Employee monitoring software has a bad reputation. And for good reason.
There’s nothing more stressful to a team than a boss that combs every working second tracked.
The good part of employee monitoring is that it doesn’t need to be creepy!
What’s the best employee monitoring software?
Here’s our list of the best (non-creepy) employee monitoring software:
Top tip:
Toggl Track stands against employee surveillance and micromanagement. Monitoring has never been a feature in our software nor our culture—and it never will be.
1. Toggl Track
Price: Starts at $10/month
Toggl Track is a time tracking and profitability tool that makes tracking employee activity and improving productivity easy without making employees feel like they are being spied on.
It helps you accurately track where your team’s time is going so you can better manage workloads and allocate resources.
Check out the demo video below to learn more:
What we like
- Besides being a time tracking tool, Toggl Track lets you add labor costs for your team and calculate how profitable your projects and employees are.
What’s missing
- Toggl Track, as a standalone tool, lacks project planning and management capabilities, forcing users to rely on third-party tools for those functions.
Top tip:
Toggl Track integrates with Toggl Plan so you can easily plan your team’s projects, track progress, and keep their workload healthy with drag-and-drop timelines.
Best for
Toggl Track is best for knowledge-based service businesses that want to increase productivity and profitability.
Top Features
- Profitability insights: Calculate and analyze the profitability of your projects using Toggl Track’s Insights feature so you can increase and forecast future revenue.
- Fixed fee projects: Add a fixed price to your projects and track their progress against this fixed price.
- Billable rates: Set and track your billable hours and provide clients with transparent activity reports.
- Offline tracking: No internet? No problem. You can track time offline and sync it when you have an internet connection.
- Integrations: Toggl Track integrates with 100+ tools to track time accurately across all workspaces.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Toggl Plan, Asana, Google Calendar, Jira, Slack, and 100+ tools.
Pricing
Toggl Track offers four pricing plans:
| Plan | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 for up to 5 users | Freelancers |
| Starter | $10 per user per month | Small teams |
| Premium | $20 per user per month | Growing and agile teams |
| Enterprise | Contact for more prices | Large or complex organizations |
2. Harvest
Harvest is a time tracking and invoicing tool that helps teams of all sizes track how they spend time and reach their productivity goals.
With Harvest, you can track time and expenses, automate invoices, and manage your budget to boost profitability.
What we like
- Harvest is a lightweight activity tracking tool that simplifies how you track your time so you can focus on what really matters.
What’s missing
- Although Harvest has plenty of financial capabilities, it lacks sales tax functionality. This means users have to rely on third-party tools for managing their sales tax.
Best for
Harvest is best for those who want a time tracking tool that streamlines time and expense management.
Top Features
- Time tracking: Easily track the time your teams put into each project or task.
- Budget reporting: Keep your budgets on track and your projects profitable.
- Capacity reporting: Better visualize how workloads are distributed across your entire team.
- Streamlined invoicing: Create accurate invoices easier and get paid faster.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Asana, PayPal, and Stripe.
Pricing
Harvest offers two pricing plans:
| Plan | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Solo users |
| Pro | $12 per user per month | Small teams |
View their pricing page for more information.
Can’t decide? Read our in-depth comparison of Toggl vs Harvest for the exact details of how they compare feature-by-feature!
3. Timely
Price: Starts at $11/month
Timely is automatic time tracking software powered by AI which takes time tracking off your mind by doing it for you.
With Timely’s smart time tracking capabilities, you see how your employees work, what productivity roadblocks they encounter, and where there’s room for improvement.
What we like
- The time and work tracked in Timely is private to users, allowing them to control what they want to share.
What’s missing
- Timely has no built-in invoicing feature, so you must do extra work outside the app.
Best for
Timely is best for teams of all sizes looking to automate their time tracking and skip tedious, repetitive time-filling tasks.
Top Features
- Automated time tracking: Easily understand where and how your team spends time.
- Project and team planning: Manage your projects and team efficiently with visual schedules and timelines.
- Project time management: See every project your team works on, with key milestones and deadlines.
