The 7 Best Remote Employee Productivity Monitoring Software Solutions

It’s challenging managing remote teams. One way to ensure everyone is productive, efficient, and on track is by utilizing a remote employee productivity monitoring software.

In this guide, we’ll explore the seven best tools available to help you keep a close eye on remote workflows, ensure data security, and maintain high productivity levels. 

Each of these platforms offers unique features designed to fit different organizational needs and styles, from in-depth activity tracking to intuitive productivity analytics. Whether you’re a small business owner or managing a large remote team, finding the right software can transform the way you work. 

Here are the 7 tools we’ll cover in this post:

1. Teramind
2. Insightful
3. ActivTrak
4. Monitask
5. Hubstaff
6. Veriato UAM
7. Controlio

1. Teramind

Teramind is a leading remote employee productivity monitoring solution, designed to offer businesses detailed insights and control over employee activities. 

For example, it tracks user activity in real-time, capturing data such as keystrokes, email content, and file transfers. This real-time monitoring is backed by a powerful analytics engine that processes user behavior data to identify patterns that may indicate inefficient work habits or malicious activity. 

Furthermore, Teramind includes customizable behavior rules that trigger alerts when specific actions occur, helping managers and IT security teams promptly address potential issues. Businesses can also choose the deployment option — either on-premises or cloud-based, depending on the one that best fits their security posture and operational needs. 

One of Teramind’s key technical offerings is its visual recording feature, which records user activities on the desktop in video form. This allows for precise audit trails and the ability to review the actions leading up to an alert. 

Teramind also includes advanced data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities through its optical character recognition (OCR) feature to monitor sensitive data displayed on screen or typed into applications. The DLP framework extends to controlling and blocking unauthorized transmission of sensitive information through channels like email, web forms, and cloud storage. 

Key Features

• Productivity Analysis. Provides comprehensive insights into employee productivity patterns, helping identify areas for improvement.
• Active vs. Idle Time Logs. Tracks when employees are actively working versus idle, offering a clear picture of engagement and work habits.
• Employee Monitoring. Enables detailed monitoring of all employee computer activity, ensuring compliance and efficiency.
• Content-Based Rules. Leveraging OCR and content inspection technologies, Teramind can identify sensitive information across different formats and applications. This feature ensures that confidential data such as credit card numbers, personal identification information, or proprietary business materials are not unintentionally or maliciously shared. 

Use Cases

• Analyze High Performers. Teramind helps recognize high-performing employees by analyzing productivity trends and engagement levels, which can be crucial for talent management and reward systems.
• Business Process Optimization. Teramind identifies inefficiencies and suggests optimal workflows by monitoring how tasks are performed, significantly improving business processes.
• Track Custom KPIs. The software allows companies to set and track custom KPIs tailored to their specific operational goals. 
• Compare Work Location Productivity. Enables businesses to compare productivity across different work locations or remote setups, facilitating strategic decisions regarding workforce distribution.

Teramind’s Pricing

Teramind’s pricing is typically structured around the number of users and the specific features required, with several tiers to accommodate different sizes and types of businesses:

• Starter: Starts at $15 per seat/month. 
• UAM: Starts at $30 per seat/month. 
• DLP: Starts at $35 per seat/month. 
• Enterprise: Tailored for large organizations needing full functionality, including video recording, forensic auditing, and more.

Each tier is available in cloud-based and on-premise deployment options, and pricing is usually provided per user per month.  

Teramind is an excellent choice for companies that need strong oversight and data security for remote workers. It offers detailed analytics and real-time monitoring, which help managers stay proactive — all while still adhering to their industry regulations. 

2. Insightful

Insightful (formerly known as Workpuls), offers a suite of tools designed to enhance employee productivity monitoring and organizational efficiency. 

This software is tailored to provide real-time insights into employee activities, helping managers make data-driven decisions to boost productivity and operational effectiveness. It also operates seamlessly across both remote and in-office environments, making it a good choice for businesses using hybrid work models. 

The platform offers automated time tracking, which captures the time employees spend on different tasks and applications without the need for manual entry. This feature is particularly beneficial for tracking remote workers and ensuring accurate payroll processing.

Insightful also offers powerful reporting tools that provide detailed analyses of time usage, productivity levels, and operational efficiency. These reports can be customized to focus on individual, team, or departmental performance.  

