Honest Review:

HourStack

By Asim Qureshi, CEO Jibble

June 5th 2023

As a CEO of a time tracking software company I need to know what my competitors are up to. That means I’m often researching about and/or playing around with their products, you know, it’s part of the job. Here, I share my findings of that research, giving credit to those competitors where credit is due and being honest about which products I believe you really need to avoid. And so, there you have it, this review, and in it, I try to be honest, fair, and insightful…

This review covers:

• Overview
• What Users Like
• What Users Don’t Like
• Pricing Plans
• Standout Features
• Positive User Highlights
• Negative User Highlights
• Ratings from Other Reviews

Overview

Well, let me tell you about HourStack – the time management software that promises to be the answer to all your team’s productivity woes. With a whopping 10 native integrations and over 1,500 integrations via Zapier, this software makes it easier than ever to streamline businesses’ workflow by using applications you already know and love.

Let’s take a look at some of HourStack’s capabilities, shall we? The software offers features such as scheduling, time tracking, and project management, making it a one-stop shop for all your time-related needs. And when it comes to time tracking, HourStack makes it as easy as clicking a button. With one-click clocking in and out, your timesheets are available in calendar view for a daily, weekly, or monthly summary. Plus, the reporting feature collects and organizes all employee data, such as hours worked compared to hours scheduled, as well as projects and tasks completed.

However, I am not going to sugarcoat HourStack’s downsides. The pricing plans are on the expensive side, especially when you consider the limited features they offer. Plus, while the third-party integrations may sound excellent on paper, they are clunky at times, particularly when it comes to Asana. Along with a lack of customization options, the software doesn’t have a mobile application.

Overall, I think HourStack is a good option for teams looking to manage their time more efficiently but I don’t think it is the best choice due to its clunky integrations and absence of a mobile app. If you’re looking for desktop-only software, then HourStack might do the job for you, just be prepared to fork over a bit of cash and deal with a few kinks along the way. 

What Users Like

• Efficient reporting
• Integrations with other applications
• Intuitive interface
• The calendar feature simplifies processes
• Easier to assign and organize tasks

Pricing Plans

HourStack has two pricing plans, Personal and Team, which can be paid monthly and annually, though the latter offers a 20-25% discount.

Personal: At US$9/month, for a single workspace member only, this plan provides time tracking, customizable reports, third-party integrations, and all other non-team-related features.

Team: At $12/member/month, for an unlimited number of members in a workspace, this plan contains all Personal features plus extra team-related functions such as team and member management, customizable workspaces, team schedules, and reports.

Standout Features of HourStack

1. Time Tracking

With HourStack’s time tracking features, users can log time automatically or manually and stay on track of their employees’ work in real time. Integrating multiple kinds of software allows the time tracker feature to be used for numerous purposes, such as adding tasks and projects when employees clock in. The calendar view presents all the daily, weekly, or monthly information of employees’ logged hours for a full summary. Users can access that information on any device and clock in, making it flexible for users to access. 

2. Reports

The reports feature is connected with the time tracker, which collects and organizes all the employee data, from hours worked compared to scheduled hours and projects as well as tasks worked on. This gives users valuable insight into their work processes, allowing them to make informed decisions for their organization and employees.

The reports can be customized and categorized by filters and groups like employees, projects, clients, etc. They contain charts, graphs, and other visual statistics to give a birds-eye view of the data and can be exported and shared in several formats.

3. Scheduling

One of HourStack’s central features is its scheduling software, which ties together all its other features and interconnects them through the calendar. Like the time tracker in a calendar view, the schedules are displayed similarly.

Employers can assign shifts to employees, or employees can create their schedules, including shifts and tasks to be carried out during the workday. It helps with the overall planning of a typical day at the office or working remotely, with entries being dragged and dropped or added manually. Additional filters can be applied, such as clients, projects, teams, and so forth, along with third-party integrations.

4. Workspace and Team Features

HourStack offers a unique feature called Workspace, which allows users to compile everything concerning a specific team or client into one workspace, from projects to exports. These can be customized and have their settings, so employers can arrange them in any way they wish.

In the team pricing plan, users also have access to various team features for managing teams and workspaces. This contains functions for identifying trends in separate teams and assessing employees’ productivity levels. Employers can view the entire team schedule in one calendar window for an overview of the work done.

