The workforce management software market is worth $9.76 billion in 2026 — and it’s growing at 4.29% annually (Mordor Intelligence). That kind of growth means two things: there are more options than ever for scheduling tools, and not all of them are built for the same use case.
If you’re running a 24/7 support team — two shifts, rotating agents, holiday coverage, and overtime chaos — Deputy might feel like you’re using a restaurant staffing tool for a call center. It handles hospitality scheduling beautifully. Distributed, always-on support teams? That’s a different problem.
This guide compares 5 Deputy alternatives purpose-tested for support operations: shift handoffs, overnight coverage, OT visibility, and keeping distributed teams in sync.
| If You Want To… | Use This | Best For | Starting Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run a free 24/7 schedule with OT visibility | Manage Roster | Distributed support teams | Free (up to 10 agents) |
| Track time for hourly workers at 1 location | When I Work | Single-location teams | $2.50/user/month |
| Manage a single physical location with HR tools | Homebase | Brick-and-mortar teams | Free (1 location) |
| Keep scheduling dead simple for small teams | ZoomShift | Teams under 20 | $2/user/month |
| Get basic scheduling at zero cost | Sling | Budget-first teams ≤30 users | Free |
Deputy is a solid tool. It powers scheduling for hundreds of thousands of hospitality, retail, and healthcare businesses. But support teams have a specific set of requirements that don’t map well onto those verticals:
1. 24-hour day visibility. Most scheduling tools show 6 AM–10 PM. Support operations run midnight to midnight. If you can’t see the full 24-hour timeline at once, you’re flying blind.
2. Overtime event tracking. In support, an agent staying 2 extra hours to cover a sick colleague is normal. You need that surfaced immediately — not buried in a timesheet review at month-end.
3. Holiday group complexity. Support teams serve multiple regions. A Bangladesh agent follows BD public holidays; a Philippines agent follows PH holidays. Deputy doesn’t handle multi-region holiday groups well.
4. Per-user pricing doesn’t scale. Deputy’s Lite plan is $5/user/month. For a 30-agent support team, that’s $150/month minimum before any add-ons. Teams with tighter margins need either a flat-rate model or a generous free tier.
5. Built for shift handoffs, not restaurant sections. Deputy’s “area” concept comes from hospitality. Support teams think in queues, time zones, and coverage windows — not sections or departments.
The result: support team leads spend time hacking Deputy’s structure to fit their workflow, or they end up rebuilding the same spreadsheet they were trying to replace.
We evaluated each tool across six criteria:
We did not evaluate payroll processing, POS integrations, or HR compliance — those matter for other use cases, but not for 24/7 support scheduling.
| Tool | Free Tier | Paid Starts At | 24h Day View | OT Events | Holiday Groups | Multi-Region |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manage Roster | Up to 10 agents | $0 (generous free) | ✅ Native | ✅ Yes | ✅ PH + BD groups | ✅ Yes |
| When I Work | 14-day trial only | $2.50/user/mo | ❌ No | ⚠️ Basic | ❌ No | ⚠️ Limited |
| Homebase | 1 location, unlimited staff | $24.95/location/mo | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| ZoomShift | Limited | $2/user/mo | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Sling | Up to 30 users | $2/user/mo | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No |
Manage Roster is the only tool on this list built from the ground up for distributed, always-on support operations. Everything about it — the day view, the OT system, the holiday groups, the AI assistant — was designed for teams that never clock out.
What makes it different:
True 24-hour day view with live NOW indicator. The schedule shows the full 24-hour window. A green “NOW” marker shows the current time on the timeline, so team leads can see at a glance who’s on shift, who’s coming up, and where coverage gaps exist — in real time, not on a static report.
OT Event System. When an agent works outside their scheduled hours, Manage Roster surfaces it as an OT event immediately. You see who triggered it, when, and how many extra hours. No more discovering at payroll that someone worked 60 hours last week.
Holiday Groups (PH/BD). You can assign agents to a Philippine holiday calendar or Bangladesh holiday calendar. This means you schedule around the right public holidays for each region without maintaining parallel spreadsheets. For teams supporting customers in multiple countries with agents across Southeast Asia, this is a material time-saver.
AI Scheduling Assistant. The built-in AI assistant helps with shift suggestions and coverage analysis. It’s not just a chatbot wrapper — it understands your roster structure and can recommend coverage adjustments based on your team’s patterns.
