How We Evaluate PEOs
Peolet scores PEOs against six weighted criteria using only evidence we can check and link to: certification records, filings, service agreements and quotes we obtained ourselves. A field with no primary source scores zero, never an average. Paying us a referral fee is not an input to any score.
Most PEO rankings are written by people who are paid more when you pick a particular provider. Ours is not — but you should not take that on trust, so this page tells you exactly how a score is produced and what would have to be true for it to be wrong.
The rubric
| Criterion | Weight | What it measures | Evidence we require |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial stability and client protection | 25% | Whether an employer's payroll taxes are protected if the provider fails | IRS CPEO certification, ESAC accreditation, audited financials or SEC filings, state bonding on file |
| Pricing transparency | 20% | Whether a buyer can see the administrative fee separately from insurance before signing | Published pricing, an unbundled quote we obtained, or a rate sheet in the service agreement |
| Contract terms and exit cost | 15% | How hard and how expensive it is to leave | Client service agreement: term, auto-renewal, notice period, exit fees, data portability |
| Regulatory coverage and multi-state fit | 15% | Whether the provider is registered where the buyer actually employs people | State registration filings, provider disclosures, state agency licensee lists |
| Benefits and workers' compensation | 15% | Plan quality and carrier depth at a constant plan design and contribution level | Carrier disclosures, summaries of benefits and coverage, comp carrier and class-code handling |
| Service model and support | 10% | Who a buyer actually reaches, and how quickly, when something breaks | Named service model in the agreement, published SLAs, first-party buyer interviews |
Weights are versioned. Changing one changes published rankings, so every change gets a version number, a date, and an entry in the changelog at the bottom of this page. We do not silently re-weight.
What counts as evidence
The rule that does the most work here is simple: a claim without a primary source scores zero.
Not "average pending review". Zero. Scoring an absence of evidence as average is how vendor marketing gets laundered into a ranking — the provider that publishes nothing ends up looking identical to the provider that publishes everything, and the buyer learns nothing.
In practice that means:
- Certification and accreditation come from the IRS public list of certified
professional employer organizations and the ESAC accreditation directory. Not from a badge on a provider's homepage.
- Pricing comes from a published rate, a rate sheet inside a service
agreement, or an unbundled quote we obtained ourselves as a buyer. A press release saying a provider is "competitively priced" is not pricing.
- Contract terms come from the client service agreement. If we cannot get
one, the page says we could not get one.
- Coverage comes from state registration filings and agency licensee lists,
not from a coverage map graphic.
Every populated field on a provider or state page carries a source link and the date we checked it. Fields we have not verified render as "Not verified" rather than being filled with something plausible.
What we do not do
- We do not accept payment for a ranking, a score, an inclusion or a position.
- We do not let providers preview scores. They may correct a factual error by
sending us a document; they may not argue a score down.
- We do not publish an aggregate star rating we have not collected first-party.
Review markup invented from nothing is both a search-engine problem and a Federal Trade Commission problem.
- We do not write a verdict on a comparison page until both provider records
have cleared our data gate. A comparison assembled from marketing copy is worth less to you than no comparison at all.
The data gate
Provider pages, state pages and comparison pages are generated from a structured dataset. A generated page is served noindex and kept out of our sitemaps until it clears four tests:
- At least 400 words of prose specific to that page — not a template with the
variables swapped.
- At least six structured fields populated and sourced, each with a URL and
a verification date.
- At least one element no competitor page has: a rate, a filing deadline, a
class code, a table nobody else publishes.
- A recorded sign-off from a named human reviewer.
Pages that fail are still visible if you find them, with a banner saying what is missing and a list of the sources we still need to pull. We would rather show you the gap than paper over it.
Refresh cadence
| What | How often | Also whenever |
|---|---|---|
| Provider records | Quarterly | A pricing page, agreement or certification status changes |
| State regulatory records | Twice yearly | Within 30 days of a statutory or agency change we are notified of |
| Ranked lists | Monthly, with a visible date | Any underlying provider record changes |
| The rubric itself | Reviewed quarterly | Never retroactively, and never without a changelog entry |
A record that goes stale past its refresh window fails the data gate automatically and drops out of our indexes until it is re-verified. That is deliberate: out-of-date compliance data is worse than none, because you would act on it.
Conflicts of interest
Peolet is paid a flat referral fee by some of the providers listed on this site when we introduce a qualified buyer. The fee is set by rate card, is the same for every provider, and is never bid on. No provider holds equity in Peolet and none has a board or advisory relationship with us. If any of that changes, it gets published here before it takes effect, not after.
The full commercial picture is on how we make money.
Who reviews this
Scoring decisions are reviewed by a credentialed HR or benefits practitioner before publication. Where a page shows "awaiting credentialed review", that review has not happened yet and the page has not been published to search engines. We are hiring for this role; until it is filled, provider scores stay unpublished rather than being reviewed by nobody.
Tell us we are wrong
If a fact on this site is out of date or incorrect, send us the document that proves it and we will correct the record and re-date the page. Corrections are made in place with the date changed, not quietly overwritten.
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