Guusto
Gift-based recognition with a free tier and no markup on the reward
Guusto is a Canadian employee recognition and rewards platform that lets managers and peers send digital gifts redeemable at more than 100 merchants, with automation for milestones and birthdays, leaderboards, social feeds, approvals and budget controls on higher plans; it is sold self-serve with a genuinely free tier, a 150 dollar per month Lite plan, and seat-based Essential and Premium plans at 4 and 5 US dollars per sender seat plus 0.70 and 1.00 per recipient seat, and it donates a day of clean water for every gift sent.
Overview
Guusto started in 2012 as a consumer app for sending someone a drink at a restaurant when you could not be there in person, founded in Vancouver by Joe Facciolo and Skai Dalziel. It pivoted toward HR and employee recognition in 2016, and the origin still shows in the product: a Guusto gift is a specific thing sent to a specific person, redeemable at a real merchant, rather than an abstract points balance that accumulates in an internal ledger.
That matters for a sales team more than it sounds. Points-based recognition platforms create a currency that only exists inside the tool, which reps find abstract and finance finds hard to value. Guusto sends something with a face value that the recipient redeems at more than 100 merchants, and the vendor states you pay face value for all gift cards with no markup. A 100 dollar SPIFF costs 100 dollars, and it arrives as something the rep can actually use that week.
The plan structure is unusually friendly at the small end. There is a real free tier with no minimum spend that covers sending rewards by email or SMS, merchant access, the mobile app and multiple languages. Lite at 150 US dollars a month adds bulk rewards, scheduling, milestone and birthday automation, a prepaid Mastercard option and, importantly, the ability to cancel unclaimed gifts. Essential at 4 dollars per sender seat and 0.70 per recipient seat with a 200 dollar monthly minimum adds HRIS integration, leaderboards, random draw automation, custom branding and analytics. Premium doubles the minimum to 500 dollars and adds SSO, approvals, budget automation and Microsoft ecosystem integrations.
What Guusto is not is a commission tool, and a buyer in this category should hold that firmly. There is no plan designer, no quota, no accelerator, no split, no clawback, no CRM connection and no calculation of any kind. What it offers a sales organisation is the discretionary layer: the contest prize, the spot bonus for the rep who saved a renewal, the recognition that makes an incentive programme feel like more than an arithmetic exercise. Guusto is aimed squarely at frontline and deskless workforces, which is a different centre of gravity from the software sales floor most commission vendors design for.
Best for
Small businesses that want a recognition and reward programme rather than only a payout rail, especially teams with frontline or deskless staff alongside sales, and companies who want to start free and grow into leaderboards, milestone automation and approvals without changing vendor.
Not the right fit for
- Anyone shopping for commission software. Guusto calculates nothing: no plan, no quota, no accelerator, no split, no clawback, no rep statement, no CRM integration and no payroll export. It is discretionary recognition, not variable pay.
- Teams whose reps expect cash. Guusto is gifts and prepaid cards; there is no PayPal, Venmo, Cash App or bank transfer rail, so a cash-heavy SPIFF programme needs Tremendous or a payout provider instead.
- Companies that want the whole feature set cheaply, because leaderboards, HRIS sync, branding and analytics all sit behind Essential's 200 dollar monthly minimum and approvals sit behind Premium's 500 dollar minimum.
- Buyers who need to buy the mid tiers self-serve; only Free and Lite are genuinely self-serve, and Essential and Premium carry contract minimums that involve a conversation.
- Global sales teams needing broad international payout coverage, since Guusto's merchant network is strongest in North America and global rewards are a Premium-tier feature rather than a baseline.
How it works
- 1
You create an account and pick a plan. The free tier requires nothing, has no minimum spend, and is a genuine product rather than a trial: send rewards by email or SMS, access more than 100 merchants, use the mobile app and multiple languages. Free and Lite are self-serve; Essential and Premium involve a conversation because of the monthly contract minimums.