Key Features

• Automatic Time Mapping. Insightful’s automatic time mapping feature categorizes time spent on different applications and websites into productive, unproductive, or neutral categories. This automation streamlines the process of understanding employee work habits and adjusting workflows to maximize efficiency.
• Productivity Labeling. This functionality enables organizations to label apps and websites manually to match their specific productivity impact, which can vary between different roles or departments. It enhances the customization of productivity analysis.
• Employee Privacy Mode. Insightful respects employee privacy by allowing the activation of privacy mode in certain scenarios, such as during breaks or non-working hours.  

Drawbacks

• Slow Response and Account Reactivation Issues. Customers have noted that the response time for addressing customer queries is slow, which is problematic due to urgent business needs. There’s also a significant delay in reactivating deactivated accounts, taking up to 7 days, which disrupts operations for businesses with high employee turnover [*]. 
• Inaccurate Time Tracking on Zoom. Users have encountered difficulties with accurately recording time spent in Zoom meetings. The software does not provide a reliable way to verify the accuracy of the time tracked, leading to discrepancies reported by users [*].
• Interruptions Due to OS Updates. When Macbooks are pending operating system updates, Insightful ceases to function, affecting about 20-30 devices in an organization of 300 people [*]. 

Pricing

• Productivity Management. $6.40 per user/month. 
• Time Tracking. $8.00 per user/month. 
• Process Improvement. $12.00 per user/month. 
• Enterprise Solution. Custom. 

Insightful provides detailed, real-time data that can significantly enhance operational efficiency and employee productivity. 

However, it might be the perceived invasiveness of features like real-time screen monitoring, which can affect employee morale if not implemented with careful consideration of privacy concerns. 

Related → 7 Insightful Alternatives & Competitors in 2024

3. ActivTrak

ActivTrak is a workforce analytics tool that uses data-driven insights to optimize workplace efficiency and employee engagement. 

The software tracks real-time user activity, which includes application and website usage, providing a clear picture of how employees use their work time. 

This granular visibility is further enhanced by ActivTrak’s use of AI to classify activities as productive or unproductive based on predefined or custom categories, helping managers understand workforce productivity patterns and identify opportunities for improvement. 

ActivTrak also features an intuitive dashboard that integrates benchmarking tools that compare individual performance against team averages. It also provides industry-specific benchmarking data to compare the organization’s performance against others in the same sector. 

Key Features

• Workload Balance Insights. This helps managers detect work distribution imbalances and potential burnout risks by analyzing activity levels across teams.
• Activity Classification Engine. Utilizes AI to automatically categorize the nature of activities into productive, unproductive, or idle. This categorization adapts to different job roles and departments, allowing for customized productivity strategies tailored to specific operational needs. 
• Focus Score. Evaluates the focus level of employees by analyzing the frequency and duration of switching between applications. A higher focus score indicates more sustained attention to tasks. 

Drawbacks

• Misinterpretation of Data. The software mislabels productive activities as non-productive, and other times, external processes or components can skew the data unfavorably for team members [*]. 
• Confusing Interface. Users find ActivTrak’s interface cluttered and confusing due to the number of features. This complexity often leads to confusion about what specific graphs represent, complicating the user experience [*]. 
• Poor Customer Service and Functionality Issues. ActivTrak’s customer service is described as highly responsive during the sales process but significantly lacking when addressing users’ issues.
  • Complaints include slow software performance, constant reclassification of data entries, and unhelpful escalations to higher management that result in attempts to upsell rather than solve problems. The contractual lock-in further worsens user dissatisfaction [*]. 

Pricing

• Free. $0 per user/month.
• Essentials. $10 per user/month. 
• Professional. $19 per user/month. 
• Enterprise. Request a quote.

ActivTrak’s intuitive interface and comprehensive productivity assessments make it an appealing choice for businesses aiming to optimize remote operations efficiently. 

However, its major drawback is the potential for data overload, where the sheer volume of insights generated can be overwhelming for managers to analyze effectively without proper training or additional analytical support. This can lead to underutilization of some of the platform’s advanced features. 

Related → ActivTrak vs. Teramind – Which is Best in 2024?

4. Monitask

Monitask simplifies the supervision of remote workforces by providing detailed insights into how employees spend their working hours. This includes how many hours employees worked, what tasks they finished, and which websites they visited, giving a full picture of what employees do during the day.

One of the advantages of Monitask is its lightweight client application, which is easy to install and operates quietly in the background, ensuring that it does not affect the performance of the user’s system or intrude into the workflow. 

This makes the software appealing for freelancers, project managers, and small to medium-sized businesses seeking an easy-to-use tool to enhance accountability and streamline project management processes. 

