Payroll Pricing Tricks: What These Tools Cost After the Intro Period Ends
By SoftwareSift Team.
Two payroll vendors in this category run a live half-off promo right now: QuickBooks Payroll cuts its bundled base price in half for the first 3 months ($88/mo becomes $44/mo), and Patriot Payroll cuts its Full Service plan in half for the first 6 months ($37/mo becomes $18.50/mo). Both discounts are exactly 50%, and both are time-boxed. This guide reads those numbers straight off each vendor's own pricing page, shows what the bill looks like the month the promo ends, and works out the real first-year and second-year cost so a buyer can budget off the number that actually applies in month 13, not the number that applies in month one.
How to Use This Guide
If a business is actively comparing a quoted promo price against a competitor's list price, skip to "Why Half-Off Promos Distort Budgeting" for the worked TCO math. If a business wants to know exactly what QuickBooks or Patriot charges before and after their current promo, the vendor-specific sections below have the full breakdown. If a business is evaluating a payroll vendor that is not running a promo at all right now, the "What About Vendors Without a Promo" section covers what that means for comparison shopping.
The Promo-Cliff Pattern in Payroll Pricing
A promo cliff is what happens when a subscription price jumps sharply on a fixed date because an introductory discount expires. It is common in software pricing generally, and this category is no exception. Two of the vendors reviewed here run an identical mechanic: cut the list price by exactly half for a fixed introductory window, then revert to full list price with no further notice required beyond what is disclosed in the original signup terms. The discount rate itself (50%) is identical between QuickBooks and Patriot; only the length of the introductory window differs (3 months vs. 6 months), which is what determines how much of the first year is billed at the promo rate versus the list rate.
Both vendors disclose the promo and the reversion in the pricing page copy itself: QuickBooks with "50% off for 3 months" next to the discounted figure, Patriot with a site-wide banner ("30 days free + 50% off for 6 months") and a struck-through list price sitting directly beside the active promo price on every plan. Neither vendor hides the mechanic. The risk is not concealment; it is that a buyer who books a quote, signs up, and files the promo number away as "the price" will be budgeting against a number that stops applying partway through year one.
Methodology: How These Numbers Were Verified
Every figure in this guide was read directly off the vendor's own pricing page during a live browser capture, not pulled from a press release, a third-party aggregator, or memory. Both the list price and the active promo price are shown adjacent to each other on the source page in both cases, so no separate lookup was needed to establish the split. Per SoftwareSift's live-price-verification standard, the list price is the number used for every headline comparison and every TCO calculation in this guide; the promo price is disclosed as a footnote to that number, never presented as the ongoing rate.
This guide will be rechecked against each vendor's live pricing page on a regular basis. If a promo terms change, expires without replacement, or a vendor's list price itself changes, the figures below will be updated and the verification date will move, not silently, and not without recomputing every derived number that depends on it.
QuickBooks Payroll: The 3-Month Cliff
QuickBooks Payroll's current promo cuts the base price of every bundled tier exactly in half for the first 3 months of service. The per-employee add-on fee is not discounted by the promo. It applies at full rate from day one on every tier, and separately, this review's own captures found that fee to be unstable across repeated page loads for the Simple Start tier, so it is excluded from the totals below (see the companion QuickBooks Payroll pricing review for the full instability disclosure).
| QuickBooks Bundle | List Price (base) | Promo Price (base, first 3 mo) | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workforce Payroll + Simple Start | $88/mo | $44/mo | 50% for 3 months |
| Workforce Payroll + Essentials | $125/mo | $62.50/mo | 50% for 3 months |
| Workforce Premium + Plus | $203/mo | $101.50/mo | 50% for 3 months |
Every one of the three published bundles carries the identical 50%-for-3-months structure. This is not a single-tier teaser rate; it is the standard offer across the whole product line at the time of capture. On the entry Simple Start bundle, month 4 is when the bill jumps from $44/mo to $88/mo, a $44/mo increase with no change in what the account receives.
