QGenda vs ShiftWizard vs SimpleScheduleAI: Who Each One Is Built For (2026)

Key Takeaways

• QGenda is built for providers at enterprise scale. Its own corporate site claims “4,500+ customers” and “850,000+ physicians, nurses, and staff”. It names six customer segments, and none of them is rural or small-hospital.
• ShiftWizard is built for hospital nursing inside a health system. HealthStream describes it for organizations with “multiple locations or departments” and claims it is “the only healthcare scheduling solution with certified Workday integration”.
• Neither QGenda nor ShiftWizard publishes a price. Both send you to a sales conversation, so you cannot compare cost until the quotes arrive. SimpleScheduleAI publishes a flat monthly price.
• The three do not differ mainly on features. They differ on who sits down and builds the schedule every week. With QGenda that person is usually a scheduling coordinator. With ShiftWizard it is your nurse manager. With SimpleScheduleAI it is a scheduling team outside the hospital.
• Two things that decide a 25-bed schedule go unmentioned in the comparison pages written about these products. One is a single nurse covering several departments in one shift. The other is knowing who to call first when someone rings in sick at 3 a.m.
• If you schedule physicians, need payroll or Workday integration, or want your nurses swapping shifts in an app, SimpleScheduleAI is the wrong choice and this guide says which of the other two to look at.

Table of Contents

• What Is QGenda Built For?
• What Is ShiftWizard Built For?
• What Is SimpleScheduleAI Built For?
• Who Actually Builds the Schedule Each Week?
• What Does a 25-Bed Hospital Need That Neither Enterprise Tool Targets?
• Who Should Not Buy SimpleScheduleAI?
• Which of the Three Fits Your Hospital?
• What Should You Ask All Three in a Demo?
• What to Do This Week
• Frequently Asked Questions

We sell a competing product, so weigh this guide accordingly. What follows still says what each of the other two is good at, because both are good at the job they were built for. The catch for a 25-bed hospital is that their job and yours are not the same one.

What Is QGenda Built For?

QGenda is built for scheduling providers across a large healthcare organization. Its nurse and staff scheduling page sells “inpatient and ambulatory settings”. The corporate site leads with “Healthcare Workforce Management Redefined” and claims “4,500+ customers” and “850,000+ physicians, nurses, and staff”. Its “Who We Serve” menu lists six segments in full: academic medical centers, federal, hospitals and health systems, international, national practice groups, and private practices. Rural and small-hospital buyers are not among them.

What QGenda genuinely does better. It puts physician and provider scheduling, on-call rotations, and credentialing in one platform, across many specialties and many sites. If your organization schedules anesthesia one way, hospitalists another, and nursing a third, QGenda handles all three in a single system.

Where it gets hard for a small hospital. QGenda holds 4.2 out of 5 across 68 reviews on Capterra. In the hospital-context reviews, the recurring theme is setup effort rather than the product itself.

“Doing the initial set up of new providers is a little complicated.”

Brandi D., Scheduling Coordinator, Hospital & Health Care, December 13, 2023, Capterra

“automated scheduling and rules set up seem to have hiccups…I just stopped using the automation.”

Courtney D., Manager of Employee and Physician Relations, May 10, 2024, Capterra

That second quote is the one to focus on. A scheduling coordinator at a facility with staff to spare can afford to switch the automation off and carry on by hand. At a hospital where the nurse manager is also taking clinical shifts, the automation is the entire reason for buying.

What Is ShiftWizard Built For?

ShiftWizard is built for nursing inside a health system. HealthStream, which owns it, positions it for organizations with “multiple locations or departments”. It names its buyers as “CNOs & Nursing Leaders”, “CIOs & IT Leaders”, “Operations & Workforce Teams” and “Department Managers”. Its customer names on that page are WakeMed, UF Health, Deaconess Cancer Services and Sandoval Regional Medical Center. Worth knowing before you search for it: shiftwizard.com now redirects to a HealthStream page, so the product no longer has a site of its own.

