If you’re weighing a self-hosted Jibble alternative, the honest starting point is this: Jibble is genuinely free, for unlimited users, with GPS and facial recognition — and that’s a real, generous offer. We’re not going to pretend otherwise. If a free cloud time clock with a face-scan punch is exactly what you want, Jibble is hard to beat on price, because Punchwell isn’t free.
So this page isn’t a price fight. It’s about the two things Jibble’s model can’t give you: a clock-in control that can’t be faked from home, and data that lives on your own server instead of a vendor’s cloud.
Punchwell is a self-hosted WordPress time clock. It installs into the WordPress site you already run, your team’s data stays in your own database, and its flagship feature is a hard-enforced, per-employee office-IP clock-in lock — it refuses an off-site punch server-side rather than recording a location for someone to review later. Jibble’s clock-in verification is GPS and facial recognition, both of which are cloud-side checks on a device the employee carries. Those are different tools for different worries.
Punchwell is an independent product by Sturdyhaus. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Jibble or any other vendor named on this page. Competitor names are used descriptively (nominative fair use) only, to help you compare. All third-party names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Get Punchwell Pro — $99/yr → · See how the IP lock works →
Not free — but self-hosted, flat-priced, unlimited employees, and your data stays on your server.
Let’s be straight about price first
Most of these comparison pages lead with total cost of ownership, because per-seat SaaS clocks get expensive fast and Punchwell’s flat $99/yr wins that math easily. Jibble is the exception, and we won’t dodge it.
- Jibble’s free tier is real. Unlimited users, GPS, facial recognition, and core time tracking at $0. Paid Premium and Ultimate tiers add features at roughly $2.99–5.99 per user per month (approximate, as of June 2026 — confirm current rates; SaaS pricing moves), but the free tier alone covers what a lot of small teams need.
- Punchwell costs money. $99/year per site. Unlimited employees, everything bundled. There’s a free community tier on WordPress.org, but it carries only a basic single-office IP lock — the full per-employee depth is Pro.
So if your only requirement is “a free clock that logs where people punched,” Jibble likely wins, and we’d rather tell you that than sell you something you don’t need. What you’re paying Punchwell for is a different guarantee: a punch that is blocked when it’s off-network, and a database that never leaves your control. If neither of those matters to you, take the free tool. If one of them does, read on.
Where the two genuinely differ
The split is clean: how clock-in is verified, and where your data lives. Everything else is secondary.
- Hard IP enforcement vs. GPS/face verification. Jibble verifies a punch with GPS location and a face scan — both run on the employee’s device and phone home to the cloud. GPS can be spoofed from a couch, and a face scan proves who is punching, not where they are. Punchwell’s office-IP lock refuses the punch server-side when the device isn’t on an allowlisted network. That’s a blocked punch, not a recorded one.
- Self-hosted vs. cloud. Punchwell runs inside your own WordPress site; your timesheets are rows in your own database. Jibble is a hosted cloud service — your attendance data, and the biometric face templates, live on their servers.
- We deliberately don’t do biometrics. Jibble’s facial recognition is a headline feature. Punchwell has no facial recognition and no biometric punch — on purpose. Face templates are sensitive personal data with real storage, consent, and regulatory weight (BIPA and similar laws exist for a reason). We chose location-based enforcement you host yourself over biometrics someone else holds. That’s a privacy stance, not a missing checkbox — and for clinics, dental practices, and agencies it’s often the safer default.
Everything below expands on those. Competitor figures stay hedged — approximate, as of June 2026 — so confirm current rates before you budget against them.
Side by side
Here’s the honest comparison. Jibble gets full credit for a genuinely free, capable clock — that’s rare, and worth saying plainly.
