Avalara reviews: see what real users are saying

Evaluating a tax platform like Avalara is difficult because Avalara is built to serve a broad customer base. If you’re trying to determine whether Avalara is a best fit, finding feedback from companies that most closely match your needs and use case means sorting through a collection of non-relevant reviews.

This page consolidates Avalara reviews from across the web and distills the key strengths and weaknesses to help you better understand how the platform handles real-world use.

Key takeaways

• Platform integrations are generally positive, but they often reflect enterprise use cases rather than day-to-day ecommerce.
• Integration reviews are consistently lower, with reviewers reporting setup challenges, liability issues, and slow support when problems arise.
• Experiences vary widely depending on internal resources, with teams lacking dedicated tax or technical staff reporting the most frustrations.

Avalara: Overall platform ratings

To understand how users rate Avalara overall, we looked at public ratings across major software review platforms.

While these reviews reflect broad customer sentiment around Avalara and Avatax, keep in mind that review scores are cumulative. They represent feedback from both large and small companies and include a wide range of plan configurations and in-house support capabilities.

Here’s how Avalara’s review scores break down:

Overall, ratings suggest that Avalara delivers strong coverage and flexibility, particularly for more complex tax environments.

Higher scores tend to reflect confidence in the underlying engine (Avatax) and any add-on products, rather than factors like cost, ease of setup, or support experience. In most cases, positive reviews indicate that Avalara performs well once the platform is fully configured and actively managed.

However, there is some nuance in performance and fit. We’ll touch on these factors in greater detail below.

What Avalara does well

Across most reviews, users consistently highlight Avalara’s ability to handle difficult and complex tax requirements at scale. Positive feedback tends to focus on the platform’s depth, flexibility, and level of customization rather than simplicity or ease of use.

Common strengths include:

• Broad tax coverage and rule handling. Reviewers frequently note that Avalara supports a wide range of jurisdictions and tax scenarios, with special attention given to regulated industries and multi-national brands.
• Reliable tax calculation engine. Many high ratings reference confidence in AvaTax, particularly once the engine is fully configured and aligned with a company’s products, nexus footprint, and exemption logic.
• Flexibility for customized tax setups. Users with dedicated tax and/or technical resources praise Avalara’s configurability by noting that the engine can accommodate highly specific tax rules, product mapping, and reporting requirements.
• Support for high-volume and multi-entity operations. Reviews from larger organizations frequently cite Avalara’s ability to scale across multiple entities, sales channels, and filing obligations without requiring a complete reimplementation.
• Coverage beyond basic sales tax needs. Some users highlight the value of Avalara’s add-on products, particularly when managing use tax, exemption certificates, and global compliance.

Taken together, Avalara’s strength and versatility explain the high scoring and positive feedback. Enterprise brands with complex tax requirements that are in a position to leverage the platform’s depth and configurability see it as a major advantage rather than a blocker.

That said, many of the reviews we saw assume a certain level of internal ownership. Reviews promoting success frequently reference teams that are able to invest time in configuration, monitoring, and periodic adjustments as business needs change.

While it’s possible to have a great experience without that internal support, this added layer of context is important for brands determining whether Avalara is a good fit.

Notable reviews

• “I am a repeat Avalara customer having installed the suite at 5 separate companies. We love the “one-stop shop” solution to unified our needs for sales and use tax, managed services, certificate management, 1099 filings, tax filings and on and on. It is the gold standard in tax solution.” — Kelly S. via G

• “Avalara automates complex sales tax processes with accuracy and reliability. It integrates seamlessly with our systems, manages exemption certificates efficiently, and saves our team 20–30 hours each month. We no longer worry about rate changes or filing deadlines—Avalara keeps us compliant while freeing time for higher-value finance work.” — Thanh T. N. via G2

