{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "id": "adp",
 "name": "ADP",
 "research_status": "researched",
 "vendor_domain": "adp.com",
 "category": "HR & People",
 "task": "Payroll & team benefits",
 "summary": "Payroll, tax filing and HR for small and mid-sized employers, sold as four RUN packages: Essential, Enhanced, Complete and HR Pro. No public pricing anywhere — /pricing is a 404 and every tier on the comparison page says “Get pricing”, so budgeting means a sales call.",
 "best_for": "small and mid-sized employers who want payroll, tax filing and compliance handled by the largest and oldest provider in the category: over 75 years, and their own figure of more than 900,000 small businesses on RUN alone. It suits those who would rather have a named account team than a cheaper self-service tool",
 "skip_if": "you need to budget before you talk to sales, because you simply cannot: every route ends at a quote form. Also skip it if you are a one-or-two-person company where a published-price competitor covers the same job, and if you only pay 1099 contractors, price that specific product rather than the packages, because ADP sells it separately",
 "honest_knock": "The quote-only posture is normal in payroll, so the honest complaint is not that ADP hides its price — it is what that does to you as a buyer. You cannot compare ADP against anyone without first giving a salesperson your headcount and your phone number. And the three-months-free banner carries an end date, which puts a clock on a decision you cannot yet cost. Ask for the per-employee-per-month rate and the per-payroll-run fee separately. Ask what you pay from month seven, since the offer terms credit the free months to months 4 to 6. And ask what the price becomes at double your current headcount, because payroll pricing steps rather than scales smoothly. One detail worth noticing: ADP does publish an /llms.txt, a file whose entire purpose is to guide AI assistants around its site. They are willing to machine-readably explain what they sell. They are not willing to say what it costs.",
 "pricing": {
  "status": "quote_only",
  "entry_price": null,
  "entry_price_terms": null,
  "from_price_usd_month": null,
  "plans": null,
  "plans_source": null,
  "notes": "(2026-08-15, read on their own site) ADP shows no public pricing for RUN anywhere on its site, and we checked four places before saying so. /pricing returns a 404, and so does /pricing.md. The RUN product page offers only a “Get Pricing” button. And the dedicated package-comparison page lists all four tiers with “Get pricing” under each one and not a single figure. The tiers are Essential Payroll, Enhanced Payroll (adds ZipRecruiter, State Unemployment Insurance and garnishment payments), Complete Payroll & HR Plus (adds basic HR support) and HR Pro Payroll & HR (enhanced HR support and staff perks). A promotion was running when we read it: three months of free payroll, marked “Ends 8/27”, with terms behind an asterisk. Re-checked 11 October 2026 in a live browser: the package-comparison page still shows Get pricing under all four tiers and no figure. The banner now reads 'Get 3 months FREE when you sign up for small business payroll. Ends 10/22.' Its terms (adp.com/terms/3-month-offer-terms.aspx) say the sales order must be signed and payroll started by October 22, 2026, processing must continue for three consecutive months at the original bundle, pay frequency and discount level, fees must be paid by direct debit, and the free months are credited to months 4, 5 and 6, not the first three. The offer is for new RUN clients with 1-49 employees in the continental U.S.; non-payroll services, pass-through costs, delivery and off-cycle fees are excluded.",
  "verified_at": "2026-10-11",
  "source_url": "https://www.adp.com/"
 },
 "free_plan": false,
 "free_plan_evidence": null,
 "cost_traps": [
  {
   "id": "quote_only",
   "label": "Quote-only pricing",
   "evidence": "No published price: pricing page and package page return only \"Get Pricing\" buttons, no figure anywhere (read 15 Aug 2026)",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-11",
   "source_url": "https://www.adp.com/"
  },
  {
   "id": "per_seat",
   "label": "Per-seat pricing",
   "evidence": "Ask for the per-employee-per-month rate and the per-payroll-run fee separately.",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-11",
   "source_url": "https://www.adp.com/"
  }
 ],
 "compare_with": {
  "name": "Gusto",
  "why": "the comparison that makes the difference visible rather than the features. Gusto publishes its per-month and per-person rates on its own site, so you can cost it in five minutes; ADP will not, so you cannot. If both can do the job, the question becomes what a sales conversation is worth to you — and for a business under fifty people that is usually the whole answer"
 },
 "links": {
  "record": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/api/v1/products/adp.json",
  "review": "https://officesoftwaremarketplace.com/adp-review.html",
  "marketplace": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/marketplace/adp/",
  "vendor_site": "https://adp.com"
 },
 "purchase": {
  "seller": "the vendor",
  "how": "AIBuilder Marketplace does not sell this software. Sign up, start a trial or buy on the vendor's site.",
  "handoff_url": "https://adp.partnerlinks.io/rd4qocoua8as",
  "affiliate": true,
  "disclosure": "Where purchase.affiliate is true, purchase.handoff_url is an affiliate link: AIBuilder Marketplace may earn a commission at no extra cost to the buyer. Commission never changes what a record says, and products are not ranked by commission. Where it is false the link is the vendor's plain site."
 },
 "provenance": {
  "research": "hand-researched dossier, read on the vendor's own pages",
  "researched_since": "2026-07",
  "method": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/how-we-review/",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Credit 'AIBuilder Marketplace' with a link to https://aibuildermarketplace.com/atlas/.",
  "note": "A rebuild is not a new measurement: pricing.verified_at is the date that matters."
 },
 "cost": {
  "status": "not_yet",
  "engine": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/agents/#cost",
  "rules": null,
  "growth": null
 },
 "unknowns": [
  "Pricing status is 'quote_only': no single public entry price.",
  "Plan-by-plan prices are not structured in this record yet; pricing.notes has the full text.",
  "Contract terms (cancellation, data export, data location, minimum seats) are not researched as separate fields; pricing.notes mentions them only where the vendor's pricing page does.",
  "No computable price rules yet: cost at a given team size cannot be calculated for this product.",
  "Not tested hands-on by us: what the product does comes from the vendor's pages and our reading of them."
 ],
 "task_evidence": null,
 "open_questions": [
  {
   "question_id": "adp:public_price",
   "key": "public_price",
   "question": "Can you publish a price, or a starting price, for the plans that are quote-only?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "adp:cancellation_terms",
   "key": "cancellation_terms",
   "question": "Can a customer cancel at any time, and what happens to an annual plan that is cancelled mid-term?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "adp:data_export",
   "key": "data_export",
   "question": "Which data can a customer export, in which formats, on which plans?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "adp:data_location",
   "key": "data_location",
   "question": "Where is customer data stored, and can a customer choose the region?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "adp:minimum_seats",
   "key": "minimum_seats",
   "question": "Is there a minimum number of seats or users on any plan?",
   "status": "open"
  }
 ],
 "vendor_answers": [],
 "agent_channels": {
  "vendor_mcp": null,
  "agent_checkout": {
   "status": "not_checked",
   "detail": "We could not read the vendor's pages as plain HTML.",
   "checked_at": "2026-10-07",
   "method": "homepage, /pricing and the pricing page we cite, read as plain HTML (no JavaScript) and searched for explicit support of purchases by AI agents: Agentic Commerce Protocol, Instant Checkout, Agent Payments Protocol, buy in ChatGPT, agentic checkout"
  }
 }
}