ActivTrak is a popular workforce analytics and employee monitoring software that helps businesses track their employees’ computer activities, analyze productivity, and identify potential security risks.
However, while ActivTrak offers a solid set of features, it’s not the ideal solution for every organization. As a result, many companies are exploring alternative solutions that provide a more comprehensive suite of capabilities to address their diverse needs. We’ll explore popular alternatives in this piece.
ActivTrak’s Limitations
Despite its strengths, ActivTrak has several drawbacks that may hinder its effectiveness in addressing the complex challenges faced by modern organizations. They include:
Limited Monitoring Channels
While ActivTrak excels in tracking application and website usage, it falls short in providing comprehensive visibility into other critical areas, such as email communication, instant messaging, file transfers, and network activity. This narrow monitoring scope may leave organizations vulnerable to various risks, including data exfiltration attempts, sensitive information mishandling, and potential insider threats.
No Data Loss Prevention or Insider Risk Detection Features
One of ActivTrak’s major drawbacks is its lack of advanced data loss prevention (DLP) and insider risk detection capabilities. ActivTrak’s capabilities are limited to basic website classifications, primarily focused on productivity use cases. The software does not offer risk alerts or anomaly detection features that could help organizations proactively identify and respond to malicious insider activities.
Static Reports with Limited Customization
While ActivTrak provides valuable productivity reports and data visualizations, its reporting functionalities may not offer the flexibility and customization many organizations require. Static reports with limited filtering and sorting options can hinder the ability to gain actionable insights tailored to specific business needs and roles.
No Payroll Features
Although ActivTrak can track employee productivity, it does not integrate with payroll systems or provide features to streamline payroll processes. This limitation can create additional administrative overhead for organizations that must reconcile employee time-tracking data with their payroll systems.
The Top 11 ActivTrak Alternatives & Competitors
After exploring ActivTrak’s cons, we’ll examine its top alternatives and competitors in detail, highlighting their key features and benefits to help you make an informed decision.
1. Teramind
Teramind is an award-winning user activity monitoring and behavior analytics platform offering comprehensive visibility into workforce operations. Our powerful features enable organizations to optimize productivity, strengthen security posture, and ensure compliance across their hybrid workforce.
Teramind also provides extensive monitoring capabilities that track all user activities across multiple channels on any endpoint. With flexible deployment models, privacy-conscious design, real-time alerts, and seamless integration with existing security infrastructure, Teramind offers a versatile solution tailored to the diverse monitoring needs of enterprises, government agencies, and SMBs.
Features
- Extensive user activity monitoring (UAM): Teramind tracks and analyzes users’ behavior across various environments such as email, web usage, file transfers, and web applications.
- Multi-channel monitoring: The software captures user behavior data from desktops, servers, and virtual desktops through video session recording, keystroke logging, social media monitoring, and file activity tracking.
- Privacy-conscious monitoring: It offers options for revealed or hidden agent deployment and configurable privacy settings to balance security needs with employee privacy.
- Productivity analytics and optimization: Teramind identifies top and low performers, productivity patterns, and bottlenecks using productivity metrics derived from user activity data.
- Robust DLP: Teramind has comprehensive data loss prevention capabilities with context-aware rules, automated responses like blocking and lock-outs, and optical character recognition (OCR) for sensitive content discovery.
- Remote desktop control: It offers the ability to remotely view user desktops and take control of incident response.
Why Teramind is the Best ActivTrak Alternative
- More comprehensive user monitoring: Teramind goes beyond basic application and website tracking to monitor messaging, email, web applications, file activities, remote sessions, etc.
- Advanced insider threat detection: Teramind uses user and entity behavior analytics and machine learning to detect anomalies indicative of potential insider threats.
- Data loss prevention (DLP): This features built-in DLP capabilities augmented by content/context awareness and automated responses.
- Configurable monitoring: It includes highly customizable rules, monitoring policies, and privacy settings to align with organizational requirements.
