The 9 Best Maryland PEO Companies Reviewed and Compared (2024)

It is so important that you choose the right Maryland professional employer organization (PEO) to help your company grow and help you achieve your business goals. 

The right PEO will take care of HR tasks and other services for you so that you’re not mentally and financially drained, leaving you free to complete the important tasks necessary to keep your company on the right path. 

The wrong PEO will be mentally taxing and drain your finances so that you don’t have the energy or resources necessary to properly manage your business and facilitate its growth. 

I checked out more than 900 different Maryland PEOs, investigated the top 15, then rated the 9 best to identify the best PEO in Maryland. 

But you should know something before I provide you with my Maryland PEO service recommendations. 

The Best PEO Isn't Always the Right PEO

I’ve spent countless hours learning about over 900 different professional employer organizations in Maryland so that I could identify the best PEO in Maryland by finding the PEO with the highest score across a variety of factors. But you should know that the best overall Maryland PEO with the highest average score doesn’t isn’t automatically the best PEO service for your Maryland business. 

• Some Maryland PEOs know a lot about certain industries and can offer customized services and unique benefits to Maryland businesses in these industries.
• Some Maryland PEOs have formed partnerships with insurance companies, which lets them offer their clients more benefits and Maryland insurance cost savings. 
• Some Maryland PEOs have a lot of experience with compliance and legal issues, so they can make sure your Maryland business follows all local, state, and federal regulations. 

You can only find the best PEO for your business by comparing your needs to the main benefits that each Maryland PEO service provider offers. That way, you can be sure that the Maryland PEO you choose is the best at the things that are most important to you, rather than simply choosing the Maryland PEO with the highest overall score. 

Fill out the form below to get a free business needs evaluation and a recommendation for the best PEO service for your Maryland business. I’ll get back to you within 24 hours with my personalized business analysis and PEO recommendation. 

If you’re just curious about which PEO service provider received the highest score, here are my recommendations for the best PEO in Maryland.

1. Flexible PEO — 9.7/10 (Best Overall PEO)

Flexible PEO is the top choice, and they specifically outperform second-place PEO Companies in one important area – customer service. They are a good all-round PEO but customer service is where this relative newcomer really shines.

Pros

Flexible PEO offers a full range of PEO services. They provide HR outsourcing, health insurance, payroll services, workers’ compensation, and assistance with things like compliance and taxes. 

They offer competitive prices, and it’s easy to get set up with their system. However, the one area where they truly stand out is their customer service. 

I ran three different customer service tests, and I found that their average response times for emails was 46 minutes. And the average wait time to speak to a customer service representative was under two minutes. 

It’s one thing to find lightning-fast customer service response times, but their agents were also incredibly helpful. They were able to answer my questions without transferring me to another agent (I didn’t have to keep repeating my problem to various agents), and they didn’t have to get a manager involved. 

While they didn’t add any exceptional personal touches, like sending me a birthday card, that’s the only thing they could do to improve the customer service experience, in my opinion.

Cons

Although the system is overall relatively easy to use and they have good prices, there were times when their system was difficult and confusing to use. I had to phone Flexible’s excellent customer service team, which was able to walk me through my problems. 

Although they offer good rates, all three quotes I got averaged out to be a little more pricey more than PEO Companies.

Overall

Flexible is a great professional employer organization option, and they’ll check nearly any PEO boxes you could have for your business. 

They have competitive prices and they back it all up with outstanding customer service. They fall behind in some aspects of their service (their rates could be lower, and their computer system could be more user-friendly), but these are drawbacks that many people would be willing to look over to get world-class customer service. 

Of course, as with every professional employer organization in Maryland, Flexible PEO bases its prices on the size of your business, the number of employees you have, the PEO options you choose, etc. To get a quote for your business from Flexible PEO, click here: Flexible. 

2. PEO Companies— 9.3/10 (Best Customer Service PEO)

Although I wouldn’t go with PEO Companies as my first choice, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a perfectly suitable option. It came in second place for me, but this was a very close race!

Pros

PEO Companies offers a full range of Maryland PEO services and HR tasks to meet the HR needs of your Maryland business. Some of its Maryland PEO services include health insurance, onboarding support, assistance with safety compliance and legal issues, employee wellness programs, flexible spending plans, risk management, time-saving tools, workers’ compensation, payroll processing, benefits administration, employee management tools, quarterly tax filings, hiring new employees and employee development, tax forms, expense reporting, and other services. 

