The Papershift alternative with the rota and support in the price.

Papershift has been on the market since 2015 and plans shifts for hospitality, retail, healthcare and production. Both products cover much the same ground. Almost the whole decision comes down to which tier holds the feature you need, and what lands on the invoice besides the licence.

The entry plan has no rota in it

Papershift's cheapest plan is called Core and costs €4 per employee per month. It covers time tracking, absence and the digital personnel file. You cannot build a rota with it.

Digital shift planning starts at Premium, €6 per employee per month, and multi-site planning arrives at the same point. Fully automatic rota filling, premium rates for nights and Sundays, payroll export and reports all sit in Professional at €9.

With Shiftbase you can plan on the free plan for up to 15 employees, and Basic starts at €30 a month with six users included and €4 for each one after that. Rota, time tracking and absence come together in every paid plan. When you compare quotes, compare the plan that actually contains the rota.

What else lands on the invoice

Support at Papershift is a package of its own. Basic support costs €39 a month and its pricing page lists it as a compulsory part of every plan. Plus is €99, Expert is €399, and the support contract runs for a year.

Because the amount is fixed, it hits small teams hardest. Run it for ten employees. With Papershift you need Premium for the rota to be included at all, so €60 of licences plus €39 of support, €99 a month on an annual contract. Shiftbase Basic for the same ten employees is €46 a month, support included and cancellable monthly.

One add-on is worth knowing about before you compare: App Center+ for open API access costs €20 a month. Compliance+, for automatic working time law checks, is coming soon and has no price yet.

Who fills the open shift

Both products show you open shifts in the rota. The difference is who fills them.

With Papershift you see straight away which shifts are still uncovered and you schedule someone into them. With Shiftbase you publish the shift, your team sees it in the app, and the first person free takes it themselves. All you do is confirm.

If someone calls in sick at seven and service starts at eleven, that one step decides whether you spend the morning on the phone or the gap closes on its own.

Labour cost while you plan

In hospitality around 34% of revenue goes on staff, and the average overspend per shift runs at about 13%. On net margins of three to five percent you notice that at the month-end close, when the money has already gone.

With Performance, included from Premium at €72 a month with twelve users, you set a labour cost target per department and the rota shows you green, amber or red while you plan. Connect your till, for example Vectron, unTill or Lightspeed, and real turnover comes in daily, so the labour cost ratio follows what actually came through the door.

Papershift prepares hours and payroll cleanly. There is no comparable real-time cost layer fed by sales data.

Which of the two fits

Pick Papershift if your payroll runs through LODAS, if you want the rota filled fully automatically, or if a German-language product with German hosting is a requirement. On those three points they are ahead of us.

Pick Shiftbase if the rota should be in the first paid plan rather than a tier up, if support should come without its own invoice line, if your team should take open shifts themselves, and if you want to see what a week costs before you publish it.