Computer monitoring software is a favourite amongst firms which have adopted hybrid and distant work models within the recent pandemic years.
It tracks and monitors your employees’ productivity levels, how they spend their work hours, projects they’re working on, etc. This offers you accurate insights into an worker’s performance no matter where they’re working from.
But with 1000’s of computer monitoring tools available today, which one should you go for?
In this text, we’ll highlight the ten best computer monitoring software, including their features and costs. We’ll also explore the professionals and cons of computer monitoring software.
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Let’s start!
10 best computer monitoring software
Here’s are the ten best computer monitoring software for productivity tracking:
1. Time Doctor
It offers the final word package of features, including robust time tracking, efficient computer monitoring, detailed reporting – simply to name just a few.
Key features
A. Time tracking
This distant monitoring tool offers each manual and automatic time tracking.
Within the interactive or manual mode, your worker can start the tracker after they begin their work and stop after they’re done or need a break.
Here’s how it really works:
- Open Time Doctor and enter the duty’s name.
- Click Start while you’re able to begin.
- Click Stop while you’re done or must pause.
B. Detailed reports and analytics
These comprehensive real time reports inform you how your employees spend their working time so you possibly can evaluate their performance.
- Timeline report: This shows you the way much time an worker spends on each task, project, and client.
- Attendance report: Know when an worker is absent, present, late, partially absent, etc.
- Activity summary report: Reports each worker’s idle minutes, energetic minutes, manual time, and mobile time.
- Web and app usage report: Check your worker’s time spent on different apps and web sites.
C. Idle time tracking
This ensures that your virtual teams only log energetic minutes as working time.
D. Screencasts (optional)
This screenshot feature is optional, so you possibly can disable or enable it for workers’ computer screens. To guard your employees’ privacy, it’s also possible to delete or blur a screenshot if it accommodates any sensitive data.
Pros
- Make your employees feel protected with Time Doctor’s employee-friendly settings.
- Track your employees’ distant desktops even when their network is down.
- Monitor all web sites and apps utilized by employees during their working hours.
- Export reports in either CSV or XLS formats for simple storage.
- Protect your data with Time Doctor’s strict security and privacy policies.
- Integrate with dozens of apps with its powerful Chrome extension.
- Pays bills and salaries accurately with the automated payroll processing system.
- Use Time Doctor on Android, Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems.
Pricing
User rankings
- G2: 4.4/5 (250+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (350+ reviews)
2. Hubstaff
Hubstaff is an activity tracking tool and collaboration software.
It tracks your distant employees’ productivity and automates mundane administrative tasks equivalent to billing, reports, etc., together with features like GPS tracking.
Key features
- Generate productivity reports drawn from GPS-based time tracking features.
- Review, reject, or approve activity reports and timesheets.
- Streamline work management with automated scheduling, break day requests, and attendance.
- Track web and application usage with screenshots of employees’ screens.
Pricing
Hubstaff offers a free plan, and its paid plans start from $7/user per 30 days.
User rankings
- G2: 4.3/5 (350+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (1000+ reviews)
3. Teramind
Teramind is an worker monitoring software that helps you to track your employees’ productivity with detailed timesheets, spreadsheets, email monitoring, keylogger feature, etc.
It also protects you from data breaches and detects insider threats in your organization.
Key features
- Evaluate worker activity through detailed reports.
- Automate risk detection and block unwanted worker behavior on a goal computer.
- Video record worker’s computer activity.
- Prevent data exfiltration with industry-grade data loss prevention (DLP) features.
Pricing
Teramind’s paid plans start at $10/user per 30 days.
User rankings
- G2: 3.9/5 (30+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (60+ reviews)
4. ActivTrak
ActivTrak is one other efficient worker tracking tool with a straightforward user interface that gives insightful worker activity reports based on computer monitoring.
It’s compatible with distant computers with macOS and Windows, and likewise available as a mobile app on Android and iOS devices.
Key features
- Provides a dashboard view showing productivity trends of people and the entire team.
- Offers productivity coaching to empower employees to realize larger goals.
- Permits you to create a custom classification of employees’ web sites and application usage.
- Removes employees’ sensitive data from activity logs equivalent to passwords, personal usage data, etc.
Pricing
ActivTrak offers a free plan, and the paid plans start from $9/user per 30 days.
User rating
- G2: 4.5/5 (150+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (500+ reviews)
5. DeskTime
DeskTime is an worker productivity monitoring tool that gives time beyond regulation calculations, spreadsheets, detailed work reports, etc., to trace work activities with ease.
Key features
- Offers an summary of your employees’ productivity using a productivity bar.
- Promotes time management with its Pomodoro timer.
- Allows employees to take a break from automatic computer monitoring with the private time feature.
- Tracks employees’ work hours without additional software via an integrated web time tracker.
Pricing
DeskTime has a free plan, and the paid plans start at $7/user per 30 days.
User rankings
- G2: 4.8/5 (25+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (200+ reviews)
6. Harvest
Harvest is a pc monitoring software solution suitable for freelancers and small business owners.
With easy configurations, this worker monitoring tool offers time tracking, automated invoices, and solid integrations to spice up your employees’ productivity and efficiency.
Key features
- Allow employees the alternative of automatic time tracking and manual timesheet filling.
- Manage resources through detailed worker productivity reports.
- Streamline communication with automated reminders and responses.
- Track employees’ computer usage throughout the day with Harvest’s browser extensions.