It’s simple to sign up for their services and get started making use of them thanks to the intuitive user interface and competitive pricing the company offers. 

Cons

Even though it’s not too difficult to get started with it, there were a few places inside the system where I needed clarification on how to use it, so I got in touch with the amazing customer service team that PEO Companies has. And despite the fact that PEO Companies offers reasonable pricing.

Despite the fact that these aren’t deal breakers for the majority of Maryland business owners (especially if customer service is significantly important to you), they were sufficient for me to rank CoAdvantage in second place on my list.

Overall

PEO Companies is an excellent professional employer organization (PEO) in Maryland that satisfies all the service requirements of a large number of Maryland businesses. It offers a wide variety of PEO services in Maryland to meet your HR needs at prices that are far cheaper than the norm in the PEO industry, and it backs all of this up with first-rate customer service. Even if its prices are a little higher than Vensure’s and it has a more confusing system, it’s still a fantastic option for a PEO service provider in Maryland, particularly if you place high value on quality customer service.

Every professional employer organization (PEO) in Maryland determines its prices based on specific information about your company (such as how many employees your company has and the industry in which your Maryland business operates) and the requirements of your business.

3. CoAdvantage— 7.41/10 (Best Value PEO)

My third recommendation for the best PEO in Maryland is CoAdvantage. Although it is an excellent deal and a reliable PEO service provider all around, the professional employer organization (PEO) services it provides have a few shortcomings that come across as a disappointment.

Pros

Like many of my other top picks for professional employer organizations, offers a comprehensive selection of PEO services to its clients. Its services include health insurance, onboarding support, safety compliance, risk management, time-saving tools, workers’ compensation, payroll processing, benefits administration, employee wellness programs, flexible spending plans, tax forms, better benefits for your employees, and other enhanced services to meet your HR needs. 

The onboarding procedure was quite straightforward, but once I had been fully incorporated into the system, I ran into some problems. The customer support employees at PEO Companies were not only knowledgeable but also reacted quickly and effectively to solve my problems.

CoAdvantage was leaps and bounds above other Maryland PEO companies in terms of pricing. The quote I got for my small business was the most affordable of the three they provided, but all three were the lowest I received from any Maryland PEO. I made it a point to include all the available services and features offered by other PEO companies in order to demonstrate the remarkable value that the company’s services provide.

Cons

Despite the incredible value it provides, using PEO Companies comes with a few downsides, as I’ve mentioned previously.

Signing up was a breeze, but once I was inside the system, I had a lot of trouble doing things that should have been easy.

When I contacted the customer support team for assistance with these challenges, I did get a response from a representative in a reasonable amount of time; but the quality of service I received was not nearly on par with the care I received from Flexible.

I wouldn’t classify the company as exceptional in any way—it just meets expectations. 

Overall

CoAdvantage is one of the most trustworthy and well-supported Maryland PEO companies, accessible at a price that’s more than reasonable. Despite the fact that its system may be tough to use for people who aren’t extremely computer literate, and its customer service isn’t very helpful or patient, it was the lowest-priced Maryland PEO service I got quotes from.

Much like the other two Maryland PEO companies on my list, bases its rates on a variety of criteria, including how many employees your company has and the types of benefits you wish to provide for your employees.

4. Justworks

Justworks is a new professional employer organization that started in 2012 and has quickly grown to serve not only Maryland but the whole country.

Justworks is a full-service PEO, just like the other PEO companies on my list. It offers health insurance, risk management, onboarding support, safety compliance, workers’ compensation, payroll processing, benefits management, better benefits for your employees, and other services.

Unlike the other PEO companies I looked into in Maryland, Justworks is very open about how it does business.

On its website, Justworks lists its pricing structure and how much each service costs publicly. This was a big plus in an industry where most PEO providers hide their prices and make potential clients reveal detailed information about their businesses before giving them a price quote for their services.

Justworks is a relatively new PEO service in Maryland, which is a big reason that I placed it fourth on my list.

It takes time to get integrated in a PEO’s system after partnering with it. If the start-up PEO your Maryland business is working with goes out of business, you likely can’t afford to repeat the process.

