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

11/09/2024
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It’s crucial that you choose the best professional employer organization (PEO) to support the growth of your Utah business. 

The right PEO will handle human resources and other tasks for you, which will free up a lot of time and mental energy and give you the resources needed to focus on other important tasks to keep your business on track.

The wrong PEO will drain you of time and money so that you don’t have the mental faculties or financial resources necessary to facilitate growth and innovation in your company.

I assessed more than 900 different professional employer organizations, then researched the top 15 and rated the top 9, and through that process I’ve identified the best PEO company in Utah. 

But before I give you the best Utah PEO recommendation, you should know something. 

The Best PEO Isn't Always the Right PEO

I spent countless hours looking into more than 900 professional employer organizations and I’ve identified the best Utah PEO by determining which PEO had the highest score across a variety of metrics. But just because a Utah PEO company has the highest average score doesn’t automatically mean it’s the right PEO for your Utah business. 

  • Some Utah PEOs have a lot of expertise in specific industries and therefore provide industry-specific benefits and services. 
  • Some Utah PEOs have developed great relationships with insurance providers and can offer you a wider range of health insurance options, with better benefits and better rates. 
  • Some PEOs are focused on compliance and work to make sure your company meets all state and federal regulations. 

There’s only one way to get the right PEO for your company, and that’s to compare the specific needs of your Utah company with the main benefits of each Utah PEO company. That ensures that you won’t simply wind up with the highest-scoring PEO, but the Utah PEO that scores the best according to rating factors that matter to you. 

If you’d like a free business analysis to learn more about your business and its unique needs, as well as a Utah PEO recommendation, enter your information below. Within 24 hours I’ll contact you with your business analysis and Utah PEO recommendation. 

If you’re simply interested in which Utah PEO got the highest score, keep reading for my best Utah PEO recommendations. 

1. PEO Companies— 9.45/10 (Best Overall PEO)

I chose PEO Companies as the best Utah PEO overall because even though none of its services really stand out as unique, it does deliver them all with high levels of quality and efficiency. The main difference between PEO Companies and other professional employer organizations is that your business likely won’t run into any real problems with them. 

Pros

It provides all the HR and PEO services you’d expect from a Utah professional employer organization (PEO): 

  • Human resources paperwork
  • Tax withholding
  • HR services
  • Human resource management
  • Compliance assistance
  • Tax rates
  • HR outsourcing
  • Assistance with unemployment claims
  • Payroll
  • 401k
  • Employee contracts
  • Dental Insurance
  • Risk management
  • Health insurance
  • Workers’ compensation insurance
  • Administrative services
  • Employee benefits administration
  • HR support

It backs all its services up with dependable customer support as well. If you email PEO Companies with an inquiry, someone will respond back within 24 hours. If you’ve got a more urgent concern, you can call the customer support line for more prompt assistance. 

One of the best things about PEO Companies is that even though it has the technological muscle to serve larger companies, it focuses on small- to medium-sized businesses. 

This means that not only can it provide you with better technology to meet your HR needs, it can also scale up and meet you no matter where you are on your business journey. 

Cons

There’s only one real negative aspect to PEO Companies' Utah PEO services (if you can even call it that). None of its Utah PEO services are truly exceptional.

  • PEO Companies covers all the PEO services that Utah small businesses need, but you won’t find any premium or unique services. 
  • PEO Companies' customer support is competent and can answer all your questions, but it won’t add any real personal touches, like sending clients birthday cards. 
  • PEO Companies' pricing is reasonable enough to be competitive with other Utah PEO companies, but it’s definitely not the lowest on the list. It’s definitely not priced so low that it’ll put itself out of business just to accommodate you and get you better rates. 

So, while the company is great overall, it doesn’t provide any unique services or features that will stand out and blow your mind.

Overall

PEO Companies is my top choice for the best Utah professional employer organization company because it provides all the PEO and HR services you need, and it will deliver them all well. It provides a full range of services at competitive prices and has solid customer support to back it all up. 