- Flexible deployment options: Teramind features on-premise, cloud, and private cloud deployment models to meet data residency and infrastructure needs.
Pricing
- Teramind Starter: Starts at $15 per user per month
- Teramind UAM: Starts at $30 per user per month
- Teramind DLP: Starts at $35 per user per month
- Teramind Enterprise: Custom pricing for large organizations requiring full functionality, such as advanced business intelligence capabilities, video recording, forensic evidence, and more.
The pricing is available for cloud-based and on-premise deployment models, with costs typically quoted per-user, per-month.
Teramind provides a robust, data-driven employee monitoring solution with security, productivity, and compliance capabilities that go beyond ActivTrak’s simple user activity monitoring.
2. Time Doctor
Time Doctor is a comprehensive productivity and time-tracking software designed to provide deeper visibility into workday activities, including time management, activity levels, project and task progress, attendance, and website and app usage.
It offers features like screenshots, video recording, and inactivity alerts and caters to remote, hybrid, and in-office teams. It enables businesses to gain the visibility and metrics they need to foster trust and flexibility among their workforce.
Features
- Time Tracking: Time Doctor offers automated time tracking, ensuring accurate timesheets and enhancing billing accuracy.
- Productivity Analytics: The software provides powerful reports on web and app usage, project and task progress, and timeline breakdowns.
- Employee Monitoring: Time Doctor offers optional screenshot and video recording features, which provide proof of work and identify training opportunities.
Limitations
- The software can be resource-heavy at times, leading to minor slowdowns on the computer.
- Occasional glitches or delays in tracking time accurately can affect the overall accuracy of time tracking.
- Limited dashboard view.
Pricing
- Basic: $5.90 per user/month
- Standard: $8.40 per user/month
- Premium: $16.70 per user/month
- Enterprise: Customizable pricing for large organizations.
While Time Doctor is a valuable tool for monitoring workforce productivity, limitations such as being resource-intensive, occasionally inaccurate, and lacking transparency in specific areas should be considered before purchase.
Read more: ActivTrak vs Time Doctor.
3. Hubstaff
Hubstaff is a time-tracking and employee monitoring software designed to help businesses manage remote, hybrid, and in-office teams. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that enable organizations to track employee productivity, monitor work hours, generate timesheets, manage payroll, and gain insights into project performance and resource allocation.
Features
- Time Tracking: Hubstaff’s time tracking features allow employees to accurately log their work hours and track time spent on specific tasks, projects, and clients.
- Real-Time Activity Monitoring: The software provides insights into employee activity levels, including application and website usage, screenshot capturing, and keyboard and mouse activity tracking.
- Project Management: Hubstaff offers project management capabilities, such as project budgeting, task assignment, and progress tracking.
Limitations
- The user interface can be clunky and difficult to navigate.
- Activity detection may not reflect actual work.
- High pricing, especially for larger teams.
Pricing
- Starter: $4.99/seat/month (minimum two seats)
- Grow: $7.50/seat/month (minimum two seats)
- Team: $10.00/seat/month (minimum two seats)
- Enterprise: $25.00/seat/month
Hubstaff is a helpful tool for time tracking and employee monitoring, but it has some drawbacks. While it offers helpful features, users have reported issues with the interface, privacy concerns, glitches in time tracking, and high pricing for limited functionalities.
4. Veriato
Veriato is a leading provider of insider risk management (IRM) and user activity monitoring (UAM) solutions designed to help organizations mitigate insider threats and monitor employee productivity and compliance. Their platform leverages advanced technologies like generative AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to analyze user behavior patterns, detect anomalies, and generate risk scores, enabling proactive identification of potential security risks.
Features
- Predictive Behavior Intelligence: Veriato leverages AI and ML to analyze user behavior, detect anomalies, and generate risk scores for proactive insider threat identification.
- Comprehensive Monitoring: The platform continuously monitors and records user activities across endpoints, providing a comprehensive view of employee behavior.
- Language and Sentiment Analysis: Veriato’s natural language processing (NLP) capabilities enable in-depth analysis of communication content, tone, and sentiment to identify risks or policy violations.