Check out the website if you’d like to learn more about Justworks’ services: Justworks. 

5. Infiniti HR

Infiniti HR is different from many other PEO companies in Maryland.

Some of the PEO services it has to offer include health insurance, risk management, payroll processing, benefits management, and other services to make your life as a Maryland business owner easier.

The PEO offers extra HR assistance by recruiting new employees. If you’re like most Maryland business owners, then you know just how valuable good employees can be. Any help finding quality employees is a huge help to any Maryland business. 

Just like Justworks, Infiniti has a big problem: it is still very new. It’s only been in business for 10 years, so compared to other Maryland PEOs, it’s a baby. You might want to wait to join until it’s had more time to develop.

6. TriNet

Among Maryland PEOs, TriNet has been around the longest. It launched in 1988. Since opening, it’s grown to now have more than 16,000 companies and 330,000 employees. 

If you’re a business owner in Maryland, this company offers all the services you could want and more than enough to meet your needs. Some of the things TriNet can do for you are health insurance, risk management, payroll management, benefits procurement, and more. The problem is that TriNet seems to rely a lot on its big name to get new clients, instead of trying to obtain new clients by providing good PEO services.

TriNet isn’t trying to impress you or earn your business, so it doesn’t go out of its way to offer great customer service or come up with new ways to solve problems. 

So, TriNet will be a good PEO in all the ways that matter, but it won’t ever go above and beyond what’s considered the industry norm, or outside what you’d expect.

7. PayChex

PayChex has been around awhile and recently bought Oasis Outsourcing, a PEO service that served companies in Maryland for over 20 years. (You may remember PayChex from your first paycheck from Dairy Queen, or wherever your first job was.) Existing Oasis customers will still get help from Oasis, but new customers will sign up for services with PayChex.

PayChex offers the same basic services that other PEO companies do, like health insurance, risk management, payroll management, benefits procurement, and more. You can also find a number of industry-specific services and enhanced benefits for businesses in the hospitality, banking, retail and education fields. But the company’s policy of only offering 12-month contracts was the main reason for its low score. 

PayChex lost points because it locks potential customers into 12-month contracts. Most PEO companies in Maryland use month-to-month contracts, so 12-month contracts are completely pointless and unfair. 

8. ADP Totalsource

As one of the biggest PEO companies, ADP Totalsource works with clients outside of Maryland in more than 140 countries. Some of the services it provides are health insurance, risk management, overall payroll services, and enhanced benefits for your employees. Like PayChex, ADP offers a wide range of services and solutions, along with several that are made for specific industries. 

The customer service offered by ADP is excellent since it not only assists you, the business owner, but also your employees. Your employees can seek answers to any questions they may have concerning their salary, benefits, tax rates, or any HR-related topics without needing to call you and have you contact ADP on their behalf. This is a huge advantage, and because of it you won’t have to deal with these time-consuming phone calls anymore, which is a major time-saver.

The issues with TriNet and other big PEO companies can also be found with ADP. If you are the owner of a small business in Maryland and are considering signing up with ADP, you should be aware that you won’t get the attention that’s crucial for the success of your business. This is due to the fact that your small business will get lost amid all the many larger companies that make up the extensive customer list that ADP maintains.

9. Insperity

My expectations were high for Insperity PEO, but this PEO in Maryland fell short.

Insperity offers a range of basic PEO services, much like other PEO companies in Maryland. It offers health insurance, risk management, additional benefits for your employees, and tools to make HR tasks for your business a breeze.

This Maryland PEO service has a 30-year track record of quality in both product offerings and customer service, having earned multiple awards. It gave me hope that my encounter with this PEO service provider would be stress free. The fact that Insperity lets its clients discontinue their service at any time (with 30 days’ notice) led me to believe that this is a Maryland PEO dedicated to offering exceptional services.

That is, until I began looking into their health-care options. 

As you are aware, health care is a big issue that requires a great deal of flexibility in order to fulfill the diverse needs of your employees. Because of the uniqueness of your employees and their complex individual health-care needs, it’s critical to provide a number of different health-care policies and benefits packages.

For some reason, the health insurance policies available via Insperity are all provided by the same company. There is just one. Why? I honestly have no clue. That’s just how Insperity operates. 