| Jibble | Punchwell | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Free — unlimited users (genuinely) | $0 community tier; $99/yr flat for Pro |
| Paid tiers | ~$2.99–5.99/user/mo (approximate, as of June 2026 — confirm current rates) | Per site, flat — never per seat |
| Hosting | Cloud SaaS — data on their servers | Self-hosted in your own WordPress site |
| Your data | Held in vendor cloud (incl. biometric templates) | Stays in your WordPress database; no data call-home (verified) |
| Clock-in verification | GPS + facial recognition (device-side, cloud-checked) | Hard office-IP lock — refuses the punch server-side |
| IP clock-in lock | No | Yes — per employee, hard-enforced |
| IP allowlist depth | — | Exact IPs, CIDR blocks, address ranges, IPv4 + IPv6 |
| Allowlist scope | — | Company + per-office + per-employee (unioned, widen-only) |
| Enforcement modes | — | Block / Warn / Flag, plus optional clock-in time window |
| GPS geofence | Yes | Yes — opt-in, per-office radius (metres or feet) |
| Facial recognition / biometrics | Yes | No — deliberately (a privacy choice, see below) |
| Kiosk / shared-device clock | Yes | Yes — short code + 6-digit PIN, enrolled device, venue IP must match |
| Mobile punch | Native iOS / Android apps | Responsive web / PWA punch screen (add-to-home-screen, not an app-store app) |
| License | Proprietary SaaS | GPL — you genuinely own the code |
| Best fit | Teams who want a free cloud clock with face-scan punch | Teams on WordPress who want a punch that can’t be faked from home, and data they own |
1. Hard IP enforcement — the punch that can’t happen off-site
This is the reason to pay for Punchwell instead of taking a free GPS clock. Jibble tells you where a punch happened (GPS) and who tapped the button (face scan). Both are useful records. Neither actually stops an off-site punch — GPS can be spoofed from a phone on the sofa, and a real employee can face-scan from home just as easily as from the floor.
Punchwell’s office-IP lock is per-employee and hard-enforced. Flag a worker as office-only and they can clock in or out only from an allowlisted address. When they’re off your network, Punchwell refuses the punch server-side — it doesn’t merely log a location after the fact. That’s the difference between a record of a bad punch and a blocked one.
The depth is rare at any price:
- Allowlist by exact IP, CIDR block (e.g.
203.0.113.0/24— a whole range of office addresses without listing each one), or address range. IPv4 and IPv6. - Three scopes, unioned (widen-only): company-wide, per-office (each location carries its own IPs), and per-employee (“additional allowed IPs” on the profile). Adding an address only ever widens access — so on-site cashiers stay locked to the building while remote staff clock in from anywhere.
- Block / Warn / Flag enforcement modes — choose how strict to be. Plus an optional clock-in time window (only accept punches around shift start; it never blocks clock-out) and a blocked-attempt email to HR.
And because Punchwell isn’t anti-GPS — it just knows GPS’s limits — it pairs the IP lock with an opt-in GPS geofence (per-office radius, in metres or feet), a kiosk/wall-tablet clock, and a mobile/PWA punch screen. We say it plainly: GPS is a deterrent, the IP lock is the hard control. You choose how strict to be.
See how the IP lock works → · GPS geofence, kiosk & mobile punch →
2. Self-hosted: your roster (and no face templates) stays on your server
Jibble is a cloud service. Your attendance history — and, if you use facial recognition, your employees’ biometric face templates — live on Jibble’s servers. For a lot of teams that’s fine. For a clinic, dental practice, or agency handling client staff, “our people’s face data is in someone else’s cloud” is a conversation nobody wants to have.
Punchwell lives inside the WordPress site you already run. Employees are just WordPress users; timesheets are rows in your own database. Nothing syncs to a vendor cloud — all of the original’s outbound network code was removed and verified — the free version makes no outbound calls at all, and the only outbound call Pro makes is validating your license key against our own billing server, never your data. (The only external content is optional YouTube tutorial embeds and Gravatar avatars — standard WordPress, and only if you use them.)
Your staff data never leaves your server, which helps with your privacy obligations. (Compliance is your configuration, not our certification — but self-hosting removes the “it’s in someone else’s cloud” problem entirely.) And “self-hosted” doesn’t mean “manage a server”: if you already run WordPress, Punchwell installs and updates like any other plugin. There’s no separate server and no cloud account to set up.
See the security and privacy picture →
3. Why we don’t do facial recognition (the honest part)
Let’s name it directly, because it’s Jibble’s signature feature and we don’t have it: Punchwell has no facial recognition and no biometric punch. If a face-scan clock-in is a hard requirement for you, Jibble does that and Punchwell doesn’t — full stop, and that’s a real difference.
But it’s a choice, not a gap. Biometric data is uniquely sensitive: a password can be changed, a face can’t. Storing face templates brings consent requirements, breach exposure, and specific legal weight (Illinois’ BIPA and comparable laws carry real penalties). We decided the responsible position for a self-hosted small-business tool is to enforce location, not identity — and to do it with a control the employee’s phone can’t fake. You get attendance integrity without becoming the custodian of your staff’s biometrics.
