SurePayroll

Paychex sells SurePayroll as the low-touch end of its range, and the accountant offer is the clearest wholesale arrangement of the major payroll partner programs. The firm resells at wholesale rates, sets its own client price, and keeps the spread. Clients log into a portal carrying the firm's brand, colors and logo, which can be embedded in the firm's own website, so the client's experience of payroll is the firm's experience of payroll. There are no long-term contracts, clients can be added, paused or dropped at any point, and staff work from a multi-client dashboard with role-based permissions. Onboarding is free and includes SurePayroll entering client data and year-to-date figures, which removes the worst part of a mid-year conversion. Firms past 30 clients get a named support contact. A separate referral program exists for firms that would rather not carry the billing.

On ownership, this is as unambiguous as the category gets. Because the branding, the pricing and the invoice are the firm's, the client has no direct commercial relationship with SurePayroll to fall back on. That is the opposite of Intuit's revenue share model, where the subscription must be client-billed and the vendor holds the account.

Underneath the wrapper the product is deliberately small. Automated tax filing and deposits, free direct deposit, W-2, W-3 and 1099-NEC processing, employee self-service, auto-payroll, PTO tracking and standard deductions. Published retail pricing is $29 a month plus $7 per worker, or $39 for household and nanny payroll including one employee. The household line is a genuine niche: firms with private client work and domestic employers have very few decent options.

The pricing structure is where this shows its age. Accounting software integration is a $4.99 monthly add-on, the second state costs $9.99 a month, and year-end W-2 and 1099-NEC filing carries a $50 base fee plus $5 per form. Charging separately for ledger sync and for year-end forms is out of step with how OnPay, Patriot Payroll and Gusto now price, and it makes the all-in number hard to quote to a client. Anyone comparing should build the annual cost with the add-ons in, not from the headline.

The security page is the other signal. It still describes 128-bit SSL, PIN protection and a Secure Call-In ID, refers to annual independent audits without naming a SOC report, and reads as if it was written more than a decade ago. For a product that holds client Social Security numbers and bank details, the absence of a published SOC 1 or SOC 2 attestation is a real gap when Rippling and Gusto publish theirs.

The dated tier stands. The reseller mechanics are good and the household payroll niche is defensible, but the feature set has not moved, the add-on pricing model belongs to an earlier era, and the security disclosures have not been refreshed. Firms wanting the same white-label economics with a modern feature set should price Payroll Relief and MyPay Solutions, both built for accountant batch processing, before committing a book of clients here.