PEO Companies' pricing depends on several factors, such as your company size, how many employees you have, and the needs of your business, but if you want to request a custom quote from a PEO that will meet all your needs, visit the website.

2. Flexible PEO — 7.90/10 (Best Customer Service PEO)

I chose Flexible PEO as my second choice, but don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s not still a good PEO option for any Utah business. It really only missed out on the #1 position by a fraction, and it does exceed PEO Companies' services in one area. 

Pros

Like PEO Companies, Flexible PEO provides you with a comprehensive range of PEO services. You get HR services, health insurance, dental insurance and employee benefits, risk management, benefits administration, human resources outsourcing, workers’ compensation and assistance with unemployment claims, human resource management, payroll processing, compliance assistance, and other tools and services to help meet your HR needs and manage your employees. 

Flexible’s pricing is competitive, and it has a simple interface that makes it easy to get setup within its system. 

There are a few drawbacks to Flexible’s services, but there was one service area where it excelled: customer support. 

I ran three different customer support tests, and Flexible’s average customer support response time to emails was 46 minutes, and the average wait time to speak with a customer service agent by phone was under 2 minutes. 

The customer support team not only answered inquiries quickly, they were also quite efficient and helpful. They were able to answer my questions competently without transferring me to another agent (and making me explain my issue repeatedly to multiple agents), or involving management. 

Flrxible hasn’t sent me a birthday card, but I feel like that’s the only thing it could do to improve its customer support and increase my client satisfaction levels. 

Cons

The reason Flexible isn’t in my #1 spot is that even though its system is easy to use and it has decent pricing, its services still fall short of PEO Companies.

Sometimes its system was confusing to navigate, which required me to call the outstanding customer support team to help me through the navigation issues. Its prices are great, all three of the quotes I got for my three different fictitious businesses were around 10% more than the quotes I received from PEO Companies. 

These drawbacks aren’t typically deal breakers for most Utah business owners—especially if you really value customer support—but they were just enough to bump Flexible down to the #2 spot on my list. 

Overall

Flexible is a great Utah PEO company that checks a lot of boxes for many Utah employers. It offers a comprehensive range of PEO services, and it offers them at competitive prices, and it has stellar customer support, as well. Its system isn’t always easy to navigate, and it’s a little more expensive than PEO Companies, but it’s still a good option—especially for Utah employers who value customer support. 

All professional employer organizations base their cost on the needs and size of your company, as well as other factors (like how many employees you have), so go get a full quote for your company here: Flexible.

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

I chose Vensure PEO as my third recommendation. It’s a solid, dependable Utah PEO company with excellent prices, but it disappointed me in a major way. 

Pros

Vensure PEO offers all the PEO options that you would expect from a quality professional employer organization in Utah. Some of the services available include health insurance, dental insurance, employee benefits packages, HR services, risk management, benefits administration, human resource management, HR outsourcing, workers’ compensation, help with unemployment claims and compliance, and a slew of other services to meet your HR needs and manage your employees. 

Its system is easy to get set up with (I struggled with it later, but I’ll discuss that in the next section). Its customer support was also competent enough to answer any questions I had about its HR and PEO services. 

The one area it really excelled in was its pricing. I received three different quotes from Vensure, and they all turned out to be the three cheapest quotes I got overall, with the quote I got for my small business coming in first place. I was sure to include all the options and features available on every other quote I received, which really highlighted the value of its services for the cost. 

Cons

Vensure PEO is an excellent value for the cost of its services, but there are limitations. 

It was easy to get set up with the system, but I came across a few navigational challenges with it after I was set up. I had some difficulty completing what should have been some fairly routine HR tasks. 

I contacted customer support to help me through these issues, and even though they were able to answer my questions and they responded in a reasonable amount of time, the customer support wasn’t on the same level as Flexible.

