I have been using RescueTime for more than a year. By “using” I mean that the application was running on my computer. Time to time I went online to see how my time was spent. Recently, after not visiting the site for a long time, I found out that my data is stored only for three month and some features (a year overview among others) are available only in paid accounts. It seems that $50 a year is not that much. But before committing my cash I decided to see what other options are there. Thanks to alternativeto.net (new website to me, and a good one too) I found a few alternatives.
Before going through the alternatives, I will specify what it is that I am looking for from an application like this. The most important usage for me is to know how much time I spent on a certain project. This simply means that I want to be able to specify what applications (documents in applications) corresponds to what project. Tagging is a way to do that. The next step is to see how much time different activities within a project occupied my time. This is also can be accomplished by tagging. I see benefits of storing the data online, but it is not a priority for me, because I do not plan to use multiple computers. For the next year or so I see myself working exclusively with windows and hence support for other operating systems is not a priority.
wakoopa: First impression was negative. After business like RescueTime, all the colors, pictures, and profiles looked a little alarming. Similarly to RescueTime, the data is stored online. Unlike RescueTime the account is free.
slifelabs: Looks too commercial without enough information to convince me to try them. Hence I did not even sign up there.
ybex: Seems to be oriented on what they need and my benefit is a side effect. This was not very convincing, hence no signing up there either.
manictime: Unlike RescueTime, the data is stored locally and the program is freeware, but for Windows only. The application has much larger memory footprint than other solutions.