Last Updated on July 20, 2025 by Ewen Finser
Do you have employees working at different sites or spread out across various locations?
How do you manage to keep track of everyone and stay connected with your whole team?
With the right apps and software, managing and tracking your team can be easier than ever. From time tracking and scheduling to payroll and performance management, there are tools out there that can streamline your entire employee management process.
Let’s start with the popular app Connecteam. This platform keeps our team connected, organized, and efficient, no matter where they are. I love that we can manage scheduling, time tracking, communication, training, HR, and operations all from a single place. This platform is focused on helping employees who do not have a desk, or deskless employees.
Connecteam’s customizable forms and checklists make real-time reporting simple, whether it’s monthly safety checks, daily openings, or incident reports. I use these tools constantly. Before Connecteam, our documentation was scattered and hard to track. Now, the Knowledge Base lets us store up-to-date policies, SOPs, catalogs, and guides in one place, making information easy to find for everyone, especially new hires.
While I do recommend Connecteam, there are many other great options available. Let’s take a look at a few more.
Top Connecteam Alternatives at a Glance
- Best for businesses with many hourly workers – Homebase
- Best for businesses wanting to simplify HR – BambooHR
- Best for a mobile-first platform – Beekeeper
- Best for simple smart scheduling – Deputy
Next, let’s take a closer look at each of these options in more detail.
Homebase
Homebase is a user-friendly employee management app designed for small businesses with hourly workers. This brings it to a different level than Connecteam, which focuses only on deskless employees. Homebase simplifies scheduling, time tracking, payroll, team messaging, hiring, onboarding, and HR tasks. Homebase also makes it easy to handle rosters, time-off requests, and compliance, while offering features to boost employee satisfaction.
What I Like
Homebase is an excellent solution for businesses looking to streamline employee onboarding and staff management. As a comprehensive human resources platform, it consolidates essential tools such as scheduling, time tracking, team communication, payroll, hiring, and onboarding into one convenient place.
I really like their onboarding capabilities, and Homebase stands out by making it fast and straightforward to add new employees to our roster. We can promptly share their work schedules and any necessary documents, ensuring that new hires have everything they need from the very beginning. This helps our new team members settle in quickly and feel prepared for their roles right away.
What I love about Homebase is how quickly and easily we can get our new employees set up. The whole process feels intuitive, both for us and for the new team member. Once we add their information, Homebase instantly sends them an invite to join the online portal. From there, we can upload and share everything they need for a seamless onboarding, such as W-4s, payment setup forms, and other important documents. We also appreciate that I can include our own company-specific paperwork, so new hires have access to everything in a single, organized spot right from the start.
What I don’t like
Homebase handles onboarding in a fairly standard and old-fashioned way, focusing mostly on forms and paperwork. At the moment, we’re not able to upload videos or share video links as part of the onboarding process. So, if we want to provide training or welcome videos to new hires, we have to send them separately or use another platform.
The onboarding experience is also somewhat generic and isn’t easily customized for different team members. Since we have staff located in various countries, this uniform approach doesn’t always fit everyone’s needs. Some employees might benefit from a more personalized or region-specific onboarding process, which Homebase doesn’t currently offer.
Lastly, many features are not available with the lower tiered plans, which can be a limiting factor for growing companies tight on budget.
Pricing
Homebase has a range of pricing plans depending on what your business needs. The Basic plan is completely free for up to 10 employees at a single location and covers all the essentials such as basic scheduling, time tracking, and even point-of-sale integration.
For a little bit more, the Essentials plan is $24 per location each month and lets us add unlimited employees, plus we get advanced scheduling, time tracking, and team chat features.
The Plus plan, at $56 per location per month, adds handy tools for hiring, PTO management, and department permissions. And of course, there is an All-in-One plan available at $96 per location per month and includes onboarding, labor cost tracking, and a suite of HR features to really keep things running smoothly.
Bamboo
BambooHR is a full human resources platform offering tools to manage the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring and onboarding to payroll, time tracking, benefits administration, and performance management. It is easy to use and really optimized HR efficiency by having all employee information in one location for everyone. When my team tried it, we quickly saw that BambooHR offers much stronger HR features and more functionality compared to Connecteam.
What I Like
One thing I really appreciate about BambooHR is that it comes with a wide variety of ready-made reports, which saves a lot of time and effort. Unlike many other software platforms that expect us to create our own reports from scratch, BambooHR provides these as part of their package. This advanced reporting functionality is not available in any of the other platforms we explored, especially Connecteam, which has more basic reporting capabilities. We also find their built-in approval workflows to be very convenient, making the whole process smoother. Another bonus is their dedicated offboarding features, which help ensure nothing is overlooked when an employee leaves.
What I Don’t like
While BambooHR has its strengths, there are a few downsides to keep in mind. It doesn’t offer some of the more advanced features that larger teams might need, and its mobile functionality is limited compared to other platforms.
Additionally, if you’re on one of their lower-tier plans, phone support isn’t available, which can be frustrating if you need quick help. Although BambooHR markets itself to businesses of all sizes, there’s no free plan, so it may not be the best fit for small or newly established companies with tight budgets. Overall, it seems better suited for larger organizations that can take full advantage of its features.
Pricing
BambooHR offers a free trial so you can try out the platform before committing, but they don’t list their prices online. They offer two main plans called Core and Pro, along with a range of additional add on features as needed. BambooHR highlights their flexible approach, suggesting they can tailor a package that suits our specific business needs, mixing and matching options for the best fit. They also emphasize having one simple monthly payment, making it easier to budget and manage costs. However, we needed to get in touch with their team to get actual one monthly payment details for our business.