So while Vensure is a good Utah professional employer organization option, it doesn’t provide any truly outstanding services. 

Overall

Vensure PEO is a dependable and solid PEO company with great prices. Its system is a little confusing to navigate at times, and it could be a real bother for anyone without excellent technical skills, and its customer support isn’t as patient and helpful as Flexible’s team, but overall it was the cheapest PEO in Utah I got quotes from. 

Just like all professional employer organization (PEO) companies, Vensure bases its prices on your business needs, size, and other factors (like the benefits you want to offer and the number of employees you have), so go here to get a full quote for your company: Vensure

4. Justworks

Justworks is relatively new to the professional employer organization industry, being established in 2012. Since then, it’s been expanding to serve businesses throughout the United States, not just Utah. 

Justworks provides all the PEO services Utah employers need, like health insurance, HR services, HR outsourcing, employee benefits, payroll administration, workers’ compensation, compliance assistance, and other business solutions to help manage your employees, meet your HR needs and reduce risk. 

But Justworks offers one service that none of the other professional employer organizations offer: transparency. It lists its pricing structure publicly on its website. This is quite refreshing because the PEO industry norm is to keep pricing obscure and force potential clients to participate in a sales call to discuss their business needs before receiving a quote. 

The reason Justworks is #4 on my list is because of its young age, which is important in the PEO industry. 

Joining a PEO and getting your company established within its system is quite time consuming and labor intensive. Most business owners can’t afford to repeat the process if they choose a start-up PEO that stops operating. 

It’s a good idea to wait a few years for Justworks to become better established on the market and prove that it’s going to be around for a while before you trust it with your business. 

If you want more information about Justworks, you can visit its site here: Justworks

5. Infiniti HR

Infiniti HR provides a feature that sets it apart in the Utah PEO market. 

It offers the same range of PEO services as the other PEOs on my list: insurance, HR outsourcing, employee benefits, benefits management, payroll administration, compliance, and other HR solutions to manage your employees and benefits. 

On top of all that, it also offers assistance with recruiting employees. If you’ve had the same experience as many Utah business owners have, then you know that quality employees can have a positive effect on the whole company, so any help finding the right employees is a huge plus. 

The drawback of Infiniti HR is the same as Justwork’s—its inexperience. It’s only 10 years old, so it’s an infant in the PEO industry compared to other seasoned professional employer organizations. It lacks the experience of other Utah PEOs with decades of experience under their belts and established reputations, so it’s a good idea to wait a few years before you sign up for Infiniti’s services. 

6. TriNet

TriNet is the oldest and most reputable PEO in the industry. It started in 1988 and has massively grown since then to have more than 16,000 companies and over 330,000 employees under its company umbrella. 

It provides the necessary PEO services Utah business owners expect, like payroll administration, HR outsourcing, employee benefits packages, HR paperwork, compliance, and other HR solutions to help you manage your employees. 

Even though it provides a lot of the services that Utah business owners want, it seems to depend more on its big name and reputation to reel in new clients, rather than superior services. 

It doesn’t provide customer support with any unique features, it doesn’t make it a point to provide new services to solve existing problems or seem concerned with innovation, it doesn’t go out of its way to impress anyone, and it’s not going to work to gain you as a client. 

So even though TriNet is a trustworthy, dependable, and competent Utah PEO, it doesn’t seem that it’s ever going to exceed industry standards, or your own expectations. 

7. Oasis Outsourcing

Oasis Outsourcing is another PEO that has been in the professional employer organization world for a long time. It’s helped small businesses with their HR needs for over 20 years. It was recently acquired by the PayChex company but still operates under its own name. 

Oasis offers basic Utah PEO services, such as HR outsourcing, human resources paperwork, employee benefits, payroll processing, workers’ compensation, and other solutions to help reduce risk, manage your employees and provide you with better benefits. It also offers a variety of industry-specific solutions for certain industries, such as banking, education, retail, and hospitality (just to name a few). 