- 2
You fund and send gifts. A gift has a dollar value and the recipient chooses where to redeem it from the merchant network, with the vendor stating you pay face value with no markup. Sending can be one at a time, in bulk, or scheduled ahead, with automation on Lite and above for birthdays, work anniversaries and other milestones.
- 3
You build a programme around it on higher plans. Essential adds leaderboards, social feeds, random draw automation, custom branding, analytics and manager insights, plus HRIS integration so the recipient list maintains itself. Premium adds SSO, approvals, budget automation, custom data fields, TV and kiosk displays, global rewards and swag.
- 4
You recover what nobody claims. From Lite upward, unclaimed gifts can be cancelled, which turns a prize budget into something with a closable end state rather than an open liability. Every gift sent also triggers a donation funding a day of clean water access through a partnership with the One Drop Foundation, which is a small cost the vendor absorbs and a real part of why the product spreads by word of mouth.
Feature breakdown
24 features in 5 modulesSending and reward mechanics
The core gifting model, available in some form on every plan.- Face value with no markup
- The vendor states you pay face value for all gift cards, so a 100 dollar reward costs 100 dollars. That is a cleaner economic story than points platforms where the exchange rate is opaque.
- 100-plus merchant network
- Recipients choose where to redeem rather than receiving a card for a shop they never visit, which is what determines whether a reward feels like one.
- Email and SMS delivery
- Available on the free tier, which matters for frontline and deskless staff who do not have a work email address at all.
- Bulk rewards and scheduling
- From the Lite plan upward, so a whole contest bracket or a quarter of anniversaries can be sent or queued in one action.
- Prepaid Mastercard option
- Available from Lite, giving a near-cash reward for recipients who do not want a merchant-specific gift.
- Unclaimed gift cancellation
- From Lite upward, unclaimed gifts can be cancelled and the value recovered, which closes out a prize budget rather than leaving it outstanding indefinitely.
Programme automation
What turns occasional gifting into a running recognition programme.- Milestone and birthday automation
- From Lite, work anniversaries and birthdays fire automatically, which is the most common reason a recognition programme quietly stops running.
- Random draw automation
- On Essential and Premium. This is the closest thing Guusto has to a sales contest mechanic, running prize draws automatically rather than by hand.
- HRIS integration
- From Essential, so joiners and leavers flow through automatically and the recipient list does not decay.
- Budget automation
- A Premium feature, allocating and refreshing budgets by team or manager without someone topping them up manually each month.
- Approvals
- Also Premium. This is the only approval mechanism in the product and it governs gifting, not commission, so do not mistake it for a comp sign-off chain.
Visibility and engagement
The social layer, which is where Guusto overlaps with sales performance tools.- Leaderboards
- From Essential. Recognition-based rather than KPI-based, so they rank giving and receiving rather than pipeline, which is a meaningful difference from Plecto's data-driven boards.
- Social feeds
- From Essential, making recognition visible across the company rather than a private transaction between two people.
- Custom branding
- From Essential, so the reward arrives as coming from your company rather than from an unfamiliar vendor, which affects claim rates.
- Analytics and manager insights
- From Essential, showing participation, spend and distribution across teams, which is how you find the manager who never recognises anyone.
- TV and kiosk displays
- A Premium feature aimed at frontline environments where staff do not sit at a computer.
Administration and security
What a growing company needs before finance signs off.- Sender and recipient seat model
- You pay separately for people who can send and people who can receive, at 4 and 0.70 US dollars on Essential and 5 and 1.00 on Premium, which is unusual and worth modelling carefully.
- SSO
- A Premium feature, which is the usual gate that pushes a security-conscious buyer up a tier.
- Microsoft ecosystem integration
- Teams, SharePoint and Outlook on Premium, aimed at companies whose internal comms already live there.
- Custom data fields
- Premium, for segmenting recognition by location, shift, division or any attribute your organisation actually runs on.