This means that if you go with Insperity, benefits and health-care options for your employees will be extremely limited, and they may not receive the care they need. 

The Best PEO for Your Business

Finding the perfect PEO for your business might be difficult since there are presently more than 900 different PEO companies in Maryland accessible to companies of all sizes. 

I spent over 230 hours studying the PEO industry over the last six years to choose the best three PEO companies in Maryland: Vensure, CoAdvantage, and PEO Companies. 

While any of these PEO companies would be a good fit for any Maryland business, you’ll need a recommendation customized specifically for your company’s needs if you want to identify the best PEO service for your business. 

My recommendations are based on the following criteria: 

• The number of employees on your payroll
• What you want the PEO to help with (payroll, HR compliance, workers’ compensation insurance, etc.)
• Employee benefits you want to offer to your team (such as health insurance and workers’ compensation insurance)
• How much you can afford to spend on employee benefits
• The location of your small business
• The location where you conduct your business (if outside the office)
• How much customer support you will need
• Your technological capabilities
• How large you plan to scale 
• Your industry

If you would like to find the right PEO for your company, simply enter your details below and I will provide a free assessment of your company needs.

The Best PEO Selection Process

I worked hard to identify the best PEO companies in Maryland. Before I explain my method, however, you need to learn a little bit about who I am.

Why You Should Trust Me

When it comes to developing businesses in Maryland and helping others find the best PEO companies to best match their requirements, I have dealt with more PEO companies in Maryland than practically anyone else in the world, so you can trust my advice.

My online health company was where I first dealt with a PEO service provider in Maryland. I just didn't have time to deal with employee benefits and other HR-related nonsense. Rather, I was immersed in learning all about the basics of entrepreneurship, such as website development, content creation, and management of employees.

I partnered with a great PEO service provider after hiring a staffing agency and realizing that it couldn't fulfill all my needs in terms of human resource management.

After dealing with that whole ordeal, I gave myself some time off before opening my second small business, a café. To say it was drastically different from running an online business would be a bit of an understatement.

Despite their differences, HR woes were a common problem at both companies. So, once again, I resorted to PEO companies in Maryland to manage my human resources and benefits packages for my employees. I found myself poring through websites, reading reviews, and listening to long sales speeches from teams attempting to sell me their goods when all I needed was a basic explanation or simple answer. There was a TON of material to process and it was a LOT of work. The Maryland PEO service provider I ended up going with was instrumentally important in the development and expansion of my business.

After realizing that the hospitality industry wasn't for me (I lack the personality for it), I closed down my business and took some time to consider my business options. When old colleagues from my café days as well as my online health company reached out to me for help with their administrative responsibilities, I realized that this was the answer I'd been searching for.

People started coming to me for advice the more I provided it, so I started documenting the recommendations I gave them. Since then, I've helped over 1,200 customers choose the best PEO companies in Maryland for their expanding businesses, providing me unparalleled insight and expertise in the industry.

How I Selected the Best PEO

Following a four-step investigative process, I was able to narrow down a pool of over 900 Maryland PEO companies to a reasonable number of contenders and ultimately choose the best PEO in Maryland.

Stage 1: Reviews

First, I studied online reviews from a variety of online review sources to get a feel for the market.

Any PEO company in Maryland that has been in business for more than a year should have a substantial number of customer reviews posted online. This information helped me quickly and efficiently go through the PEO companies in Maryland and decide which ones were worth looking into further and which ones should be crossed off my list.

In order to save time, I only looked at Maryland PEO companies that had received good marks on the most common review websites to see whether they were capable of providing the bare minimum in terms of quality, pricing, and customer support.

Stage 2: Offering Analysis

The professional employer organization (PEO) industry in Maryland is rich with a wide variety of different types of businesses. There is a large variety of products and services offered by Maryland PEO companies, and the costs associated with them vary widely.

My second line of investigation involved comparing the prices and offerings of PEOs operating in the state of Maryland. This was useful in avoiding PEOs that offered just a few services or charged too much for the ones they did provide.

Stage 3: Speaking With Real Customers

Online reviews are helpful for getting a sense for a company as a whole, but they do come with two important disadvantages.

The first is that only customers who have had either a spectacular or disastrous experience will ever leave a review. The feedback you read about a company on internet reviews may not be reliable since it tends to be quite opinionated and divided.

