Comparison

Deputy vs OffshoreSMS

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Deputy

This app simplifies employee scheduling, time tracking, and workforce management for businesses. It allows for easy creation of balanced schedules, communication with staff, and integration with payroll systems. Employees can view their schedules, manage availability, and clock in/out.

Highlights
  • Create balanced, cost-effective schedules
  • Publish shift information via push notification
  • Fill open shifts with team pick-up
  • Approve leave and shift changes
  • Manage team communications and tasks
  • Track time and attendance
  • Integrate with payroll and POS systems
Features
Read full description

Deputy is the ultimate employee scheduling app, shift planner, staff timesheet app, & complete workforce management solution. Get started for free today! Over 250,000 workplaces in 90+ countries trust Deputy for their employee scheduling software, leave management, time & attendance tracking, team task management, staff communication, demand forecasting and performance management. HOW DEPUTY HELPS BUSINESSES ◆ Easily create balanced, cost-effective schedules in minutes from any device. ◆ Publish personalized shift information to your team via push notification, email, and SMS. ◆ Fill open shifts easily by pushing alerts to your team and letting them pick up available shifts. ◆ Approve leave from your mobile easily so you're never caught off guard. ◆ Quickly approve employee shift swaps and shift changes in seconds straight from a mobile device. ◆ Manage team communications easily in one place: broadcast announcements, assign tasks to specific individuals / shifts, and get confirmation that your team has seen it. ◆ Get greater insight and control of your business, and keep yourself compliant with inbuilt fair workweek compliance. ◆ Connect with your existing apps to give you end-to-end visibility. Deputy syncs with over 300+ of the world's most used solutions such as ADP, Square, QuickBooks, Xero, Gusto, NetSuite, Revel, LightSpeed and many more! HOW DEPUTY HELPS EMPLOYEES ◆ Get your work schedule on your device as soon as it’s published. ◆ View all your upcoming shifts in one place and receive alerts on days when you’re due to work. ◆ Manage your availability and time off easily, see what’s approved, and make it simple for your manager to know when you are and aren’t available. ◆ Clock in and out of work quickly from the app. ◆ See important company updates, manage your tasks and communicate with your team from your mobile device. TRY DEPUTY TODAY Setting up your business? Sign up for a free trial today. No setup fee. Pick the plan to suit your business: monthly, annually or flexi. Always know that you have the right people scheduled with our Shift Planner: Deputy makes it easy to create fully costed schedules in minutes, then notify staff when they’re working. Deputy will even automatically remind employees of their shifts on the morning that they are due to work. Manage employees’ leave requests or unavailability from a central location, then integrate with your online schedules so there’s no risk of scheduling someone who is not available. Need to be smart about staffing levels? Deputy integrates with your POS & payroll information to make sure you’re scheduling efficiently, and pulls in real-time weather information so you know if you need extra shifts or not! Clocking in to work is made simple with our time clock software, including GPS validation, to quickly track time and attendance (or optionally from a tablet Kiosk, using our inbuilt facial detection technology). Finalizing your timesheets and exporting to payroll can be done with one click from your mobile device. Joining an existing team? It's free - just log in. CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS “Straightaway, the time and attendance headache disappeared. There’s no need to manually enter data from one system to another. It’s all uploaded effortlessly. And on our tablets or phones, we can sign off timesheets with a swipe." "Everyone gets alerted to their shifts, which they can check on their smartphones. Everyone knows where they should be, when they should be there and what they should be doing." "Deputy has been a revelation for our business. We’re saving approximately $30,000 a year in admin costs alone. But even more importantly, we’re now able to optimize all shifts and staffing levels." ABOUT DEPUTY APP Our staff scheduling app is updated regularly to make sure we’re always providing the best and most flexible features to the businesses we work with. Any feedback? Need help? Email experience+ios@deputy.com Terms of Use: https://www.deputy.com/subscription-agreement

About

OffshoreSMS

This app provides commercial vessel owners, skippers, and crew with essential tools for maritime safety management. It simplifies the creation and real-time updating of safety management systems, ensuring all crew members have access to critical information. The platform aims to reduce paper usage and streamline safety processes on board.