Patriot Payroll: The 6-Month Cliff
Patriot's current promo is broader than QuickBooks': it applies the identical 50%-off structure across every product on the pricing page, not just payroll: Accounting Basic, Accounting Premium, Basic Payroll, Full Service Payroll, and both the Time & Attendance and HR add-ons all carry the same "30 days free + 50% off for 6 months" banner, and every single one of them shows a struck-through list price at exactly double the active promo price.
| Patriot Plan | List Price | Promo Price (first 6 mo) | Per-Worker (List / Promo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Payroll | $17/mo | $8.50/mo | $4 / $2 per worker paid |
| Full Service Payroll | $37/mo | $18.50/mo | $5 / $2.50 per worker paid |
| Time & Attendance add-on | $6/mo | $3/mo | $2 / $1 per employee |
| HR Software add-on | $6/mo | $3/mo | $2 / $1 per employee |
Every figure in the table above is exactly 2x between list and promo, base price and per-worker fee alike. That consistency is itself worth noting: unlike QuickBooks, where only the base price is discounted and the per-employee fee floats independently (and unstably), Patriot's promo discounts the entire bill, per-worker fee included, at the same 50% rate. On Full Service Payroll, month 7 is when the bill reverts from $18.50/mo + $2.50/worker to $37/mo + $5/worker. Both halves of the bill double at once.
Why Half-Off Promos Distort Budgeting
The distortion is not that the promo price is fake. It is real, billed, and active for the stated window. The distortion is in what a buyer assumes the annual cost will be if they anchor on the promo number instead of the list number. Here is the first-year and second-year math for both vendors' flagship full-service plans, base price only (per-employee/per-worker fees added separately below, and QuickBooks' unstable fee excluded from the total per the disclosure above):
| Vendor / Plan | Year 1 Blended Cost (base only) | Year 2+ Cost at List (base only) | Month the Bill Jumps |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Simple Start bundle | (3 x $44) + (9 x $88) = $924 | 12 x $88 = $1,056/yr | Month 4, $44 to $88 |
| Patriot Full Service Payroll | (6 x $18.50) + (6 x $37) = $333 | 12 x $37 = $444/yr | Month 7, $18.50 to $37 |
Adding a 10-employee headcount to the per-worker side of Patriot's plan (the only vendor here where both the base and the per-worker fee are stable enough to total with confidence) makes the gap concrete: at list price, Patriot Full Service Payroll for a 10-person team is $37 + (10 x $5) = $87/mo. During the promo window, the same 10-person team is billed $18.50 + (10 x $2.50) = $43.50/mo, exactly half, holding the pattern from the table above. A buyer who quotes the promo number and budgets $43.50/mo indefinitely will be underbudgeting by $43.50/mo, or roughly $522/year, the moment month 7 arrives.
QuickBooks' equivalent per-employee math cannot be totaled with the same confidence, and that is itself the point of this guide: a vendor whose per-employee fee moves between $7 and $6.50 on repeated loads of its own pricing page is not giving a buyer a number stable enough to build a 10-employee budget on, promo or no promo. Budget off the $88/mo list base with a placeholder range for the per-employee line, and confirm the real figure before signing.
Three-Year Total Cost: Base Price Only
Extending the same base-price math out to three years shows how much the promo window shrinks relative to the life of the account. A promo that looks generous in month one is a small fraction of what gets billed by the time a business has run payroll on the platform for three years:
| Vendor / Plan | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-Year Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Simple Start bundle (base only) | $924 | $1,056 | $1,056 | $3,036 |
| Patriot Full Service Payroll (base only) | $333 | $444 | $444 | $1,221 |
By year 3, the promo window (3 or 6 months) accounts for a small share of the total bill in both cases: roughly 4% of QuickBooks' three-year base-price total and about 8% of Patriot's. The list price, not the promo price, is what actually determines a multi-year budget, which is exactly why SoftwareSift's pricing methodology treats list price as the headline figure everywhere on this site and the promo as a footnote.
Patriot's per-worker fee is stable enough (per this review's captures) to carry the same math forward at a named headcount. At 10 employees, the full three-year picture for Patriot Full Service Payroll, base plus per-worker fee combined, runs: Year 1 blended at $43.50/mo for 6 months and $87/mo for 6 months = $783; Year 2 and Year 3 at $87/mo x 12 = $1,044 each; a 3-year total of $2,871. QuickBooks' equivalent per-employee total is deliberately not calculated here, for the same reason it is excluded from every other total in this guide: a fee documented moving between $7 and $6.50 per employee on the vendor's own page is not stable enough to compound across 36 months without materially misleading the reader.
What About Vendors Without a Promo?
Not every vendor in this category runs an introductory discount. Gusto's pricing page, captured for this guide, lists $49/mo + $6/mo per person for its Simple plan with no struck-through price or promo banner next to it. The number shown is the number billed from day one. OnPay's pricing page shows the same pattern: $49 base + $6/worker per month, described on the page itself as "simple pricing with no surprises," with no promo pricing observed alongside it in this review's capture. Neither absence proves a vendor will never run a promo in the future, but at the time of this guide's verification, the number on Gusto's and OnPay's pricing pages is the number a new customer's first invoice will match. There is no month-4 or month-7 cliff to plan around because there is no discounted starting rate in the first place.