- Dedicated account manager
- Premium only; every tier below is self-service or standard support.
Social impact
Unusual to list as a feature, but it is a real and deliberate part of the product.- One day of clean water per gift
- Guusto donates through a partnership with the One Drop Foundation for every gift sent, an arrangement running since 2014 and absorbed by the vendor rather than added to your bill.
- Frontline workforce focus
- The product is explicitly built for deskless and frontline staff, which shapes decisions like SMS delivery and kiosk displays and differentiates it from software-team recognition tools.
- Free tier with no minimum spend
- A genuine free product rather than a trial, which lets a small business run recognition at zero platform cost indefinitely.
Use cases
4 documentedSales manager who wants a spot-bonus habit
Commission covers closed deals, but the rep who rescued an at-risk renewal or covered a colleague's territory gets nothing, and the manager has no easy way to mark it.
A gift goes out the same day from a manager's budget, visible on the social feed, at face value with no markup, and the behaviour gets recognised while it is still fresh rather than at the next review.
Small business starting recognition at zero cost
Fifteen people, no HR function, no budget for a per-seat platform, and a desire to stop handing out gift cards bought at a supermarket.
The free tier covers sending by email or SMS to more than 100 merchants with the mobile app included, and the company grows into Lite at 150 dollars a month only when bulk sending and milestone automation start to matter.
Operations lead running a quarterly prize draw
Everyone who hits a threshold goes into a draw, and running it manually means someone with a spreadsheet and a random number generator every quarter.
Essential's random draw automation runs it, the leaderboard and social feed give the programme visibility, and unclaimed prizes are cancelled at expiry so the budget closes out cleanly.
Company with a mixed office and frontline workforce
Half the staff have no work email and no desk, so any recognition tool built around Slack reaches only the office team and quietly reinforces the divide.
SMS delivery, a mobile app, multiple languages and Premium kiosk displays reach the frontline directly, which is the specific problem Guusto was rebuilt around after 2016.
Pricing
from $0 on the free plan; $150 per month on LiteFreemium with a flat-fee Lite plan and, above it, a dual seat model charging separately for sender seats and recipient seats, subject to monthly contract minimums.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 no minimum spend |
A real product, not a trial. A small team can run recognition here indefinitely and pay only for the gifts themselves. |
| Lite | $150 per month |
The first genuinely useful tier and the last one you can buy purely self-serve. The single sender seat is the binding constraint. |
| Essential | $4.00 per sender seat and $0.70 per recipient seat per month monthly, with a $200 minimum |
Marked most popular. The 200 dollar monthly minimum means small teams pay the floor rather than the seat arithmetic. |
| Premium | $5.00 per sender seat and $1.00 per recipient seat per month monthly, with a $500 minimum |
SSO and approvals are the usual reasons a company ends up here, and the 500 dollar minimum is the real price for a small team. |
Billing notes
- The dual seat model is unusual: you pay separately for people who can send and people who can receive, so cost scales with headcount, not with how much you actually give.
- Monthly contract minimums of 200 dollars on Essential and 500 dollars on Premium mean a small business pays the floor regardless of seat count, which is the number to plan around.
- Gift value is separate from and additional to platform cost, and the vendor states you pay face value for gift cards with no markup.
- Only Free and Lite are cleanly self-serve; Essential and Premium involve a commercial conversation because of the minimums.
- Unclaimed gift cancellation from Lite upward means a prize budget can be recovered rather than left outstanding, which materially improves the effective cost of a contest programme.
Value assessment: The free tier is the strongest thing here and a genuine reason to try Guusto rather than argue about it: no minimum spend, real sending, real merchants, and no markup on gift value. Lite at 150 dollars a month is fair for bulk sending, milestone automation and unclaimed recovery. Above that the value question tightens, because the 200 and 500 dollar monthly minimums are a real commitment for a small business and the features they unlock, leaderboards, HRIS sync, SSO and approvals, are governance and engagement rather than anything that computes what a rep is owed. Against Bonusly at 5 dollars per user, Guusto's dual seat model is often cheaper for companies with many recipients and few senders, and more expensive when everyone gives to everyone. Model your own giving pattern rather than comparing headline rates.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- A genuinely free tier with no minimum spend, no expiry and real functionality, which is rare in a category where most vendors will not even publish a price.
