Shiftie Review 2026

Last updated: January 2026

If you're still building staff rotas in a spreadsheet and texting shift changes to a WhatsApp group, Shiftie is the upgrade you need. Built in the UK for hospitality, healthcare, and retail, it handles scheduling, time tracking, availability, shift swaps, and team communication in one app. At $1.30/user/month to start, it's hard to argue against at least trying it.

Building Schedules

The drag-and-drop schedule builder overlays staff availability so you see who's actually free before assigning shifts. Templates save common patterns (the Monday lunch crew, the Saturday evening rotation) so you're not rebuilding from scratch every week. Conflicts flag automatically.

Staff submit their availability through the mobile app. No more chasing people for their hours. When coverage gaps appear, you can post open shifts that available staff claim, or enable shift swapping with manager approval. Both features cut the "can someone cover for me?" phone calls down significantly.

Time Tracking and Compliance

Staff clock in and out through the app or a designated device. Shiftie compares actual times against scheduled shifts, flagging late arrivals, early departures, and overtime. Time data exports for payroll processing.

The compliance layer is where the UK focus shows. Configure Working Time Directive rules, break requirements, and rest period constraints. Shiftie warns you before you schedule something that violates regulations, which saves headaches for care homes, NHS contractors, and hospitality businesses with underage staff.

Built-in messaging keeps schedule-related communication in one place. Announce changes, message the team or individuals, and stop relying on personal WhatsApp groups for work coordination.

Pricing

Starter: $1.30/user/month (about £1). Core scheduling, time tracking, and communication.

Professional: $3.25/user/month (about £2.50). Adds advanced scheduling features, integrations, and priority support.

Enterprise: Custom pricing for multi-location operations.

For a 20-person team, the Starter plan costs about $26/month. Even Professional is just $65/month. That's cheaper than any comparable scheduling tool I've seen.

What Works / What's Missing

Works:

• Dead cheap. At £1-2.50 per user, price is never the objection.
• The availability and shift-swap features genuinely reduce manager workload
• UK compliance baked in (Working Time Directive, break rules, rest periods)
• Mobile-first. Staff live in the app.

Missing:

• Newer platform with less market presence. You won't find thousands of reviews or a huge knowledge base.
• Integration options are limited compared to Deputy or When I Work
• UK-centric compliance. If you're outside the UK, the regulatory features may not apply.
• Advanced features (labor forecasting, demand-based scheduling) that larger operations need aren't here yet

Shiftie vs. Deputy vs. Rotacloud

Deputy ($4.50+/user) has more features, more integrations, and works globally. But it costs 3-4x more. If you're a 15-person pub in Manchester, that difference matters.

Rotacloud is the closest competitor: also UK-based, similar features, similar price point. Slightly more established but Shiftie's interface feels more modern.

When I Work dominates the US market. Solid product, but the compliance features are built for American labor law, not UK regulations.

How Shiftie works

Shiftie is UK-built cloud software for staff scheduling and team management, aimed at shift-based businesses: hospitality, retail, attractions, museums, healthcare and escape rooms. It covers the full shift lifecycle, from building and publishing rotas to collecting availability and leave requests, clocking staff in and out, and turning all of that into timesheets you export for payroll. It also holds basic HR records (contact details, hourly rates, job roles, line managers, documents), so scheduling data and employee data sit in one place. It is sold as one flat plan rather than a feature ladder.

You start by setting up venues or schedules, job roles and employees, then build rotas by drag-and-drop using saveable shift and schedule templates. The system suggests assignments, flags conflicts, and shows live shift cost against target weekly hours as you build. Staff log recurring or one-off unavailability and request leave, which is checked against their annual allowance and against existing time off. Open shifts can be published for staff to volunteer for, and swaps are handled in-app.

Clocking happens two ways: employees clock in on their own phone with GPS restrictions (so they cannot clock in from the car park), or everyone clocks in by PIN on one shared device in Portal mode. Absences can be logged straight from Time Clock. Clock data auto-generates timesheets, which managers edit and approve, then export filtered by period, schedule, employee or job role as a spreadsheet to feed into payroll software. Integrations are narrow and vertical-specific: DigiTickets and TrekkSoft (pre-booked visitor numbers shown on the rota), eola (instructor availability), ICRTouch EPOS (sales data against rotas), Drawbridge (escape rooms), InfoVetted (pre-employment background checks), plus calendar feeds that push shifts into personal calendars. There is an API described as API-first with documentation and examples, but access has to be arranged by contacting the company.

Where Shiftie wins

• One flat price with everything included. Scheduling, availability, HR records, leave, documents, time clock, timesheets, multi-venue, messaging and reports all sit in the single £2.75/employee/month plan, with no feature tiers to upgrade through.
• Demand-aware scheduling for visitor-driven businesses. DigiTickets and TrekkSoft put pre-booked visitor counts directly on the rota, and ICRTouch pushes EPOS sales data in, so staffing is set against expected volume rather than guesswork.
• Labour cost is visible while you build. Shift cost and target-hours tracking live in the rota view, so you see the cost as you schedule rather than after payroll runs.
• Two clocking modes. Personal-phone clocking with GPS geofencing plus a shared PIN Portal device covers sites where staff do not use their own phones.
• Low-commitment trial. 28 days free with no card details required, and month-to-month cancellation with access through the current billing period.

Where it falls short

• No native iOS or Android app. The mobile experience is a Progressive Web App you save to the homescreen. Fine for most teams, but it rules out anything needing app-store distribution, MDM push-install, or reliable native background behaviour.
• The integration list is very short. Six named partners, mostly UK attractions and hospitality tooling. There is no named payroll, accounting or HRIS integration, payroll is a spreadsheet export you import yourself, and no Zapier or Make listing appears on the integrations page.
• API access is not self-serve. The site says to contact the company to arrange it, so you cannot evaluate or build against it during a trial without a conversation first.
• GBP-only pricing with a minimum. £2.75/employee/month with a £82.50 minimum covering the first 30 employees, so a 5-person team still pays for 30. Custom pricing kicks in above 200 employees.
• Multi-language support is undocumented. The vendor site does not state whether the employee-facing app supports multiple languages, which matters for mixed-language hospitality and retail teams.

Who should use Shiftie

Small-to-mid UK shift businesses with roughly 10 to 200 staff in hospitality, retail, attractions and healthcare that want scheduling, time clock, leave and light HR in one flat-priced tool. It is a particularly strong match if you already run DigiTickets, TrekkSoft, eola or ICRTouch, because the rota then reflects real booked demand instead of estimates.

Skip it if you need a native mobile app, a direct payroll or HRIS integration, a large integration marketplace, or a US-centric product with compliance features like predictive scheduling laws and tip handling. The 28-day trial with no card is the cheapest way to find out which side of that line you fall on.

FAQ

Shiftie does one thing well: making shift scheduling less painful for UK small businesses. It won't replace Deputy for a 500-person operation, and it won't help if you need deep integrations with American payroll systems. But for a restaurant, care home, or retail shop that's currently managing rotas on paper or in Excel, Shiftie is the easiest and cheapest step up. Build next week's schedule in the free trial. You'll know in an hour.