Rize.IO Review 2024: Best Smart Time Tracking App?

Do you understand how you spend and manage your time? Are you looking for the best tool to track your time, improve your focus, be more productive, prevent burnout, and help you build better work or business habits?

I have tested a wide selection of software and recently stumbled across Rize IO – an intelligent time tracker promising time reporting and a beautiful user interface.

In this blog post, I provide an in-depth review of Rize IO by taking an overview of its features, ease of use, value for money, and customer service.

To help you decide if Rize is worth subscribing to, here’s everything you need to know when judging whether it could be the top time tracker on the market! Try out Rize here!

What is Rize?

Rize is an app that tracks and categorizes your work activity in real-time on macOS and Windows. It helps you understand how you spend your time, improve your focus by providing daily scores and personalized metrics, and build better work habits by notifying you when to take a break at the right time.

Rize also allows you to drill down into the quality of your focus time to identify distracting apps or websites and limit work creep to prevent burnout. The platform focuses on three primary objectives:

1. First, allow you to be efficient with your time.
2. Improve your ability to focus.
3. Build work habits to keep you recharged.

How Does Rize Work?

Similar to the perspective in Cal Newport’s Deep Work (book summary), the founder believes it is essential to concentrate on single tasks for uninterrupted time blocks to succeed in our modern world. But, unfortunately, the world we live in does not prioritize deep work time.

Rize works to provide you with the critical metrics to understand your current work behavior to make habitual changes to be more productive over time. And so, the tool organizes its app into three major categories:

• Track: Track your progress as you work, get a breakdown of your time spent each day, and analyze trends in the time spent on different tasks.
• Focus: Improve the time spent on deep work by quantifying focus time, understanding your interrupters, and how often context switching occurs.
• Habits: Analyze your work activity to get feedback and provide notifications for the right time to take breaks.

Who is building Rize?

In August 2020, Will Goto and Macgill Davis founded Rize. Previously, they co-founded a venture-backed startup for three years with over $3.1 million in funding.

Will has a background in front-end software development and design. Also, he previously worked at Twitter, Periscope, and various other early-stage startups.

On the other hand, Macgill has a background in back-end software development, having gained experience at Twitter and Peer. Before starting Rize, he also co-founded and successfully sold an outdoor tour startup called GuideHire.

How Much Does Rize Cost?

Free Plan

The Free Plan offers a session timer and retains one day of data at no monthly cost. For those who require more features, there are two paid subscription options.

Paid Plans

The Annual Billing plan costs $9.99 per month, while the Monthly Billing plan is priced at $14.99 per month, both of which include a 7-day free trial without the need to provide credit card information.

Other Pricing Considerations

Additionally, a 50% discount is available for students and non-profit workers; they must email support@rize.io to get this pricing.

Please note that users will still have access to their accounts and existing data if they discontinue their subscription payments. Still, any new activity tracking will not take place.

Rize Features

In this section, we will review the essential features of Rizes, so you can implement the time tracker tools to build good habits and supercharge your productivity.

Automatic Time Tracking

Rize tracks real-time activity based on the app name or website of the in-focus window without having to start or stop timers. You can set up a work schedule for the tracker to be on for specific working hours.

On your desktop, the Desktop Widget indicates whether the app is tracking. Pausing Rize stops activity tracking, and quitting the app halts tracking altogether.

Reporting

Receive daily email reports summarizing your time breakdown and productivity metrics. Also, you get sent a PDF report summarizing your week every week.

Categorization

Rize automatically categorizes time spent on various apps and websites. It comes with predefined categories (marketing, business, management, etc.), so you can easily create customizable categories.

You can change categories for specific periods or create rules moving forward to categorize apps and websites. You can also create rules based on exact or partial URL matches or based on app or website titles for better tracking.

Break and Overworking Notifications

Benefit from break notifications based on work activity or hours, without the need for Pomodoro timers or overworking notifications that help prevent excessive work.

Outlook & Google Calendar Integration

Rize allows integration with multiple calendars, currently supporting Outlook and Google Calendar Integration. In addition, users can customize calendar integration settings for offline meeting creation, custom meeting categorization, and pinning to the dashboard.

Pinned Calendar lets users compare planned activities with actual time spent and works well with timeboxing techniques. Events can be shaded differently for easy visual comparisons. Rize can automatically start and end sessions based on specific keywords in calendar events.

Session and Break Timer

The Session Timer automatically detects Focus Sessions, Breaks, and Meetings but can also be manually started. Users can create Focus Sessions, set goals, add project tags, change durations, and choose focused music. Break Sessions and Meeting Sessions can be initiated similarly.

The Break Timer and break auto-detection create accurate break records based on user activity. Users can customize timer settings (may use the Pomodoro Method), such as default focus, meeting, and break times, as well as break notifications and snooze time.

User Guide

Rize is a compelling time tracker that you can customize precisely how you want it. The company provides an in-depth online user guide to see everything the software is capable of.

Rize Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

With everything that Rize offers, some common questions arise. Here are the answers to those questions:

Who is Rize for?

Rize is a productivity tool designed for individuals who value time management and seek to enhance their productivity.

It is suitable for marketing managers handling multiple projects, teams, and deadlines; software developers and designers requiring focused time with minimal distractions; and startup founders and entrepreneurs aiming to prioritize their tasks effectively.

How does Rize track my activity?

On your computer, Rize automatically captures the time you have spent working. For websites, it will connect to the current URL and then categorize any time spent in web browsers.

For meetings, you can directly integrate Google Calendar or other calendars into Rize to capture the time spent in meetings and video calls. This feature is helpful if you are presenting or multitasking.

What platforms does Rize support?

Rize is currently available for macOS and Windows, with support for Linux coming soon.

The tool mainly supports all major online web browsers on these operating systems, including Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and many more.

Please note that Rize can track the amount of hours spent on unsupported browsers but does not categorize any activity by the specific URL within the browser.

How does Rize protect my data?

Your data is securely stored on Amazon Web Services, with physical and electronic protection. Access to your data is limited to solely your password-protected account. Further, your data should be encrypted the entire time.

The team brings experience from the top tech companies, so it prioritizes security throughout the development process and ensures regular backups for data redundancy.

What do the founders hope to accomplish?

Rize aims to be a “fitness app for your productivity,” helping you enhance productivity and focus on achieving more in less time.

The team has a strong personal connection to the project, as it aligns with their core values of continuous self-improvement and being productive through quantifiable metrics and self-reflection. Thus, they are committed to working on Rize in the long term.

Final Thoughts on Rize.IO

To summarize, Rize IO is an excellent automated time-tracking app and one of the best tools available to manage your time. It is easy to use, provides excellent value for money, and boasts many additional features.

If you’re looking for a great app that can help you understand your daily work habits and supercharge your productivity, look no further than Rize.IO! But don’t just take my word for it – try it free for seven days right now to see what this powerful platform can do for you!

Just click on the link below and get started today! Allow yourself to leverage Rize’s intelligence daily and unleash its full potential!

Rize Alternatives

Timely.ai is a time-tracking app that automatically tracks users’ time usage by using AI to analyze their activities on their computers and mobile devices. It also enables users to review their productivity and billable hours, all in an easy-to-use interface.

Meanwhile, Rize.io similarly tracks your activities using AI to help you achieve your long-term productivity goals. Rize is simpler and is made for an individual user, while Timely is geared for team management.