Join us as we dive into this RescueTime review as we provide you with all the need-to-know bits of the company. Focusing on important work becomes increasingly difficult with so many distractions around. Thanks to RescueTime, you can claim control and spend your time where it matters.
Founded in 2007 by a group of friends struggling with time, always wishing they had more time left in the day. Since then, they’ve developed software designed to help students and professionals keep track of time and help them stay focused.
Wondering whether RescueTime is what you’ve been looking for? Continue reading our RescueTime review to see if it is the right fit for you.
Features, Courses, and Materials
Who is RescueTime for?
RescueTime was developed keeping in mind people who want to ensure they’re productive from the start of their day to the end. Students and professionals enjoy RescueTime since they spend most of their time dealing with demanding tasks and projects. If you cannot afford to waste your time with distractions, then RescueTime is perfect for you!
RescueTime for Students
RescueTime aims to be inclusive by offering a discount for students. It is often difficult for students to pay for things when they don’t have an income. With the RescueTime student discount, students can enjoy the software for their college/university needs.
If you’re a student, you can email help@rescuetime.com to get a membership.
Getting Started
If you’re new to the service, you will be prompted to sign up as with any other service out there. It is different with RescueTime, though. When you sign up, you are requested to do a quick survey.
We’ve found that the questions are designed for the software to get to know you for a personalized experience. These questions determine whether you’re a professional or a student. From there, the questions are tailored to your choice. RescueTime also prompts you to select the start time of your day and the end time of your day, as well as which days are your off days.
How it works
When you sign up, you can enjoy several features that come with the RescueTime software. You can use RescueTime for iMac and Windows. There’s a RescueTime app for iOs and Android.
Your friend, the RescueTime assistant, will be with you every day, on all your devices, helping you set goals for your day and alerting you when you’re distracted. The assistant helps you stay on track with your personalized goals while tracking your distractions and how long these distractions last. Alongside the RescueTime assistant, you can enjoy more features like:
- Daily personalized work focus goals.
- Smart Coaching.
- Focus Sessions.
Daily Personalized work focus goals
Keeping track of your own time and setting daily goals can become overwhelming at times. RescueTime steps in to help by using powerful AI to work out your schedules and help you set focus goals for the day.
By analyzing your data compared to the time people like you spend, the RescueTime software creates a work goal for you, ensuring you spend your time wisely.
Smart Coaching
Have you ever fallen victim to being distracted by a notification pop-up? We can relate! With RescueTime smart coaching, your time is tracked to determine how well you focus. A distraction caught you off guard? No problem, RescueTime alerts you to get back on track.
Smart coaching also provides alerts and nudges throughout the day, offering you a glimpse of how well you’re doing.
Integrations
RescueTime allows you to integrate your calendar into the software, ensuring all your activities are tracked. You can integrate your Google Calendar or your Outlook Calendar to RescueTime for the RescueTime assistant to keep track of your meetings. Use a Google Calendar for work? Check out this link on how to integrate your calendar. If you use Outlook Calendar, you can use this link for help.
Integrating your calendar also allows RescueTime to recognize the type of event through hashtags. Need to enable a focus session for the event? Add a hashtag in the description of the event on your calendar, and you’re all set. Additionally, with all events in your calendar, all of them aren’t meetings. Adding a simple hashtag in the description will let the RescueTime assistant know whether it is a meeting or not. Check out this link for more on hashtags.
Focus Sessions
With so many important deadlines to work toward and endless tasks are thrown your way, focusing has never been more essential. Have a big deadline you have to cram for? RescueTime got you with their Focus Sessions designed to block out all distractions for the session. Enable your focus session and get cracking. RescueTime will give you a quick summary at the end of the session, comparing the session to your average time.
Insights
With insights based on your daily activity, RescueTime sends you a detailed summary of how you spend your time daily. At the end of the workday, RescueTime sends you a detailed summary reflecting the sites that distract you from your goals, as well as how long these distractions lasted.
Along with this, RescueTime sends you an account of your day, reflecting what you did for the day and how long the workday was. This account helps you stay on track with your start and end times.
RescueTime Security
Security is always a concern, especially with misused data. Who can we trust with our personal information these days? Although RescueTime has privy to your personal information and tracks what you do, this information is used to be analyzed for your experience.
RescueTime is an ad-free service that admits they don’t sell any data. Your data is stored in an encrypted place, giving you peace of mind. No longer want RescueTime to have access to your personal information? You have control over your information, and deleting that is super easy.
