Sling alternative

A focused alternative for
open shifts and self-signup

Zelos covers that slice of Sling at one flat price,
without the time clock, labour costing, and per-user fees.

Sling logo

Shift scheduling, time clock, labour costs, and payroll reports

Fits organisations with
managers, rosters, and hourly payroll.

Zelos logo

Open shifts, task dispatch, notice board, and team chat

Fits when the organisation is all on you.

Start a free Zelos project

No credit card · Unlimited members on every plan · Set up in under 5 minutes

How open shifts work in each app


Sling

Available shifts inside a roster

Managers build the schedule first; the shifts nobody is assigned to get published as available for employees to claim or swap.

Zelos

Open shifts as the whole product

Admins post shifts and tasks; team members browse and claim what fits their skills and schedule.

What Sling is better at

If your workflow depends on the things below, Sling is the right pick.

Time clock and labour costing

Mobile and kiosk clock-in, geofencing, timesheets, overtime tracking, and labour cost against sales. If you need to know what a shift cost you, that's Sling's core job and Zelos doesn't do it.

Payroll-ready reporting

Payroll reports, PTO management, holiday pay, break attestation, and clopening rules. Sling is built to hand clean hours to a payroll system at the end of the period.

Manager-built rosters

Drag-and-drop schedules, weekly templates, employee availability, day parts, and auto-assigning on the Business plan. If one person builds the whole rota in advance, Sling is designed for exactly that.

Toast and restaurant operations

Sling is now part of Toast and connects to Toast POS for sales-based labour planning. For restaurants already running Toast, that integration is hard to argue with.

If these bullet points are non-negotiable, you're a Sling customer.

What Zelos is sharper at

If you don't need the full suite of employee scheduling tools, Zelos is a better fit.

Built for people who aren't on payroll

Sling models everyone as an employee with a wage, a position, and a location. Zelos models them as people who claim work, which is what volunteers, contractors, gig workers, and casual staff actually are.

Pricing that doesn't grow with the team

Zelos premium costs $99/month flat, independent of crew accounts. Sling's free plan stops at 30 people; Zelos's free plan has no headcount limit at all.

Built to run itself

Zelos is the kind of tool a single coordinator can configure on a Tuesday afternoon and have a 200-person team using by Wednesday morning. There's no roster to build first, no admin training, no setup call.

Privacy that's the default, not an upgrade

Workspaces are invite-only. Members can't see each other's contact info. All chat includes admin oversight, no unsupervised 1:1 messaging. Built in Estonia, GDPR-compliant out of the box.

If you're drawn to this kind of simplicity, you should spin up a free project in Zelos right away.

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$340 → $99

per month

200 people, same coordination work. Sling bills you $340 a month.
Zelos bills you $99.

What you'll actually pay at different team sizes

Here's what that looks like in practice (annual billing, USD).

Team size Zelos Zelos Pro Sling*
10 people Free $99/mo Free
30 people Free $99/mo Free
50 people Free $99/mo $85/mo
100 people Free $99/mo $170/mo
200 people Free $99/mo $340/mo
500 people Free $99/mo $850/mo

* Sling pricing pulled from getsling.com/pricing. Premium tier at $1.70 per user per month, annual billing. Business doubles it to $3.40 per user. Sling's free plan caps at 30 users.

If your team grows seasonally or scales for events, the per-user model changes the equation.
Nonprofits and education teams get additional discounts on Zelos Pro and Enterprise.

How Zelos works

Seen enough?
Get started in our self-service.

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No credit card · Five-minute setup

Teams that pick Zelos over Sling

Volunteer-led nonprofits with growing rosters

Sling's free plan stops at 30 people, and volunteers don't have wages, positions, or timesheets to track. A 300-volunteer nonprofit on Sling Premium would pay around $510/month. Zelos covers the same group for free.

Learn more →

Event staffing and on-demand workforces

Events spike to hundreds of staff for a weekend, then back down. Sling's per-seat model makes that scaling expensive. Zelos's flat fee doesn't move. Most event staff also pick the shifts that fit their schedules, exactly what self-signup is built for.

Learn more →

Contractor pools and gig dispatch

Contractors set their own availability and aren't on your payroll, so a rostering tool is solving the wrong problem. Post the job, let the right people claim it, coordinate in the task chat.

Learn more →

Cleaning services and field crews

Cleaning companies and field service businesses use Zelos to dispatch jobs. Crews claim what fits their day, and coordinate through built-in chat. On a slow month, a 100-person on-demand crew runs free on Zelos, but would pay $170/month on Sling Premium.