The reason it got such a low score is that it has a policy of only offering 12-month client contracts. The Utah PEO industry standard is to provide clients with month-to-month contracts, so it’s unusual and uncalled for to force potential clients into 12-month contracts. Oasis lost a considerable amount of points for that. 

8. ADP Totalsource

ADP Totalsource is a major player in the PEO industry. It offers services in over 140 different countries, so it’s not exclusive to Utah companies. 

It offers the basic services that most Utah employers need, like human resources paperwork, employee benefits and insurance, benefits management, payroll processing, HR support, workers’ compensation, and other HR solutions to help manage employees and provide better technology for your company. 

One of the best aspects of ADP Totalsource is that the business owner isn’t the only person who can access the customer support team, unlike most PEOs in Utah. If your employees have HR or payroll questions, or questions about their benefits, they can access the customer support team and talk to them directly, rather than having to call you and ask you to talk to them on behalf of your employees. It essentially removes an entire step and eliminates unnecessary phone calls, saving you time and work, which is a great bonus. 

The problem with ADP Totalsource is the same problem you run into with TriNet. Smaller Utah companies will be essentially lost among ADP’s sea of big business customers from around the world, and as a result, your company will never get the full attention it needs from the PEO in order to grow and thrive. 

9. Insperity

I initially had a lot of hope for Insperity, but it ultimately let me down. 

It offers all the basic services that most PEOs provide, such as human resources tasks, insurance and employee benefits packages, payroll services, workers’ compensation, and other HR solutions to help manage your employees and provide you with better technology. 

I started feeling hopeful for Insperity when I discovered that it has a 30-year track record for winning awards for its services and support. This made me think it would be a really easy company to work with. Then I found out that clients can cancel their service at any time (as long as 30-days’ notice is provided, and I thought this was likely a company that works to provide superior HR solutions. 

But I immediately changed my mind when I ran into one detail: health care. 

As you likely know, health care is a big issue for most Utah employers, and you need a lot of flexibility and options to make sure that the needs of your employees are adequately met. Of course, your employees all have unique health needs, and you need a variety of health care options to make sure that your employees get the coverage they need. 

But Insperity only offers healthcare plans and benefits from one provider. Just the one. Why, you ask? I have no idea and I couldn’t find a reasonable answer to this in any of my research. It’s just what Insperity does. 

Ultimately, if you choose Insperity as your professional employer organization (PEO), then it’s pretty likely that your employees won’t get the coverage they need because their health care and benefits options will be so limited. And considering that part of the reasoning for businesses to choose PEO services is that they provide better benefits and offer benefits at a reduced cost, along with HR services, it defeats the purpose of partnering with Insperity if it only offers benefits from one provider.

The Best PEO for Your Business

There are more than 900 different professional employer organization (PEO) companies on the market for Utah businesses to choose from, so it can be quite overwhelming trying to find the right PEO for your business. 

I spent more than 230 hours over the course of six years learning about the Utah PEO industry and it has led me to choose PEO Companies, Flexible, and Vensure PEO as the three best PEO companies that Utah has to offer. 

Even though each of these companies are good choices for any Utah business, to find the right PEO for your business, you need to get personalized recommendation based on your organization’s circumstances: 

  • 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’s needs.

The Best PEO Selection Process

My best Utah PEO selection process was quite extensive. But before I give you the specifics on that, you should learn a few things about me. 

Why You Should Trust Me

When I give you a Utah PEO recommendation, you can trust it’s because I know more about how PEOs operate than nearly anyone else. I gained my experience from both building two small businesses and helping other business owners find the right PEOs to meet their needs. 

I first began my experience with PEO providers when I started my online health company. I was completely overwhelmed with learning all the things necessary to start an online business-building website, writing articles, and learning to manage my employees, and there was little time left over to learn how to deal with all the HR and employee benefits tasks and paperwork that were piling up and requiring much of my attention. 