- Face value with no markup on gift cards, so the economics are transparent in a way points-based platforms are not.
- Built for frontline and deskless workforces, with SMS delivery, a mobile app, multiple languages and kiosk displays, so it reaches people a Slack-based tool never will.
- Unclaimed gifts can be cancelled from the Lite plan upward, turning a prize budget into something you can close out.
- The dual seat model can be markedly cheaper than per-user pricing when a small number of managers send to a large number of recipients.
- Fourteen years old, founder-led, with a clean water donation attached to every gift since 2014, which is a real differentiator for companies that care how a programme reads internally.
Limitations
- It calculates nothing. No plan designer, no quota, no accelerator, no split, no clawback, no rep statement, no CRM integration and no payroll export.
- No cash payout rails: no PayPal, Venmo, Cash App or bank transfer, so cash-expecting sales teams need a different tool for SPIFFs.
- The useful programme features sit behind monthly minimums of 200 and 500 dollars, which is a lot for a fifteen-person company that only wanted leaderboards.
- Only Free and Lite are cleanly self-serve; the mid and upper tiers carry contract minimums and a commercial conversation.
- Lite includes only one sender seat, so any team wanting several managers to give independently is pushed straight to the Essential minimum.
- Merchant coverage is strongest in North America and global rewards are a Premium feature, which limits it for internationally distributed sales teams.
Head-to-head comparisons
5 alternativesGuusto vs Bonusly
from $0 for up to eight users; $5 per user per month on TeamThe closest comparison. Bonusly is points-based peer recognition at 5 dollars per user per month with a free plan capped at eight users, strong Slack and Teams presence, and analytics aimed at engagement. Guusto is gift-based with a free tier that has no user cap, no markup on gift value, and a dual seat model that is cheaper when few people send to many. Choose Bonusly for a peer-to-peer culture programme in a desk-based company; choose Guusto for manager-led gifting, frontline reach, and a free tier you can actually stay on.
Full Guusto vs Bonusly comparisonGuusto vs Tremendous
from $0 to use the platform; you pay only the face value of what you sendTremendous is a payout rail with no recognition layer, no seats and no subscription, covering 2,500-plus gift cards plus cash through PayPal, Venmo, Cash App and bank transfer across 200-plus countries with a 4 to 6 percent cash fee. Guusto wraps gifting in a recognition programme with leaderboards, feeds and milestone automation, but caps out at gifts and prepaid cards. If you just need money to reach people, Tremendous. If you want the programme around it, Guusto.
Full Guusto vs Tremendous comparisonGuusto vs Giftbit
from $0 to open and use an account; you pay only the face value of what you sendBoth are gift-based and both let you recover unclaimed value, but they sell to different buyers. Giftbit is infrastructure: a free API-first platform with 1,500-plus brands, no recognition features, and a 25 percent share of unclaimed promotional value. Guusto is a programme: leaderboards, feeds, milestone automation and approvals, with seat pricing above the free tier. Engineers integrating rewards choose Giftbit; HR and sales managers running a recognition habit choose Guusto.
Full Guusto vs Giftbit comparisonGuusto vs Plecto
from $300 per month for ten tracked licenses, or $30 per license per month, billed yearlyOpposite starting points. Plecto measures performance from live CRM, telephony and billing data and can compute a commission figure, from 300 dollars a month for ten licences. Guusto measures nothing and instead handles the human side of rewarding it, starting free. A sales floor that wants both the live leaderboard and the reward habit ends up running one of each, which is not unreasonable given Guusto's free tier costs nothing to add.