Highlights
  • Real-time SMS updates for crew
  • Digital vessel logs and forms
  • Crew qualification and induction management
  • Passenger manifest creation
  • Expense logging and receipt saving
  • Personal Mariner Profile creation
  • Fleet management tools
Features
Read full description

FREE to download and FREE to create a user profile, the Offshore SMS has been developed to give commercial vessel owners, skippers and crew the tools they need to be safe on the water, anywhere in the world. Every vessel should have a safety management system (SMS) or safety management plan, and everyone on the boat, from the owner to the crew, must know where it is, what is in it, and how to use it. The OffshoreSMS app makes this easy! Owners and masters can build and update the SMS in real time from anywhere on earth. Every change is synced in real time to every crew member on the boat, and all crew have the SMS right in their pocket! Whether you're based, or whatever your operation, OffshoreSMS will simplify safety on your vessels, plus give you a ton of easy-to-use tools to save you time and money, and all with zero paper!! If you're a crew member on a vessel, there is no cost whatsoever! Simply download the app and search for the vessel you work on, then request crew access to start using the app! Created with input from commercial vessel operators from day one, our aim is to simplify the process of running a vessel safely and reducing paper on your boat. We've made it super easy to add a vessel, connect with other users on the app and induct them as crew, and do all of the legally required vessel logs. Offshore SMS features include: • Quick signup through the app • Update your own personal profile and be found by other vessel skippers • Great for everyone on any commercial vessel anywhere • Add as many free vessels as you like and all have unlimited free ships logs • Use our in-app helpers to build a compliant SMS or SMP in minutes • Manage crew qualifications and inductions with signatures • Log defects, schedule maintenance or even create your own custom forms • Create passenger manifests and do live head count logs • Log anything from pre-starts to fuel and engine hours, to the ship's log • Add unlimited crew and get a signed induction in the app • Record important dates for your vessel (safety gear, expiry dates etc) * Choose from a range of annual subscription options from less than $1/week per vessel NEW Features for Charter and Passenger vessels: • Create a Passenger Manifest for each trip with all passengers' personal information • Check passengers on and off in real time • Create a separate Passenger Induction checklist and induct passengers with easy prompts • Masters can do quick head counts from the app and save them in the cloud - no clickers, no paper! NEW Features in 2024: • Workflows - create and manage larger jobs and add small tasks for other team members! • Expense logs - record expenses on board and save receipts, invoices or bills per supplier • A new personal Mariner Profile - your new marine resume! • Mark vessels, plant and equipment as offline / tagged out • New Marine Fleets - now fleet owners and managers can view live fleet activity, monitor stats, and manage assets and team members right from the app! • New crew warnings for skippers at startup • Now log multiples drills at one time! PLUS: * Crew change logs * Custom log review screen * Scheduled maintenance by TIME as well as ENGINE HOURS * Location pin drops in Ship's Log Now, if you own or manage a fleet of vessels, use our app to connect your skippers to your fleet dashboard in real time! AND, if you employ multiple people on your vessel, set up to 3 different roles, each with custom access permissions! PLUS HEAPS MORE!

Screenshots

Deputy4 screens
OffshoreSMS4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Deputy at 4.8 against OffshoreSMS's 1.0. Deputy also leads on ratings volume (6K vs 1). OffshoreSMS's advantage is review sentiment (83% vs 59%) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Deputy sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $59.99 per month and OffshoreSMS sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Deputy holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Deputy has 6K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 59% of Deputy's written reviews are positive against 83% of OffshoreSMS's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Deputy ships an update weekly, OffshoreSMS every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Deputy versus OffshoreSMS: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterDeputyOffshoreSMS
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (6K ratings) — better1.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews59.2% of reviews83.3% of reviews — better
Number of ratings6K — better1
Update frequencyWeekly — betterEvery 10 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size285 MB65 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDeputy.comOffshore SMS Pty Ltd

Customer experience

Deputy

All ratings5,977 ratings
Positive95.5%
Neutral1.1%
Negative3.4%
Written reviews429 reviews
Positive59.2%
Neutral9.6%
Negative31.2%

OffshoreSMS

All ratings1 ratings
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%
Written reviews6 reviews
Positive83.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative16.7%

Bugs and requests

Deputy

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • App crashes or freezes frequently
  • Timesheets not accurately recording hours worked
  • Shift scheduling issues after updates
  • Notification system not reliable

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add ability to cancel shifts
  • Improve communication features between employees
  • Provide more detailed reporting and analytics
  • Allow employees to view their leave balances
  • Integrate with more payroll/HR systems

OffshoreSMS

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Deputy

Subscriptions2
  • 10 users1 Month trial$59.991 Month
  • 25 users1 Month trial$144.991 Month
4 purchases

OffshoreSMS

One-time4
  • Digital Logs Plan$31.99
  • Digital SMS Plan$84.99
  • OffshoreSMS LOGS + SMS$94.99
Show 1 more
  • OffshoreSMS PRO Plan$159.99

Questions

Is Deputy free?
Deputy is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is OffshoreSMS free?
OffshoreSMS is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Deputy or OffshoreSMS?
Deputy is rated higher. Deputy averages 4.8 out of 5 from 6K ratings, while OffshoreSMS averages 1.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Deputy or OffshoreSMS have ads?
Neither Deputy nor OffshoreSMS shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Deputy or OffshoreSMS?
Deputy ships an update weekly, and OffshoreSMS every 10 days. Most recently, Deputy was updated on October 30, 2026 and OffshoreSMS on October 24, 2026.

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