The HR half, without Gusto.

Gusto is payroll with HR around it. Daciel is the HR half: directory, hiring, onboarding and time off on the record your customers are on. Payroll stays where it is.

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Reminders

Projects

Recent

Renewals at risk

Board pack, October

Supplier terms review

Churn post mortem

Which accounts are at risk this month, and draft the outreach.

Worked for 41s · 6 steps · $0.12

Read9 accounts renewing

Read14 open tickets

Comparedusage against the last two quarters

Drafted7 messages, held 2 for a person

Nine accounts renew inside 30 days and three of them are the ones to worry about. Their ticket volume is up while usage is falling, which is the pattern that preceded every churn last quarter.

Salesforce

Zendesk2 sources, permission aware

Message Daciel

Keep Gusto for payroll; connect it.

One record behind every channel

Library

Everything the work produced, with who owns it and who can read it.

AllDocumentsSheetsFrom runs

Renewal brief, Acme

Document · Priya · Deal team

Q3 pipeline review

Sheet · Marcus · Sales

Supplier terms summary

Document · Ana · Private

Churn post mortem

Document · Marcus · Everyone

Board pack, October

Deck · Priya · Leadership

Access review

Sheet · Tom · Admins

Turn the renewal brief into an email to the deal team

Renewal brief, Acme

Chat

One composer, on every surface.

Vendor reviews

Q3 onboarding

Support desk

Website rebuild

Everything the renewal touched: the thread it started in, the artifacts it produced, and who is allowed to see them.

148 artifacts

Keep

Acme renewal

Payroll migration

Hiring: sales

Said once, kept for good

Any answer becomes an artifact, with an owner and a permission.

Slack

Gmail

Outlook

Google Drive

Notion

Salesforce

HubSpot

Zendesk

Jira

GitHub

Linear

Stripe

Zoom

Asana

Airtable

Dropbox

Box

Confluence

Intercom

Google Calendar

Monday

ClickUp

Figma

DocuSign

Trello

Slack

Gmail

Outlook

Connected from day one

The systems you already run, readable in one place.

Runs this week

RunOutcome and traceWhat it producedCost

1Renewal outreachApprovedRead the nine accounts renewing this quarter in Salesforce, compared each one's usage against the last two quarters, drafted seven messages and held two back for a person. 41s, 6 steps, $0.12...7 draftsTotal$0.12Model$0.09Tools$0.03

2Invoice chaseHeldMatched fourteen overdue invoices in Stripe against the support thread for each account, then stopped before sending: two of them are in an open dispute and the policy says a person decides...14 invoicesTotal$0.08Model$0.06Tools$0.02

3Monday briefingApprovedPulled every run from the last seven days, grouped them by workspace, and wrote the briefing into the Library with the trace attached to each claim so any line can be opened...1 briefingTotal$0.21Model$0.17Tools$0.04

4Access reviewApprovedListed every connection holding a write scope, checked each against the role that owns it, and flagged three that now outlive the person who created them. Nothing was revoked without asking...3 flaggedTotal$0.05Model$0.04Tools$0.01

Runs

Every step, every tool call, every cost, and who approved it.

Payroll stays; the rest moves

Most people searching for a Gusto alternative are not unhappy with payroll. They are paying per employee for HR features that know nothing about the rest of the company. Daciel takes the directory, hiring, onboarding and time-off requests onto the business record, at one price, and reads Gusto for what it still does.

Queued6+⋯

RUN-2085

Chase the 14 overdue invoices

RUN-2094

Summarise every ticket Acme opened

RUN-2092

Check which renewals slipped a quarter

RUN-2200

Rewrite the onboarding mail sequence

Planned10+⋯

RUN-2211

Renewal quote for Acme, send held

Salesforce

Priya approves

RUN-926

Renewal outreach, nine accounts

Salesforce

Gmail

RUN-2088

Weekly briefing into the Library

Slack

RUN-924

Reconcile Stripe against the tickets

Stripe

RUN-1882

Tag the inbox by account

Outlook

Running3+⋯

RUN-1487

Pull usage for the at-risk accounts

4 steps

RUN-1028

Answer the RFP security section

Confluence

RUN-2187

Flag connections holding write scope

Waiting on Priya6 steps

Done48+⋯

RUN-2074

Monday briefing, written and filed

Library$0.21

RUN-1912

Churn post mortem for Q3

$0.14

RUN-1951

Board pack pulled together

$0.31

RUN-1960

Access review, three flagged

Approved$0.05

RUN-1991

Supplier terms summarised

Thread in #renewals

Marcus Hale9:12 AM

Acme wants a renewal quote. Their contract is up in three weeks.

Ana Duarte9:12 AM

Ticket volume has climbed every month this quarter. Read that before we price it.

Marcus Hale9:13 AM

So someone pulls usage, open tickets and the last two invoices. Three systems.

Priya Raman9:14 AM

And most of an afternoon. Hand it over and hold the send until one of us reads it.

