Ownware

Rostera — Staff Shift Scheduler & Rota (PHP + MySQL, Self-Hosted) vs. renting SaaS

Self-hosted staff shift scheduler — a weekly rota, exact hours, double-booking caught.

The subscription math

Rostera — Staff Shift Scheduler & Rota (PHP + MySQL, Self-Hosted) — yours
$59.00
one-time · self-hosted · your data, your server
Buy once
When I Work — rented
Essentials $2.50/user/mo, Pro $5.00/user/mo [1]
Break-even: 8 months of When I Work equals the one-time price.
Assumption: Per-seat monthly. Figure shown for 3 staff; Rostera is one payment, unlimited staff.
Deputy — rented
Lite $5, Core $6.50, Pro $9 per user/month, with a USD $30/month minimum spend on monthly plans [2]
Break-even: 2 months of Deputy equals the one-time price.
Assumption: Per-seat with a $30/mo floor, so small teams pay at least that every month. Rostera has no seats and no recurring bill.

Savings calculator

SaaS figures use the cited plan price above (see the sources below); per-seat plans scale by the seat count from the same cited price. This is arithmetic, not a quote.

Also in this category

Sling [3]

Free tier; paid Premium/Business per-user
Free scheduling tier; paid per-user tiers exist but the price did not render on our 2026-07-22 headless fetch - listed without a monthly figure rather than guess.

7shifts [4]

Free (Comp) tier; paid Entree/The Works per location
Free tier for small teams; paid per-location tiers. USD price did not render (page served CAD $79.99/mo/location to our fetch, geo-dependent) - not used as a USD figure.

Why owning beats renting here

  • One payment. No per-month, per-seat, or per-location fees — the license is perpetual.
  • Your data stays on your server. Customer records never live in someone else's cloud.
  • No plan ceilings. Records, users, and usage are limited by your hosting, not a pricing tier.
  • It keeps working if the vendor doesn't. Self-hosted software can't be sunset out from under you.

Fair trade-offs: you host it, you back it up, and updates are yours to apply — see the product page for honest limitations.

Sources

  1. When I Work — price checked 2026-07-21 — source
    “$2.50 and $5.00 per user per month tiers shown on the pricing page”
  2. Deputy — price checked 2026-08-02 — source
    “there is a minimum monthly spend of USD $30 ... per month per invoice on our monthly Lite, Core & Pro plans from September 1, 2025”
  3. Sling — price checked 2026-08-02 — source
    “Free”
  4. 7shifts — price checked 2026-07-22 — source
    “Comp / $79.99 CAD Per month/location”

Competitor prices change — always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown.

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