RescueTime vs. Toggl
While RescueTime is good, it is not the only tracking software out there. Toggle, too, is a tracking software tracking your time and productivity. This software helps you stay focused, ensuring you spend your time wisely. Toggl goes further than RescueTime, though. Toggl offers three products – Tracking, Planning, and hiring. RescueTime only tracks your productivity. If you want more than tracking your productivity, you could look at more time tracking software like Toggl. You could have a look at RescueTime alternatives below:
- Toggl
- Timedoctor
- TimeCamp
- DeskTime
Ease of Use
RescueTime is fairly easy to use as all the information is on their website. A glance through, and you’ll know what to do and how to do it. Navigating their website is easy, but getting some information may be hard to reach by clicking through many pages to get an answer.
Signing up is easy. Click sign up, follow the prompts, and you’re all set for productivity! The RescueTime team also included a quick video to see RescueTime in action, ensuring you know what you’re working with. This video is accessible on their home page.
Plans & Pricing
RescueTime costs vary depending on what you’re looking for. They currently have two plans:
- $12 per month
- $78 annually ($6.50 per month)
RescueTime offered a free version which has since been discontinued. This decision was made to put all efforts into RescueTime premium. With the RescueTime free version, the team had to spend time working on the free version as well as the premium version causing negligence to other important projects.
Discontinuing the RescueTime free version does not impact your decision, though. RescueTime offers a trial for you to play around and interact with the software. The RescueTime free trial spans 2 weeks which is enough time to get to know the software. You can cancel this trial anytime within the first 14 days if you’re not happy with RescueTime.
As mentioned earlier, RescueTime offers discounts to Students too. The cost for students is not available on the RescueTime website. However, students may email help@rescuetime.com to get help obtaining a discounted membership.
The RescueTime discount doesn’t end there, though. RescueTime currently has a promotion where you get a one-year subscription and a productivity ebook bundle for $99.
Refund Policy
Currently, RescueTime does not have a refund policy. Although they have a free trial, you can cancel this within 14 days. If the RescueTime free trial is not canceled within this period, your account will be billed, and you will most likely not receive a refund. The RescueTime team can implement a feature allowing users to provide reasons for wanting a refund when they’re billed after the free trial. We’re human, and sometimes we forget!
The same goes for your subscriptions. If you no longer use RescueTime, you may cancel the subscription, but RescueTime will not refund you for any fees added to your membership before you cancel it.
Online Ratings
The online ratings for RescueTime are fairly good. Most of these ratings are by Professionals. Capterra.com holds a record of these reviews, and to date, RescueTime has a rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars, most of these ratings being positive.
One good rating (5 stars) mentioned that they like to see where they spend most of their time while also noting that RescueTime can be improved to add more languages instead of English only. Another bad rating (3 stars) liked the software too. The professional works on several projects on the same software. Unfortunately, RescueTime could not track the time spent on individual projects.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Easy to use.
- Affordable pricing plans.
- Offers a personalized experience.
- Can be used across your devices.
- Comprehensive insights daily.
- Protects your Personal Information
Cons
- Only available in English.
Value for Money – Final Verdict
To recap, RescueTime offers people looking to spend their time wisely an opportunity to block out distractions. Instead of wondering where the time went all day long feeling like you haven’t been productive all day, you can end your day with results.
RescueTime helps students and professionals take back control of their time and spend it where it matters most. This RescueTime review offered a quick look into the service, saving you more time like RescueTime will do. So what are you waiting for? If you’re a student or a professional, RescueTime is waiting for you to take back your time. With their affordable pricing, you can end your workdays with a smile. You can go and check it out now, especially with their free trial!
People Also Ask – FAQ
How does RescueTime work?
RescueTime is a tracking software tracking your productivity and helps you stay focused. The software helps set personalized goals for your daily workday, ensuring you focus more on the work that matters most. Eliminating distractions is what RescueTime aims to do.
Is RescueTime safe?
RescueTime is safe and secure as the company values your personal information. Your information is stored and encrypted, ensuring its safety. RescueTime admits to being an ad-free company that does not sell your information. You also control your data; deleting this from RescueTime’s database is easy and can be done anytime.
Is RescueTime premium worth it?
RescueTime currently only offers a premium version. You have access to all of their features with this premium version. It is affordable with a monthly or an annual subscription, and it’s easy to use.
Is there a free version of RescueTime?
Unfortunately, RescueTime has discontinued their free version. This RescueTime Review found that the decision was made after all resources were placed into the free version and the premium version only to neglect other projects. By discontinuing the free version, RescueTime can put all of its resources into the premium version.
