hourscreates

HoursCreates is a web-based productivity platform designed to help creators plan, track, and optimize the hours spent on content projects. Built to support individual freelancers, studios, and education teams, it combines time tracking, task management, and reporting in a single interface. The core idea is to align estimated work hours with actual effort to improve planning accuracy and resource allocation.

Key features include manual and automatic time tracking, estimate-to-actual comparison, hourly budgeting, kanban-style boards, task lists, calendars, dashboards, and export options for CSV and PDF. It provides integrations with calendar apps, project-management tools, and webhooks for automation, plus an API for custom development.

Architecture and hosting. The platform is offered as a cloud service with an option for self-hosting in enterprise deployments. It emphasizes an API-first approach, with OAuth-based authentication, webhooks, and a JSON-based REST API. Data is stored securely with encryption in transit and at rest.

History. HoursCreates began as a community project in 2017 and released an open-core version in 2019. It evolved into a commercial service with a developer-focused ecosystem, featuring contributor guidelines and modular plugins. The project is maintained by a distributed team and community volunteers.

Reception and impact. Users cite improved planning accuracy and clearer visibility into time usage across complex productions. Critics note a learning curve for advanced features and emphasize the importance of privacy controls and transparent data practices.