Key Features

• Proof of Work Screenshots. This feature captures periodic screenshots of an employee’s screen, which can be configured by frequency and by specific trigger activities. These screenshots serve as proof of work and help in maintaining operational transparency, especially in remote settings where direct supervision is not possible.
• Clock-In/Clock-Out Board. Enables employees to easily mark their start and end times, providing a clear, real-time overview of attendance and shifts for both staff and management.
• Employee Performance Ratings. Allows managers to rate employee performance based on the data collected, including task completion rates and time management. This helps in identifying high performers and areas where other team members may need additional support or training. 

Drawbacks

• Pause Function Tracking Issues. The tracking feature occasionally malfunctions when paused, making it difficult to determine when it has been briefly stopped. This loophole allows employees to potentially misuse the pause function [*]. 
• Functionality and Reliability Problems. Users have encountered issues with Monitask’s functionality, such as the software becoming stuck and not resuming from the last point after a restart, which forces a restart from the beginning [*].
• Task Selection Issues. Monitask users face challenges with the task selection process, as the dropdown menu does not always function smoothly, requiring multiple attempts to select a task [*]. 

Pricing

• Free Trial. $0/month for 10 days. 
• Pro. $5.99 per user/month. 
• Business. $8.99 per user/month. 
• Enterprise. Request quote. 

Monitask is particularly effective for teams seeking straightforward and reliable monitoring solutions without the need for complex setups. 

However, its reliance on screenshots and activity levels as proxies for productivity might not suit all organizational cultures, potentially leading to concerns about privacy and the perception of micromanagement. 

5. Hubstaff

Hubstaff’s key advantage in employee productivity monitoring lies in its ability to provide precise, GPS-based time tracking combined with online timesheets. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses that require detailed documentation of work hours and locations, such as those in construction or field services. 

The software operates in the background, gathering data on application and website usage, and uses this data to generate activity rates based on keyboard and mouse usage, thereby providing insights into employee productivity levels without being overly intrusive. 

In addition, Hubstaff supports automated payroll processing, which simplifies the compensation management process by directly linking hours worked to payroll. This integration reduces administrative overhead and minimizes errors associated with manual data entry. 

Hubstaff’s project management tools are also robust, offering features like task assignments, project budgeting, and progress tracking. These tools help managers keep projects on schedule and within budget while maintaining high levels of productivity. 

Key Features

• Smart Time Tracking. Automatically records time spent on tasks with high precision, facilitating accurate billing and payroll.
• Geofencing. This feature enables location-based tracking, allowing for automatic clock-ins and clock-outs as employees enter or leave a designated work area.
• Advanced Scheduling. Managers can create and manage employee schedules, with alerts for missed shifts or scheduling conflicts. This helps facilitate easy shift planning and staffing adjustments.  

Drawbacks

• Privacy Concerns. Hubstaff’s level of monitoring, which includes screenshots and activity tracking, makes some users uncomfortable due to perceived invasiveness. This is especially noted among remote workers who feel their privacy may be compromised [*].
• Inaccurate Activity Tracking. Hubstaff does not always recognize activities such as meetings, training videos, or call reviews as “active” work, even though it tracks the user’s presence in apps like Zoom [*].
• Limited Offline Tracking. Hubstaff’s offline tracking capabilities are limited. While it can track time without an internet connection, the data synchronization process is unreliable and can lead to data loss [*]. 

Pricing

• Starter. $4.99 per seat/month. 
• Grow. $7.50 per seat/month. 
• Team. $10.00 per seat/month. 
• Enterprise. Request a quote. 

Hubstaff’s strength lies in its ability to merge time tracking with essential management features, making it a valuable tool for optimizing remote operations. 

However, the major drawback lies in its potentially invasive monitoring practices, such as keystroke logging and random screenshots, which may raise privacy concerns among employees.

Related → Hubstaff vs. Teramind – Which Is Best For Productivity?

6. Veriato UAM

Veriato UAM is tailored for organizations seeking to gain deep insights into user behavior and activities across both on-premise and remote work environments. 

It offers analytical capabilities, which include detailed recording of user actions such as keystrokes, emails, file transfers, and application usage. These capabilities allow managers to get detailed insights of how employees engage with their work, identifying both high-performing individuals and areas where efficiency can be improved.

Veriato UAM also features an anomaly detection system, which employs advanced machine learning algorithms to identify deviations from normal activity patterns. This feature is essential for detecting potential security threats or policy violations early. 

Additionally, Veriato UAM provides contextual video recording—capturing screen activity in a video format that can be replayed for audit or training purposes. This is particularly useful for understanding the context behind data entries, communications, or transactions. 

