How we rank, and where the numbers come from

The disclosure

We make Shiftelio. It appears on most of the lists on this site, and on several of them it is ranked first. We are not neutral and there is no arrangement of words that would make us neutral.

What we can do instead is make the ranking checkable. The criterion is named before the ranking that uses it. Every rupee figure carries its source and the month it was read. Every entry, ours included, carries a paragraph naming the reader who should buy something else. No page here publishes a rating for our own product. Nobody pays to be included, nobody pays to be ranked higher, and there are no affiliate links anywhere on this site.

The eight rules every comparison page follows

1. 1. The criterion is chosen and written down before anything is ranked

   Every comparison page on this site names, in its first screen, the single question it ranks against. Not "best", which means nothing on its own, but something specific enough to be wrong: annual cost at 25 employees with location verification switched on, or whether the statutory challan is actually produced rather than merely calculated. The ordering then follows from that criterion mechanically. A reader who wants a different criterion is told so at the top and pointed at the page that uses it, rather than reading nine entries before discovering the list was not for them.

2. 2. Costs are quoted with the feature you came for switched on

   This is the decision that changes the answer more than any other. Checking every vendor pricing page in August 2026 turned up one pattern running through the whole market: location verification is almost never in the base plan. greytHR publishes GPS live tracking at Rs 140 per user per month on its two upper tiers only. SalaryBox prices it at Rs 100 per user per month. Truein charges Rs 200 per user per year on top of an annual base fee. Kredily gives web clock-in on its free tier and puts selfie and GPS attendance two tiers up, with continuous tracking a further per-user add-on marked Android only on its own comparison table. Comparing base plans therefore compares the wrong number and produces an ordering that collapses the moment somebody buys. So every cost figure is quoted with the add-on priced in.

3. 3. A minimum billed headcount is counted as a real cost, because it is one

   Several platforms bill a floor whatever the size of your team. A minimum block of 100 employees means a company of 25 pays for 100 and its true cost per head is four times the headline. A five-user minimum means a three-person company pays for five. An annual base fee is charged before the first per-user rupee. These are the single most common reason a quote comes back higher than the pricing page suggested, they are almost never in comparison tables, and they are in ours.

4. 4. Every figure carries its source and the month it was read

   A price with no date is worthless within a quarter, and a comparison built on prices recalled rather than read is worthless immediately. Each figure on each page names where it came from: the vendor own pricing page wherever the vendor publishes one, and where it does not, the third-party source is named and the figure is marked second hand so a reader can weigh it accordingly. Where a source is a competing vendor comparison blog, that is said out loud, because a rival pricing a rival is not a neutral source.

5. 5. Refusing to publish a price is recorded as a finding, not left blank

   Some vendors publish nothing and route every enquiry to a sales call. That is a legitimate way to sell software and it is also information a small business owner needs before spending an afternoon on a demo. So those entries say plainly that no price is published, rather than carrying a guess or a dash. A blank cell in a comparison table quietly reads as "cheap"; it usually is not.

6. 6. Every entry, including ours, says when it is the wrong choice

   A comparison in which one product has no downsides is an advertisement wearing a table. Each entry carries a paragraph naming the reader who should buy something else and what they should buy instead, and each competitor is credited with the category it genuinely wins. On several pages that means a rival is ranked above us, and on the free-tier page it means recommending a product that costs nothing against one that costs money.

7. 7. We do not publish a customer rating for our own product

   No page on this site carries an aggregate rating, a star score or a review count for Shiftelio. Self-reported ratings in structured data are trivially fabricated, are worth nothing to a reader who understands where they came from, and one was removed from two pages on this site in August 2026 for exactly that reason. Where a rival publicly holds a rating on an independent platform, that rating may be quoted with its source and its date, because a third party said it and not us.

8. 8. Corrections are made in public

   When a figure turns out to be wrong it is corrected on the page and the correction is recorded there, saying what was claimed and what is actually true. The comparison listicle already carries one: a previous version stated that a vendor offered a free plan for up to 25 employees, which their pricing page does not support and never did. The claim was removed and the correction left in place, because a page that quietly edits its mistakes is a page you cannot check.

What counts as a source, in order of weight

• Vendor pricing pages

  The primary source and the only one used without qualification. Read directly, including the plan comparison matrix and the add-on rows underneath it, because the headline tier price is routinely not the price of the thing being compared.

• Vendor documentation and feature comparison tables

  Used to establish what a tier actually includes, particularly where a feature is present on one platform and absent on another under the same name. Platform limits, such as a tracking feature being Android only, come from here.

• Public app store listings

  Used for platform availability and minimum OS version. Not used for ratings of our own product, and used for a competitor rating only with the store, the figure and the date all stated.

• Indian statute and government sources

  For anything legal: the Code on Wages, the Occupational Safety Health and Working Conditions Code, the Factories Act 1948, state Shops and Establishments Acts, EPFO and ESIC circulars, and state professional tax notifications. Named on the page, with the section, and with the scope of who it applies to.

• Third-party pricing round-ups

  A last resort, used only where a vendor publishes no India price at a stable URL. Always marked second hand in the entry, and marked again where the publisher is itself a competing vendor.

How often this is re-checked

Competitor pricing is reviewed every quarter. Between reviews, a script watches each vendor pricing page and flags when the text around a price changes, so a mid-quarter change surfaces rather than sitting there until the next scheduled read.

A page's modified date moves when its content actually changes and not otherwise. A date that advances on every deploy tells a reader nothing and tells a search engine something false, so it is not done here. If a page says it was verified in August 2026, somebody read the sources in August 2026.

Who writes these pages

The comparison and reference pages are published by the Shiftelio editorial team: the people who build and support the product, working from vendor pricing pages, Indian statute and the support queue. The first-hand experience behind these pages is running attendance and payroll for Indian small businesses every day, which is the part of this subject that is hard to get from documentation.

The long-form guides and the blog carry a named personal byline instead, because guidance on PF, ESI and labour law should be attributable to a person. Both are reachable from the about page.

The pages this policy governs

• Best attendance apps in India · ranked by annual cost at 25 employees with GPS verification working
• Best free attendance apps in India · ranked by how far a free tier gets you before payroll, location or a headcount cap forces an upgrade
• Best GPS attendance apps in India · ranked by which tier gates which kind of location proof: stamp, geofence, live trail, anti-spoofing
• Best attendance apps for field staff in India · ranked by site caps, offline capture and the cost of a continuous trail, for staff never at one address
• Best attendance apps for construction sites in India · ranked by workers who own no smartphone, whether a daily wage can be paid at all, and whether the pricing shape survives a headcount that moves with the project
• Best attendance apps for restaurants in India · ranked by whether a two-part day can be rostered at all, whether each outlet gets its own boundary, and how fast a new hire can punch
• Best payroll software for small businesses in India · ranked by whether the statutory output is actually produced, not merely calculated
• Shiftelio compared with PagarBook
• Shiftelio compared with SalaryBox
• Shiftelio compared with Truein
• Shiftelio compared with Keka

If you believe anything on any of them is inaccurate, including a price we have got wrong or a free tier we have missed, write to support@shiftelio.com. We will correct it and say on the page that we did.