Limitations
- Initial installation can be troublesome.
- The alerting is not as accurate as hoped, and analytics are often false positives.
- The reporting sometimes needs clarity and focuses more on devices than individual users.
Pricing
- User Activity Monitoring (UAM): $15 per user per month (billed annually) or $25 per user per month (billed monthly).
- Insider Risk Management (IRM): Custom pricing based on specific requirements.
Veriato is a robust employee monitoring and insider threat detection software. Its robust, detailed recording and surveillance features make it ideal for investigative and regulatory purposes. However, it may have a steeper learning curve and less OS compatibility than other solutions.
Read more: Veriato vs ActivTrak.
5. Insightful
Insightful is an employee productivity software that boosts workplace efficiency and promotes sustainable productivity. It offers tools to identify overstaffed or understaffed teams, prevent employee burnout, and gain insights into remote, hybrid, and in-office work dynamics. The software uses analytics and real-time monitoring to optimize workflows, streamline processes, and inform decisions about people and operations.
Features
- Productivity Management: Insightful monitors productivity trends, application usage, and work time categorization to increase focus time and prevent burnout.
- Time and Attendance Tracking: It automates time tracking and attendance monitoring, simplifying shift scheduling and enabling integration with payroll systems.
- Operational Efficiency Analysis: With Insightful, you can conduct detailed process and task analysis to identify bottlenecks, optimize workflows, track project time, and allocate resources effectively.
Limitations
- The time tracking and idle time detection can be inaccurate at times.
- Limitations in reporting features or customizing reports as desired.
- User management features like merging/unmerging users could be improved.
Pricing
- Productivity Management: $6.40 per user per month
- Time Tracking: $8.00 per user per month
- Process Improvement: $12.00 per user per month (requires 50+ users)
- Enterprise Solution: Custom pricing (requires 100+ users)
Insightful offers powerful features to enhance productivity and optimize workflows, but it has some shortcomings related to integration capabilities, accuracy issues, reporting features, user management, and customer support channels.
6. DeskTime
DeskTime is an all-in-one time tracker with workforce management features that help businesses boost productivity and develop high-performing teams. It offers automatic time tracking, project tracking, resource planning, and office management capabilities to track work hours, analyze productivity, schedule shifts, oversee absences, and maintain employee work-life balance.
Features
- Automatic Time Tracking: DeskTime’s desktop app automatically tracks time and computer activities, ensuring accuracy without manual entry.
- Performance Evaluation: Users can categorize activities as productive, unproductive, or neutral, enabling managers to assess employee productivity and identify improvement areas.
- Project Tracking: The app allows users to track time spent on specific projects and tasks, facilitating better resource management, cost estimation, and expense control.
Limitations
- Downloading or generating certain detailed reports can be difficult.
- Categorization of productive, unproductive, and neutral websites/apps needs refinement.
- It lacks some advanced features like project management and task assignment.
Pricing
- Lite: Free for a single user
- Pro: $6.42 per user/month
- Premium: $9.17 per user/month
- Enterprise: $18.33 per user/month
DeskTime is a capable time tracking and workforce management tool, but it has some limitations related to cost, accurate activity tracking, reporting capabilities, and missing project management features. Businesses should consider these potential drawbacks and evaluate whether DeskTime fits their needs and budget before adopting it.
7. Toggl Track
Toggl Track is a frictionless time-tracking software that helps teams monitor and manage their time efficiently. Features like one-click timers, calendar view, offline tracking, and cross-platform availability provide insightful time data and actionable insights to boost productivity, increase efficiency, and balance team workloads. Toggl Track caters to teams of all sizes, from freelancers to large enterprises.
Features
- Flexible Time Tracking: Toggl Track offers one-click timers, calendar integration, offline tracking, mobile and desktop apps, and automated tracking for accurate time recording.
- Comprehensive Reporting: The software provides customizable reports, such as summary, weekly, and analytics reports, offering insights into billable hours, project progress, and team productivity.