I had originally tried hiring a staffing company to help manage my employees, but that wasn’t enough to help me with my HR troubles. Eventually I signed up with a great professional employer organization that was better able to handle my HR needs.

After that ordeal, I decided to take some time off before opening my second small business—a cafe! Saying that there’s a difference between running an online business and a cafe is a vast understatement. 

But even though there were differences between the two businesses, they did have one thing in common: HR difficulties. So I decided to begin researching professional employer organizations once again so that I could find one to help me with my HR responsibilities and employee benefits. I analyzed websites, read online reviews, and stayed on the line to listen to lengthy sales pitches when I really only needed simple answers to straightforward questions. It was a LOT of information to take in. But because of it, I eventually chose the ideal professional employer organization and partner for my business and was able to grow and expand because of it. 

It quickly became apparent to me that I didn’t have the personality necessary for the hospitality industry, so I decided to sell my cafe. Again, I took some time off to consider my next move. Then, friends from my cafe and website days began to come to me asking for advice and help with their back-end operations and HR tasks, so the answer presented itself to me. 

I made more and more recommendations, and more and more people came to me, so I started writing down my professional employer organization recommendations. Since those humble beginnings, I’ve helped over 1,200 different people find the right professional employer organizations for their businesses, and that’s given me more expertise than even most people who work in the professional employer organization industry.


How I Selected the Best PEO

My process started with a four-stage investigative process that gradually weeded out the weakest professional employer organizations and took a list of more than 900 PEOs down to 15.

Stage 1: Reviews

The first stage of my investigative process was reading online reviews. 

Most Utah professional employer organization companies that have been in business for more than a year should have accumulated a bit of online feedback from their customers. This client feedback is valuable because it allows me to discern which professional employer organizations I could eliminate from my list before wasting too much time on them, and which ones were worth looking into further. 

I analyzed several major online review platforms to find out more about the professional employer organization companies that didn’t live up to the standards in the Utah PEO field. I looked at product offerings, prices, and customer support so that I could eliminate them from my list if they weren’t worthy of further analysis. 

Stage 2: Offering Analysis

Unfortunately, the Utah PEO market isn’t uniform. There are different professional employer organization companies that offer different services, and they all charge different prices for those services. You may find two different Utah professional employer organization companies that offer the same products but charge drastically different fees for identical services. 

The second stage of my process was to review the products and services of each professional employer organization, as well as its price points. This allowed me to weed out Utah PEOs that didn’t offer a full range of services or who charged inflated prices for basic services. 

Stage 3: Speaking With Real Customers

Of course online reviews are a good way to get a general understanding of a Utah professional employer organization and its offerings, but there are two limitations to these reviews. 

The first limitation is that ordinarily, a client won’t leave an online review unless they’ve had a remarkably fabulous, or a flabbergastingly horrid experience with a company. So if you base your opinions of professional employer organization companies solely on extremely polarized online reviews, you’ll get a distorted view of how the Utah PEOs operate. 

Stage 4: Speaking With Their Sales Teams

Another important thing I looked into was how each Utah professional employer organization handles negative feedback and criticism. This analysis gives me a more clear idea of how the Utah PEOs operate in the long term. Do they make it a point to change and evolve, or are they stubborn and inflexible? Are the companies able to take responsibility for their mistakes, or do they attempt to place blame on their client instead? The answers to these questions separate the best professional employer organization companies in Utah from the rest. 

Ranking Factors

There were five different rating factors I used to determine the Best PEO

Factor 1: Offerings

The first factor I used was a list of professional employer organization product offerings. 

Of course, there’s no sense in choosing to partner up with a PEO company for specific HR tasks or benefits like workers’ compensation if it doesn’t offer the services or benefits you need. So to make sure you’ll get a PEO with a comprehensive list of services, I created a detailed database of the services and products that each company offers. 

Factor 2: Price

The second factor I considered was price. 