Pricing
Harvest has a free plan, and its Pro plan starts at $12/user per 30 days.
User rankings
- G2: 4.3/5 (700+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (450+ reviews)
7. KickIdler
KickIdler is a user activity tracker designed for giant and small businesses in addition to public institutions. It offers real time user activity monitoring, time tracking, usage reports, etc.
It also doubles up as parental control software.
Key features
- View all of your employees’ desktops concurrently with the quad splitter feature.
- Generate various activity logs equivalent to details of the day, working timesheets, etc.
- Access your employees’ distant desktops from anywhere with the distant access feature.
- Monitor worker computer activity via video recordings and screenshots.
Pricing
The paid versions start at $3.67/user per 30 days.
User rankings
- G2: 4.7/5 (5+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (35+ reviews)
8. Veriato Vision
Veriato Vision is an worker computer monitoring software that uses AI to derive desktop monitoring data and analytics. Aside from a pc, it’s also possible to use this distant monitoring tool on an iOS or Android device.
Key features
- Monitors employees’ computer activity to trace productivity.
- Provides video recordings and screenshots of any goal computer.
- Tracks user behavior to detect potential threats and productivity levels.
- Detects suspicious worker behavior with custom lists of keywords and terms containing sensitive data, hate speech, etc.
Pricing
Veriato Vision is priced at $150/feature per 30 days.
User rankings
9. iMonitorSoft EAM
iMonitorSoft EAM is an worker tracking software that helps you to track 1000 computers from a central server. You should utilize it to efficiently manage your distant employees, track their productivity, and protect data.
Key features
- Tracks domain-based laptops and PCs, distant desktops with a VPN, and people outside your organization’s network.
- Supports keylogging and records social media user activity, activity on external storage devices like USB, etc.
- Routinely limits time for non-work-related apps and web sites.
- Monitors remote desktops, even on Windows Terminal Server or Citrix.
Pricing
iMonitorSoft EAM’s paid plans start from $45.96/feature with lifetime access.
User rankings
10. Work Examiner
Work Examiner is an efficient worker monitoring tool to trace your distant employees’ web usage, working time, and productivity metrics. It offers each on-premise and cloud-based pc monitoring software.
Key features
- Monitors energetic and idle time spent on web sites and apps.
- Captures screenshots of employees’ computer screens during their energetic minutes.
- Records keystrokes to capture what’s being typed.
- Supports live streaming and continuous video recording of a goal pc.
Pricing
Work Examiner’s paid plans start from $7.99/user per 30 days.
User rankings
- G2: N/A
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (5+reviews)
Next, let’s try just a few pros and cons of pc monitoring software.
3 key pros of computer monitor software
Listed here are just a few explanation why it’s best to start using an worker computer monitoring software today:
1. Measure productivity
As you shift your workforce to distant and hybrid models, it might be difficult to measure your employees’ productivity accurately.
That is why you wish worker monitoring software to trace the work hours of your distant employees. Its activity logs and timesheets will give useful insight to assist you evaluate their productivity and conduct performance reviews.
Some monitoring solutions also let the worker view their productivity reports. This may help them spot areas of improvement and focus higher on delivering quality work.
2. Enables a productive workflow
With worker tracking software, you’ll higher understand who’s good at what.
For instance, you might discover that some employees take lesser time covering certain tasks than others. This means they’re clearly more expert at those tasks.
It’ll assist you assign tasks to employees best equipped to finish these tasks more productively than others.
Furthermore, you possibly can check on employees who need to enhance their work and help boost their productivity.
3. Higher security
Often, you’ll have no alternative but to share details about your projects together with your distant employees.
But how do you ensure data security?
Tracking your employees’ user activity will inform you how they use company information and sensitive data. Many worker tracking tools also offer data loss protection to guard you from insider threats and suspicious user behavior.
With worker computer monitoring software, you possibly can give your distant employee all of the crucial information without fearing security breaches.
Nonetheless, it’s best to also know certain downsides of worker computer monitoring software.
2 cons of computer monitoring software
Listed here are some disadvantages it’s best to take note when using worker monitoring software:
1. May stress employees
Knowing that their computer activity is being tracked may stress out some employees. They could feel disrespected or mistrusted of their workplaces.
These concerns may:
- Reduce employees’ trust in you.
- Decrease their morale.
- Tamper together with your company’s distant work culture.
To avoid this, it’s essential to present them a transparent idea of the info used, where it’s stored, privacy details that protect their data, etc. Discuss these details in whole team meetings before you deploy such technology.
2. Invading personal time
Some user activity monitoring tools constantly track employees’ computer activity even after they’re on breaks or off-duty. This might be seen as a violation of individual privacy.
You will need to make sure that you’re using the pc monitoring software as ethically as possible.
Search for computer monitoring software with strong privacy features and provides your distant workforce a alternative to begin and stop the tool in keeping with their work hours.
You can even restrict some privacy-invading features of computer monitoring software.
For instance, some monitoring systems capture keystrokes that inform you precisely what the worker is typing. As a substitute, you possibly can go for a monitoring tool that only checks for keystroke movements to find out energetic minutes.
Wrapping up
Computer monitoring software is crucial to trace employees’ working hours, spot pitfalls, and improve your organization’s efficiency — especially when you manage a virtual team.
Undergo the tools we covered here to find out the proper worker monitoring solution in your needs.
It’ll help enhance your organization’s efficiency because it’ll provide you with insights into the worker while also respecting their privacy.