What ShiftWizard genuinely does better. Two things, and both are real. It ties scheduling to patient demand, so a unit’s staffing follows census rather than a fixed pattern. HealthStream also claims it is “the only healthcare scheduling solution with certified Workday integration”. Say your hospital runs Workday or UKG, the two big payroll and workforce systems, and wants the schedule to reach payroll without anyone retyping it. For a hospital running either one, that is a real advantage.

It also has the deepest review base of the three by a wide margin. It holds 4.4 out of 5 across 723 reviews on Capterra, the software review site nurses and administrators post to, with more than 88% rating it four stars or higher. Nurses like the app.

“ShiftWizard was designed by nurses which is why it is fantastic to use for Hospital/clinic use! The mobile app is fantastic, contacting employees with open shifts etc and communication is on point!”

Jennifer C., Director of Emergency Services, July 15, 2024, Capterra

That “designed by nurses” line is a reviewer’s words, not a claim on HealthStream’s current page, so treat it as one nurse’s view rather than a company promise.

Where it gets hard for a small hospital. G2, a software review site, lists ShiftWizard’s average time to implement as 3 months, averaged from its own reviewers. Those 3 months cover the whole project: buying it, setting it up, and getting your team running it. That is a normal number for a platform this deep. It is also a long time to wait when the schedule is already breaking.

What Is SimpleScheduleAI Built For?

SimpleScheduleAI is AI-native nurse scheduling software, delivered as a service: the AI builds the schedule, a scheduling team checks it, the nurse manager approves. It is built for Critical Access Hospitals in Texas with 25 beds or fewer, where the nurse manager also takes clinical shifts and has no scheduling coordinator to hand the work to.

The design assumption behind it is narrow on purpose. It assumes nobody at the hospital wants to learn a scheduling platform. The hospital sends its roster as an Excel file, the rules are configured during onboarding, and each cycle a finished schedule arrives for the nurse manager to approve by email. Onboarding takes 3 to 5 business days and the first schedule arrives inside two weeks. After that the manager’s weekly scheduling work is 1 to 2 hours of review.

Cost: Flat monthly price by roster size: $1,000/month for up to 20 nurses, $1,500/month for 21 to 40 nurses. No per-nurse fees and no setup fees, with the full breakdown on the pricing page.

Neither QGenda nor ShiftWizard publishes a price. Every vendor and review page checked for this guide in September 2026 sent you to a sales conversation instead. That is normal for enterprise software. It does mean you cannot compare the three on cost until you have both quotes in hand, with your own staff time added to each.

Who Actually Builds the Schedule Each Week?

This is the question the feature comparisons skip, and for a small hospital it decides the purchase. All three products produce a schedule. They differ on whose calendar the work sits on after go-live.

The row that decides this is the first one, “who builds each schedule”. Two of the three answers put someone at your hospital in front of a screen every week. At a 25-bed facility that person, not the software, is the thing in short supply.

What Does a 25-Bed Hospital Need That Neither Enterprise Tool Targets?

Two needs come up in every conversation with a small-hospital nurse manager, and the comparison pages written about these products skip both.

One nurse covering several departments in one shift. Enterprise scheduling assumes discrete units with their own staffing patterns, because at 300 beds that is true. At 25 beds the same nurse may cover med-surg, take emergency department call, and watch a swing bed on the same night. A scheduler built around unit-by-unit coverage models that badly, and the workaround is a spreadsheet next to the software.

A plan for the callout at 3 a.m. Every product here will show you an open shift. The question at a small hospital is which of the four people who could cover it you should call first. That depends on who is near overtime, who is signed off for the unit, and who can take charge if the nurse who called out was holding it. Working that out by hand at 3 a.m., on a phone, is where the hours go. Our own interviews with more than 30 nurse managers put scheduling at 8 to 12 hours a week when built by hand, with covering callouts the largest single piece (how that week breaks down).

SimpleScheduleAI is built around both. The rules for each of your units are mapped at onboarding, and the engine counts a nurse working outside her home unit as a cost rather than treating each department as its own separate roster. And a callout produces a ranked shortlist of replacements with the reason for each name, ordered so nurses who are not yet into overtime come before those who are, and agency last. The nurse manager still picks up the phone. What the shortlist takes away is the guesswork about who to try first.