Workspace architecture. One workspace holds your full team, shift structures, and schedules. You don’t need to create separate “locations” or “departments” for different queues — the structure maps to how support teams actually operate.
Pricing:
Best for: Support team managers running 2–3 shift rotations with agents in multiple countries. Especially strong for teams with 5–30 agents who need 24h visibility and can’t afford to miss OT.
Limitations: Newer product — fewer third-party integrations than legacy tools. No payroll processing or POS connectivity (by design — it’s a scheduling tool, not an HR suite).
When I Work is a polished, well-established scheduling tool with a strong mobile experience and solid time-tracking features. It’s a good Deputy alternative for teams that are location-based and need the scheduling + time clock combination at a lower price point.
Key strengths:
Pricing:
For a 20-person team: $50–$200/month depending on plan.
Limitations for support teams: When I Work assumes a standard business day. Overnight shifts and 24-hour scheduling windows require workarounds. There’s no native OT event system — you track overtime via time reports after the fact. Multi-region holiday calendars aren’t supported. If your team spans geographies, you’ll manage holidays manually.
Best for: Small support teams (5–25 agents) at a single location where time-clock accuracy matters more than 24h scheduling visibility.
Homebase is the most feature-rich free scheduling tool available — but the “free” tier is specifically for one physical location with unlimited staff. If you’re running a support operation from a single office (or have agents at one site), you get a lot for $0.
Key strengths:
Pricing:
For a 20-person team at 1 location: $0–$99.95/month (flat rate, not per user).
Limitations for support teams: Homebase is built for brick-and-mortar. The scheduling model assumes physical locations. Distributed support teams with remote agents across multiple countries don’t fit the location-based structure. There’s no 24h day view, no OT event system, and no multi-region holiday support. The free tier is powerful if you have a single office — but most modern support teams are distributed.
Best for: Support teams operating out of a single physical office with 10+ agents, where the flat-rate pricing beats per-user tools significantly.
ZoomShift positions itself as the simple, clean alternative to over-engineered scheduling tools. If your team has 20 or fewer people and you want to get a schedule published in under 10 minutes, ZoomShift delivers that experience.
Key strengths:
Pricing:
Limitations for support teams: ZoomShift doesn’t have 24h scheduling views, OT event visibility, or multi-region holiday support. Reporting is basic — you can see hours, but not detailed OT breakdowns or coverage analytics. The product is designed for simplicity, which means advanced use cases (multiple time zones, overnight shifts, holiday group management) hit walls quickly.
Best for: Very small support teams (under 15 agents), or teams that just need to get off spreadsheets fast without a complex setup process.
Sling leads with a free plan that covers up to 30 users for basic shift scheduling. If your constraint is pure budget — you need something better than a spreadsheet and you need it for $0 — Sling is the honest answer.
Key strengths:
Pricing:
For a 20-person team: $0 (free), $40/month (Premium), or $80/month (Business).
Limitations for support teams: The free plan is deliberately limited — no time tracking, no overtime monitoring, no labor cost data. You need Premium ($2/user) for OT tracking, which is a core need for support ops. Even on paid plans, Sling doesn’t offer a true 24h day view or multi-region holiday calendars. It’s optimized for retail and service workers, not distributed digital teams.
Best for: Budget-first teams of 15–30 agents who need to move off spreadsheets immediately and can live with basic scheduling until they grow into a more purpose-built tool.
| Feature | Manage Roster | When I Work | Homebase | ZoomShift | Sling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✅ Up to 10 agents | ❌ Trial only | ✅ 1 location | ⚠️ Limited | ✅ Up to 30 users |
| 24h day view | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Live NOW indicator | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| OT event system | ✅ Real-time | ⚠️ Reports only | ⚠️ Essentials+ | ❌ | ⚠️ Premium+ |
| Multi-region holidays | ✅ PH + BD | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| AI scheduling assistant | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Shift swap requests | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Time clock | ⚠️ Planned | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ Premium |
| Mobile app | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Team messaging | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ | ✅ |
| Multi-location | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ Paid | ⚠️ | ✅ Paid |
| No credit card for free | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Running the numbers for a 20-person support team across a full year:
| Tool | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manage Roster | $0 | $0 | Up to 10 agents free; contact for 20+ |
| When I Work | $50–$140 | $600–$1,680 | $2.50–$7/user/month depending on plan |
| Homebase | $0–$99.95 | $0–$1,199 | Free for 1 location; $99.95 for All-in-One |
| ZoomShift | $40 | $480 | ~$2/user/month estimate |
| Sling | $0–$80 | $0–$960 | Free basic; $4/user for Business |
| Deputy (baseline) | $100–$180 | $1,200–$2,160 | $5–$9/user/month (Lite to Pro) |
Key takeaway: Deputy at $5–$9/user/month costs 2–4× more than most alternatives on this list, for features that weren’t designed for support operations. For teams under 10 agents, Manage Roster’s free tier eliminates the cost conversation entirely.