- Robust Project Management: Toggl Track enables efficient project management with time estimates, task tracking, recurring projects, and fixed-fee project monitoring. The project dashboard provides a visual overview of project timelines, budgets, and progress.
Limitations
- Lack of integration or limited integration with project management tools.
- Reporting or viewing options could be improved, such as weekly timesheet view.
- The pricing is considered expensive, especially for smaller businesses or individuals needing basic time tracking.
Pricing
- Free Plan: $0/month, up to 5 users
- Starter Plan: $9/user/month
- Premium Plan: $18/user/month
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing
Toggl Track offers a user-friendly time-tracking solution praised for its ease of use and robust reporting capabilities. However, the pricing model is considered expensive, especially for smaller teams needing basic functionality, and syncing inconsistencies arise when using the software across multiple devices.
8. Monitask
Monitask is an employee productivity tracking and workforce analytics platform for businesses with remote teams. It offers features such as time tracking, activity monitoring, screenshot capturing, and detailed reporting to help companies monitor and optimize the efficiency of their distributed workforce.
Features
- Time Tracking: Monitask enables accurate tracking of time spent on tasks, projects, and activities for efficient resource allocation and project management.
- Activity Monitoring: The software monitors employees’ internet usage, application activity, and idle time, identifying potential distractions and areas for improvement.
- Screenshot Capture: Monitask captures periodic screenshots of employees’ screens, providing visual documentation of work progress and ensuring transparency.
Limitations
- The reporting history is limited, making long-term auditing difficult.
- Reported issues with the time tracking functionality, such as the software automatically pausing or stopping while employees work.
- If a user ends the service, they lose all data on employees’ hours worked and cannot download or export it.
Pricing
- Pro Plan: $4.99 per user per month
- Business Plan: $6.99 per user per month
- Enterprise Plan: Customizable pricing for large enterprises (100+ employees)
- Screenshot Add-Ons: Additional fees range from $2.40 to $7.20 per user per month, depending on the desired frequency of screenshot capture.
While Monitask is an effective employee productivity platform that provides useful features like screenshot capture, activity tracking, and project management, shortcomings around data preservation, mobile usage, client sharing, and initial usability could create hurdles for certain businesses.
9. Apploye
Apploye is a versatile time-tracking solution that streamlines workflow and boosts productivity for teams of all sizes. It offers a centralized platform for tracking time, managing projects, monitoring remote employees’ performance, and generating insightful reports. Apple integrates seamlessly with various platforms and devices, ensuring a seamless experience across desktops, mobiles, and web browsers.
Features
- Time Tracking: Accurate time tracking for individuals and teams through desktop and mobile apps, features like clock-in/clock-out, customizable timesheets, time entry notes, and the Pomodoro technique for focused work sessions.
- Remote Monitoring: The optional RemoteTrack add-on provides advanced monitoring capabilities for remote teams, including random screenshots, app and URL tracking, and activity analytics.
- Project and Task Management: Apploye allows you to manage projects efficiently, assign tasks, set budgets, and track time spent on each project and task for better resource allocation, client billing, and project profitability analysis.
Limitations
- The reporting functionality is limited and does not allow the exporting of detailed employee timesheets or tasks they worked on.
- Lack of essential reminder notifications to turn tracking on/off, leading to untracked time.
- It could use more dashboard customizations.
Pricing
- Standard Plan: $2.50 per user/month
- Elite Plan: $3.50 per user/month
You can also try the software for free for ten days before purchasing a subscription.
Apploye is a user-friendly and affordable time-tracking solution that can boost productivity. Still, it has drawbacks like limited reporting and integration options, lack of reminders for tracking time, and unnecessary screenshot captures.
10. Timely
Timely is an automatic time-tracking software designed to help businesses increase billable hours, maximize utilization rates, and boost project profitability. With its powerful AI-driven features, Timely eliminates the need for manual time tracking, ensuring accurate time data for informed decision-making.
