Choose Proximatic when you need to organize an event team, fill volunteer shifts and see who arrived. Describe the event in one box to create its shifts and draft roster. Pro can collect availability by email and use the replies to prepare the assignments for your review. Consider RosterLab when you need an ongoing staff rota with leave, night shifts, rest periods and contractual requirements.
Start with one real event or working week. The useful comparison is how easily your coordinator can prepare it, spot a problem and get the right people onto the right jobs.
Use Proximatic for an event team
A pantry, race, workshop or community event starts with a practical question: who can cover each job for the full time?
In Proximatic, prepare your approved team and their available times. Describe the event in Create with AI to create a saved draft, or enter the event and shifts yourself. Give each shift its job, start and finish times, number of places and meeting point.
For a future draft with custom shifts, Pro can request availability by email from your approved roster teams. Volunteers reply with dates and times, and Proximatic uses those answers to prepare the private draft roster. Review coverage and commitments, then publish to start requests to confirm the assigned shifts. An availability reply and a confirmed assignment are separate steps.
Look at what still needs attention. Dinner below needs three people from 4–7pm, but Avery and Jordan fill only two places. Use Find cover to identify a suitable person for that whole shift and save the assignment while keeping the rest of the roster in place.
Find the Dinner shift that needs another person
The pantry walkthrough shows the team, available times, shifts and saved assignments together.
Make the staffing requirements easy to explain
For a three-person pantry shift, you might want at most one new volunteer so experienced people can help them. Build that requirement on Proximatic's visual canvas and apply it to the relevant shifts.
Build a staffing requirement on the canvas
The scheduling-rules guide explains the supported requirements. Check the person's approved role and full availability too; a rule about experience cannot tell you whether someone is free for dinner.
RosterLab's rules engine addresses workforce needs such as rest between shifts, night-shift patterns, staff preferences and required skill mix. If those needs drive your operation, take your actual requirements into a demonstration.
Know what happens when you change the roster
Proximatic's Auto-Schedule saves a replacement roster immediately after a successful run. Other assignments can change too, so review the whole event: open places, the people assigned and each person's workload. A full schedule can still ask too much of a few volunteers.
Manual roster changes save automatically. Check Saved after editing. In a draft event, Undo can restore the last saved staffing change when it is available. Publishing and sending participant messages are separate actions.
RosterLab's re-rostering page describes changing part of a staff roster and reviewing the impact on coverage. Ask to see a sick-call replacement in your demonstration: what changes, what stays in place and how affected staff hear about it?
Follow the plan through event day
For Proximatic event teams, the roster connects to the public event page, signup and check-in and checkout. Tell volunteers their job, full time, meeting point and lead. Afterward, review arrival and departure records before sharing hours, including any missing times or estimated finishes.
For an ongoing workforce, leave requests, shift swaps and personal schedules may matter more. RosterLab's staff app describes those tasks. If you also need event attendance, ask to see that workflow with the report your organization requires.
Ask which AI actions are available
RosterLab already offers automatic roster generation. Its separate Otto assistant page describes roster questions and insights; creating a draft and adding shifts are listed as coming soon, with a waitlist. Confirm the actions available in the plan you are considering.
In Proximatic, AI event setup creates a saved event draft for you to review. Check the dates, shifts and resulting assignments before publishing. Use Auto-Schedule when you want to rebuild staffing from the prepared team, available times and rules.
Compare the cost for your actual team
Proximatic's core event creation, signup, scheduling, rosters and attendance are free. AI includes one AI-organized event each UTC month, with additional paid tasks available. Pro is $16/month per organization, including email-assisted scheduling, 30 AI-organized tasks and 1,000 email credits per paid month. See pricing and the billing terms for allowances and conditions.
As checked on October 8, 2026, RosterLab's pricing page lists free manual Digital Rostering and AI Optimised Rostering at $20 per person per month. It counts staff included in the generated roster; an admin or manager who is not rostered is free. Confirm currency, contract length and any minimum with RosterLab before comparing totals.
Compare the cost for the people you actually schedule. A small volunteer crew with occasional events has a different budget and workflow from a 30-person team working rotating shifts.
When RosterLab may be the better fit
An ongoing healthcare or round-the-clock operation should investigate RosterLab when leave, fatigue, contractual rules, shift swaps and changing staffing patterns are central to the job. Its workforce features address a different operating need from a single event crew.
For an event team, start with the pantry example, then build your own event roster. Check whether you can explain every open place, agree each person's commitment and carry the plan into signup and attendance with less chasing.