Updoot vs. OnTheClock: Pricing and Features Compared

If you're comparing time clock software for a small business, OnTheClock is one of the names you'll run into early. It's been around since the mid-2000s, it's known for straightforward pricing, and it shows up consistently in "best time clock" roundups across the review sites.

Updoot is a newer, different kind of platform. It starts from the same place, accurate time tracking, but it's built to be the operating system for a whole small business, not just the clock. This guide breaks down how OnTheClock's pricing actually works, what you get and don't get at each tier, how Updoot's pricing and feature set compare, and which one fits which kind of business.

What Is OnTheClock?

OnTheClock is a cloud-based employee time clock and attendance platform built for small and mid-sized businesses. The company has been in the time tracking space since the early 2000s and has built a reputation around three things: affordability, simplicity, and responsive US-based customer support.

At its core, OnTheClock answers one question well: when did my employees actually work, and how do I turn that into accurate payroll? It does this through web, mobile, and kiosk punch-in options, GPS and geofencing for location-verified punches, PTO request and approval workflows, basic drag-and-drop scheduling, overtime tracking and alerts, payroll export and payroll provider integrations, and an optional built-in payroll product.

It's a mature, well-reviewed product in its category. It is also, by design, a time and attendance tool first, with scheduling and payroll layered on top. It isn't trying to be a project management platform, an SOP system, or a CRM, and it doesn't market itself as one.

OnTheClock Pricing Breakdown

OnTheClock uses a base fee plus per-employee pricing model, with a separate add-on for payroll.

Time Tracking, Scheduling, and PTO Plan: $5/month base fee plus $4 per employee/month, with no free-forever tier. A 30-day free trial is available before billing starts.

Payroll Add-On: $40/month base fee plus $6 per paid employee/month, requires the Time Tracking plan. A one-time $250 payroll migration and onboarding fee applies when moving historical payroll data over from a previous provider.

Optional Hardware: fingerprint time clock readers are available as physical hardware, plus $0.50 per employee/month for employees who use fingerprint punch-in.

Enterprise: businesses with 100 or more employees are directed to contact OnTheClock directly for custom pricing.

Example: What You Actually Pay

Payroll also carries a one-time $250 migration fee if moving historical data from another provider.

The per-employee base pricing is genuinely competitive for time tracking alone. Where the math changes is once payroll gets added, since that's a second base fee and a second per-employee charge stacked on top of the first.

What You Get with OnTheClock

For what it's built to do, OnTheClock is a solid, well-supported tool. The core Time Tracking plan includes a time clock via web, mobile app, or physical kiosk, GPS location capture and geofencing, PTO accrual, requests, and approvals, basic shift scheduling, overtime threshold alerts, job or project codes for basic cost tracking, timesheet review and approval, standard reporting and payroll export, and multi-device and multi-location support. The payroll add-on adds direct deposit, automated tax calculation and remittance, W-2 and tax filing support, and benefits withholding and garnishments.

OnTheClock's core plan genuinely does include GPS, geofencing, scheduling, and overtime tracking without upcharging for each one separately, which is worth crediting. Compared to tools that gate GPS tracking or scheduling behind a premium tier, OnTheClock's base plan is fairly generous for what it costs.

Where OnTheClock Has Real Limits

The limits aren't really about time tracking quality. They're about scope.

It's a point solution, not a business platform. OnTheClock does time, attendance, scheduling, PTO, and, optionally, payroll. That's the whole product. It does not include project or task management, SOP or process documentation, internal collaboration beyond scheduling, invoicing or billing, CRM or customer tracking, performance reviews or goal tracking, or org chart and role mapping. For a business that only needs a time clock, that's not a weakness, it's focus. But most small businesses that start with "we just need a time clock" find themselves needing project tracking, SOPs, or invoicing within the first year, and at that point they're shopping for a second, or third, piece of software.

