An honest comparison
roster vs Alkimii
Alkimii is Irish, from Skerries, and built for hotels: its site counts over 460 of them. It is sold by quote with an installation and on-site training. The differences that matter for a pub, restaurant or cafe are the price, how long it takes to start, and what happens when the schedule shows a gap.
| roster | Alkimii | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | €29.99 a month per venue, flat, unlimited staff. Public at roster.ie/pricing. | No public price. Quoted per property, banded by employee count, with a one-time installation fee. |
| Starting out | Seven days free, no card to start, cancel any time. | Demo first, then an implementation of a few weeks with on-site training. No free trial on their site. |
| A dropped shift | The schedule posts the gap as a paid shift and a vetted, rated worker fills it. Built in. | Open shifts go to your own staff. Filling from outside is your phone. |
| Irish rules | Sunday premium, public holidays, statutory sick pay and tips under the 2022 Act are built in, with Irish calculators on the public site. | Irish too, and strong on public holiday pay methods and payroll exports. Tips under the 2022 Act and statutory sick pay tracking are not listed on their site. |
| Clock-in | Any phone or tablet is the clock terminal (roster.ie/kiosk), PIN plus optional photo per punch. | Through their staff app and hotel terminals. The app is rated 3.7 on both stores as of September 2026. |
| Hiring | Permanent job posts included, free. Applicants land in the same account. | Onboarding and contracts for people you have already hired. Not a hiring product. |
| Payroll handoff | One payroll-ready CSV with Sunday and public holiday hours broken out, for whatever software your accountant runs. | Named exports to a dozen payroll systems, including the Irish ones. Genuinely strong. |
| Switching cost | Import your team from an Alkimii export in an afternoon: names, roles and rates come with you. | n/a |
Alkimii details reflect their public positioning and product as of September 2026. If something here is out of date, tell us at hello@roster.ie and we will correct it: honesty is the whole point of this page.
Credit where due
Where Alkimii is strong
Alkimii is the hotel operating system: revenue feeds from the property management system, draft schedules built against forecast, maintenance and checklists for the building, and contracts and compliance for a 100-person team. If you run a hotel of that size, it was built for you. roster is built for the venue with one bar, one kitchen and one manager, and for the hotel bar that needs two more people on Saturday.
Switching
An afternoon, not a project.
Export your employees from Alkimii, import them into roster as CSV, and your schedule is ready to build the same afternoon.
Seven days free · no contracts · cancel any time · no card to start
Built in Ireland
Built for Irish employment law, with support based in Ireland.
Seven days free
No card to start, no contract, cancel any time.
Payments by Stripe
Card details never touch roster. Shift payments are held and released by Stripe.
ID-verified workers
Every marketplace worker has had their identity and right to work checked.