1. Importing Deputy’s mental model into the new tool. Deputy uses “areas” as its core scheduling primitive. Other tools use locations, departments, or just open shifts. If you rebuild your Deputy structure without rethinking it, you’ll end up with the same friction in a different interface. Map your team’s real structure — queues, shifts, time zones — and build from scratch.
2. Choosing a tool based on feature lists, not 24h use cases. Most scheduling tools show you a Monday–Sunday, 6 AM–10 PM calendar. That looks fine in demos. At 11 PM when you’re trying to confirm overnight coverage, you realize you’re stitching together information from two-day views. Always test a tool with an actual overnight shift scenario before committing.
3. Underestimating the overtime problem. Support teams have OT. Agents cover sick colleagues, escalations run long, new team members get extra onboarding shifts. If your tool surfaces overtime only in monthly reports, you’ll approve it before you see it. Look specifically for tools that flag OT events as they happen — Manage Roster does this; most others don’t.
Q: Is Manage Roster really free for small teams? Yes — 1 workspace, up to 10 agents, no credit card required. You can set up your full schedule, configure holiday groups, and use the AI assistant without paying anything. There’s no trial expiry. Start here.
Q: What’s the main reason support teams leave Deputy? The most common reasons we hear: per-user pricing that scales painfully at 20+ agents, the lack of a true 24h day view, and the absence of real-time OT visibility. Deputy works well for hospitality — it wasn’t designed with overnight support coverage in mind.
Q: Can I use multiple tools together (e.g., Sling for scheduling + something else for OT)? You can, but it usually creates more problems than it solves. Data lives in two places, agents get notifications from two apps, and you manually reconcile OT records against the schedule. If OT visibility matters (it should), use a single tool that handles both.
Q: Does When I Work support overnight shifts? It supports them technically — you can create a shift from 10 PM to 6 AM. But the standard day view doesn’t render overnight shifts clearly, and there’s no 24h visualization. For occasional overnight shifts it’s workable; for teams that run 24/7 it’s consistently frustrating.
Q: Homebase is free — why isn’t it the obvious winner? Homebase’s free tier is excellent for brick-and-mortar teams at a single location. Support teams with remote agents in multiple countries hit its walls quickly: no multi-region holiday calendars, no 24h view, and the per-location pricing model doesn’t fit distributed teams. The free tier is genuinely good — just not for this use case.
Q: What if my team grows beyond 10 agents — does Manage Roster still work? Yes. Manage Roster offers paid plans for larger teams. The free tier handles 10 agents, which covers a lot of small support operations. For teams of 15–50, contact them directly for current pricing — it’s significantly below Deputy’s rates.
Q: Is ZoomShift worth it for a 10-person team? If simplicity is your top priority and you don’t need 24h scheduling or OT event tracking, ZoomShift is fine. But at $2/user/month for 10 people, you’re paying $20/month for a tool that has less functionality than Manage Roster’s free tier. The math doesn’t favor it unless ZoomShift’s specific UX clicks better for your team.
Q: How long does it take to set up Manage Roster for a real team? Most teams report getting a working 24h schedule live within 30–60 minutes. The workspace setup asks for agents, shifts, and holiday groups — not a complex org chart. You can be operational the same day you sign up.
Deputy is a capable tool — for the use case it was designed for. If you’re running hospitality or retail, it’s a strong choice. For 24/7 support operations with distributed agents, rotating shifts, real-time OT visibility, and multi-region holiday complexity, it’s fighting the wrong problem.
The five alternatives here solve different parts of that problem:
If your team runs 24/7 and you want a tool that was designed for that reality — not adapted from a restaurant scheduling app — start with Manage Roster for free. No credit card. No time limit. Just a schedule that actually shows your overnight coverage.
Pricing data verified February 2026. Deputy pricing: $5–$9/user/month (Lite–Pro). All pricing subject to change — verify on vendor websites before purchasing.