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Paychex offers employee retirement benefits alongside complete HR support, which is why it’s our best pick for all-in-one service.
Managing a workforce involves a complex web of responsibilities, from payroll and tax filings to benefits administration. To manage these responsibilities, small businesses could use multiple vendors and platforms, which can quickly become messy, or they can find an all-in-one provider. All-in-one providers help small businesses save time, streamline processes and automate manual tasks.
We chose Paychex as the best option for all-in-one human resources and employee retirement plan management. The company has decades of experience and provides a full suite of payroll and HR services that are suitable for small companies.
9 / 10
Paychex stood out to us as the ideal all-in-one solution for a number of reasons, starting with its small business 401(k) options. These include traditional 401(k) plans, owner-only 401(k) plans, solo 401(k) plans, pooled employer plans (PEPs), 403(b) plans, Profit-Sharing plans, and SIMPLE IRAs. Paychex works with you to create a retirement plan that meets your business’s and employees’ needs.
Paychex also distinguished itself with the Paychex Flex all-in-one HR platform, where you can manage your retirement offerings, payroll, benefits and other HR functions in one place. It’s a one-stop shop for your HR needs, including for running payroll. We like how your Paychex payroll data integrates with your retirement plan information and updates automatically behind the scenes. This way, you can improve your reporting accuracy, collect census data, stay compliant and meet fiduciary obligations.
We were also impressed with how easy the platform makes it for employees to enroll in a retirement plan and stay on top of their accounts. Direct payroll integration is not common among employee retirement plan providers. Of the other retirement service providers we reviewed, only ADP offered a direct payroll integration. Read our review of ADP to learn more.
Employees can enroll in a retirement plan in a few clicks through Paychex’s online platform, as seen in this demo screenshot. Source: Paychex
Another reason Paychex is one of the best employee retirement plan providers is that it can bundle recordkeeping and third-party administration to simplify plan management. According to the 2024 PLANSPONSOR Recordkeeping Survey, Paychex remains the largest retirement plan recordkeeper by total number of plans in the U.S., managing more than 120,000 plans.
During our review of Paychex’s retirement services, we paid particular attention to the usability of the employee-facing software. We found that Paychex makes it easy for small business owners to implement and manage employee retirement plans through the vendor’s digital dashboard and mobile app. Then, using the platform, eligible employees can enroll in a retirement plan in just four clicks.
We liked that if you integrate payroll services, you can automatically see which team members are eligible to sign up for your retirement plan — one of the key advantages of Paychex’s all-in-one solution. Another important benefit, in our opinion, is the option for automatic 401(k) enrollment to increase employee participation rates.
We found Paychex’s employee dashboard simple and intuitive to navigate. Once team members are enrolled, they have access to an online dashboard that gives them an overview of their retirement accounts and lets them make changes, track progress and manage their investment choices. The interface clearly displays portfolio performance, allowing users to visualize their savings trajectory without needing a finance degree. The digital dashboard also simplifies the process of choosing investments, changing contributions, tracking loans and automating distributions.
Paychex makes it easy for employees to manage their retirement plans via a user-friendly dashboard. Source: Paychex
Paychex Flex stands out thanks to its flexibility, investment options, plan administration services, integration with payroll data and easy-to-use mobile application.
We love that Paychex’s retirement plans can be customized to fit your company’s specific needs. Whether you are a solopreneur needing a Solo 401(k) or a growing firm interested in a Pooled Employer Plan (PEP) to share administrative burdens, Paychex has a structure for you.
However, this customization means you’ll need to get custom pricing from the vendor, which is largely why Paychex doesn’t list its pricing online.
During our review, we tested how easy it was for both employers and employees to find important plan information. Paychex’s employer website for managing retirement plans is simple to navigate and makes it easy to access information about plan investments and participants. Employees can switch effortlessly between desktop and mobile versions to check balances, adjust contribution percentages and download statements.
Another benefit of Paychex is the option to partner with GuidedSavings from Mesirow, an independent financial services firm. This partnership reduces your fiduciary liability, ensures compliance and enhances your retirement plan by providing expertly managed investment options designed to help your employees achieve their financial goals. It acts as an ERISA 3(38) investment manager, meaning they take responsibility for selecting and monitoring the investment lineup.
Serving as the third-party administrator, Paychex creates and manages retirement plan documents, checks eligibility and enrolls participants, conducts quarterly compliance testing, and processes employee loans. Paychex also records and processes your employees’ contributions to their retirement plans for you, thereby cutting down on manual work. If you choose to provide your staff with 401(k) plans, you have to file Form 5500 with the IRS. As the plan administrator, Paychex prepares this form for you.
If you already use Paychex as your payroll processor, you can directly integrate your retirement plan and payroll services to streamline administrative tasks. Payroll integration is a great way to save money by lowering overhead costs, ensuring that payroll complies with tax codes, and decreasing the number of vendors your business needs to hire. Paychex’s payroll integration can be combined with a pay-as-you-go workers’ comp plan to help your business save money on insurance premiums.