Full Guusto vs Plecto comparisonGuusto vs QuotaPath
from $525 per month platform fee plus $35 per user per month (Growth), billed annuallyNot substitutes. QuotaPath calculates commission against a designed plan from CRM and billing data, gives reps a statement and a dispute path, runs approvals and exports to payroll, from 525 dollars a month plus 35 dollars per user. Guusto handles discretionary recognition that sits entirely outside the plan. If a buyer is choosing between these two, they have misdiagnosed their problem: work out whether the pain is calculation or motivation, because these tools solve different ones.
Full Guusto vs QuotaPath comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Minutes on the free tier: create an account, send a gift. Lite adds automation that takes an afternoon to configure. Essential's HRIS integration and branding are a few days of work, mostly waiting on someone to approve a connection to the HR system.
- Learning curve
- Very low. Guusto is deliberately simple because it targets frontline organisations without dedicated HR technology staff, and nothing in the product requires formulas or configuration languages.
- Onboarding
- Self-serve on Free and Lite with no sales call. Essential and Premium involve a conversation because of the monthly minimums, and Premium includes a dedicated account manager. There is no separately priced paid implementation engagement disclosed.
- Migration notes
- Nothing to migrate on the calculation side because there is none. Moving from another recognition tool means exporting your recipient list and, if you are on Essential or above, connecting your HRIS so it maintains itself. Points balances in a previous platform generally do not transfer; most companies zero them out and start clean, which is the honest thing to tell staff.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web applicationiOS and Android appsSMS and email deliveryTV and kiosk displays on Premium
- API
- Integrations rather than a heavily promoted public API: HRIS connections from Essential, and Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Outlook from Premium.
- Compliance
- Canadian vendor operating under Canadian privacy lawGreat Place to Work certified as an employer
- Data residency
- Canadian company operating a fully remote workforce; no specific regional data residency options advertised.
- SSO
- Single sign-on is a Premium feature, gated behind the 500 dollar monthly minimum.
- Security notes
- Approvals, budget automation and custom data fields on Premium provide the spend governance a finance owner will ask for. Below that tier, control rests on the single sender seat in Lite or on seat permissions in Essential.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email and in-product supportDedicated account manager on Premium
- Documentation
- Help centre at help.guusto.com covering sending, redemption, the clean water donation model, plan features and administration.
- Community
- A company blog focused on recognition practice rather than a user forum.
Company
- Founded
- 2012
- Headquarters
- Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, operating fully remote
- Ownership
- Privately held and founder-led, with Skai Dalziel serving as co-chief executive
- Founders
- Joe Facciolo, Skai Dalziel
- Employees
- Not disclosed
- Funding
- No large venture rounds publicised; the company grew from a consumer gifting app into an HR platform without a headline funding narrative.
Timeline
- 2012Founded in Vancouver by Joe Facciolo and Skai Dalziel as a consumer app for sending someone a drink or a bottle of wine remotely.
- 2014Partners with the One Drop Foundation to donate a day of clean water access for every gift sent, an arrangement still in place.
- 2016Pivots from consumer gifting to HR and employee recognition, which becomes the company's permanent direction.
- 2020Named the highest rated recognition platform on G2 and grows more than 250 percent in a year as remote work drives recognition spending.
- 2023Doubles down on frontline and deskless workforces with SMS delivery, kiosk displays and multi-language support rather than chasing desk-based competitors.
- 2026Sells a free tier with no minimum spend, Lite at 150 dollars a month, and dual seat Essential and Premium plans at 200 and 500 dollar monthly minimums.
Integrations
- HRIS systems, from the Essential plan
- Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Outlook, from Premium
- Email and SMS delivery on every plan
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- TV and kiosk displays on Premium
- 100-plus merchant redemption network
- Prepaid Mastercard issuance from Lite
- One Drop Foundation clean water donation on every gift
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Guusto?