• “We use Avalara to monitor and manage our sales tax obligations in the USA resulting from our remote seller status. Avalara offers a robust automation solution with full integration into our proprietary billing system. We like the scope of automation and geographical coverage. Avalara also provide vast know-how resources and regular updates on global VAT topics.” — Dusan A. via G2

• “Avalara has created a logical well thought out tax calculation product that allows for laymens terms interpretations with our customers. related to surcharges, tax on tax implications, that many traditional CPA’s and accountants are not familiar with, and the Telecommunications industry is loaded with tax on tax at the Federal and State levels.” — Joseph C. via Capterra

• “Portal is easy enough to navigate. Lots of training and tutorials provided – “Set it and forget it” .. well not exactly .. you still have to monitor and reconcile monthly to ensure everything is running smoothly. But saves a lot of time logging in and figuring out how to file taxes monthly for each state. – Reporting is very transparent. Easy to download reports, and compile and save info for auditing purposes.” — Reanna R. via Capterra

Where Avalara underperforms

Despite Avalara’s versatility, reviews (even many positive reviews!) also point out major challenges when working with the software.

Teams without dedicated tax or technical resources will need to set up and configure everything themselves. When issues arise, teams need to work directly with Avalara to resolve problems, which regularly results in a subpar experience for Avalara customers.

Aside from support issues, operational friction, high costs, and unethical behavior by the sales team are common complaints across customers of every size and industry.

Here’s a closer look at the main issues users have with Avalara:

• Support quality and access. A recurring theme in lower-rated reviews is the difficulty accessing timely and knowledgeable support. Users report long wait times, unclear escalation paths, and incorrect advice when working to resolve issues. Some have been directed to third party (paid) support in order to resolve problems.

• High costs and opaque billing policies. Avalara pricing is modularized, but unexpected and surprise charges are common. Users cite unexpected costs related to filing, transaction volume, add-on services, and support. In some cases, dissatisfaction is tied to how costs scale over time.

• Setup complexity and time to value. The downside of Avalara’s versatility is that fully configuring the platform to work with existing systems can be time-consuming and painful. Especially for brands with large product catalogs or multiple sales channels, fully online Avalara can take weeks or months.

• Ongoing maintenance burdens. Reviews indicate that Avalara requires regular monitoring and adjustment to remain accurate as products, jurisdictions, and business models change. While the system does update some things automatically, teams without internal ownership describe this upkeep as more demanding than expected.

• Challenges when issues impact live transactions. Although uncommon, issues like misapplied tax, missed nexus updates, and integration failures can occur. When that happens, users report that resolutions are slow, further increasing compliance risk and internal workloads.

These shortfalls are telling, especially considering how Avalara’s costs and overall modularity. In addition to saddling teams with a hefty maintenance burden, it’s easy for brands to end up paying for expensive add-ons and supplemental services in order to create complete solutions.

For example, exemption certificate management — a core feature in TaxCloud’s own product offering — is an add-on product for Avalara’s tax calculation system. This is the case for many essential services within the Avalara ecosystem. Returns, reporting, some item classification features, and more aren’t included in the default costs like they are with TaxCloud.

Notable review

• “The post-sales hand-off and onboarding experience is terrible. Their customer success and integration is outsourced to a team in India. It took three weeks to get a kick off call, and when we finally did the team was not adequately informed of our use case. Our integration project manager was unable to set clear expectations or effectively communicate the integration process entailed. It was difficult to schedule meetings, or get clear guidance over email. Our efforts to escalate have been ignored, leaving us with very low confidence that our integration will go smoothly. A very inefficient and frustrating experience for our team.” — Carla P. via G2

• “I would say the thing that doesn’t work for our company with Avalara is there’s not a really good support team. If there’s any issues with integration or if we have questions about API calls, we have not really had a prompt or strong feedback in the support field.” — Jessica Q. via G2

• “Avalara will automatically upgrade you to higher usage tiers without your permission. They will charge exorbitant “Upgrade Fees“. Because their QBO integration is so bad, you end up having to use 3x the usage you expected, which then costs you 3x what you expected. We literally paid more because their product was worse than expected.” — Tom A. via G2

