Huckleberry is an online insurance agency that generates business insurance quotes. It was acquired by payroll company Paychex in 2023. Paychex is a multi-billion-dollar company, but it doesn’t seem like much of that goes to Huckleberry. It offers just a handful of basic business insurance policies, with little customer support and no assistance with claims.
Huckleberry works with reputable insurance partners and generates legitimate quotes with fair prices. But the company appears to be pivoting away from serving the general public. For instance, the most recent online reviews are years old. The lights are on, but I’m not sure if anyone’s home.
For that reason, I wouldn’t recommend getting insurance from Huckleberry. Online brokerages like Simply Business and insurance companies like Ergo Next can get you coverage just as fast. Paychex has its own insurance agency as well. Go directly there if you want to do something like integrate Paychex payroll with a workers’ comp policy.
Huckleberry is an insurance broker that sells policies from other insurance companies. It doesn’t underwrite policies itself. For that reason, we don’t give it a star rating.
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Huckleberry business insurance: Pros and cons
Pros
Shop online for general liability insurance, business owner’s policies, workers’ comp and cyber insurance with one application.
Can access your Certificate of Insurance online and email it to others.
Insurance partners include reputable companies like Hiscox, The Hartford and Berkshire Hathaway.
Cons
Must file claims through your insurer’s platform, not Huckleberry.
No published phone support number.
No option to pay your premium in full.
What Huckleberry does well
Simple quote process
Huckleberry’s online quote process is quick. If you need a policy fast, it might be worth taking a few minutes to get a quote from Huckleberry. It will at least give you a ballpark price. And if it’s the best one, consider buying it — especially since you’ll be dealing with the insurer, not Huckleberry, for claims.
Reliable partners
Huckleberry lists nine insurance companies as partners. All of them have “excellent” or “superior” ratings from AM Best, a credit rating agency. That means they should be financially resilient enough to pay out claims in case of a major event, like a wildfire or natural disaster. Its partners are:
- AmTrust Financial.
- Berkshire Hathaway Guard.
- Chubb (NerdWallet’s review).
- Employers.
- The Hartford (NerdWallet’s review).
- Markel.
- Hiscox (NerdWallet’s review).
- Pie Insurance (NerdWallet’s review).
- CopperPoint.
Where Huckleberry falls short
Only a few policies, with availability limited by state
Huckleberry only sells a few types of business insurance online:
- General liability insurance.
- Business owner’s policies.
- Workers’ comp.
- Cyber liability insurance.
- Liquor liability insurance.
- Commercial auto insurance, seemingly only in a few states.
Huckleberry says not every policy is available in every state. But it’s not clear what is and isn’t available from the website’s coverage map or state-by-state pages. I reached out to Paychex media relations for more clarity and will update this review if they reply.
For coverage with broad availability, try getting a quote directly from The Hartford.
No way to contact phone support
Huckleberry doesn’t publish a customer service phone number online. The only option is a live chat, which is mostly automated — though you have the option to leave your phone number and ask a customer service rep to call you.
That might be good enough while you’re shopping for insurance. Phone quotes are still common. But if you’re a Huckleberry customer and have a question about your account or a payment, this feels ripe for frustration. For well-rated customer service, consider Chubb instead.
Can’t pay your premium in full
When I got a quote from Huckleberry (more on that below), the shortest payment schedule I could select was a down payment plus one “installment.” I couldn’t find a way to pay for a year of coverage in full.
Huckleberry charged me a $5 installment fee. So in practice, that meant that I had to pay that fee twice. Plus, I’d have to set up autopay or remember to come back and pay my premium. Otherwise, my coverage might lapse.
This is the first insurer I’ve seen that doesn’t allow you to pay premiums in full up front. For an online shopping experience with annual payments and no installment fees, try biBERK.
What do small-business owners say about Huckleberry? Not much
I always read through online forums like Reddit and review sites like Trustpilot to get a sense of how users feel about the insurance company I’m reviewing. I also use an AI tool to help analyze overall sentiment and identify common themes.
Very few people have talked about Huckleberry online over the last few years. The company’s last Trustpilot review is from October 2023. Its most recent review on WalletHub is even older. The last positive reviews I could find of Huckleberry date to 2022. The public-facing website hasn’t changed much since I started covering business insurance in 2022 either.
I don’t see much evidence that Huckleberry’s parent company (Paychex) is investing in or promoting this brand in general. The company’s About Us page is minimal. Its social media accounts still have purple logos, which aligns with its branding from before Paychex acquired it.
That acquisition happened in 2023, which roughly aligns with when online reviews stopped. I don’t know that there’s a link between the acquisition and a falloff in Huckleberry’s marketing. But it’s possible Huckleberry is now less focused on the general public.
A 2024 case study from Farco Studio, a design agency that says it’s worked with Huckleberry, explains that the company is moving to a business-to-business model. Huckleberry’s LinkedIn page seems to confirm this. Its company overview refers to Huckleberry helping “business lenders, payroll providers, SMB SaaS, and more” unlock revenue. That’s not consumer-facing language.