- Team time management: Allocate resources more effectively while ensuring workloads are distributed equally.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Asana, Basecamp, Gmail, Google Calendar.
Pricing
Timely offers four pricing plans:
| Plan | Cost | Best for |
| Starter | $11 per user/ month | Small teams |
| Premium | $20 per user/ month | Midsize teams |
| Unlimited | $28 per user/ month | Midsize and large teams |
| Unlimited+ | Contact for more pricing | Large teams |
Visit their pricing page for more information.
4. Paymo
Price: Starts at $5.95/month
Paymo is a comprehensive project management tool that helps you keep track of your employees’ work.
Analyzing project profitability metrics, managing your tasks and invoices, and monitoring your team’s work (in a non-creepy way) is a piece of cake with Paymo.
What we like
- Paymo is an all-in-one work management tool, meaning you don’t need to leave the app to manage invoicing, time tracking, or project planning. It’s all right there in Paymo.
What’s missing
- For users looking for resource management, Paymo can be quite pricey, as only their most expensive pricing plan includes resource management.
Best for
Paymo is best for freelancers doing remote work or small businesses that want a comprehensive work management tool that includes invoicing and time tracking features.
Top Features
- Automatic time tracking: Accurately see where and how your hours are spent.
- Built-in invoicing: Customize and generate invoices from the app and track project profitability.
- Workload management: With Paymo’s customizable workflow and workload view, you can distribute tasks more efficiently to ensure maximum productivity.
- Resource capacity: Is your team overworked or underworked? Paymo lets you see who’s working on what, so you can assign projects accordingly.
- Task management: Manage your projects like a pro and never miss another deadline.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Slack, Google Drive, Google Calendar.
Pricing
Paymo offers four pricing plans:
| Plan | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 for 1 user | Personal use |
| Starter | $5.95 per user per month | Freelancers |
| Small Office | $11.95 per user per month | Small teams |
| Business | $24.95 per user per month | Midsize and large teams |
Visit their prices page for more information.
5. My Hours
Price: FREE. Paid plans start at $6/month
My Hours is a time tracking software designed for small teams and freelancers. It lets you track time on projects with tasks, generate insightful reports, and send invoices to clients.
What we like
- Many users rave about the ease of use and minimalist design that helps them to switch between tasks quickly.
What’s missing
- The reporting features can be longwinded and are less intuitive than other apps.
Best for
My Hours is best for teams that want to track projects and stay within budget with real-time insights.
Top features
- Always know how much time has been spent on your projects and tasks in a specific period with easy-to-create reports.
- Track attendance with hourly rate — know who was present at work and track absences and the reasons behind them.
- Multiple ways to bill for your work. Including a flat project fee, task-based, or member-based rates.
Pricing
My Hours has two available plans.
| Plan | Cost |
|---|---|
| Free | $0 per user/month |
| Pro | $6 per user/month |
6. Timeular
Price: Starts at $9/month
Timeular is a simple time tracking solution that allows you to track where your team’s time is going accurately.
With goal-setting, reminders, and automated timesheet features, Timeular motivates employees, helps maintain accountability, and boosts productivity.
Timeular also has reporting and insights capabilities, which provide accurate data from employees’ work and productivity monitoring.
What we like
- Timeular is very easy to sync across multiple devices, allowing you to switch between devices without losing tracked time or important data.
What’s missing
- Timeular can take some time to learn and get used to, especially for non-technical individuals.
Best for
Timeular is best for teams of all sizes that want a simple way to keep track of their work and improve their productivity.
Top Features
- Time tracking: Made easy so you can manage your workloads more efficiently and accurately.
- Tracking reports: Visualize your projects so you can make informed decisions and manage tasks and people.
- Automated timesheets: Generate automated timesheets for your tracked time so you know exactly what you worked on.
- Goal-setting: Set weekly or monthly goals to boost motivation and productivity.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Quickbooks, Jira, Asana, and more.