The second disadvantage is one of limited space. Word count limits (often less than 200 characters) in reviews of services make it hard to form an opinion about the provider. Ex-clients may comment on its general likeability, but they won't be allowed the space to elaborate on their generalized comment.

During the third stage of my investigation, I spoke with real consumers to see how they felt about their experience with these companies. Through my website and network, I was able to contact real PEO customers in Maryland and ask for their feedback. This phase of my research into Maryland PEOs allowed me to ask specific questions, and I was pleased when I obtained detailed responses that helped me feel confident about my findings.

Stage 4: Speaking With Their Sales Teams

I looked into each Maryland business’s approach to handling customer complaints and comments to see whether I could see myself working with it in the long run. That way I would avoid recommending any PEO that would be totally frustrating to deal with. How open are they to new ideas? Do they shift blame on the client or admit fault when things go wrong? These qualities and values separate the best companies from the rest of the pack.

Ranking Factors

I used these five rating factors to help me choose the best PEO:

Factor 1: Offerings

The first rating factor is the product catalog of each PEO.

Partnering with a Maryland PEO to manage health insurance is pointless if the PEO does not provide sufficient health-care coverage for your employees. To guarantee that you choose the perfect PEO for your business situation, I have developed a comprehensive database of the goods and services offered by each PEO.

Factor 2: Price

The second factor I evaluated while analyzing each PEO was its price.

Among Maryland PEOs, the costs of certain goods and services may vary considerably (and this information is only accessible to customers by engaging in a sales call, which is very sneaky). Therefore, I rated each PEO in Maryland according to a price-to-value ratio I developed.

Factor 3: Ease of Sign-Up

The third factor I looked at while evaluating each Maryland PEO was the ease of enrollment into the system.

Some Maryland PEOs might require you to spend weeks digging through drawers for information you don't truly need, while other PEOs may gather a significant amount of your business information from government agencies.

To ensure that you choose a PEO in Maryland that won't waste your time, I analyzed the effectiveness and automation of each PEO's onboarding procedure.

Factor 4: Ease of Use

I assessed the functionality of each system as the fourth factor.

Some Maryland PEOs have invested millions in simplifying and automating their back-end systems while making user experience a primary focus, whilst others have just added new capabilities to legacy infrastructure and then written lengthy manuals to explain their complex navigation systems.

Clearly, working with a customer-focused, user-friendly system is FAR superior to being tied down to an old system. To aid you in making an educated decision, I rated the usability and navigation of each PEO system in Maryland.

Factor 5: Customer Service

No matter how much time or money is spent creating the most simple to use system, questions will always arise. Thus is the highlighted importance of good customer service.

Some Maryland PEOs will keep you on the call for hours before connecting you to a bored, untrained representative who cannot resolve your problem and can only promise to escalate it to management (which doesn't ever happen). Other Maryland PEOs will answer your call within a few minutes and fix your problems in less time, letting you continue with your day and perform all your important duties.

The Best PEO for Your Business

Even though Vensure is a great option for many small businesses, it would be difficult to recommend a Maryland PEO without knowing more about your company and its requirements.

I cannot recommend a trustworthy PEO for you until I have more details about your Maryland company, like its industry, size, number of employees, and the benefits you want to provide.

Enter your information below to get a free business analysis and customized PEO recommendations for your business.

Simply fill out the form below, and I'll do my best to refer you to a PEO in Maryland that is the best match for your company. I'll do all the homework to match your business with a PEO in Maryland that will reduce health insurance rates and help you save time and money.

You should probably consider registered agent services while you are here learning about business services. A registered agent is a person or business who receives mail, service of process, and other critical legal documents on your company's behalf. Read my post, the Best Maryland Registered Agents, to learn more about what a registered agent can do for you.

If you have not yet selected a business structure, this is an excellent time to do so. There are several business structures to select from, including partnerships, corporations, sole proprietorships, and limited liability companies (LLC). If you'd like to read more about the complexities and processes involved in creating an LLC in the state of Maryland please read my post How to Form an LLC in Maryland.

While you’re learning how to form an LLC, you should read up on LLC formation services to help with the process. If you’d like to learn more about LLC formation services, check out the Best LLC Services in Maryland.

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