Opportunities › Modern, self-hosted time tracking for teams › Proposed app
Hourkeep
Self-hosted time tracking for teams that own their data
- Score
- 62
- confidence 53
- Evidence
- 6
- items on the page
- Rivals
- 1
- named in sources
- First version
- 35 d
- estimate
- Type
- Desktop and mobile
- PWA: on computers and phones alike
- Market since
- 2006
- Mature market · AI estimate
ScreensConcept
Desktop and mobile: Workers tap a timer on phones to track time, but managers approve timesheets and review payroll reports at a desk. Sample screens on a computer and a phone, in the proposed brand. Their numbers are sample data.
Today
Timer running6h 42m
About this appAI proposal
Hourkeep is a time tracker for small companies, agencies and freelancers who bill by the hour or need clean hours for payroll and project accounting. Run it on your own server or use a hosted copy. Your time entries stay where you decide.
Track with a timer or a quick entry from your phone. Teams share projects, rates and approvals in one place, and reports and invoice drafts come from the same entries. No spreadsheets to merge at month end.
It is an installable web app, so it works on any device without an app store. Self-hosting is a first-class path, with plain-file export and no features held back from the self-hosted copy.
- Tagline
- Your hours, on your terms.
- Voice
- PlainSteadyTrustworthy
- Why this name
- Hour is the unit teams bill and pay in. Keep says the records stay with you, which is the point of self-hosting.
In the first version
Members say which features they would use. It tells PWAS what people want; it changes no score.
One-tap timer
Start, pause and switch projects from the home screen. Forgotten timers are flagged and can be trimmed before they reach a report.
No member yet
Works offline
Log time on a train or a site visit. Entries are stored on the device and sync when the connection returns.
No member yet
Team approvals
Managers review and lock weekly timesheets, so payroll and invoices use hours that have been checked.
No member yet
Rates and budgets
Set hourly rates per person, client or project, and watch budget hours burn down before a project runs over.
No member yet
Brand identityAI proposal
Check the name against trademark registers before using it.
Palette
#1F4D3APine · primary#F6F1E7Paper · surface#1D2622Ink · text#D9822BAmber · accent#3B5B8CSlate blue · data
Typography
Aa
Hourkeep
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
Your hours, on your terms.
PricingAI proposal
Based on Kimai's pricing page (verified): a free plan and two paid plans from €2.99 to €3.99 a month. Whether the price is per user is not stated; our USD tiers are a starting point to test.
Self-hosted
Free
- All features on your own server
- Unlimited users
- CSV and JSON export
- Community support
Cloud
$3 a month
- Hosted and updated for you
- Daily backups
- Approvals, budgets, invoice drafts
- Email support
Cloud Plus
$4 a month
- Everything in Cloud
- Single sign-on
- Audit log
- Priority support
What it could be worthEstimate
What a software business making this much sells for today, from real deals. Pick a monthly revenue.
If it makes
Worth about
$194,000
Sale range $132,000 to $263,000
$120,000 a year in revenue
From 87 software businesses listed and sold on Empire Flippers in the last year, revenue vetted by the broker: they sell for about 19× their monthly revenue, most between 13× and 26×.
Measured on profit, the middle deal is 32× monthly net profit: about 2.7 years of profit.
An estimate, not an offer or financial advice. A real price depends on profit, growth, churn, how much of the work is the owner's, and the buyer.
How it would growAI proposal
How the product would reach new customers through its own use, and how the first ones would be found. A plan to test, not a result.
- Built-in loop
- Shared outputs. Freelancers and agencies send invoice drafts and report links to clients. Each carries a small 'made with Hourkeep' line that can be turned off on the paid plan.
- Do they become customers?
- Clients who open a link are mostly not buyers of time tracking. Test whether agency clients who bill their own staff by time follow the link and start a trial.
- First customers
- Small web and design agencies of 5 to 20 people in Europe that bill hourly and prefer to keep client data on their own servers.
- Where to reach them
- Self-hosting communities: Post a deploy guide and demo in self-hosted and open-source forums where people compare time trackers.
- Agency owner groups: Offer free migration from spreadsheets or other trackers to agency founders in their chat groups.
- Comparison pages: Publish an honest page on switching from other open-source trackers, with an import tool.
- First milestone
- Five agencies on the paid hosted plan within 60 days, plus 50 self-hosted installs with active weekly use.
Why people already pay for this
- VerifiedGitHub repository gained 8976 stars in 996 days
- VerifiedGitHub repository gained 5065 stars in 3642 days
- Public claimKimai serves freelancers, companies and organisations who need to manage timesheets, generate reports, create invoices
- Public claimThe application is available in multiple deployment models (on-premise and SaaS), indicating different customer preferences and willingness to pay
- Verified
Tech stack
Every proposal builds on the same PWA base, installable from the browser on any phone or computer. Dashed boxes are what this app adds.
- AppNext.js and TypeScript
- PWAManifest and service worker
- UITailwind CSS
- Data and authSupabase Postgres
- PaymentsStripe
- EmailResend
- HostingVercel
- This app · Self-host packagingContainer image with setup guideSelf-hosting is the core promise, so it needs a one-step deploy beyond Vercel.
- This app · Offline syncLocal storage queue in the service workerEntries logged offline must sync without loss or duplicates.
RisksAI inference
- CommercialKimai is an established open-source tracker with a free plan and low paid prices. Hourkeep must win on experience and team features, not price alone.
- CommercialSelf-hosters may never pay. Revenue depends on the hosted plan converting enough teams, which is unproven.
- TechnicalSupporting both a hosted and self-hosted version doubles the work for upgrades, migrations and support.
- TechnicalOffline entry sync can create conflicts, such as overlapping timers from two devices, that need clear merge rules.
- RegulatoryPayroll use may bring local rules on working-time records and data retention. Teams must set them; the product only supports export and locking.
Everything marked AI proposal or AI inference was written by a model from the evidence on the opportunity page. The proposed name must be checked against trademark registers before it is used.