• “Not good. Attempted to cancel, but had to jump through hoops and we are still being charged monthly. We had multiple changes in our dedicated support rep, and he would constantly cancel our scheduled meetings. Customer Support was horrendous and slow. Platform was difficult to navigate at times and it is overpriced.” — Lysi H. via Capterra

• I received nothing positive from working with this company — only charges and poor communication. I canceled services back in January 2025 by contacting support and explaining my experience. They apologized but offered no remedies. I was never informed that my account wasn’t deactivated or that I needed to take additional steps. I stopped receiving bills from Avalara and couldn’t log into my account anymore, so I thought it was the end of the story. But they kept charging me. Recently I discovered they’ve still been billing me $19/month for a Shopify extractor I never used. No bills, no communication — just hidden charges buried in Shopify. I’ve tried contacting them countless times with zero response. Completely unacceptable — I’m still waiting for my refund. — Iryna P. via Capterra
  

Avalara: Integration ratings

While overall platform reviews focus on Avalara’s core capabilities and support, integration reviews reflect how Avalara performs when connected directly to ecommerce platforms, accounting systems, and CRMs to pass real-time tax information to other software.

To gain more insight, we combed through various integration marketplaces in search of user feedback regarding Avalara’s setup and reliability when the platform is connected to the rest of the tech stack.

Here’s a closer look at how reviewers rank Avalara’s integrations:

While searching, we found that many integration pages don’t allow users to leave reviews, and most of the major integrations claim Avalara as a trusted brand partner. These factors, along with the reduced popularity of these pages, means that the number of reviews on most integration websites is much smaller.

Reviews in this category also tend to be more critical of the brand, and with good reason. Unlike TaxCloud, where users gain access to all available integrations when signing up for a plan, Avalara sells integration access as part of its custom packages. Users must pay a significant amount of money, in addition to their standard plan costs, so that Avalara can communicate with another piece of software.

Naturally, when that fails, users are less forgiving.

What works in Avalara integrations

Across integrations, positive feedback tends to focus on Avalara’s ability to support complex, multi-state tax scenarios once integrations are in place.

Users scoring Avalara highly note the customization options, accuracy, and reliability of the product post-setup. Automation is also a major factor, as Avatax is designed to calculate tax on marketplace platforms like WooCommerce and hand that information to a finance software like QuickBooks Online.

Notable reviews

• “Avalara Avatax really does make complicated sales tax simple. I used to manually calculate sales tax for a company that had NEXUS in a few states and it was a monthly headache to stay compliant! Avatax has been extremely reliable and makes reporting to the appropriate agencies effortless. I am able to manage sales tax more efficiently and I have peace of mind that we are reporting accurately. I would definitely recommend.” — Sian R. via QuickBooks integration

• “Accurate, real-time tax calculations with ability to customize and adjust to ensure tax compliance with seamless Sales Cloud integration – perfect solution for many businesses.” — Renee Ivy via Salesforce integration

• “I set up a customer with complex sales tax needs as they are in multiple states and growing each and every day. They were helpful from everything from the set up to the day to day training for the client. We would really recommend Avalara to anyone that even touches sales tax as the rules are changing.” — RobinHall1 via Quickbooks integration

Common integration issues

Unfortunately, lower-rated integration reviews far exceed positive feedback.

Users that provided low scoring were quick to point out Avalara’s lack of support, high costs, and mishandled billing process. On top of that, issues affecting live tax calculations that required hands-on help were regularly left unresolved due to confusion or lack of support.

Of particular concern are the reviews indicating that Avalara users are charged for services they never agreed to or wanted. Not only does this lead to long-term headaches and disputes; it also forces teams to chase Avalara for revenue lost to unused product and support costs.

