DoneThat vs Boss as a Service

The short answer

Boss as a Service hires you a boss. A real person checks in morning and evening, six days a week, asks what you will do, and does not count it as done until you send proof. DoneThat is software: it records the work automatically, and its AI coach reaches out during the day.

The human wins on consequence. Proof plus a person who keeps following up is about as strong as accountability gets without an employment contract. The software wins on coverage and effort: it sees the whole working day rather than the tasks you chose to commit to, and it produces the evidence without you assembling a screenshot.

For desk work the two fit together unusually well. The hardest thing to prove to a Boss is an hour of computer work, and that is exactly what DoneThat records.

How Boss as a Service works

From its public site, read on 25 September 2026:

1. You get matched with a trained human Boss whose schedule suits your time zone. You keep the same Boss long-term, and can ask for a different one at any time.
2. You commit to what you will do, over text, WhatsApp, email or Telegram.
3. You prove it. A screenshot, a photo, a link — anything that shows the task is done, with the date and time visible. Unproven tasks do not count.
4. If you slip, your Boss follows up, and keeps following up until it is resolved.

Check-ins run morning and evening, Monday to Saturday. The higher plans add planning and review calls, a goal document your Boss maintains, and a quarterly deep review. There is also a Beeminder integration if you want money on the line when a task cannot be proved.

The service is explicit that no AI is involved: every Boss is a person. It has been running since 2018 and says it has more than 3,000 users.

What a Boss gets you that software does not

Proof, not self-report. This is what sets it apart from most human accountability. A coach who takes your word for it is working from a flattering summary; a Boss who wants a screenshot is not. That closes most of the gap that makes daily check-ins drift.

Pursuit. An app notifies you once. A Boss who keeps asking until a task is resolved makes disappearing expensive, and disappearing is what kills most accountability systems by week two.

Consequences you chose. With Beeminder connected, an unproven task turns into a charge. Few software tools wire a real penalty to a verified outcome.

A plan, not only a check. On the Super and Virtuoso plans, your Boss runs planning and review calls with you. That is judgement about what to work on, which is a different job from recording what you did.

Any goal. Running, taxes, writing, a language. A Boss can check anything you can photograph or link to. DoneThat only sees a computer.

Where it runs out

Proof is work you do. Every commitment needs evidence assembled and sent. For a run, that is one screenshot from a fitness app. For three hours of deep work on a proposal, it is harder: the Boss as a Service FAQ suggests a screenshot of your time-tracking stats for coding time, which means running a second tool anyway.

It covers what you committed to. Proof verifies the tasks on the list. The rest of the day — the context switches, the meeting that ate the afternoon, the hour in email — stays invisible unless you report it, and nobody reports that.

Twice a day is still after the fact. The evening check-in finds out the afternoon went sideways. Nothing notices at 2pm.

Sundays are off, which is a reasonable thing for humans to want.

None of this is a flaw in the service. It is the limit of what a person reading your messages can see.

What DoneThat does differently

It records the work instead of asking for it. Capture runs continuously and the day is reconstructed from what was on screen, so the record includes the parts you would never think to report.

It intervenes during the work. Don, the AI coach, nudges you onto goals, blocks calendar time for them, flags low-value work while you can still change course, checks your mood, reminds you of meetings and suggests breaks.

It can send the evidence for you. DoneThat can email a daily or weekly summary to people you choose, or post it to Slack, on the schedule you set. Tasks you hide stay out of shared summaries, and shared views show how your time split as percentages rather than exact hours.

What it does not have is a person expecting an answer. Don can be dismissed. A Boss who messages again at 6pm cannot, quite, and we are not going to claim otherwise.

On capture: screenshots are never stored — processed in real time, immediately deleted, only the derived structured activity persists. Excluded apps are redacted on your machine before anything is sent. With your own Gemini or OpenAI-compatible model, raw activity never reaches our servers. The desktop app is open source.

Using both: DoneThat as proof for desk work

If you work at a computer and pay for a Boss, the most useful thing automatic capture does is produce the proof.