Payroll is a separate, additive cost. OnTheClock's payroll isn't included in the base plan, it's a second product with its own base fee and its own per-employee charge. For a 12-person team, that's the difference between $53/month and $165/month. It's transparent pricing, but it's not one price covers it pricing.

No built-in path from time data to anything else. OnTheClock captures accurate hours and exports them to payroll. But that's where the data trail ends. There's no native way to turn logged hours into a client invoice, tie hours to a project budget, or connect a timesheet to a performance or accountability system. The hours exist in their own silo.

What Is Updoot Pricing?

Updoot uses one number: $5 per user per month, flat, with every feature included at that price. There's no base fee, no per-feature add-on, and no separate charge to unlock GPS tracking, scheduling, invoicing, or anything else in the platform.

There's no separate payroll-style add-on math to do, because everything that would otherwise be a separate module, invoicing, HR, project tracking, performance, is already inside the $5/user price.

How Updoot Is Different

Updoot isn't only a time clock, it's built as the operating system for a small business, with time tracking as one piece of a connected system rather than the whole product. That includes GPS-verified web and mobile clock-in with hours tied directly to a project or job, logged hours that convert directly into a client invoice without re-entering them into a separate billing tool, project management with task ownership, budgets, and deadlines, built-in SOP and process documentation with role-based access, PTO requests, org chart and RASCI mapping, and an employee-facing dashboard, performance and goal tracking that ties daily work to company-level goals, applicant tracking for hiring, AI-powered features built into the platform, a company health dashboard for a real-time view of how the business is actually running, and a CRM for customer and client records tied to the same projects and invoices.

Updoot vs. OnTheClock: Side-by-Side

The Real Cost Comparison

Sticker price is only part of the picture. Here's what it actually looks like once you count what each platform requires you to buy elsewhere.

OnTheClock cost = time clock plus everything else you still need. For pure time tracking, OnTheClock is priced well. But once a business needs to manage projects or tasks, document SOPs, send invoices tied to work performed, track performance or goals, or keep a CRM, those are all separate tools, with separate monthly costs, that don't talk to the time data OnTheClock is already collecting.

Updoot cost = one price for the whole system. At $5/user/month, Updoot is priced to replace the stack, not just the time clock. For a 12-person team, that's $60/month against $53/month for OnTheClock's time tracking alone, a $7/month difference for a platform that also includes invoicing, SOPs, project management, and CRM, none of which OnTheClock's base plan offers.

Where the gap widens further is payroll. If that same 12-person team wants integrated payroll through OnTheClock, the monthly cost jumps to $165. Updoot doesn't process payroll in-house, but it exports timesheet data in a format ready to hand to a payroll provider or accountant, so hours don't have to be re-entered by hand, without adding a second base fee and per-employee charge to the bill.

Feature-by-Feature: Where Each Platform Actually Wins

Time tracking and GPS: Both platforms handle this well. OnTheClock has fingerprint hardware available as a punch-in option, which can matter for a business with employees who don't carry smartphones or don't want to use one to clock in. Updoot's GPS tracking is tied more tightly into project-level cost tracking from the start, so hours are attached to a job or client automatically rather than requiring a separate job-costing step.

Scheduling: Both include basic drag-and-drop scheduling. Neither is a dedicated, deep scheduling tool the way a restaurant or retail-specific platform might be, so a business with complex shift-swap or tip-pooling needs may still want to evaluate a specialist scheduling tool regardless of which of these two it chooses.

PTO management: Comparable in both platforms, accrual rules, requests, and manager approval. Neither stands out as meaningfully ahead of the other here.

Payroll: This is OnTheClock's clearer differentiator. It has a built-in, in-house payroll product with direct deposit, tax filing, and garnishment support, something Updoot doesn't offer as a native feature. A business that specifically wants time tracking and payroll from the same vendor, under one login, has a real reason to look at OnTheClock's payroll add-on. The trade-off is the added cost: for a 12-person team, that convenience runs about $112/month on top of the time tracking plan.