Who Should Not Buy SimpleScheduleAI?

A comparison written by a vendor is worth reading only if it says this part plainly. Pick one of the other two, or something else entirely, in each of these cases.

• You schedule physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, or residents. SimpleScheduleAI schedules registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants. It has no provider scheduling at all. QGenda is built for exactly this and does it across specialties.
• You need the schedule to flow into payroll, Workday, or your EHR. There is no payroll integration, no link to an HR system, and no connection to the medical record. ShiftWizard’s certified Workday path is a genuine advantage here.
• Your nurses want to self-schedule and swap shifts in an app. There is no nurse-facing app, and nurses cannot claim open shifts. Both other products do this well, and NurseGrid Manager does it cheaply if that is the whole requirement.
• You have a scheduling coordinator with real hours for it. If someone owns scheduling as their job, a platform gives them more direct control than a service will. You would be paying for time the hospital already has.
• You are outside Texas, or your roster is above 40 nurses. The rules are built around Texas Critical Access Hospitals, and the pricing stops at 40.

If any of those five describe your hospital, a SimpleScheduleAI demo wastes your afternoon. Better to read it here than find out in the third meeting.

Which of the Three Fits Your Hospital?

What Should You Ask All Three in a Demo?

Six questions separate these products faster than any feature list. Ask each vendor the same six, on a schedule that looks like yours, and write the answers down.

1. Who builds the schedule in week six? Not during setup, when the vendor is still helping. Ask who sits down and builds it once the vendor team has moved on, and how long it takes them.
2. Show me one nurse covering three departments in one shift. Ask to see it built on screen, not described. Products designed around separate units struggle here, and watching them try shows you how much of the work lands back on your desk.
3. A nurse holding charge calls out at 3 a.m. What does the system tell me? Listen for whether it produces a list or an order. A list of available people is not the same as knowing who to call first.
4. What is the total first-year cost, including our staff time? License plus setup plus the weekly hours the tool needs from your team, at her hourly cost to the hospital including benefits. Both enterprise vendors quote custom prices, so this is the only comparable number you will get.
5. How long until a schedule we can actually post? G2’s reviewers put ShiftWizard’s average implementation at 3 months. Ask each vendor for their own number and for a reference customer at your bed count who hit it.
6. What does support look like at 2 a.m. on a Sunday? Ask for the escalation path and the response time in writing, not the support hours on the pricing page.

Here are SimpleScheduleAI’s answers to the same six, in the same order.

1. A scheduling team outside the hospital builds it in week six and every week after.
2. Cross-department cover is set up during onboarding as part of your rules.
3. A callout returns a ranked shortlist with the reason for each name, and says plainly when nobody left can take charge.
4. The price is flat and published, so first-year cost is that price plus 1 to 2 hours of review a week.
5. Onboarding takes 3 to 5 business days, and the first schedule arrives inside two weeks.
6. Escalation runs to a named person with a written response time, not a ticket queue.

Where the honest answer is no, the section above on who should not buy this says so.

What to Do This Week

1. Write down who will build the schedule in week six. Name the person and the hours. If the name is your nurse manager and she also takes clinical shifts, the operating model matters more than the feature list.
2. Count how many shifts last month had one nurse covering more than one department. Take that number into every demo and ask each vendor to model it.
3. Ask both enterprise vendors for a quote and a reference customer at your bed count. Neither publishes a price, so a quote is the only way to compare. A reference customer at 25 beds also tells you whether you would be their smallest.
4. Time one schedule build end to end. Put those hours against each quote, priced at what an hour of your nurse manager costs the hospital. That is the real first-year comparison, and the ROI calculator does the math on your numbers.
5. If the hours are the problem rather than the software, look at having the schedule built for you. Start at how it works, or read the operating-model comparison in what ShiftWizard is.

Frequently Asked Questions

Choosing between them

Is QGenda or ShiftWizard better for a small hospital?