Notable reviews

• “This is the worst product and their integration with QuickBooks doesn’t work. They have raised their pricing for support by $2,000 a year and their support is the worst part of the product. NO ONE EVER CALLS YOU BACK. IF they allowed zero stars that is what it should be.” — Dontava via QuickBooks integration

• “We can never get this to work properly and calculate taxes where we are set up to file. Customer support also struggled when i called them trying to get the software to calculate properly. We are looking for a new product to calculate sales tax for us.” — mkendrickorange via Woocommerce integration

• “While the service functions as it should, their pricing is incredibly misleading. After one year of service, we got a new bill saying we owed over 10x the agreed upon rate. When I repeatedly tried to get clarification, one rep told me that they had discontinued the lower tier service and everyone was upgraded to the higher plan, but if I didn’t want it just don’t sign the contract. I followed that advice but continued to get bills saying we owed thousands of dollars that I never agreed to. I finally got a meeting with a rep only to be pitched a new service add on for thousands of more dollars without addressing the original issue. No thanks. I see other reviews about their bait & switch pricing so I know we are not alone.” — via BigCommerce integration

Avalara on social media

While scanning Reddit threads, public tweets, and user forums, we found that public sentiment for Avalara reflects what we saw in many of the negative reviews from popular platforms.

This is important to note, because Avalara maintains a presence on most review platforms. Their marketing team is active on those forums and actively reaches out to try and mitigate negative feedback. However, that presence doesn’t extend across niche communities like the integration review pages (above) or social media.

In many cases, social media threads inevitably shift to searching for Avalara alternatives as users add their own negative experiences to the list.

Notable feedback

• “Avalara is terrible and borderline predatory. Trying to reach their support team is impossible.” — Always_Slacking, Reddit

• “We currently use Avalara and it has been an absolute nightmare. I need to convince our leadership to rip the bandaid off and switch.” — Gullible_Scratch9060, Reddit

• “Just got fleeced for over $6,300 USD by @avalara support to restore tax calculations due to a change they never communicated to us, lol. feels like criminal incompetence..” — rahnolds, X

• “We paid a small implementation fee to Avalara and about $5k up front to another contractor to implement it. The Avalara implementation team was outsourced and nearly zero help, which drove up the implementation cost. This unfortunately seems pretty standard for software.” — shomedamemes via Reddit
  

Case studies & real user feedback

Going beyond review websites and social media, several brands have switched from Avalara to other tax providers and shared their story about their time with the company.

We’ve heard firsthand accounts from several former-Avalara customers regarding costs, frustrations, and lackluster support that ultimately forced them to switch to other providers.

Here’s a quick rundown of what some of our very own customers had to say:

PangoBooks

A fast-growing online marketplace selling books across the U.S., PangoBooks struggled with cost and complexity when working with Avalara. Grant Singleton, CEO, notes that the company left much to be desired. Costs were high and customer support took days to respond.

Grant puts it this way:

“We were moving away from Avalara mainly because of the pricing, but also due to bad customer service. When we switched to TaxCloud, I expected a lesser product based on the pricing difference. But the TaxCloud solution was the same — if not simpler — compared to Avatax.”

Costs were another major factor in PangoBooks’ migration decision. With TaxCloud, the company paid $25-$30k for compliance, down from $100-$150k with Avalara. That’s a huge difference, especially when combined with TaxCloud’s overall simplicity and ease of use.

Cable Bullet

A manufacturer selling nationwide via ecommerce channels, Cable Bullet initially turned to Avalara for assistance managing multi-state sales tax compliance. Over time, escalating costs and missed opportunities around the Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) program made the platform increasingly difficult to justify.

Chris Manduka, CEO, initially moved the company from TaxJar to Avalara for address-level tax calculations, but costs quickly ballooned to unsustainable levels. The company was already participating in the SST program to save on filing costs.

