Honest comparison

Staff Hub vs Deputy: a compliance platform, or a flat-priced workforce layer inside Shopify?

Both build rotas, clock staff in, and produce approved timesheets. The difference that actually decides it: Deputy has a real labour-law compliance engine and works for staff who are nowhere near Shopify. Staff Hub has neither — it is Shopify-only, and it gives you configurable overtime and break rules, not jurisdictional rule sets. If compliance depth is your binding constraint, buy Deputy and stop reading.

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Disclosure: we build Staff Hub. Weigh our analysis accordingly — and note that on this page we tell you plainly where Deputy is the better buy.

The one difference that decides it

Deputy interprets labour law. Staff Hub does not. Deputy maintains award interpretation and pay-condition rules across jurisdictions and industries — that is its core engineering, and it is why regulated employers pay per seat for it. Staff Hub ships overtime thresholds (weekly and daily, 1.5× by default) and break/labour policies that you configure yourself. Those are different things, and we are not going to blur them.

The second difference: Deputy works anywhere. Staff Hub works only inside Shopify. If a meaningful share of your team — warehouse, field, delivery, a second non-Shopify business — sits outside your store, Staff Hub cannot reach them and Deputy can.

What is left, once you rule those two out, is a Shopify retailer who wants a rota, a clock, timesheets, payroll export, training and announcements — and does not want to pay per head, per month, for a second platform. That is the buyer Staff Hub is for.

Staff Hub and Deputy at a glance

Staff Hub rows are verified against our shipped product as of July 2026. Deputy rows describe its publicly documented capabilities and pricing shape — we do not quote per-user figures we cannot stand behind. Check deputy.com/pricing for current rates.

Comparison of Staff Hub and Deputy across scheduling, time clock, payroll, compliance, reach, and pricing model.
Staff Hub Deputy
Where it runs Inside the Shopify admin, on your existing staff accounts. Shopify stores only — no reach beyond them. Standalone platform, any industry and any site, with a mature staff mobile app.
Scheduling Drag-and-drop rota, shift templates, availability, conflict detection, peer shift-swap requests, and sales-aware auto-scheduling (forecasts hour-of-week sales into a coverage requirement, then fills from available staff; Pro plan and above). Core strength, with a long track record: rostering, swaps, open shifts, demand-based auto-scheduling.
Time clock PIN clock-in and clock-out at Shopify POS, photo verification, and GPS geofencing available as an opt-in (off by default). Time and attendance is core: GPS- and photo-verified clock-in, kiosk and mobile, break tracking.
Timesheets & overtime Timesheets with manager approval and exception flags; overtime thresholds (weekly and daily, 1.5× default) and break policies you configure. Timesheets with approval, plus overtime and break rules driven by its compliance engine.
Labour-law compliance engine No. Configurable overtime and break policies — not award interpretation or pay-condition rules across jurisdictions. Yes — this is Deputy's moat. Award interpretation and pay-condition rules maintained across jurisdictions and industries.
Payroll Payroll periods and payroll-ready export or sync to Gusto, QuickBooks, ADP, Paychex, Rippling or CSV. Staff Hub is not a payroll processor — it does not file taxes or move money. Also not a payroll processor, but integrates with a wide range of payroll providers and POS systems.
Training, onboarding & announcements Training modules with quizzes, learning paths, onboarding checklists, HR documents, PTO, and announcements with read receipts per shop and per role. Present, but secondary to scheduling and compliance — a news feed rather than a training and read-receipt system.
Pricing model Flat per tier, no per-seat fee. Free $0 (5 staff); Basic $12.99/mo or $129/yr (15 staff); Pro $24.99/mo or $249/yr (50 staff, any number of shops); Enterprise $49.99/mo or $499/yr (unlimited). Note the gates: the Free plan covers announcements and training only — scheduling, the POS time clock, timesheets and payroll export start at Basic, and sales-aware auto-scheduling at Pro. The 30-day trial on paid plans gives full access. Per user, per month — cost scales in a straight line with headcount. There is a limited free starter tier. Confirm current rates on Deputy's pricing page.
Track record New. The workforce backend — scheduling, clock, timesheets, payroll — shipped on 3 May 2026. Far less production mileage than Deputy's. Long-established, hardened at scale from small teams to large multi-site operations.

Which one should you actually buy?

This is a fit question, not a ranking. There are real businesses for which Deputy is unambiguously the right answer.

Choose Deputy if…

  • Labour-law compliance is a hard requirement. Award interpretation, pay conditions, jurisdiction-specific break and overtime rules. Staff Hub does not do this, and configuring your own thresholds is not a substitute.
  • Some of your staff are not inside Shopify. Warehouse, field, delivery, a second non-retail business. Staff Hub simply cannot reach them.
  • You run at a scale where workforce management is a central daily function, across many sites and hundreds of employees.
  • You need a mature, self-service staff mobile app that people live in between shifts.
  • You want a long production track record. Deputy has years of it; Staff Hub's scheduling and time-clock shipped in May 2026.

Choose Staff Hub if…

  • Every member of staff is already inside Shopify, and you would rather not administer a second platform.
  • Your compliance needs are met by overtime and break rules you configure once, not by a jurisdictional rule engine.
  • You want the rota, the POS clock, timesheets, payroll export, commissions and training and announcements on one bill.
  • Per-seat pricing is the thing that keeps stinging. Staff Hub's Pro plan covers 50 staff across any number of shops for a flat $24.99/month.
  • You want nothing for staff to install — they clock in at the POS they already stand behind.

What Staff Hub is not

  • Not a payroll processor. It aggregates hours, computes overtime, and exports or syncs payroll-ready data to Gusto, QuickBooks, ADP, Paychex, Rippling or CSV. It does not file taxes and it does not move money. You keep your payroll provider.
  • Not a compliance engine. No award interpretation, no jurisdictional pay-condition rules. Overtime and break policies are yours to configure.
  • Not usable outside Shopify. Shopify stores only.
  • Not battle-hardened yet. The workforce backend shipped on 3 May 2026. Deputy has years of production scheduling and time-attendance behind it and we do not.

Running both: only in one specific case

Staff Hub and Deputy now overlap on scheduling, clocking and timesheets, so running both usually means paying twice and asking staff to clock into two systems. Do not do that by default. The combination that does make sense is narrow: you keep Deputy because you genuinely need its compliance engine or you have staff outside Shopify, and you add Staff Hub for the training modules, read-receipt announcements and onboarding that sit outside Deputy's focus. Because Staff Hub is flat-priced, that add-on stays cheap as you hire.

Try Staff Hub free — and keep Deputy if it's the right call

The 30-day trial gives full access to scheduling, the POS clock, timesheets and payroll export. There is also a free plan for up to 5 staff, though it covers announcements and training only. If your binding constraint is compliance depth or staff outside Shopify, we would rather you bought Deputy than churned out of us in a month.

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