The practical takeaway for comparison shopping: a lower headline number is not automatically a lower real cost. Patriot's promo rate ($18.50/mo) looks cheaper than Gusto's flat rate ($49/mo), but Patriot's own list price ($37/mo) is still the number that applies for 18 of a plan's first 24 months of service. Compare list price to list price, and treat every promo rate as a temporary, disclosed discount off that baseline, never as the baseline itself.
Vendor Evaluation Checklist: Questions to Ask Before You Sign
- What is the list price, not the price on the signup screen? Ask for the number that applies after any introductory window ends, in writing, before entering a card number.
- How long does the promo window last, exactly? QuickBooks' current offer runs 3 months; Patriot's runs 6. Confirm the vendor's current window at signup. Promo terms change, and the windows documented in this guide reflect what each vendor's pricing page showed at the time of capture, not a permanent policy.
- Does the promo discount the per-worker fee too, or only the base price? Patriot's current promo discounts both the base rate and the per-worker fee at the same 50% rate. QuickBooks' current promo discounts only the base price; its per-employee fee is billed at full rate from day one, on top of the discounted base.
- Is the per-unit fee stable? Load the vendor's own pricing page more than once, on different days if possible, and compare what is shown. If a per-employee or per-worker figure moves between loads without an obvious explanation, budget off the higher of the observed figures rather than assuming the lower one will hold.
- What happens automatically when the promo ends? Confirm whether billing reverts automatically to list price, or whether the account requires action to continue at the new rate. Neither vendor's captured page specified this mechanic for every plan, so it is worth confirming directly with the vendor at signup rather than assuming either behavior.
- Does the quoted price include tax filing, or is that a separate line item? Not every plan in this category files payroll taxes at its base tier: Patriot's Basic Payroll plan, for example, does not include tax filing, while its Full Service tier does. Confirm which tier a quoted promo price actually applies to before comparing it to a competitor's tax-inclusive plan.
This checklist exists because none of the single-vendor pricing reviews on SoftwareSift can carry a cross-vendor promo comparison on their own. Each one verifies its own vendor's numbers, but only a page built specifically to hold two vendors' promo mechanics side by side can show that a 50%-off headline means something different depending on whether the discount applies to one fee or two, and whether it runs for 3 months or 6. That is the distinct judgment this guide is built to carry.
Related Guides on SoftwareSift
- QuickBooks Payroll pricing review: full bundle breakdown and the per-employee instability disclosure in detail.
- Gusto vs. QuickBooks Payroll: standalone payroll versus payroll bundled into your accounting system.
- Real cost of payroll at 10 employees, all 8 vendors compared: apples-to-apples TCO table across the full category.
- Best payroll software buyer guide: the full ranked field with SoftwareSift's scoring methodology.
Compare all payroll software options on SoftwareSift: pricing tiers, promo terms, and true first-year cost for SMB and mid-market buyers.
Disclosure: SoftwareSift earns affiliate commissions from some tools we review, including Gusto. QuickBooks/Intuit and Patriot Payroll are not commission-eligible links on this page. None of these relationships change the pricing figures reported above.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much more does QuickBooks Payroll cost after the promo ends?
- The Simple Start bundle jumps from $44/mo to $88/mo at month 4, a $44/mo increase, base price only. The other two bundles double on the same schedule: Essentials from $62.50/mo to $125/mo, and Plus from $101.50/mo to $203/mo.
- How much more does Patriot Payroll cost after the promo ends?
- Full Service Payroll jumps from $18.50/mo + $2.50/worker to $37/mo + $5/worker at month 7. Both the base price and the per-worker fee double at the same time, since Patriot's promo discounts the whole bill rather than only the base rate.
- Which payroll vendor in this category has no promo-cliff risk?
- Gusto and OnPay's pricing pages, as captured for this guide, show flat list pricing with no introductory discount and no struck-through price. The number quoted at signup is the number billed going forward, based on what each vendor's own page shows at time of verification.
- Should I choose a vendor based on its promo price?
- No. Compare list prices across vendors first, since that is the rate that applies for most of a plan's first two years. Treat any promo rate as a temporary, disclosed discount worth factoring into a first-year budget, not as the number to compare against a competitor's ongoing list price.