So the honest trade is: Jibble verifies the person’s face; Punchwell verifies the network they’re on — and refuses the punch if it’s wrong. Different guarantees. If you want the face scan, Jibble. If you’d rather not hold biometric data at all and want the punch blocked rather than recorded, that’s Punchwell.
What Jibble does that Punchwell doesn’t (the rest of the honest part)
Naming the limits is what makes the rest believable.
- It’s free, and that’s genuinely hard to beat. Jibble’s free unlimited tier is a real offer. Punchwell Pro costs $99/yr. Our free community tier exists, but the full per-employee IP depth is a paid feature. On raw price, Jibble wins.
- Facial recognition. Covered above — Jibble has it, Punchwell deliberately doesn’t.
- Native mobile apps. Jibble ships iOS and Android apps. Punchwell’s mobile punch is a responsive web / PWA screen you add to your home screen — not an App Store / Play Store app. For most on-site clock-in use that’s plenty, but if you specifically need a native app, that’s a real difference.
- Zero setup / nothing to host. With Jibble you sign up and go. Punchwell needs a WordPress site (which you likely already have, but it’s a prerequisite).
If those trade-offs are dealbreakers, Jibble may suit you better — and that’s fine. If a punch that can’t be faked from home and data you actually own matter more, Punchwell is built for exactly that.
FAQ
Is Punchwell affiliated with Jibble? No. Punchwell is an independent product by Sturdyhaus. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Jibble or any other vendor. We reference “Jibble” descriptively (nominative fair use) only, to help you compare time-clock options. All third-party names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Jibble is free — why would I pay for Punchwell? For two things Jibble’s model can’t give you: a clock-in that is blocked when it’s off your office network (Jibble records GPS and a face scan but doesn’t hard-refuse an off-site punch), and data that lives on your own server instead of a vendor’s cloud. If neither matters to you, Jibble’s free tier is a genuinely good deal and we’d say so. If either does, that’s what the $99/yr flat price buys.
Does Punchwell have facial recognition like Jibble? No — deliberately. Punchwell has no facial recognition and no biometric punch. Biometric data is uniquely sensitive and legally weighty (BIPA and similar laws), so we chose to enforce location, not identity, with a hard office-IP lock the employee’s device can’t fake. It’s a privacy stance, not a missing feature. If a face-scan punch is a hard requirement, Jibble does that and Punchwell doesn’t.
Does Punchwell have GPS too? Yes. Punchwell ships an opt-in GPS geofence (per-office radius, in metres or feet) alongside the IP lock, plus a kiosk screen and a mobile/PWA punch screen. We’re honest that GPS can be spoofed and needs a device — it’s a deterrent, while the IP lock is the hard control. You choose how strict to be.
How is Punchwell’s clock-in lock different from Jibble’s GPS? Jibble’s GPS verifies where a punch appeared to happen and logs it. Punchwell’s office-IP lock refuses the punch server-side when the device isn’t on an allowlisted network — it’s a blocked punch, not a recorded one — and it’s per-employee, with CIDR blocks and address ranges, IPv4 and IPv6, company + per-office + per-employee allowlists (unioned), and block/warn/flag modes.
Is my data really mine if it’s self-hosted? Yes. Punchwell lives inside your own WordPress database — your employees, timesheets, and leave records are your rows on your server. There’s no vendor cloud holding them (and no biometric templates held anywhere, since we don’t do facial recognition), and no data call-home (all of the original’s outbound network code was removed and verified; Pro’s only outbound call is license validation, never your data). It’s GPL, so even if you cancel a Pro license you keep the plugin and every record.
Free is a price. Enforcement and ownership are the product.
Jibble’s free, cloud-hosted, face-scanning time clock is a genuinely good tool, and if that’s what you want, take it — we mean that. But if you’d rather have a punch that’s blocked when it’s off your network instead of merely logged, keep your team’s data on your own server, and never become the custodian of anyone’s biometrics — that’s what Punchwell is for, at a flat $99/yr.
Get Punchwell Pro — $99/yr → · See how the IP lock works → · Review the security posture →
Per site, not per seat. GPL. Self-hosted. Your data stays on your server.
Disclaimer: Punchwell is an independent product by Sturdyhaus and a maintained GPL fork of the “WP Human Resource Management” plugin. Sturdyhaus is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Jibble or any other vendor named on this page. “Jibble” and any other product names are referenced descriptively (nominative fair use) solely to allow honest comparison. Competitor pricing is approximate and as of June 2026; vendors price dynamically — confirm current rates before budgeting. All third-party names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Punchwell, by Sturdyhaus.