Guusto is a Canadian employee recognition and rewards platform. Managers and peers send digital gifts redeemable at more than 100 merchants, with automation for milestones and birthdays, plus leaderboards, social feeds, approvals and budget controls on higher plans. It was founded in 2012 as a consumer gifting app and pivoted to HR recognition in 2016.
Does Guusto calculate sales commission?
No. There is no plan designer, no quota, no accelerator, no split, no clawback, no rep statement, no CRM integration and no payroll export. Guusto handles discretionary recognition and gifting, which sits alongside a commission plan rather than replacing one. If your problem is that commission is calculated wrongly, this is not the tool.
How much does Guusto cost?
There is a free plan with no minimum spend. Lite is 150 US dollars a month with one sender seat and 250 recipient seats. Essential is 4 dollars per sender seat plus 0.70 per recipient seat with a 200 dollar monthly minimum. Premium is 5 dollars per sender seat plus 1.00 per recipient seat with a 500 dollar monthly minimum. Gift value is separate and charged at face value with no markup.
Can a five-person team buy Guusto?
Yes, and it can stay on the free tier indefinitely because there is no minimum spend and no user cap on free. Lite at 150 dollars a month is the first paid step and is self-serve. The mid and upper tiers carry 200 and 500 dollar monthly minimums, so a five-person team buying Essential pays the floor rather than the seat arithmetic.
What is the dual seat pricing model?
Above Lite, Guusto charges separately for sender seats, meaning people who can give rewards, and recipient seats, meaning people who can receive them. Essential is 4 dollars and 0.70 respectively; Premium is 5 dollars and 1.00. This is cheaper than flat per-user pricing when a few managers give to many staff, and more expensive when everyone gives to everyone.
What happens to gifts nobody claims?
From the Lite plan upward, unclaimed gifts can be cancelled and the value recovered. That is a meaningful practical advantage over buying gift cards outright, where an unredeemed card is money gone, and it lets a contest budget be closed out at the end of a quarter rather than left outstanding.
Can reps be paid cash through Guusto?
No. Guusto sends gifts redeemable at its merchant network and, from Lite, prepaid Mastercards. There is no PayPal, Venmo, Cash App or bank transfer rail. If your sales team expects cash SPIFFs, Tremendous handles cash for a 4 to 6 percent fee and Trolley or Wise Business handle larger cash payouts.
Does Guusto have approvals and SSO?
Both are Premium features, behind the 500 dollar monthly minimum. Approvals govern gifting spend, not commission sign-off, so do not mistake them for the multi-level payout approval chain a comp platform provides. Budget automation and custom data fields sit on the same tier.
What is the clean water donation?
Guusto has partnered with the One Drop Foundation since 2014 to fund one day of clean water access for every gift sent. The donation is absorbed by Guusto rather than added to your bill. It is a genuine part of how the company positions itself and one reason recognition programmes built on it read well internally.
How does Guusto compare with Bonusly?
Bonusly is points-based peer recognition at 5 dollars per user per month, free up to eight users, strongest in desk-based companies on Slack and Teams. Guusto is gift-based, has a free tier with no user cap, charges no markup on gift value, and is built for frontline and deskless staff with SMS delivery and kiosk displays. Compare by giving pattern and workforce type rather than by headline rate.
Editorial verdict
Guusto is the friendliest entry point in this shortlist for a small business that wants a recognition habit rather than a payout rail. The free tier is real, the gift value carries no markup, unclaimed gifts come back from Lite upward, and the frontline focus means it reaches staff that Slack-based tools structurally cannot. The dual seat model rewards the common pattern of a few managers giving to many people, which is exactly how a small sales organisation actually behaves. The caveats are firm. Everything genuinely programmatic, leaderboards, HRIS sync, SSO and approvals, sits behind 200 and 500 dollar monthly minimums, there are no cash rails, and Guusto computes nothing at all. A buyer who arrived in this category because their commission spreadsheet broke should fix that elsewhere and then, separately, spend nothing to try Guusto for the discretionary half of the programme.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.