Everything beyond time and payroll: This is where the platforms diverge most. OnTheClock doesn't offer project management, SOPs, invoicing, CRM, or performance tracking at any tier. Updoot includes all of it in the same $5/user/month price. For a business that only ever needs a time clock and, eventually, payroll, that difference won't matter. For a business that's also managing projects, documenting processes, sending invoices, or trying to connect daily work to company goals, it's the difference between one system and four.

Compliance and Reporting

Accurate timesheets exist for a reason beyond payroll convenience: they're the record a business relies on if a wage-and-hour question ever comes up. Both platforms produce standard timesheet reports with regular and overtime hours broken out, and both support GPS-stamped punches that can back up where and when an employee actually clocked in.

OnTheClock's reporting is built specifically around what a payroll processor or accountant needs to see: hours, overtime, PTO balances, and export-ready formats. It does this well and doesn't try to be more than that. Updoot's reporting covers the same time-and-attendance ground, but because hours are tied to projects and clients by default, it can also answer a different question, not just how many hours did this person work, but what did those hours actually cost against this job or this client, which matters more for a business doing job costing or client billing than it does for a business that just needs clean payroll hours.

Neither platform should be treated as a substitute for legal advice on wage-and-hour compliance, and rounding practices, break rules, and overtime thresholds still need to be configured correctly regardless of which platform is used.

Onboarding and Setup

Neither platform requires a lengthy implementation process, which is one of the reasons both show up on easy-to-use lists in software reviews. OnTheClock's setup is built around getting a time clock live quickly: add employees, set pay periods and overtime rules, choose punch methods, and the clock is running. Adding payroll later means a second setup pass, plus the one-time $250 migration fee if historical payroll data needs to move over from a prior provider.

Updoot's setup covers more ground in the same pass, since time tracking, projects, and invoicing live in the same system from day one. That means slightly more to configure up front, project structures, customer records, and role permissions, but it also means there's no second onboarding process later when a business decides it needs project tracking or invoicing, because that structure is already in place.

Customer Support

OnTheClock has built a strong reputation specifically around support quality, with US-based support staff and consistently high marks in third-party reviews for responsiveness. For a business that wants a phone call or chat with a real person during setup or a payroll question, that reputation is a legitimate factor in its favor.

Updoot is built to be simple enough that most questions don't need support at all, and when they do, real humans answer, not a ticket queue. Because the whole business runs through one platform instead of several, there's no handing a question off between separate vendors when something touches both time tracking and, say, invoicing.

Who Each Platform Is Really Built For

OnTheClock tends to fit best for a business that has already solved project management, documentation, and invoicing some other way, whether that's a dedicated tool, a spreadsheet system that works fine for them, or simply not needing those functions, and just wants a dependable, affordable, well-supported time clock with the option to add in-house payroll later.

Updoot tends to fit best for a business that's either just starting to formalize its systems, or one that's currently paying for ten or more disconnected tools, a time clock, a project tracker, an invoicing app, a CRM, a hiring tool, a shared doc for SOPs, a performance review tool, an org chart maker, a budgeting spreadsheet, a scheduling app, and more, and wants to collapse all of it into one login and one monthly charge per user.

Common Questions When Switching From a Time Clock to a Full Platform

Businesses evaluating a move from a standalone time clock like OnTheClock to an all-in-one platform like Updoot tend to ask a similar set of questions before making the switch.

Will we lose historical time data? Both platforms allow timesheet and reporting exports, so historical hours can typically be preserved and imported or archived, though the exact process depends on the export format available at the time of switching.

Do we have to migrate everything at once? Not necessarily. Many businesses run a pilot with time tracking and scheduling first, confirm it fits, and layer in project management, SOPs, and invoicing over the following weeks rather than switching every function on day one.