Beekeeper
Beekeeper is a flexible app focused on making communication easier for teams who are always on the go or away from a desk. It brings all our messaging tools together in one easy-to-use mobile app, letting us chat one-on-one, create group conversations, and send company updates. Plus, we can quickly share things like videos and documents, so everyone stays connected and in the loop, no matter where they are located.
Beekeeper is a user-friendly platform that keeps our team connected, especially when we have field workers or employees on the go. We get instant company updates with real-time notifications and can easily share important information from our phones, helping everyone stay informed and productive.
What I Like
Beekeeper stands out for its robust analytics features, giving us valuable insights into how our business is running and where we can improve. It also gives us multiple ways to engage with our employees, helping us keep everyone involved and connected. Their mobile capabilities are impressive too, allowing us to manage everything no matter where we are. Plus, the workflow tools make it simple to automate important tasks and processes, saving us time and helping everything run more smoothly.
What I Don’t like
Beekeeper can be a bit challenging to get started with, and setting everything up does take quite a bit of time and effort. It’s not the most straightforward platform for beginners. One other thing to keep in mind is that Beekeeper doesn’t offer a built-in time tracking tool, so if we need to manage work hours, we’ll have to rely on other methods. Scheduling shifts also has to be done manually, which might add some extra work for managers.
Pricing
Beekeeper does offer a free plan, which is a nice option for small or growing businesses with up to 30 users. However, there are some important limitations to be aware of. For instance, you won’t have access to features that let you approve or track employee requests, which is something that can be pretty important for running a smooth operation. The free plan also leaves out all of the HR tools, so if you’re looking for comprehensive HR support, you’ll need to consider one of their paid options.
Beekeeper is on the more expensive side, with pricing tiers that start at $2,160 per user each year, even though they do provide a free trial. This platform runs on a subscription model and is packed with a variety of tools, including secure channels for employee communication, ways to digitize processes, and features for tracking employee engagement. We can choose between different plans, such as Essential, Core, and Premium, depending on what features our business needs.
Deputy
Deputy Deputy is a modern and easy-to-use platform that helps us handle many aspects of employee management, especially for teams with hourly employees. It offers a fresh approach to tasks like scheduling, tracking time and attendance, managing tasks, and keeping everyone in touch. We can quickly build staff schedules and send them out to any device, making it easy for everyone to stay updated. It also allows us to monitor when team members clock in and out, and we can easily sync timesheets with our payroll system.
What I Like
If an employee calls in sick and we suddenly need coverage, we can find someone to fill in with just a tap on our mobile device. Deputy also makes it easy for our team members to swap shifts themselves right from their phones, which is incredibly convenient.
When it comes to payroll, we don’t have to worry about manual data entry. All our employee time card information flows directly into Deputy, and we can process payroll with a single click using popular payroll providers, making payday simple and stress-free.
Deputy also helps us build smarter schedules by showing us when our business is the busiest and when it’s quieter. This way, we can adjust staff levels to match demand and better manage our labor costs. This “smart scheduling” option is a nice perk that helps us build more efficient schedules with less effort. This is something Connecteam doesn’t currently provide, so it’s a unique benefit that sets this platform apart.
What I Don’t like
One thing we’ve noticed is that the app can be a bit unreliable at times. It can occasionally freeze or become glitchy, which slows us down when we’re trying to update schedules or make changes quickly. We’ve also found their customer support isn’t always there when we need help, and when we do reach out, the service can be underwhelming.
Pricing
Deputy offers several reasonable pricing plans to fit different business needs. The Scheduling and Time & Attendance plans are both $4.50 per user per month and include features such as employee scheduling, auto-scheduling, timesheets, payroll and POS integration, leave management, a news feed, tasking, 24/7 email support, analytics, and more.
The Premium plan costs $6 per user per month and combines all scheduling and time tracking tools with reporting features. For larger businesses with over 250 employees or specialized requirements, the Enterprise plan offers everything in Premium, plus additional options like single sign-on, advanced analytics, custom pay rates, and dedicated support, with pricing available upon request. All plans come with a free trial and offer various add-ons.
Summing Up the Top Connecteam Alternatives
Managing a team that’s spread across different locations can feel overwhelming, but the right apps and software can make it a whole lot easier. Whether you need to track hours, schedule shifts, manage payroll, or boost communication, there are plenty of tools designed to streamline every part of your employee management process.
While I love Connecteam, it’s not right for every business, and there are other options out there. Homebase is perfect for businesses with hourly workers. It takes the hassle out of scheduling, time tracking, and onboarding, making the setup process for new employees quick and intuitive. BambooHR is another excellent option if you’re looking to simplify HR. It’s a comprehensive platform that covers the full employee lifecycle, from hiring to offboarding. Its built-in reports and approval workflows are real time-savers, and the system is user-friendly.
If your workforce is often on the move, Beekeeper is designed for mobile-first communication. It offers robust analytics and easy ways to connect with your team, automate workflows, and keep everyone in the loop. Then there’s Deputy, which offers a modern, straightforward approach to scheduling and time management for hourly teams. I love that everyone can swap shifts or find cover easily from their phones, and that timesheet data integrates right into payroll.
Each of these apps brings something a little different to the table. Depending on your business size, budget, and specific needs, you’re sure to find a platform that takes the stress out of employee management, so you can focus on growing your team and your business.