The self-hosted Homebase alternative
Rostera: Self-hosted staff shift scheduler — a weekly rota, exact hours, double-booking caught. Own it once, run it on your own server, and stop paying Homebase every month.
Stop renting Homebase.
Rostera3 months of Homebase costs what Rostera costs once.
Buy onceHow we counted: The entry PAID tier on annual billing, per location. Homebase is the one rival on this product that does not meter people — employees are unlimited and the location is the unit — so a big single-site team is where it is strongest and a multi-site operator is where it costs. Rostera is $69 once, for any number of staff on any number of sites you run it on under its license.
Homebase meters by LOCATION rather than by employee, and adds payroll as a second meter with its own base fee plus a per-head rate.
“payroll is available as an add-on product on all plans for a standard $49 base fee / month + $6 per employee paid / month (read 2026-09-24)”, their own page, read 2026-09-03
Homebase keeps a genuinely free tier for a single site of up to ten people, with scheduling in it rather than behind a trial.
“basicget started with homebase and set up a new team.$0/ location / month for 1 location, up to 10 employees”, their own page
Stay with Homebase if you want hiring, messaging, payroll and time clocks in one hosted account across sites. Rostera is the rota itself — a weekly schedule, exact hours and double-bookings caught — bought once and run on your own server.
What Rostera deliberately doesn't do is on its product page.
Why owning beats renting Homebase.
No monthly, per-seat or per-location fees. The license is perpetual.
It never lives in Homebase's cloud.
Records and users are limited by your hosting, not by a pricing tier.
Self-hosted software can't be sunset or repriced out from under you.
The fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up and apply updates yourself. See the product page for its limits, and the full Rostera vs renting comparison.
Questions about moving off Homebase.
Is Rostera payroll?
Is it a time clock?
How exact are the hours?
MySQL or SQLite?
Related on this site
Sources
- Homebase: price checked 2026-09-03, source“basicget started with homebase and set up a new team.$0/ location / month for 1 location, up to 10 employees ... essentialssimplify the process of tracking & managing shifts.$30$24/ location / month unlimited employees ... (2026-09-24) payroll is available as an add-on product on all plans for a…”
Competitor prices change, so always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown. This vendor is tracked in the Price Observatory: every figure verbatim, dated, re-checked quarterly.