We paid particular attention to Paychex’s investment options during our research. The company offers a variety of investment choices, including model portfolios, target-date funds and preselected lineups. Paychex also partners with well-known investment providers to offer thousands of mutual funds and ETFs. The company’s retirement specialists can help answer questions on topics such as choosing between a traditional and Roth IRA.
With 401(k) plans, participants can take out loans against their retirement savings accounts. 401(k) loans provide employees with access to liquidity without requiring them to incur taxes and penalties for early withdrawal of 401(k) funds. The loan is then paid back directly through paycheck withholdings.
We like that Paychex offers multiple mobile apps that can be used by both employers and employees. The Paychex Flex mobile app makes it easy for employees to enroll in a retirement plan or make changes on their smartphones. The app also keeps participants engaged with digital financial tools and investment information. For employers and business owners, the Paychex app represents another tool to run a business from a smartphone. As of February 2026, Paychex Flex holds a rating of 4.8 out of 5 in the Apple App Store and 4.6 out of 5 in the Google Play store.
Paychex’s apps also include a variety of ways to manage remote employees, including time management features like a calendar, scheduling, vacation, and ways for employees to clock in and out.
Managing an employee retirement savings plan is simple with Paychex’s mobile app. Source: Paychex
Like some of the other employee retirement plan providers we reviewed, Paychex doesn’t post pricing for its retirement services online. To initiate a quote, simply answer two questions; a representative will reach out to you, typically in under an hour.
When you connect with your local Paychex affiliate, make sure to inquire about fees for you as the employer and plan sponsor, and your employees as the plan participants.
Here are some plan participant fees to ask about:
You should also ask if there is a service contract, how long the term is, and if there are any early-cancellation penalties. You’ll also want to inquire about incidental costs, such as loan-origination and -maintenance fees, distribution fees, and required minimum distribution (RMD) fees.
Other retirement service providers we reviewed, such as Fidelity Investments, are known for offering low fees. We also found that companies such as USA 401k are more transparent about pricing than Paychex. Read more in our full review of USA 401k.
We like that Paychex runs everything from the same dashboard, which makes it a breeze to implement retirement plan services for your team. The platform automatically pulls the required data and then sends an invitation to eligible team members with just one click. During our demo, we found employee onboarding to be straightforward. A series of prompts leads users through the process of establishing payroll deductions and investment options. We especially like how everything is simply laid out in the portal to make managing your retirement plans as user-friendly as possible.
Paychex offers customer support by phone, email and live chat. We like that businesses are assigned a team of retirement specialists to help them select the right retirement plan options for their staff. There are different customer support numbers for different services, but you can reach customer support Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, at 1-800-472-0072 for retirement benefit services.
Because Paychex specializes in assisting with payroll and other core human resources processes, its website is equipped with a wealth of helpful HR information, including a knowledge center, podcasts and webinars. There are even calculators you can use to assess different metrics. For example, a retirement calculator lets users plan out how much money they can save before retiring.
Founded in 1971, Paychex has over five decades of industry experience. According to the company’s annual report, Paychex pays 1 in 11 U.S. private sector employees. It has been accredited with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) since 2010 and sports an A+ rating. However, its customer score on the BBB website is only 1.02 stars out of 5. Paychex also scores a 1.1 out of 5 for customer service on the user-generated-review site Trustpilot. Although this is a low score, similar businesses, like ADP and Paycor, also have essentially the same score on Trustpilot.
Paychex isn’t forthcoming about its pricing. Costs aren’t listed on the vendor’s website, which makes it challenging for time-strapped entrepreneurs to evaluate whether the company’s services make financial sense for their business. Although we recognize that Paychex seeks to customize its services and, therefore, its pricing, some of its competitors make it easier to get cost information. You can read our review of Human Interest for one such example.
In addition, although we were pleased to see that Paychex is accredited with the BBB and has the highest possible rating, the vendor’s poor customer review score is concerning. The BBB readily admits that “customer reviews are not used in the calculation of BBB Rating,” which means Paychex’s A+ isn’t necessarily representative of actual customer experiences. Small business owners who prefer a highly personalized, boutique service experience might find the large-scale support structure of Paychex less intimate than smaller, regional providers.
To find the best employee retirement plan administrators for small businesses, we search for vendors that keep plan costs down for both employers and employees, don’t make it too complicated to implement a plan, and are willing to work with you during setup and beyond. When identifying the top solution for business owners specifically seeking an all-in-one platform for managing both retirement plans and other HR tasks, we started by looking for providers that offered integration with payroll. That’s a big deal, because it reduces the need to input employee information manually and limits the potential for mistakes.
We further narrowed our list by reviewing the vendors that offered integrations beyond payroll. Time is money, and the more business tasks you can combine under one system, the better. The last thing a small business owner has time for is moving through different platforms to handle employee retirement benefits, payroll and other HR responsibilities. Fortunately, Paychex eliminates those hurdles with its comprehensive, all-in-one Flex system.
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Nathan Weller contributed to this article.
