantly easier to produce certificates of insurance that prove your coverage levels when partnering with contractors or subcontractors.

Paychex PEO does not publicly disclose its pricing, so you will have to contact Paychex directly for a customized quote.

Industry-specific support teams

TriNet is one of the only PEOs on this list that organizes its support model around your industry rather than your account size. 

When you sign on with TriNet, your support team includes HR, payroll, and benefits specialists who have worked specifically within your sector, whether that’s financial services, technology, or nonprofit. This means faster, more accurate guidance on questions like how to classify a part-time researcher for benefits eligibility or how to structure equity compensation in a pre-IPO tech company.

HR platform with centralized data

TriNet’s platform gives administrators and employees access to payroll, benefits, HR documents, expense management, and compliance data from one dashboard. It’s notable for being easy to use and navigate through, with an interface that employees can manage on their own without a lot of HR hand-holding.

TriNet does not publish fixed PEO pricing. Its pricing page says costs depend on factors such as the size of your business and the services needed.

Transparent flat-rate pricing with no setup or exit fees

Remote publishes its pricing for PEO, EOR, and contractor management services directly on its website. That puts it alongside Justworks as one of the only providers in this guide that doesn’t require a sales call just to understand what you’ll pay. I also like that Remote doesn’t have onboarding/offboarding fees, minimum contract terms, or upfront deposits.

Built-in IP protection

Remote’s IP Guard is a standard feature of its employment contracts, not an add-on. It includes clear ownership documentation and legal safeguards across all countries where Remote operates, ensuring that intellectual property developed by employees is properly assigned to your company under local law. 

For tech companies, professional services firms, or any business where employee-created IP is central to the product, this is a meaningful protection that many HR platforms either don’t address or charge extra for.

Unlike Justworks, Remote only has one plan for its PEO product. Pricing starts at $99 PEPM and comes with all the essential tools you need to hire, pay, and manage employees, including dedicated HR and compliance support, as well as guided onboarding for new hires.

If you decide to expand globally, Remote offers several modules to help you legally and compliantly recruit and pay workers.

• Employer of Record: Starts at $699 PEPM
• Global Payroll: $29 PEPM
• Contractor Management: $29/contractor monthly
• Contractor Management Plus: $99/contractor monthly
• Contractor of Record: Starts at $325/contractor monthly

HR solutions are also available for managing employee information, performance reviews, recruiting, and surveys. Visit the Remote website to check pricing details.

Customizable workflows

Its Workflow Studio lets you build custom HR automation rules without needing IT support, such as automatically triggering an onboarding checklist when a new hire is added or revoking software access when a termination is processed. No other PEO on this list comes close to this level of workflow flexibility.

Unified HR, IT, and finance solutions

Rippling is the only PEO on this list where HR, payroll, IT device management, app access provisioning, and expense management tools share a single employee data record. That architecture means changes flow automatically across systems. 

When you hire someone, Rippling can simultaneously enroll them in payroll, assign their laptop, grant access to Slack, Google Workspace, and your HRIS, and trigger their benefits enrollment — from a single onboarding workflow. When someone leaves, the same automation reverts all of that in one step. 

For comparison, every other PEO on this list handles HR and payroll, but IT management and app provisioning live in separate systems that don’t talk to each other. For companies spending several hours each week managing these handoffs manually, Rippling eliminates a lot of the administrative work that other PEOs simply don’t address.

Like most of the PEOs on my list, you have to contact the provider to discuss your HR needs and request a quote.