Selected Positive User Feedback: 

• “The ease to drag and drop calendar invites onto the calendar is great. The ability to tag a project or label is great for allocation of hours.” – Verified User in Insurance (Source G2)
• “I love the way HourStack displays your time entries. It’s by far the most intuitive (to me, at least) program to throw tasks from various programs (tons of connected task managers) and just get to work.” – Steve (Source Software Advice)
• “I like that it can use different sources for the tasks, so one can combine e.g., Asana tasks and Outlook appointments.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “Reports are easy to generate; it’s actually easier to use the in-app reports rather than exporting to excel and doing reports there, which is not normally the case for products like this.” – Verified User in Automotive (Source G2)
• “The ability to assign tasks to your daily schedule is a game changer for the workplace and personal life!” – Anonymous (Source Software Advice)
• “The software is very easy to use and has a beautiful simplistic interface.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “Quite easy to use and get started. The simplicity of the features ensures you don’t get lost! Perfect for the users tracking their time.” – Simon G. (Source Capterra)
• “Easy-to-use interface that allows for maximum flexibility in how you designate your projects, labels, etc. Drag-and-drop works nicely. Most importantly, the reporting really helps highlight how you spend your time, keep track of yourself or your team’s “real-time spent” on projects, etc.” – Anonymous (Source Software Advice)
• “When I had questions, the guys behind Hourstack were willing to help very fast.” – Sander L. (Source Capterra)
• “Having both calendar and task import allows me to set up all of my activities for each working day – Being able to drag only the calendar events and tasks that I want to allocate to a day is very useful.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “We used this in combination with Asana, so it would pull tasks into HourStack from Asana. We then drag them into our week and track time on them, which made weekly planning really handy and is something I miss about the software we move to after Hourstack.” – Anonymous (Source Software Advice)
• “The integrations and the reporting. I am able to pull data from my Google Calendar and Asana task list for one consolidated view of events. I also enjoy the tagging and project associations with Asana.” – Ayodele (Source Software Advice)
• “The Graphical interface is very intuitive and shows the status of all ongoing projects.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “Integrations do not have to repeat work.” – Verified User in Marketing and Advertising (Source G2)
• “Easily connects with ASANA and other task-sharing software for a simple to implement process and an ease of use that keeps you using it time and time again.” – Cody M. (Source Capterra)

Selected Negative User Feedback:

• “If I start the timer on my phone, sometimes it will just stop, and sometimes it will miscommunicate with the website. The mobile app isn’t reliable enough to depend on, so I stopped using it.” – Verified User in Automotive (Source G2)
• “The cost for getting the Reports to feature is pretty high for me (but I paid it anyway because it is useful) – I wish there were more integrations available. Plus, the software lacks detailed features.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “I wish there was more ability to add more categories. It would be nice to allocate hours per department easier so it is a defined custom field that we could report on. I would like to see dashboards so we can easily see team member performance instead of exporting data and creating our own charts.” – Verified User in Insurance (Source G2)
• “The pricing is quite steep for the enterprise plan and even for the team plan. The enterprise version is more than full-featured project management programs, some of which have their own time tracking built-in!” – Steve (Source Software Advice)
• “It lacks detailed features such as advanced administrative features.” – Taymeka W. (Source G2)
• “I am unable to easily generate repeated meetings. If we could make a task repeatable, it would reduce the administrative time by 50%.” – Ayodele (Source Software Advice)
• “The Asana tasks can be hard to manage via HourStack because the task name gets pulled in, but not the project so it’s hard visually.” – Verified User in Marketing and Advertising (Source G2)
• “It can be more visually appealing (have different colors and sections for different types of tasks, so it’s more intuitive).” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “There were bugs every once in a while or the server/app would just crash and doesn’t have more customisation options. Also, there wasn’t a public API we could access to build out our own software for reporting.” – Anonymous (Source Software Advice)
• “I feel it’s missing some features for the administrators. Pricey. Archiving and unarchiving is a bit clunky, could be nice to sort by the client.” – Simon G. (Source Capterra)
• “Once or twice the integration to asana went down, rending the time tracking unusable the way we do it.” – Verified User in Marketing and Advertising (Source G2)
• “Wish there was a connecting option to an accounting software that could also track hours and more customization options.” – Cody (Source Software Advice)
• “Expensive. I have not done well with customizing the software. It has not been worth moving it to others in our company, so I have not yet taken advantage of the team concept.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)
• “The only thing I can remotely complain about is malfunctioning of integrations.” – Verified Reviewer (Source Capterra)

Ratings from Other Reviews

(As of 04/08/2023)

• Capterra: 4.8/5
• G2: 4.4/5 
• Software Advice: 5/5

Final Thoughts

HourStack – a time tracking, scheduling, and planning software that’s available on a desktop. Along with in-built reports, HourStack has a calendar view that organizes data better and sorts it using groups and filters – making productivity and sorting quite easy.

I find HourStack’s workspaces to be a fantastic tool. It allows enterprises to compile projects and keep everything organized. The software’s native integrations and detailed reporting features streamline workflows and organize employee data.

However, I do find HourStack to be a bit lacking in customization options, and the visuals also leave a bit to be desired. On top of that, the third-party integrations are a bit clunky, and it’s a bummer that there’s no mobile app. Most important though, is HourStack’s high price of US$9/month, which really puts me off.

In conclusion, while HourStack has some features that are appealing to certain users, its lack of a mobile app and high pricing makes it a bit of a tough sell for larger businesses. Nevertheless, if you’re a small business or freelancer looking for straightforward features and are willing to pay a higher price, HourStack may be worth checking out.