Pricing
Timeular offers three pricing plans:
| Plan | Cost | Best for |
| Personal | $9 per month | Personal use |
| Personal Pro | $14 per month | Freelancers |
| Team | $19 per user per month | Teams of all sizes |
View their prices page for more information.
7. ClickTime
Price: Starts at $13/month.
ClickTime is time tracking software your team members can use to track and log their work hours effortlessly.
Other useful features include overtime and time-off management, so you can manage your team’s time efficiently and ensure a healthy work-life balance.
What we like
- ClickTime has a ridiculously easy-to-use interface that makes tracking time a smooth task that employees actually enjoy.
What’s missing
- The downside of having a simple user interface is that it may not look too nice. And this is something that many ClickTime users have complained about.
Best for
ClickTime is best for teams of all sizes that want a flexible, easy-to-use time tracking and resource management tool to organize their remote workforce.
Top Features
- Overtime tracking: You can calculate overtime hours or generate overtime reports to help prevent burnout.
- Resource management: Manage your workloads and allocate resources effectively to ensure project profitability.
- Time tracking: See where your employees’ hours are going and discover productivity gaps.
- Customized reports: Generate detailed reports on productivity for employees, teams, or projects, for in-depth analysis of logged hours.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive.
Pricing
ClickTime offers four pricing plans:
| Plan | Cost | Best for |
| Starter | $13 per user per month | Small teams |
| Team | $17 per user per month | Midsize teams |
| Premier | $28 per user per month | Midsize and large teams |
| Enterprise | Contact ClickTime for prices | Large teams |
Visit their pricing page for more information.
Tool comparison
Here’s a quick overview of our top alternatives to employee monitoring software:
| Tool | G2 Rating | Best for | Price |
| Toggl Track | 4.5 | Knowledge-based service businesses | From $10/user/month |
| Harvest | 4.3 | Businesses of all sizes | From $12/user/month |
| Timely | 4.8 | Businesses of all sizes | From $11/user/month |
| Paymo | 4.6 | Small and midsize businesses | From $5.95/user/month |
| My Hours | 4.6 | Businesses of all sizes | From $8/user/month |
| Timeular | 4.5 | Businesses of all sizes | From $9/user/month |
| ClickTime | 4.6 | Businesses of all sizes | From $10/user/month |
How to choose the best employee monitoring software
This will depend on your needs. Generally, you should consider the following criteria when choosing the best employee monitoring tool:
- Usability: How easy is the tool to use? Does it have a steep learning curve? Will it require team onboarding and training?
- Features: Can you assess employee profitability with this tool? Does it allow you to conduct productivity analysis or track offline activities? Look for features that meet your specific business needs.
- Price: Is the tool meeting your budget needs? Do you need to pay for third-party tools to make up for missing features?
- Privacy and legal compliance: Your employee tracking software needs to comply with privacy laws. Look for features like user consent or data encryption to make sure you respect employee privacy.
Employee Monitoring Software FAQs
Get answers to common questions people ask about employee monitoring systems:
- What are the benefits of using employee monitoring software?
By using employee monitoring software, employers can get a clearer picture of how their employees work and how they can change working habits to improve productivity. Also, employee monitoring can boost employee performance, save costs, and help employees better manage their time at work.
- Is employee monitoring legal?
This depends on the country, but employee monitoring is generally legal.
The employer has the right to monitor user activity (take screenshots of the employee’s screen, keystroke logging, or social media activity) on employee computers that belong to the company.
- How does employee monitoring software help businesses?
Businesses that use employee monitoring software can increase their overall efficiency as they have in-depth access to how their employees work.
Based on this, employers can better distribute workloads to increase employee engagement.
The bottom line
There are alternatives to traditional employee monitoring that, instead of freaking your employees out, make them more productive and keep them motivated.
Try Toggl Track for free and give your team an employee monitoring alternative that they actually like to use.
Related Articles
- 9 Best Employee Time Tracking Software for 2024: Tried & Tested
- 9+ Best Time Tracking Apps in 2024: For Every Budget & Team
- How to Get Your Team to Track Time (And Succeed)
- 4 Best Ways to Track Employee Hours
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