Shiftly vs When I Work pricing: $1,800 vs $29 once

OneTimeSuite Blog · Published 2026-07-21

When I Work is $2.50 per user per month and Deputy starts at $4.50 — for 20 employees that is $600 to over $1,000 a year, forever. Shiftly is the useful 90% of both: a drag-drop weekly calendar, swaps, open shifts and a live labor-cost estimate on your own server. $29, once.

This is the full pricing breakdown: what When I Work actually costs over one, two and three years, what Shiftly gives you for $29 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.

What When I Work actually costs you

When I Work prices per user — $2.50/user/mo — so the subscription grows with every user you add. The comparison below uses the catalog's annual figure of $600, which works out to roughly 20 users at that rate; the per-user table underneath shows how the bill scales either way.

When I Work bills per user, so the total scales with headcount:

Three years in, the gap is $1,771 — and every year after that adds another $600 to the subscription side of the ledger.

Shiftly vs When I Work, feature by feature

Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:

What you get for $29, once

Self-hosted drag-drop scheduling, swaps, open shifts and live labor cost — no per-employee fees. The highlights:

• 🖱️ Drag-drop weekly schedule — Drag shifts between employees and days; shift templates like Morning or Close fill a week in two clicks.
• 🟥 Availability and time off — Weekly windows and approved time off, with unavailable, time-off and double-booked conflicts flagged red on the grid.
• 🔁 Shift swaps — Employee-to-employee swap requests with manager approval; approving reassigns the shift instantly.
• 🙋 Open-shift pickup board — Post unfilled shifts and assign a claimer in one click.

One month of scheduling one small team more than pays for Shiftly, and it never bills per head again.

Switching is 3 steps

1. Buy once on Whop. One payment of $29 gets you the packaged Windows installer with updates, or clone the MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/shift-scheduler-mvp and run it free.
2. Run desktop or deploy. Run npm run desktop as a local window, or docker compose onto a $5 VPS when you need it public.
3. Build the week. Drag shifts onto the grid, publish, and affected employees get notified.

When paying When I Work is still the right call

Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that When I Work's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $2.50/user/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.

If that's you, Shiftly is $29, once. For the deeper dive, read the Shiftly vs When I Work head-to-head.

Frequently asked questions

Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — Shiftly is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/shift-scheduler-mvp. The $29 buys the packaged Windows installer and updates; building from source is free.

Where does my roster and wage data live?
In a SQLite file on your own server or LAN — your roster and wages never leave your box.

Is this a subscription in disguise?
No. $29 once, no renewal, no per-employee monthly fee.

More on When I Work pricing

Shiftly — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns