Should I Build It Should I Build It
19 Apr 2025
Productivity Time Tracking

An application for users to manage their time off and record when ...

...they'll be away from work

Confidence
Engagement
Net use signal
Net buy signal

Idea type: Freemium

People love using similar products but resist paying. You’ll need to either find who will pay or create additional value that’s worth paying for.

Should You Build It?

Build but think about differentiation and monetization.

Your are here

You're entering a market with several similar products for managing time off, as indicated by the 8 matches we found. This suggests a validated need, which is encouraging. However, you'll face competition. The products in this category tend to get decent engagement, reflected by the 24 average comments. This means people are interested and willing to provide feedback, which you can use to your advantage. Based on the 'Freemium' idea category, users generally like these tools but may resist paying. The key challenge is differentiating your application and finding a monetization strategy. Consider who will pay, and for what added value.

Recommendations

  1. Given that you're in the 'Freemium' category, start by offering a valuable free version to attract a broad user base. Identify the core features that provide the most value to individual users and make those readily accessible without charge. This aligns with the general user behavior observed in similar products.
  2. Based on the discussions from similar product launches, a common request is for more customization options (as seen in 'Stretch My Time Off'). Therefore, prioritize offering flexible settings, such as adding personal holidays, accommodating different work week structures, and support for various country-specific calendars. This directly addresses user criticisms and enhances the product's usability.
  3. Consider premium features targeted towards team or company-wide use. For example, features like consolidated employee time-off schedules (as mentioned in the 'AI Time Off' discussion), group vacation planning, and blackout date management could be compelling for businesses willing to pay. Target the features toward the organization as a whole to leverage the freemium nature of the tool for individual adoption.
  4. Offer personalized support or consulting services for larger organizations as a premium add-on. This could involve helping them integrate the application with their existing HR systems or providing training to their employees. These high-touch services justify a higher price point and cater to the needs of businesses with more complex requirements.
  5. Explore usage-based pricing where you charge based on the number of active users or the amount of data processed. This allows you to capture revenue as your user base grows without immediately requiring everyone to pay upfront. This also means you can scale your backend dynamically and plan for additional resources as they are needed.
  6. Actively gather user feedback through surveys, in-app prompts, and community forums. Pay close attention to feature requests and pain points, and iterate on the product based on this input. The high engagement observed in similar products shows that users are willing to contribute their ideas, which is invaluable for product development.
  7. Address concerns about product information. As users of 'AI Time Off' desired more comprehensive product details, ensure that you provide clear and detailed information on your website and Product Hunt page. Focus on highlighting the benefits of your product and providing transparent pricing information to enable informed decisions.

Questions

  1. Given that users desire custom holiday allocations, how will you ensure that your application can integrate/cater to a wide range of countries' specific holiday calendars and work week structures?
  2. How will you balance offering a valuable free version with enticing users to upgrade to premium features that generate revenue? What specific features are compelling enough to drive conversions?
  3. Considering the comments about the product 'No ads, no login website to track work hours' being too bloated, how will you ensure that your app remains lightweight, fast, and easy to use, while still providing a comprehensive set of features?

Your are here

You're entering a market with several similar products for managing time off, as indicated by the 8 matches we found. This suggests a validated need, which is encouraging. However, you'll face competition. The products in this category tend to get decent engagement, reflected by the 24 average comments. This means people are interested and willing to provide feedback, which you can use to your advantage. Based on the 'Freemium' idea category, users generally like these tools but may resist paying. The key challenge is differentiating your application and finding a monetization strategy. Consider who will pay, and for what added value.

Recommendations

  1. Given that you're in the 'Freemium' category, start by offering a valuable free version to attract a broad user base. Identify the core features that provide the most value to individual users and make those readily accessible without charge. This aligns with the general user behavior observed in similar products.
  2. Based on the discussions from similar product launches, a common request is for more customization options (as seen in 'Stretch My Time Off'). Therefore, prioritize offering flexible settings, such as adding personal holidays, accommodating different work week structures, and support for various country-specific calendars. This directly addresses user criticisms and enhances the product's usability.
  3. Consider premium features targeted towards team or company-wide use. For example, features like consolidated employee time-off schedules (as mentioned in the 'AI Time Off' discussion), group vacation planning, and blackout date management could be compelling for businesses willing to pay. Target the features toward the organization as a whole to leverage the freemium nature of the tool for individual adoption.
  4. Offer personalized support or consulting services for larger organizations as a premium add-on. This could involve helping them integrate the application with their existing HR systems or providing training to their employees. These high-touch services justify a higher price point and cater to the needs of businesses with more complex requirements.
  5. Explore usage-based pricing where you charge based on the number of active users or the amount of data processed. This allows you to capture revenue as your user base grows without immediately requiring everyone to pay upfront. This also means you can scale your backend dynamically and plan for additional resources as they are needed.
  6. Actively gather user feedback through surveys, in-app prompts, and community forums. Pay close attention to feature requests and pain points, and iterate on the product based on this input. The high engagement observed in similar products shows that users are willing to contribute their ideas, which is invaluable for product development.
  7. Address concerns about product information. As users of 'AI Time Off' desired more comprehensive product details, ensure that you provide clear and detailed information on your website and Product Hunt page. Focus on highlighting the benefits of your product and providing transparent pricing information to enable informed decisions.

Questions

  1. Given that users desire custom holiday allocations, how will you ensure that your application can integrate/cater to a wide range of countries' specific holiday calendars and work week structures?
  2. How will you balance offering a valuable free version with enticing users to upgrade to premium features that generate revenue? What specific features are compelling enough to drive conversions?
  3. Considering the comments about the product 'No ads, no login website to track work hours' being too bloated, how will you ensure that your app remains lightweight, fast, and easy to use, while still providing a comprehensive set of features?

  • Confidence: High
    • Number of similar products: 8
  • Engagement: High
    • Average number of comments: 24
  • Net use signal: 2.8%
    • Positive use signal: 10.6%
    • Negative use signal: 7.8%
  • Net buy signal: -1.7%
    • Positive buy signal: 0.0%
    • Negative buy signal: 1.7%

This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.

The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.

The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.

The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.

Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.

Similar products

Relevance

AI Time Off - AI-Powered time off management simplified

19 Oct 2023 Artificial Intelligence Human Resources Productivity

AI Time Off simplifies time off management with AI automation. Create and manage policies effortlessly, reduce admin tasks, and prioritize what matters.

AI Time Off automates and simplifies time off management, removing personal responsibility and easing decision-making. Users congratulate the team on the launch and express interest in seeing more of the product, with one user requesting early access. A floor manager is interested in viewing employee time off schedules.

Users desire more comprehensive product information both on Product Hunt and the main website. They are looking for more details to make informed decisions.

Avatar
29
8
50.0%
8
29
50.0%
Relevance

TIMEOFF.GURU - Leave management for teams made easy

18 Feb 2024 SaaS Human Resources

TIMEOFF.GURU is an online platform designed to simplify your organization's leave management and absence tracking. It offers a unique and simple interface that allows you to efficiently manage time off requests, view balances, and track absences in real-time.

Avatar
2
2
Relevance

Stretch My Time Off – An Algorithm to Optimize Your Vacation Days

12 Nov 2024 Productivity

Hey HN! I built StretchMyTimeOff as a quick experiment using Cursor (Anysphere's AI code editor) and GPT-4o to see how far AI could go in building a simple, functional site.What it does: The site helps you get the most out of your vacation by suggesting optimal days to take off around national holidays, maximizing long breaks with minimal vacation days, anywhere in the world and for any calendar year.It's an idea I've had for a while, and building the algorithm with GPT was a fun challenge. Any feedback or ideas I'm all ears :)

Users appreciate the tool for planning vacations, especially around school holidays and public holidays, but request more customization options, such as adding personal holidays, manual day-picking, and company-specific calendars. Some criticize the lack of flexibility for different countries' holidays and suggest improvements like a Monday start option. There's a desire for features to optimize time off, like group vacation planning and black-out days. Users also discuss the impact of taking time off on work, school, and travel, with varying opinions on the best strategies for maximizing PTO. Some comments are unrelated or humorous, and a few report technical issues.

Users criticize the product for lacking customization options, particularly for holiday allocations, work weeks, and education constraints. There's a strong emphasis on the tool's impracticality for parents with school-bound children, the high cost and inconvenience of travel during public holidays, and the lack of features for corporate and local holidays. Users also note the tool's incompatibility with various countries' systems, misleading information, and the need for manual overrides. Additionally, there are complaints about the website's functionality, such as errors and poor handling of date transitions.

Avatar
358
163
0.6%
-1.8%
163
358
9.2%
Relevance

PicnicHR – Simple HR and time-off tracking for your team

29 Aug 2023 Human Resources

Hey HN! Picnic started as a side-project during lockdown for internal use, and we recently decided to share with the world as a full product.There's a lot of leave / time-off management applications out there, quite a few we've tried.. We hope Picnic is a more accessible solution, particularly for smaller businesses.An overview of Picnic functionality:- Employees can submit requests for vacation and other time-off, and be notified of their manager's response- Managers and supervisors can process requests for leave, and provide explanation- Team members can view their personal calendar, and managers can view their team's calendar to see upcoming time off, and plan resourcing- Browse all company employees in the employee directory (with the option to make the list visible to all employees, or managers only)- Manage employees information, including personal details, and emergency contactsPicnic is HR software designed to scale to companies of any size, but is especially suited to small and medium businesses.We'd welcome your thoughts on the product, and where we might develop it further!

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3
3
Relevance

No ads, no login website to track work hours

03 Jan 2024 Productivity Time Tracking

Since I went remote(working) last year, I found it hard to track my work/focus hours. To begin with, I started with my mobile stopwatch but found it to be inefficient and distracting. I then tried some time management tools online but they were geared towards enterprises than individuals. Plus, had too many features.So, last weekend I created https://www.timemygrind.com/ - a simple focus time tracking tool that requires no login, no internet and has no ads. Once you finish your work, it shows the times in the table below.I usually pause when I take a break or go out for lunch and has helped me figure out how productive I am.Eventually, I will add more features but would like to hear your thoughts on this and remote work productivity in general.

Users appreciate the simplicity and problem-solving nature of the web app. Some have used similar tools like Wakapi and Wakatime. There is positive feedback but suggestions for improvement, such as saving work start time in the browser and adding a remote team tracking feature. One user questioned the use of a 600kb image from Unsplash.

Users criticized the product for being too bloated and expressed concerns about the precision of time tracking. They also noted that work time is lost if the tab, window, or browser is closed. Additionally, there were questions about the large image size and the lack of a remote team tracking feature.

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9
5
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9
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