Key Features

• Smart Camera. Utilizing AI, the Smart Camera feature automatically captures screen content based on specific triggers such as the opening of an application or the input of certain keywords. 
• Psycholinguistic Analysis. This examines the language used in emails and chats to detect signs of insider threats or discontent. This advanced feature aids in preemptively resolving conflicts and securing the internal environment.
• File Tracking and Document Title Recording. Veriato UAM tracks file movements and accesses, including the recording of document titles. This feature helps in monitoring the dissemination of information within and outside the organization, crucial for preventing data leaks. 

Drawbacks

• Complex Setup Requirements. Setting up Veriato involves running multiple PowerShell scripts and has been known to disable local firewalls, adding to the complexity and potential security concerns [*].
• Difficult Deployment for MSPs. Deploying Veriato is particularly difficult for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) due to its manual process, which involves adding users to groups individually—a task that becomes exceedingly complex with a large user base and multiple devices [*].
• Implementation and Update Issues. Veriato’s implementation is challenging, with updates often being blocked by antivirus or endpoint monitoring systems. Users also report issues with keyword duplication in reports, unfilterable junk information, and inaccuracies in user selection for reporting [*]. 

Pricing

There are two deployment options on Veriato UAM: 

• Cloud.
  • User Activity Monitoring (UAM). $15 per user/month.
  • Insider Risk Management (IRM). Request a quote. 
• On-premise.
  • User Activity Monitoring (UAM). Request a quote.
  • Insider Risk Management (IRM). Request a quote. 

Veriato UAM is a go-to choice for industries with heavy regulatory demands, such as finance and healthcare. 

However, organizations adopting the software need to balance its capabilities with transparent and fair usage policies to maintain a positive work environment. 

Related → Veriato vs. ActivTrak: Features, Pros & Cons Compared

7. Controlio

Controlio offers a robust solution for monitoring employee productivity, specifically designed to cater to the needs of enterprises operating in diverse environments, including remote, hybrid, and traditional office settings. 

The platform’s approach is centered on transparency and accountability, ensuring that employees are aware of monitoring practices, which cultivates an environment of trust and drives productivity improvements. 

Controlio is also capable of capturing screen content in real-time and offers video playback of any recorded session, providing managers with the tools to review work processes and conduct thorough audits. 

Furthermore, Controlio extends its capabilities to include time tracking and attendance management, which simplifies the administrative burden associated with managing a workforce across multiple time zones. 

Key Features

• Automated Behavior Flags. The platform includes an automated system that flags behaviors based on predefined criteria, such as excessive idle time or unauthorized application usage. This helps maintain continuous oversight without the need for constant manual monitoring. 
• Efficiency Metrics. Controlio generates detailed efficiency metrics for each employee, calculating productivity scores based on specific activities deemed productive, unproductive, or neutral. This tailored assessment helps managers optimize team performance and individual productivity strategies. 
• Real-time Screen Monitoring. Tracks employee activities in real-time, providing immediate insights into work habits and productivity levels. 

Drawbacks

• Software Interruptions on Mac Updates. Updates to Mac machines occasionally cause the software to stop functioning, requiring manual intervention to adjust settings remotely. This issue creates significant manual work, leading to unpredictability in maintenance [*]. 
• Clunky Features with a Need for Better UX. Users find certain aspects clunky, indicating a need for a more refined user experience to enhance usability [*]. 
• Poor Usability. The interface could be improved to allow easier management of widgets, particularly for the most frequently used functions [*]. 

Pricing

• Cloud. $7.99 per user/month.
• On-premises. On request.
• Private cloud. On request. 

Controlio delivers detailed insights into employee productivity and behavior while maintaining a level of customization that respects privacy concerns. 

However, the complexity of the software’s feature set can require a significant time investment to configure optimally. This complexity can be a barrier for smaller teams or businesses without dedicated IT support.

Teramind — One Solution for Data Security, Productivity & Compliance

Teramind is a top choice for businesses that need to keep their data safe, ensure the productivity of their teams, and meet industry rules. 

It’s more than just a monitoring tool—it’s a complete package that helps you keep an eye on your team’s activities without making things too complicated. 

Choosing Teramind is like giving your business a security and productivity boost all at once. With its easy-to-use interface and powerful features, it’s perfect for anyone who wants a straightforward way to watch over their remote teams. 

Whether you’re tackling security risks, pushing for better performance, or navigating complex regulations, Teramind is a reliable partner that helps your business move forward smoothly.