For nursing at a single small facility, ShiftWizard is the closer fit, because it is built for nurse scheduling and QGenda’s heritage is provider scheduling. For a hospital that schedules physicians and nurses together across sites, QGenda is the closer fit. Neither names rural or small-hospital buyers in its own positioning, so ask both for a reference customer at your bed count.

Which one is cheapest?

Neither publishes a price, so nobody can answer this from the outside. Both quote custom. The comparable number is the quote plus the weekly hours the tool asks of your staff, priced at what an hour of their time costs the hospital. SimpleScheduleAI publishes a flat $1,000 to $1,500 a month by roster size, which makes that side of the comparison checkable.

Do I need to replace my whole system to change scheduling?

No. Scheduling sits upstream of payroll and separate from the medical record. The integration question matters if you want the schedule to reach payroll automatically, which is where ShiftWizard’s Workday path is relevant and where SimpleScheduleAI does not compete.

Compliance and operations

Do any of them handle CMS documentation for a Critical Access Hospital?

Both QGenda and ShiftWizard are built for hospitals and both keep schedule records, but neither publishes a Critical Access Hospital audit export on its product pages, so ask each to show you the actual file. §485.635 is the federal rule a surveyor checks you against, and what it wants to see is who was scheduled, who changed it, and when. SimpleScheduleAI logs every schedule change with a timestamp and exports that trail. Check any vendor’s answer against the requirements in critical access hospital scheduling.

How does each handle overtime before the schedule posts?

SimpleScheduleAI checks each nurse’s scheduled hours against the 40-hour federal overtime line (FLSA) in every draft, and a draft that breaks a rest, hours or charge rule is corrected before the manager sees it. Ask QGenda and ShiftWizard to demonstrate the same check on a draft schedule during the demo.

What if we want the enterprise tool and cannot staff it?

That is the most common answer at 25 beds, and it is worth naming out loud in the buying meeting. The options are hiring a scheduling coordinator, accepting that the nurse manager loses those hours every week, or moving the building work outside the hospital. The nurse scheduling software hub compares those three paths, and AI nurse scheduling covers how an AI-built draft is produced and checked.

Sources

[1] QGenda, Nurse & Staff Scheduling Software: “inpatient and ambulatory settings”; facility types named. qgenda.com. Verified 2026-09-09.

[2] QGenda corporate site: “Healthcare Workforce Management Redefined”, “4,500+ customers”, “850,000+ physicians, nurses, and staff”. qgenda.com. Verified 2026-09-09.

[3] QGenda ratings and reviewer quotes: 4.2/5 across 68 reviews. capterra.com. Verified 2026-08-13.

[4] ShiftWizard by HealthStream product page: “multiple locations or departments”, named buyer roles, “the only healthcare scheduling solution with certified Workday integration”, named customers. healthstream.com. Verified 2026-09-09, including the shiftwizard.com redirect.

[5] ShiftWizard ratings and reviewer quote: 4.4/5 across 723 reviews, 88%+ at four stars or higher. capterra.com. Re-verified 2026-09-05.

[6] G2 lists ShiftWizard’s average time to implement as 3 months, averaged from its own reviewers. Page-verified 2026-08-09, re-confirmed 2026-08-14.

[7] CMS Conditions of Participation §485.635 for Critical Access Hospitals. eCFR, Title 42, Part 485, Subpart F.

[8] FLSA overtime for hospitals and residential care. U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #54.

Methodology note: Vendor capability and positioning statements are quoted from each vendor’s own live pages on the verification dates above. Ratings and reviewer quotes come from Capterra listings on their stated dates. Where a vendor’s page does not describe a capability, this guide says it is not published rather than claiming the feature is absent. Two aggregator comparison pages (G2 and AVIA Marketplace) block automated access and were not used as sources. Vendors change products and prices; confirm with each before deciding.

Pradeep Pandey is the co-founder of SimpleScheduleAI. He serves as Deputy General Manager of Operations at Apollo Hospitals and holds an MBA from IIM Trichy (Operations and Marketing). His work focuses on workforce optimization and scheduling operations for Critical Access Hospitals and other small rural facilities. LinkedIn →