What happens to payroll during a switch? Since Updoot doesn't process payroll in-house, a business already using OnTheClock Payroll would either keep that relationship and export Updoot's timesheet data into it, or move payroll to a separate provider entirely, an accountant or a dedicated payroll processor, independent of the time tracking switch.

Is there a learning curve for the team? Time clock functionality is intentionally similar across both platforms, clocking in and out doesn't change much. The bigger adjustment for a team is usually adopting the additional modules, projects, SOPs, invoicing, over the following weeks, not the time clock itself.

Total Cost at Different Team Sizes

The gap between the two platforms shifts depending on team size and whether payroll is included, so it's worth looking at more than one example.

At small team sizes without payroll, OnTheClock's per-employee rate is slightly cheaper than Updoot's flat per-user rate. That gap grows modestly as headcount increases, since $4/user plus a small base fee stays under $5/user through most team sizes. Where the comparison flips is the moment payroll, invoicing, project management, SOPs, or CRM enter the picture, since each of those is a separate cost on OnTheClock's side and already included on Updoot's.

Data and Integrations

OnTheClock is built to hand off cleanly to a payroll system, whether that's its own in-house payroll or a third-party provider, and its export formats are built around that single handoff. It's a narrower integration story by design, since the product itself is narrower.

Updoot's data model connects time entries to projects, clients, and invoices natively, since those live in the same system rather than being separate products. That means the "integration" most businesses actually need, hours turning into an invoice, or a project budget reflecting actual labor cost, happens inside the platform rather than requiring a connector between two vendors. For payroll specifically, Updoot exports timesheet data in a format built to hand off to an external payroll provider or accountant, the same handoff OnTheClock supports for teams not using its in-house payroll add-on.

Which One Should You Choose?

Choose OnTheClock if: you want a dedicated, in-house payroll product from the same company that handles your time clock, you need fingerprint hardware punch options, or your only current need is time, attendance, scheduling, and PTO, and you're comfortable adding other software later if the business grows into needing it.

Choose Updoot if: you want time tracking, invoicing, project management, SOPs, and CRM in one place instead of stitching tools together, you'd rather export clean timesheet data to your existing accountant or payroll provider than pay for a second in-house payroll product, you're trying to reduce the number of logins and subscriptions your team has to manage, or you want one flat per-user price instead of a base fee plus per-feature math.

What Existing Users Say

OnTheClock consistently earns strong marks in third-party review platforms for ease of use and customer support, with reviewers frequently highlighting how quickly employees can see their hours after clocking out and how responsive the support team is when a question comes up. That reputation is well-earned and matches what the product is built to do: a simple, dependable time clock that doesn't require a learning curve.

Reviews of all-in-one platforms like Updoot tend to focus less on any single feature and more on the reduction in tool-switching, teams that previously logged into a time clock, a separate project tool, and a separate invoicing app describing the shift to fewer logins and one consistent source of truth as the main benefit, rather than any one feature standing out on its own.

Both patterns make sense given what each product is optimized for: OnTheClock for doing one job well, Updoot for reducing how many separate jobs a small business has to manage software for in the first place.

The Bottom Line

OnTheClock is a genuinely solid, well-priced time clock. If time and attendance is the whole problem you're trying to solve, it does that job cleanly, and its optional in-house payroll is a real point in its favor for businesses that want time and payroll under one roof.

Updoot starts from the same requirement, accurate time tracking, but treats it as one piece of a larger system instead of the entire product. The tradeoff is that Updoot doesn't process payroll in-house the way OnTheClock's add-on does. The advantage is that everything else, projects, invoicing, SOPs, CRM, performance, is already included at the same flat price, rather than requiring separate software and separate subscriptions as the business grows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

When you're comparing these two, don't just compare the per-employee rate. Compare what you're getting at that price, what you'll need to buy separately six months from now, and whether cheaper per feature or fewer total subscriptions matters more for how your team actually works. The lowest sticker price rarely stays the lowest total cost once a growing business starts adding the tools a time clock alone was never meant to replace.