Emplora vs When I Work

Emplora brings employee scheduling, shift management, and staff rota planning into one platform for small and mid-size businesses. Managers can prepare weekly or monthly schedules, with saved changes becoming visible to the team. Employees can check schedules in a phone browser using a QR code or PIN, without installing an app. Time-off requests and employee shift swaps require manager approval and are available from Starter. Schedules can be exported as CSV or PDF for payroll workflows. The Free plan supports one location and up to 15 employees; Starter and Professional add capacity and features such as notifications, reports, attendance tracking, analytics, and labour cost reports. Enterprise offers flexible pricing, unlimited scale, SSO, API access, a dedicated SLA, and training. Emplora says it uses bank-grade encryption and organisation-level data isolation, and its DPA covers EU GDPR, UK GDPR, and applicable data-protection law. Human support is listed as responding within 24 hours, usually faster. The service is available on the web and through an API; fully rules-based schedule generation and POS and PMS integrations are roadmap items. Pricing is Free, with paid plans from $39/mo and a 30-day trial.

When I Work brings employee scheduling, shift swaps, team messaging, and time tracking together for shift-based workplaces. Auto scheduling assigns shifts using staff availability and qualifications, and managers can oversee multiple stores, departments, or job sites from one dashboard. The time clock tracks attendance, breaks, and time off, while staff can message without sharing phone numbers. It runs on the web, Android, and iOS. Essentials costs $2.50 a month billed per user per month; Pro is $5 a month billed per user per month; Premium is $8 a month billed per user per month. A 14-day trial offers complete access and requires no credit card, but there is no free plan. API key access, webhooks, and SAML/SSO are included in Premium. When I Work says it uses AWS, TLS, daily backups, multiple-disk writes, and mobile two-step verification. It does not offer an SLA, although its hosting partners guarantee 99.9% uptime.