Your remote and hybrid workforce rely on tech to help them work together, hit growth goals, and manage change effectively — as long as those tools don’t introduce more inefficiency. To ensure their productivity and collaboration apps are saving and not wasting time, businesses use workforce analytics platforms like Insightful for employee monitoring.
With Insightful, you can track how much time employees spend using workplace apps for projects and tasks and identify preventable bottlenecks. But Insightful won’t be able to protect you against data leaks or IP theft, which means you’re putting your sensitive and proprietary data at risk.
You’re also missing key features that allow you to create more compliant, secure workflows for your finance, insurance, and claims employees. Thankfully, there are software solutions that offer more productivity features while offering robust protection against insider threats.
The 7 Top Insightful Alternatives
- Teramind
- Hubstaff
- Time Doctor
- ActivTrak
- Toggl Track
- Desk Time
- Veriato
1. Teramind
Teramind offers more than productivity analysis — It’s a comprehensive behavioral analytics platform that offers in-depth workforce intelligence and security threat detection. With Teramind, you can go beyond simply monitoring how employees use workplace apps. The platform uses AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze user behavior patterns and identify anomalous or suspicious activities. This robust security feature lets you quickly detect and respond to insider threats, data breaches, and compliance violations, providing a strong shield for sensitive and proprietary data.
One of the key advantages of Teramind is its robust data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities. You can establish custom policies to prevent unauthorized sharing or exfiltration of sensitive data. The platform can automatically block or notify you of any attempts to access or send sensitive information, ensuring enterprise-grade security at all stages of your business.
Teramind Features
- Extensive user activity monitoring (UAM): Set specific rules for monitoring every employee’s activity based on your company’s compliance, security, and productivity parameters.
- Multi-channel monitoring: Teramind boasts comprehensive coverage by monitoring activity across over 15 channels, including email, networks, and screen recordings.
- Privacy-conscious monitoring: Protect your most important and sensitive internal and customer data by restricting access to specific employees and even blacking your client’s personal information during session recordings.
- Productivity analytics and optimization: It allows you to pinpoint productivity and process gaps by monitoring where remote employees spend their workdays. With productivity labeling, you can categorize activities as productive or non-productive, and even create custom KPIs for performance improvement. This level of insight can significantly enhance your business’s productivity and efficiency.
- Robust DLP: Create customized rules to prevent unauthorized file transfers and protect sensitive data during off hours with schedule-based policies.
- Remote desktop control: Teramind lets you control an employee’s desktop and mouse if you suspect they’re engaging in suspicious activity. This feature is also great for turning employee onboarding and training into more engaging, efficient learning experiences.
Why Teramind is the Best Insightful Alternative
Compared to Insightful, Teramind stands out as a better option because of:
- Deeper user monitoring: It goes beyond endpoint protection to provide extensive user activity monitoring across applications, websites, files, emails, and user screens. This granular level of detail helps identify suspicious behavior and potential insider threats that Insightful might miss.
- Advanced insider threat detection: Teramind uses sophisticated anomaly detection and monitoring user behavior to proactively identify potentially malicious insider activity. This allows for intervention before a data breach or sabotage occurs.
- Data loss prevention (DLP): Our platform offers features for data discovery, data classification, and content-based DLP policies to prevent sensitive data exfiltration, which Insightful doesn’t offer.
- Configurable monitoring: Teramind allows you to configure the level of monitoring for each user or group, addressing privacy concerns. Based on your security and employee privacy needs, you can customize your monitoring to be less intrusive.
- Flexible deployment options: We provide cloud-based, on-premise, and private cloud deployment options to meet different IT infrastructure needs.
Teramind Reviews
Here is what real users are saying about the benefits of Teramind:
- Unmatched employee monitoring software
- Excellent product with a wide range of use cases
- Excellent data loss prevention, user activity monitoring and insider threat detection tool
- No other product like it on the market!!
- Teramind is the best employee monitoring software for security threat protection because of its tools for proactively preventing data loss.
With high-level security threat detection and employee productivity monitoring combined in one single platform, Teramind can reduce risk while streamlining the employee experience single platform for your remote workforce.
2. Hubstaff
Hubstaff is a workforce management software with built-in time-tracking tools and employee analytics. Its focus is to make work easier for remote and hybrid teams with scheduling, time clocks, and employee productivity monitoring. One feature that sets it apart is the habit tracker, which gives staff members more control over their work experience by allowing them to uncover their time-wasting activities and processes.
While it lacks dedicated DLP and threat detection features, it’s a solid software solution for businesses looking to integrate workplace management and employee monitoring features into one platform.