The price for services varies so widely between Utah PEOs that different companies often charge different fees for the same services. This is further complicated by the fact that they force any potential client to participate in a sales call to find out about their prices. Because of this, I rated each PEO company based on the value for money that its services provide. 

Factor 3: Ease of Sign-Up

The third factor I looked at when rating each Utah PEO was how easily you can sign up to its system. 

Some PEOs require you to spend weeks searching around for random bits of unnecessary information, while other Utah PEOs gather large portions of the information they need from government agencies. 

So that you don’t choose a Utah PEO that will waste your time, I rated each PEO according to how automated and streamlined it has made its onboarding process. 

Factor 4: Ease of Use

The fourth factor was how easy each Utah PEO’s system was to use. 

Some PEOs have obviously spent millions of dollars to streamline and automate their back-end systems and have prioritized the user experience, while other companies have just tacked in new features to legacy systems and then written huge user manuals in an attempt to explain their complicated navigation. 

Of course, it’s preferable to partner with a Utah PEO that has a customer-centric, user-friendly system, as opposed to getting stuck with an antique system. So that you don’t choose a Utah PEO with a user-unfriendly system, I rated the companies based on how easy it was to navigate their systems. 

Factor 5: Customer Service

No matter how much effort or money a Utah PEO company has spent to build a user-friendly system, you’ll still eventually run into a question or problem with it. It’s in these instances that good customer service is crucial. 

Some PEOs will leave you on hold for hours before finally connecting you to a bored college student who can’t fix your problem but can promise to escalate it to management (which they never actually do). Then there are other PEOs that will answer your call in just a couple of minutes and solve your problems just as fast, saving you time and allowing you to get on with your day. 

The Best PEO for Your Business

While I chose PEO Companies as the best PEO Utah has to offer because they’re a great option for most companies, it’s impossible to make a recommendation for your business without having an in-depth knowledge of it and your needs. 

Until I know things about your business, including your industry, the size of your company, the number of employees you have, and the benefits you’d like to offer your employees, I can’t make an accurate PEO recommendation for your specific situation. 

If you’d like a personalized PEO recommendation for your business, as well as a free business analysis, enter your business information below. 

After you’ve submitted the form, I’ll help you find out more about your needs and give you a PEO recommendation for your business. 

So just enter your information below to take the hard work out of searching for the right PEO for your business. 

While you’re here learning about how to set up HR outsourcing for your company, you should also consider learning about various business structures and choosing one. If you’d like to learn more about forming an LLC, check out my article about how to start a Utah LLC

Another business service you should look into is a registered agent. A registered agent is a person or business that will accept mail, legal documents, and service of process on behalf of your business. For more information about what a registered agent can do for you, read my article about the 12 best Utah registered agents



Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to use a PEO?

The price of a PEO can vary widely depending on a number of different factors. This can include the PEO you choose, the services you use, the employee benefits you offer, and the number of employees you have. But on average, $1,000–$2,000 per employee per month is a good base number to start with.

How does a PEO charge?

There are two different fee structures used by PEO service providers: flat fee or percentage of payroll.

A flat fee structure charges you a set amount per employee. This is a good option for any business that requires a high level of certainty around their monthly billing. 

A percentage of payroll structure is where the PEO charges you a percentage of the wages you pay your employees per month. This is a good option for employers in low-wage industries.

How long does it take to get set up with a PEO?

The setup process for any small business with PEO service providers takes time. They need lots of paperwork from your end and then need to file plenty more with government authorities to get you up and running. 

This process can take anywhere between three and six weeks but on average, it usually takes four weeks. 

Does it cost to change PEOs?

There are no specific exit fees associated with any of the PEOs we’ve recommended in this article, but due to the extensive setup process, every PEO charges a setup fee. This means that if you decide to leave your PEO for a new PEO, you won’t be charged anything to leave but you will have to pay the setup fee with the new PEO.


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