Here’s how Chris explains it:

“With Avalara’s payment model, it was all based on credits and filings. The more times you file, the more you’re paying. So, we were seeing exponential costs every year, not just due to the new states that we were adding, but also from the frequency of our filings going from annually to quarterly to monthly.”

According to Chris, Avalara dropped the ball by refusing to assist the company with filings via SST as new states joined the program. When switching to TaxCloud, Chris was surprised because the TaxCloud team was able to register and file via SST in several states and become their Certified Service Provider in the SST program — eliminating those filing costs entirely — where Avalara refused to help.

Combined with other cost savings and bad experiences with Avalara support, switching to a different platform made more sense.

UntilGone

A brand making waves in the daily deals market, UntilGone worked with Avalara via the BigCommerce integration to handle its compliance needs. Richard Bell, president and owner, notes that Avalara initially made sense because UntilGone’s challenges around tax compliance were difficult for them to manage on their own.

As seen in many online reviews, UntilGone found Avalara’s process mangled by poor support, hefty costs, and unnecessary consulting contracts.

Richard had this to say:

“Initially, we used Avalara for our tax needs, but it wasn’t as helpful as we needed. The process was complex and time-consuming, especially for someone like me who was new to ecommerce and sales tax rules. Additionally, Avalara never informed us about the Streamlined Sales Tax (SST) program, which could have saved us a significant amount of money.”

When making the switch, the TaxCloud team enrolled UntilGone in the SST program, significantly reducing filing costs along the way. Combined with a straightforward app integration — which Richard refers to as “flipping a switch” — UntilGone was able to get up and running quickly and back to focusing on business growth.

Checklist: Is Avalara the right fit?

Based on the reviews, feedback, and real-world customer experience we’ve seen, Avalara tends to work best for a specific type of organization.

Despite some of the horror stories out there, Avalara is a powerful tax engine with enterprise-level deployment solutions that can only be found from a handful of other major brands like Vertex and Sovos. For customers who need deep integrations across ERPs, CRMs, and custom software, Avalara might be a good fit.

The checklist below can give you a good idea of whether Avalara makes sense for your company.

Avalara may be a good fit if you:

• Have complex tax requirements, including multi-state, regulated, or internal use cases.
• Maintain dedicated tax or technical resources to manage configuration changes and ongoing updates.
• Are comfortable with hands-on setup and regular maintenance without ongoing support from Avalara’s core team.
• Need deep configurability across multiple systems or need to configure products, tax rules, and reports in specific ways to meet unique needs.
• Can accommodate variable pricing tied to usage, filing, and support tiers.

Avalara will be a poor fit if you:

• Operate a smaller team without in-house tax expertise on a dedicated IT staff.
• Rely heavily on out-of-the-box integrations and expect them to “just work” when deployed.
• Want predictable and transparent pricing without add-ons, fees, and custom-built packages.
• Need fast, responsive, or knowledgeable support to resolve issues when rules change or the tax engine fails.
• Are looking for a tax partner who can work closely with you rather than a platform provider selling software and upgrades.

Think Avalara might not be a great fit? There are plenty of other options out there, including TaxCloud.

If you’re currently with Avalara but are considering a switch, take a look at this step-by-step guide to learn how you can migrate away from Avalara with minimal disruptions.

TaxCloud: A better alternative for growing brands

Growing across states without a tax team? TaxCloud is built for ecommerce businesses that need coverage without chaos.

TaxCloud is a full-service sales tax platform designed for growing brands that want coverage without complexity.

We offer:

• Transparent pricing with no surprise support fees.
• U.S.-based support that responds within 24 hours.
• Hands-on onboarding for sellers using Shopify, WooCommerce, QuickBooks Online, and other popular platforms.
• SST filing in 24+ states for eligible businesses — included at no extra cost.

If Avalara’s support delays, pricing surprises, or setup complexity are slowing you down, you don’t have to rebuild your tax stack from scratch to switch to TaxCloud.

Book a demo and we’ll walk you through it.