Hubstaff Pros
- Time tracking: Hubstaff lets employees clock in and track time via the desktop or mobile app. It instantly converts those hours into timesheets for payroll prep, saving time and preventing inaccuracies at every pay period.
- Workforce management: Manage schedules, create work orders, and run payroll with one platform. Combining these features makes the work experience easier for remote employees without needing separate apps.
- Productivity tracking: When employees clock in, Hubstaff automatically tracks their activity, projects, and tasks, allowing you to identify ways to simplify the work experience when necessary.
Hubstaff Drawbacks
- It’s missing some key integrations. Hubstaff may not offer all the desktop or mobile integrations your business uses every day for project management or remote communication.
- The price point is a little high for long-term use. The cost of a Hubstaff plan may be prohibitive if you’re looking to scale.
- Not as robust as other time-tracking tools. Hubstaff doesn’t yet offer a Pomodoro timer or AI features that would drive more productivity.
Why Hubstaff Might Be a Good Alternative to Insightful
Hubstaff is a good option if you’re looking for more workforce management features, such as employee scheduling, automatic time tracking, and payroll tools for remote teams. However, it still lacks advanced threat protection, which means you’ll still need a platform like Teramind to defend against internal cybersecurity issues.
Read more: Hubstaff vs. Teramind
3. Time Doctor
Time Doctor is an employee productivity monitoring software designed to drive team member output and improve overall work culture. It combines time tracking, productivity analytics, and workforce management tools into one platform so you can create a more frictionless work experience for your remote teams.
One standout feature is the timeline report, which gives you a breakdown of your team’s daily workflows so you can quickly identify ways to improve. And if you’re working with leaner teams, you may benefit from the work-life balance metrics it tracks so you can better support employees at risk of quitting.
Time Doctor Pros
- Automatic time tracking: When remote team members clock in, Time Doctor automatically tracks hours and internet connectivity and even encourages breaks.
- Project and task management: Time Doctor shows you how long it takes employees to complete work, helping you more easily identify ways to streamline processes across your organization.
- Attendance and scheduling: Time Doctor allows you to create custom schedules and maintain attendance records. This feature might be useful for managing teams across various time zones.
Time Doctor Drawbacks
- Limited integrations. Time Doctor may not offer all the integrations that your business relies on for project management, communication, and collaboration.
- Some users find the interface confusing. The user experience of Time Doctor may not be as intuitive as other productivity tools, which could impact user adoption and efficiency.
- The pricing structure can be expensive for larger teams. If you have a large number of team members, the cost of Time Doctor can quickly add up, making it less cost-effective for scaling businesses.
Why Time Doctor Might Be a Good Alternative to Insightful
Time Doctor offers an all-in-one platform for time tracking, productivity analytics, and workforce management. It helps improve team productivity and work culture by providing valuable insights into daily workflows and work-life balance metrics. If your primary focus is optimizing team productivity and creating a more balanced work environment, you might find Time Doctor a suitable alternative to Insightful.
Read more: Time Doctor vs. Teramind
4. ActivTrak
ActivTrak is another Insightful alternative that focuses on employee productivity and operational efficiency. It provides detailed insights into how employees spend their time, with features like website and application monitoring, attendance tracking, and time analysis.
In addition to productivity analysis, ActivTrak also offers behavior analytics. It can identify patterns and trends in employee behavior, flagging any unusual activity that may indicate security issues or compliance violations. This helps you stay on top of employee engagement, well-being, and potential organizational risks.
ActivTrak Pros
- Productivity reporting: ActivTrak provides users with a daily breakdown of time spent on productive and non-productive tasks. That’s helpful for remote team leaders looking for ways to keep on top of productivity trends and do more with less software.
- Behavior analytics: ActivTrak monitors employee activity and notifies you about possible violations so you can investigate before security risks escalate.
- Productivity coaching: The virtual productivity coach analyzes each employee’s activities and provides actionable guidance for making work more efficient.
ActivTrak Drawbacks
- Activities aren’t always appropriately calibrated. Sometimes ActivTrak marks an activity as non-productive when it isn’t, which means you’ll have to double-check all reports for accuracy.
- User interface is a little bit complex to navigate. It may take extra time up front to customize ActivTrak dashboards and tools to your liking when compared to other options.
- Substandard customer service. Some users have reported that ActivTrak’s customer service team was difficult to contact and didn’t respond to issues in a timely manner.
Why ActivTrak Might Be a Good Alternative to Insightful
If you’re looking for beginner-level endpoint user monitoring to prevent security threats before they turn into major issues, you’ll likely find value in ActivTrak’s behavioral analytics. HR and operations teams may also benefit from ActivTrak’s capacity and headcount planning dashboard, particularly if they need to navigate recruiting or force reductions.