Marcus Hale9:14 AM

@Daciel draft the Acme renewal from usage and tickets, hold the send

Two jobs it does on day one

The people record

Directory, hiring, onboarding and time-off requests on the same record as your customers and deals; a manager approves every step.

See HR software

Conversations

7 open · 4 answered without a person

Acme CoWhere is invoice 4417?Agent

NorthwindRefund for the duplicate seatAgent

StarlightCan we move the renewal date?Held

MeridianAPI keys stopped workingWaiting

BrightlineInvoice address is wrongAgent

KestrelDo you support SSO?Agent

HalcyonExport stopped at 10k rowsWaiting

The rest of the company

The phone answered, the inbox drafted, invoices chased, approvals held: the same product, the same record, one price.

See what Daciel does

Renewals

9 inside 30 days · 7 drafted, 2 held

Brightline$14kDrafted

Kestrel$9kSent

Halcyon$6kHeld

Why look for a Gusto alternative?

Gusto is payroll-first software for small businesses: payroll, benefits and tax filings, with hiring, onboarding and time tracking added around the employee record, priced as a monthly base plus a fee per person.

How to switch from Gusto

Connect what you keep

Your mailbox, store, billing and CRM connect in one click each. Gusto itself can stay connected while you run both.

Set the brief

Hours, policies, what may be resolved alone and what waits for a person. Plain language, no macro import.

Start with everything held

Every send, spend and change is held for a named approver until the record earns a looser rule.

Run in parallel

Route one channel or one queue to Daciel first. Compare the record, not the demo.

Move the rest

Point the remaining channels and the phone line at Daciel. Cancel the seats you no longer pay for.

Gusto alternatives, compared

Each row is a real substitute. The columns are the three things that decide it: which channels it owns, how a person stays in control, and what the month costs.

	Best for	Channels	How a person stays in control	Published pricing
Gusto	Small businesses that need payroll first and HR around it	Payroll, benefits, hiring and onboarding, time tracking	Manager approvals on time off and time tracking	Monthly base plus per person per month, published by tier
Rippling	Companies of 25 to 1,000 that want HR, IT and finance on one employee record, with payroll	HRIS, payroll, benefits, device management, spend; app marketplace	Policy engine and approval chains configured by an admin	Per employee per month, quoted; base platform fee plus modules
BambooHR	Small and mid-size HR teams that want an HRIS with an ATS and onboarding	Employee records, ATS, onboarding, time off, performance; payroll add-on	Approval workflows on requests, configured per company	Per employee per month, quoted; Core and Pro packages
Dacielthis site	Businesses of 5 to 200 people that want the directory, hiring, onboarding and time-off requests on the same record as the rest of the company	Directory, candidates, onboarding tasks and time-off requests as records; the agent drafts, schedules and files	Offers, onboarding steps and time-off requests are held for the named manager; payroll and tax filings are refused, not faked	Contact Daciel for business plan availability and pricing.

Competitor pricing as published on each vendor's site, read 2026-08-19. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the row says so.

Switch in an afternoon

See pricing

Daciel

ElevenLabs

Answers in a voice you would not know from a person.

Daciel

Twilio

A direct line of its own, answering from the first ring.

Daciel

Cloudflare

Domains provisioned and shielded at the edge before they are asked for.

Daciel

Anthropic

Frontier reasoning on the work, with the trace kept for every line.

Daciel

ElevenLabs

Answers in a voice you would not know from a person.

Daciel

Twilio

A direct line of its own, answering from the first ring.

Daciel

Cloudflare

Domains provisioned and shielded at the edge before they are asked for.

Daciel

Anthropic

Frontier reasoning on the work, with the trace kept for every line.

Daciel

ElevenLabs

Answers in a voice you would not know from a person.

Daciel

Twilio

A direct line of its own, answering from the first ring.

Daciel

Cloudflare

Domains provisioned and shielded at the edge before they are asked for.

Daciel

Anthropic

Frontier reasoning on the work, with the trace kept for every line.

Connects to

No per-employee feeContact Daciel for business plan availability and pricing.

Payroll refused, not fakedKeep the provider that files; Daciel connects and reads

Manager on every decisionOffers, role changes and leave wait for the named person

Safe to switch from Gusto. An agent that reaches into your systems is held to what the person behind it may do, and shows its work.

How permissions work

Questions people ask before buying

Does Daciel replace Gusto's payroll?

No. Daciel does not run payroll, file taxes or administer benefits, and says so on the screen. Many teams keep Gusto for payroll and move the directory, hiring, onboarding and time off to Daciel.

Why leave Gusto?

The reasons people search: the per-employee bill, an HR system that knows nothing about the customers and deals those employees own, and modules bought that a small company never opens.

Can we migrate our employee records?

Yes, by export and import, and by a live connection reading Gusto where the connector exists. Gusto can stay connected while you run both.

How is Daciel priced?

Business pricing is confirmed during setup. Gusto prices per employee per month.

What else is in the price?

The phone answered, the shared inbox, the sales pipeline, receivables, approvals and reports, on the same record as the people.

HR software for small business HRIS for small business BambooHR alternative PTO tracking software

Built for the future. Available today.

See pricing