Learn more →

Brand ambassadors and street teams

Marketing teams running ambassador programmes need lightweight self-signup and built-in chat, not time clocks and labour cost reports. Zelos costs less and includes only what they actually use.

Learn more →

Seasonal and casual labour pools

Rosters assume you know who's working before the week starts. Casual pools don't work that way, you post the shifts and see who's free. Zelos is built around that order of operations.

Learn more →

From teams who picked Zelos

What teams who picked Zelos say

Capterra
★★★★★

"It helped us a lot reducing the planning overhead. It is way more motivating for staff to pick their task than just getting assigned!"

Manuel W.

Coordinator, Events Services

Full review →
Capterra
★★★★★

"We were looking for a system to handle our concert staff. Zelos is really easy to access both for the administrator and the users!"

Niels Peter H.

Board member, Music

Full review →
Capterra
★★★★★

"The overall experience has been great, the customer service is amazing and I can't wait for all the new changes coming up in the app!"

Celia D.

Coordinator, Motion Pictures and Film

Full review →

Free for teams of any size

No credit card, no trial expiration.

Pro starts at $99/month, never per person.

Nonprofit and education discounts on Pro and Enterprise.

See full pricing → Or just get started, it's free

Frequently asked questions

Can Zelos do open shifts like Sling?
Yes. Zelos is built around open-shift signup as the entire app, while Sling publishes available shifts inside a manager-built roster. In Zelos there's no schedule to construct first, you post the shift, and the people it was targeted to claim it.
Does Zelos have team chat like Sling?
Yes. Built-in messaging is included in every plan, including free. You get task-specific channels, group chats, direct messages, and push notifications. The main difference is intent: all chat in Zelos includes admin oversight by design, there is no unsupervised 1:1 messaging between team members. Sling includes private employee-to-employee messaging on its free plan and group messaging from Premium up.
Is Zelos free for unlimited people?
Yes. There's no headcount limit on any Zelos plan, free or paid. Sling's free plan covers up to 30 users, after which you move to Premium at $1.70 per user per month or Business at $3.40, billed annually.
Is Zelos a Sling alternative?
Yes, for teams built around self-signup rather than manager-built rosters. Zelos is a strong alternative if you coordinate volunteers, gig workers, contractors, or event staff. It's not a replacement if you depend on time clocks, labour cost reporting, or payroll-ready timesheets, those are Sling strengths Zelos doesn't try to match.
Can I track hours and run payroll with Zelos?
No. Zelos doesn't have a time clock, timesheets, or payroll reports. Zelos is built around tasks and shifts that people sign up for, not hours that need to be paid. If payroll is part of your workflow, Sling (or a dedicated payroll tool) is the right fit.
Does Zelos charge per person?
No, never. The free tier includes unlimited team member accounts. The premium tier is a flat subscription starting $99/month for advanced features. Whether you have 50 or 5,000 people, the price doesn't change. Sling charges per user on both paid plans.
What's the catch with the Zelos free plan?
There isn't one. The free plan includes unlimited members, unlimited admins, full self-signup, built-in messaging, push notifications, gamification, smart targeting, and CSV export. The limits are 25 concurrent active tasks, 100-task archive, and 10,000 chat messages. If you need more volume or features like CSV bulk upload, that's when Pro at $99/month makes sense.
Why doesn't Zelos auto-assign shifts like Sling can?
Because people know their availability, skills, and preferences better than software does. Self-signup typically produces higher fill rates and lower no-show rates than auto-assignment, especially for non-employee teams. Zelos lets you target tasks to specific groups or skills, but the final pick is always made by the person.
Can I use Zelos for volunteers?
Yes, and it's the most common use. Sling is designed for hourly employees with wages, positions, and locations attached, which makes volunteer rosters awkward and expensive past 30 people. Zelos treats everyone as a member who claims work, with no wage data required.
Does Zelos integrate with Toast, Slack, Zapier, or other tools?
Not directly. Zelos has built-in messaging, so most teams don't need a separate chat tool alongside it. CSV export of tasks and members is on every plan; REST API and webhooks are on Enterprise. If you run a Toast POS restaurant and need sales-linked labour planning, Sling is the better fit.
Can I use both Zelos and Sling?
Yes, and some teams do. A venue might use Sling for its rostered hourly staff (time clock, labour costs, payroll reports) and Zelos for its on-call or volunteer pool (self-signup, no per-seat fees). The two products fit different parts of the workforce question.

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