Read more: ActivTrak vs. Teramind
5. Toggl Track
Toggl Track is a straightforward yet easy-to-use time tracker for your remote staff. It allows you to sort all tasks by client or project so employees can track time spent down to the second. This not only yields more accurate time reports for client billing but also gives you a more complete picture of how your dispersed team members are spending their time.
Another practical aspect about Toggl is that employees can track time from the web, their desktop, their phone, or even from their stopwatch as long they have the Toggl app.
Toggle Pros
- Project tracking: Be as detailed as possible when uploading projects and clients to Toggl Track, and use historical project tracking and time data to better allocate resources in the future.
- Time reporting: Toggl’s analytics dashboards let you track key time and productivity metrics like ROI and earnings-per-client. With these real-time, actionable insights, you can have the data you need to build trust with current and potential clients.
Toggl Drawbacks
- Getting the timer started can be tricky. Some users report that the timer doesn’t always stop and start unless you input the right information.
- It doesn’t notify you when you’re not tracking time, which is not ideal for busy remote employees who may struggle to remember to start the timer.
- It’s a costly time-tracking solution. Smaller organizations may find it a bit out of budget and may prefer a free time tracking tool with similar functions.
Why Toggl Might Be a Good Alternative to Insightful
If you’re looking for a time-tracking platform that can provide detailed reports for optimizing your processes. While it lacks functions for monitoring employee activity and logging active and non-productive time, it’s a user friendly app that can help you make more data-driven improvements to your workflows.
6. DeskTime
DeskTime is a time-tracking platform similar to Toggl, but it also incorporates features for team scheduling and basic employee monitoring. Thus, you can support both office-based and remote employees with the tools they need to stay on task.
Moreover, DeskTime helps you drive performance by tracking the projects, apps, URLs, and even the documents employees work on throughout the day.
DeskTime Pros
- Online and offline time tracking: Once you install the desktop app, DeskTime starts tracking as soon as you turn on the computer, including breaks via the break time monitor. You can also fill in offline hours manually when reviewing time reports.
- Productivity tracking: DeskTime shows you the apps and websites your employees use throughout the day and can even randomly capture screen captures to ensure employees aren’t falsifying activity.
DeskTime Drawbacks
- Productivity reporting isn’t always accurate. Some users report issues with the URL and screenshot functionality.
- Per-user pricing not ideal for teams of all structures. For instance, if you employ part-time employees or contractors, you may find DeskTime too expensive.
- Reports can take a long time to download. That may make it difficult to share productivity data widely within your organization.
Why DeskTime Might Be a Good Alternative to Insightful
You might find DeskTime a solid solution if you need automated time tracking and easy-to-implement tools for monitoring employee productivity at scale. While it’s not ideal for preventing data leakage and IP theft, it can provide you deeper insights into how employees are utilizing their remote tools throughout the workday.
7. Veriato
Similar to Teramind, Veriato offers predictive workforce behavior analytics that allows you to detect insider threats and monitor employee productivity proactively. It automatically tracks every user’s activities and then calculates a risk score on a scale of 0 to 600.
Additionally, Veriato’s built-in AI uses psycholinguistics analysis to monitor emails for anomalous behavior. That makes it suitable for businesses and organizations that handle highly sensitive client data.
Veriato Pros
- Workplace intelligence: Veriato has built-in screen monitoring, activity logging, and AI-powered behavior analytics that allow you to address workflow issues across channels and devices.
- Compliance breach prevention: Veriato helps you stay GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPAA compliant with .
Veriato Drawbacks
- Set up be cumbersome for fully remote teams. You’ll want to ensure it can be used on all remote staff members’ devices before you invest in Veriato.
- You can’t monitor mobile devices: Your business data is unprotected if employees use their cell phones for work purposes.
- The UI isn’t as user-friendly as its competitors. This may present a longer learning curve for teams unfamiliar with employee monitoring software.
Why Veriato Might Be a Good Alternative to Insightful
While Veriato doesn’t offer project and task management tools, it’s an affordably priced workforce analytics platform ideal for small- to medium-sized businesses that need straightforward user activity monitoring and compliance features.
Read more: Veriato vs. Teramind
Conclusion
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to employee monitoring, and every business has unique goals for improving productivity.
But if you’re looking for an all-in-one workforce analytics and insider threat prevention solution, Teramind is your best bet. With powerful features for process optimization, insider threat prevention, behavior analytics, and compliance management, Teramind allows you to improve the remote work experience for employees and gives you peace of mind that sensitive data stays secure.
