Who shouldn’t use Daypart (and what to use instead)

Most scheduling-app posts end by telling you to sign up. This one tells you when not to. Daypart builds a schedule, gets it to your crew’s phones, and handles the changes — open shifts, swaps, time off. That’s the whole product. If that’s your problem, it’s a good fit. If your problem is somewhere else, you’ll be happier with a different tool, and you’ll find that out faster here than from a trial.

The one-question test

What do you need the tool to do on Tuesday? If the answer is “get next week’s schedule built and into everyone’s hands,” keep reading. If it’s “tell me how many hours people worked” or “run payroll,” the next section is for you.

Don’t switch to Daypart if you need…

• A time clock (punch in and out, timesheets). Daypart doesn’t have one, and it isn’t on a coming-soon list. Homebase, Connecteam, Deputy, When I Work and 7shifts all include one — on some of them, only on a paid plan.
• Payroll or tax filing. Daypart doesn’t do payroll; you can export hours to whatever does. Homebase and 7shifts sell payroll as an add-on, or you can pair Daypart with a standalone payroll service.
• POS integration or labor-cost-to-sales numbers. Daypart doesn’t connect to your point-of-sale system. 7shifts does, and it’s built for restaurants.
• Tip pooling. Not something Daypart does. 7shifts offers it as an add-on or on its top plan.
• Hiring and onboarding paperwork. Not our product. Homebase and 7shifts both offer hiring tools.
• Break-law and predictive-scheduling compliance tools. Daypart has no compliance engine. Deputy does, and so does 7shifts on its Pro plan and up.
• GPS clock-in or geofencing. Daypart doesn’t have it. Connecteam, Deputy and ZoomShift list it.
• Client appointment booking. Daypart schedules your staff, not your customers. Look at Vagaro, Zenoti or Square Appointments.
• A much bigger operation. Daypart is built for teams of roughly 5 to 75 people across up to 10 locations. Past that, look at a tool built for larger teams, such as Deputy.

The time clock is the one people hit most often. Almost every other scheduling app ships one, and plenty of owners assume it comes with the territory. We’d rather you know in the first minute than the twelfth.

Why we left things out

Daypart is built and maintained by one developer. Every feature is one more thing to keep working and one more screen between you and the schedule. The bet is that many small teams don’t want an HR platform — they want quick answers to four questions: who’s working, who’s available, what shifts are open, and what changed.

That’s a bet, not a fact. If you try it and find that having no time clock is a deal-breaker, that’s a fair verdict, and the list above is where to go next.

Do consider Daypart if…

• Your schedule lives in a spreadsheet, a screenshot or a whiteboard photo, and your group chat is where changes get sorted out.
• You’d like a call-out to be a posted open shift that qualified people can claim, instead of six individual texts.
• You collect availability and time-off requests in messages and rebuild them from memory when you write the schedule.
• You run a few small teams or locations and want one place to see them.
• The person building the schedule is also working the floor, and it needs to take minutes, not an evening.

The free-plan question

Several tools have free plans, and for a small team one of them may be all you need. As of October 2026:

• Connecteam is free for up to 10 users, with the full feature set, including a GPS time clock.
• Homebase is free for one location and up to 10 employees: basic scheduling and a basic time clock. More advanced scheduling tools are on paid plans.
• 7shifts is free for one location and up to 15 employees: scheduling, open-shift claiming, and availability and time-off requests. The time clock starts on its first paid plan.
• Sling is free for up to 30 users: scheduling, open shifts and time-off requests. No shift swaps or time clock.
• ZoomShift is free for up to 20 users at one location, and only schedules two weeks ahead.

If one of those covers what you need, use it. Free beats $20 a month, and we’d say that to your face.

Deputy and When I Work have no free plan; both charge per person. When I Work starts at $2.50 per user, so for a team of 8 people or fewer it costs the same or less than Daypart’s flat price. Past that, flat pulls ahead. Daypart is $20 a month for the whole team, everything included, with a 30-day free trial.

So the question isn’t free or paid. It’s which of the things you need are behind the paywall, and whether the cap on people or locations fits your crew now and next year.

About phones

Daypart has an iOS app and a web app that works in any browser. If your crew is mostly on Android, the web app works, but it isn’t the same as a native app — try it with a couple of people before you commit.

It’s fine to use two tools

Pairing Daypart with a time clock or a payroll tool is normal. Build and share the schedule here; run time and pay wherever you already do. If you’d rather have everything under one roof, one of the all-in-one tools above is the better fit, and that’s a reasonable choice.

Where that leaves you

• Need a time clock, payroll, POS data, compliance or hiring? Use one of the tools above.
• Need a schedule built and in everyone’s hands without an HR platform on top? Try Daypart free for 30 days.

Side-by-side pages: Homebase, When I Work, Deputy, 7shifts, Connecteam and Sling, each with a “choose them instead if…” section.

If you run a bar, a restaurant, a café or a shop, the industry pages show what the fit looks like day to day: bars and breweries, restaurants, cafés, retail.