Still, Huckleberry’s public-facing website persists. And spotty brand management is like bad hygiene. If the company isn’t taking care of its appearance, I worry about how well it takes care of its customers.
What policies does Huckleberry sell?
Huckleberry sells these policies on behalf of other insurance companies:
- General liability insurance.
- Business owner’s policies (BOPs), which include general liability, commercial property and business interruption coverage.
- Workers’ comp.
- Cyber liability insurance.
After you buy one of those policies, you may be able to add on some other types of insurance:
- Professional liability insurance.
- Umbrella insurance.
- Additional insured endorsements and waivers of subrogation.
- Hired and non-owned auto insurance.
- Equipment breakdown insurance.
- Employment practices liability insurance.
- Liquor liability insurance and spoilage coverage.
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How to get insurance from Huckleberry
Every time I review an insurance company, I try to get an online quote. The process gives me insight into what policies companies offer, when they refer shoppers elsewhere and whether they charge extra fees.
To start, Huckleberry asked for my industry, business name, number of employees and expected annual revenue. I also input my address and contact information.
I told Huckleberry I work as a sole proprietor doing marketing consulting. I said my annual revenue would be around $10,000. I use these same details for every quote I get.
Normally, consulting businesses need professional liability insurance. But that wasn’t one of Huckleberry’s recommendations for me. Instead, the system recommended workers’ comp, general liability or a BOP and cyber insurance.
Sole proprietors generally aren’t required to have workers’ comp. And a BOP isn’t really necessary for a home-based consulting business. But for the sake of getting a quote, I moved forward with the general liability insurance/BOP quote.
On the next screen, I had the option to add professional liability coverage. Huckleberry isn’t able to quote these online, though.
In general, if you know you need both general and professional liability insurance, try to get quotes for both at the same time. Many companies offer discounts when you bundle coverage. If you have to buy one policy before you can see quotes for the other, you might get stuck paying more than you should or having policies with two different companies.
Next, Huckleberry asked me for my business structure, the names of all owners and operators and how much of the business each one owns.
The next series of questions asked about my building — what it’s made of, when it was built and how many square feet my business takes up. These are important questions for property coverage, which is part of a BOP. I didn’t have the option to skip this even though I only wanted general liability insurance.
I selected my desired policy limits (the standard $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate). Huckleberry then generated my quotes.
I can choose between a general liability policy and a BOP, but not between multiple general liability policies. I’m not comparing quotes and choosing the best price. (Huckleberry says it’s possible to get multiple quotes, though.)
Still, The Hartford is a reputable brand, and these quotes are in line with other general liability quotes I’ve gotten using these details in 2026.
When I chose “select payment plan,” there was no option to pay in full. Instead, I had the option to make between two and 10 total payments over the course of a year. Huckleberry charges a $5 fee per installment payment.
Because you can’t make fewer than two payments, I couldn’t find a way to avoid paying at least $10 on top of my premium. But $5 per payment is comparable with other installment or monthly platform fees from other online insurance companies.
Huckleberry followed up with four phone calls over the next four business days, presumably to close the sale. That’s on the higher end of other companies I’ve gotten quotes from, but not by much. And the calls stopped after I didn’t pick up.
Methodology
Business insurance ratings methodology
NerdWallet rewards business insurance companies for reliability and good service. We calculate star ratings based on scores in about a dozen categories. These include:
- Each company's financial strength.
- How many complaints customers made relative to its market share.
- How easy it is to get coverage.
- How accessible customer service is.
Learn more about how we rate small-business insurance companies.
Our editorial team routinely fact-checks and updates these data points. We also adjust our scoring on an ongoing basis. This helps our star ratings reflect changing industry norms. For instance, in 2026, we began evaluating how easy insurers make it to add an additional insured.
Our ratings are a guide. But insurance policy details and prices can vary widely. We encourage you to shop around and compare several insurance quotes. NerdWallet does not receive compensation for any reviews. Read our editorial guidelines.
Insurer complaints methodology
One key factor in our star ratings is how many complaints insurance companies get. Here's how we arrive at that score.
Disappointed customers can file a complaint with their state's insurance department. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) collects, analyzes and groups complaints by business line and insurance company every year. A business line is a specific type of coverage, like workers’ comp.
Then, the NAIC calculates a complaint ratio for each company. It divides the company's share of complaints by its share of total premiums for each line of business. It then adds these ratio values to their official complaint index.
- A complaint ratio of 1 means a company received about the expected number of complaints relative to its size.
- A ratio of 2 means it received twice as many complaints as expected.
- A ratio of 0 means it received half as many complaints as expected.
NerdWallet obtains the raw NAIC data every year. We aggregate results at the company level and fact-check these results. Then we calculate a three-year average of each insurer's complaint ratio and convert it to a score for our star ratings.
Business insurance star ratings consider complaints about two lines of business: commercial liability and commercial property. We analyze complaint data on commercial auto and workers' comp policies too. But we don't currently incorporate these into our ratings since they're less universal.