Features
- Automatic Time Tracking: Timely’s Memory Tracker runs seamlessly in the background, capturing every second spent on digital tasks without any manual intervention. This ensures accurate billing and frees up time for more important work.
- AI Timesheets: Timely’s AI-powered timesheets make time tracking effortless. Users can review and submit timesheets in under two minutes with just a few clicks, increasing team adoption and utilization rates.
- Project Management: Timely offers a comprehensive project dashboard that allows users to track all projects in one place, view project details, set billable and cost rates, and assign tags for easy organization.
Limitations
- The AI add-on for automatic time tracking doesn’t always work reliably and can cause issues like freezing.
- The interface and functionality may have a steep learning curve initially.
- The pricing can be expensive, especially for single users or small teams on a tight budget.
Pricing
- Starter Plan: $9/month per user
- Premium Plan: $16/month per user
- Unlimited Plan: $22/month per user
While Timely offers powerful features tailored for businesses seeking to optimize their operations and profitability, it has limited functionalities that come at a higher cost than similar competitors. This could be a limitation for smaller businesses with tighter budgets.
11. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is a time-tracking and productivity management solution that offers a wide range of features, including automatic time tracking, project profitability analysis, and precise billing capabilities. With TimeCamp, individuals and teams can effortlessly monitor their time spent on tasks, optimize their productivity, and ensure accurate invoicing for clients.
Features
- Automatic Time Tracking: TimeCamp’s automatic time tracking feature seamlessly monitors your activities, applications, and websites, eliminating the need for manual time entries.
- Productivity Monitoring: Track employee productivity by monitoring website and app usage, identifying idle time, and generating insightful productivity reports to maximize team performance.
- Geofencing Time Tracking: With the geofencing feature, TimeCamp can automatically track time spent at specific job sites, providing accurate billing and time tracking for field workers.
Limitations
- TimeCamp can be invasive in some ways, causing discomfort to employees.
- The interface could be more intuitive.
- The software can be a bit clunky and buggy.
Pricing
- Free Plan: $0
- Starter Plan: $2.99 per user/month
- Premium Plan: $5.49 per user/month
- Ultimate Plan: $7.99 per user/month
- Enterprise Plan: $11.99 per user/month
TimeCamp is a feature-rich time-tracking solution that can significantly improve productivity and profitability. However, it has limitations, such as potential privacy concerns for employees, a steep learning curve due to its advanced capabilities, and a clunky interface with bugs.
FAQs
What does ActivTrak actually track?
ActivTrak tracks employee computer activities, including application and website usage, document access, idle time, etc. It provides detailed insights into employee productivity and helps businesses optimize their workflows.
Does ActivTrak take screenshots?
Yes, ActivTrak has a screenshot feature that allows employers to capture screenshots of employees’ computer screens at specified intervals. This feature provides additional insights into employees’ activities and can be used for monitoring and performance evaluation purposes.
Can ActivTrak track incognito mode?
No, ActivTrak cannot track activities done in incognito mode. Incognito mode is designed to prevent browser history and activity tracking, making it inaccessible to monitoring software like ActivTrak.
How often does ActivTrak take screenshots?
ActivTrak allows employers to set intervals for taking screenshots, ranging from every few seconds to once per hour. However, excessive screen capture may compromise employee privacy and trust, so it’s recommended that this feature be used responsibly and per local laws and regulations.
What is active time on ActivTrak?
Active time on ActivTrak refers to the duration an employee uses their computer or engages in a specific application or website. It helps employers gauge the productivity and focus of their workforce.
Conclusion
While ActivTrak offers excellent employee monitoring capabilities, it falls short in several features. We may be biased, but Teramind is the best ActivTrak alternative. It offers a full-featured platform combining robust monitoring, insider threat detection, and customizable data loss prevention capabilities.
With its flexible deployment options and privacy-conscious design, Teramind delivers unparalleled visibility and security controls, making it the top choice for organizations seeking to optimize productivity, mitigate risks, and ensure compliance across their workforce.