• Send the summary to your Boss. Set DoneThat to email your daily summary to the address your Boss uses. The evening check-in starts from what actually happened, not from a screenshot you remembered to take. Whether it counts as proof is your Boss's call, but a dated record of the whole day is harder to fudge than a single screenshot.
• Commit to time, not only tasks. "Two hours on the proposal" is a goal DoneThat tracks for you, so you know before the evening check-in whether it happened.
• Keep private work private. Hide sensitive tasks before the summary goes out. Your Boss sees the shape of the day, not client names.
• Leave the rest to the Boss. The run, the taxes and the book written by hand stay with Boss as a Service, which can check things DoneThat will never see.

That changes what the check-in is spent on: less proving, more of the thing you are paying a human for, which is being held to it.

Pricing

Boss as a Service publishes its prices. As of 25 September 2026:

Every plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee and can be cancelled at any time. There is no free tier or trial; the guarantee plays that role.

For a service with a human reading your messages every day, Starter is priced close to software. The calls are where the cost climbs.

DoneThat is subscription-based with a 14-day free trial; current prices are on the DoneThat download page.

Where Boss as a Service is the better choice

• Follow-through is the problem. You know what to do and do not do it. A person who wants proof is the strongest fix available.
• You have tried the apps. If every tracker you installed went quiet within a week, another app is unlikely to be different.
• Your goals are not all on a computer. Fitness, admin, writing by hand, life goals.
• You want planning with a human: calls to decide what matters, not only checks that it happened.
• You want real stakes, via Beeminder.
• You rule out capture. Nothing is recorded; you choose what to send.
• You live in your messages, and would rather check in over WhatsApp or Telegram than open an app.

Where DoneThat is the better choice

• You want evidence without assembling it. The record builds itself.
• You want to know where the whole day went, not only whether the committed tasks happened.
• You want help at 2pm, not at the evening check-in.
• You want a record over months: patterns, trends, what your weeks actually look like.
• You want AI tools to have your work history through MCP and an API.
• You want peer accountability instead of a Boss: following others, shared summaries, Slack and Discord, accountability groups, all opt-in.

Weighing other human options? GoalsWon also pairs you with a coach for daily check-ins, and Focusmate gives you live company while you work.

How we compared these

Everything stated about Boss as a Service comes from its public site, read on 25 September 2026 and linked below: prices, check-in schedule, proof rules and the Beeminder integration. We have not used the service ourselves. Boss as a Service suggested this listing; they did not write or edit it.

Claims about DoneThat are first-hand: we build it. A Boss who asks for proof is stronger accountability than anything we ship, and we have said so plainly. The narrow claim we would defend is that proof for computer work is expensive to assemble by hand, and that is the part automatic capture removes.

Questions people ask about Boss as a Service

How much does Boss as a Service cost?

From $25 a month for the Starter plan as of 25 September 2026, or $60 a quarter and $200 a year. Super is $100 a month and Virtuoso $200 a month; both add calls with your Boss. Every plan has a 30-day money-back guarantee and can be cancelled at any time.

Is Boss as a Service a real person or AI?

A real person. The site states there is no AI and no bots: every Boss is a trained human matched to your time zone, and you keep the same one long-term unless you ask to switch.

What counts as proof for Boss as a Service?

Anything that shows the task is done with the date and time visible: a screenshot, a photo, a link. For computer work its FAQ suggests a screenshot of time-tracking stats. A DoneThat daily summary emailed to your Boss is one way to send that without taking screenshots by hand; whether it counts is your Boss's call.

How is Boss as a Service different from GoalsWon?

Both give you a human for daily check-ins. Boss as a Service makes proof the rule, so a task does not count until you show it is done, and your Boss follows up until it is. It also publishes its prices, from $25 a month, where GoalsWon asks you to sign up to see them.

Can I use Boss as a Service and DoneThat together?

Yes, and for desk work they fit well. DoneThat records the computer work and can email a daily summary to your Boss, so the check-in starts from what happened. Keep Boss as a Service for goals off the computer, which DoneThat cannot see.