Hubstaff vs. Teramind – Which Is Best For Productivity?

Hubstaff and Teramind offer features for managing employees’ time, scheduling, activity tracking, and productivity analytics.

Only Teramind offers comprehensive employee monitoring, behavior analytics, insider threat detection, data loss prevention (DLP), business process optimization (BPO), and more.

The main differences between these solutions are that:

• Hubstaff is primarily time-tracking software with timesheets and task management features. It also has some employee monitoring capabilities, such as app and URL tracking, screenshot capture, and basic notification features.
• Hubstaff works well for companies that need to track employees’ and freelancers’ time on different projects and for small businesses with basic workforce metrics and analytics needs. In that sense, it’s similar to other solutions like TimeCamp, Time Doctor, Clockify, ActivTrak, etc.
• Teramind’s employee monitoring software is best for companies that need more than time tracking and workforce analytics. Especially if real-time employee activity monitoring, productivity analysis, business process optimization, insider threat detection, and data loss prevention are the problems you’re solving. Teramind is unique because it offers multiple solutions in a single package.
• With Hubstaff, you track employee time. With Teramind, you actively improve employee productivity while protecting your organization from insider threats and data leaks.

This teardown will examine each provider’s available functionality, pricing, user experience, user reviews, and beyond.

Hubstaff vs. Teramind: Functionality Review

Feature	Hubstaff	Teramind
Screen Video Recording	✓	✓
Application Monitoring	✓	✓
Productivity Analytics	✓	✓
Built-in Reports	✓	✓
Time Clock	✓	✓
Website Monitoring	✓	✓
Cloud Deployment	✓	✓
Network Monitoring	X	✓
Email Monitoring	X	✓
Clipboard Monitoring	X	✓
IM Monitoring (Slack, Teams, Skype, etc.)	X	✓
File Transfer Monitoring	X	✓
OCR Detection	X	✓
Custom Reports	X	✓
Geolocation Monitoring	X	✓
On-premise deployment	X	✓
Private cloud deployment	X	✓

• Hubstaff is a simple, user-friendly time tracking and timesheet solution that requires little to no training. Built-in reports with no-frills analytics provide a smooth experience for remote teams.
• Teramind is the best for time tracking, employee productivity optimization, insider threat detection, and data loss prevention. It’s ideal for use cases like employee activity monitoring, employee productivity monitoring, employee engagement measurement, remote team management, insider fraud detection, forensic investigations, and more.

Teramind Overview: Features, Use Cases, Pros & Cons

Here’s what you get with Teramind:

Time Tracking, Time Sheet, Project Management, and Payroll Features

Teramind offers multiple clock-in and time-tracking options, such as kiosk, web, and silent clock-in. With the silent agent, Teramind will automatically assign tasks and projects based on a user’s activities.

A built-in scheduler makes managing rotations and part-time hires easy. It automatically generates timecards, time records, and timesheet reports. You can also view employee costs, project and task costs, and payroll reports.

Easy integration with project management, ticketing, helpdesk, and accounting solutions such as Jira, Redmine, Zendesk, ServiceNow, etc., makes tracking multiple teams and projects easy, as well as managing payroll and preparing invoices.

Comprehensive time tracking, employee productivity management, and workforce analytics features

Teramind’s employee monitoring solution, which integrates time tracking, behavior analytics, and Business Intelligence (BI) features, helps you measure employee active time, idle time, focus time, productive/unproductive tasks, employee engagement, performance impacts, app interactions, resource utilization, payroll, and more.

• Compare productivity trends between remote and onsite employees, freelancers, departments, or individuals.
• Identify the most productive employees.
• Spot discontent, workforce harassment, burnouts, and risky behaviors.

Ease of use with intuitive user interface and customization functionalities

Use the built-in reports and dashboards to prioritize the most sought-after metrics, such as employee productivity, employee engagement, insider threats, data risks, and more.

• Build your own custom BI reports with drag-and-drop widgets. 
• Simplify report generation with automated ranking, filters, and built-in formulas that produce the most needed metrics.
• Visualize KPIs by choosing from hundreds of data points and plotting them with graphs, charts, heatmaps, and grids.
• Create complex behavior policies and rules with a visual policy editor and hundreds of templates to address productivity, security, and HR use cases.

Integrated insider threat detection and endpoint data loss prevention

Protect sensitive and confidential company data and IPs from loss caused by malicious, accidental, negligent, or compromised insiders with insider threat detection fueled by data-driven endpoint monitoring.

Detect and block data exfiltration attempts with DLP policies and rules, real-time notifications and alerts, advanced OCR, automated data discovery and classification, fingerprinting, forensics, and more.

Teramind’s Main Use Cases

Automatically Track Time, Projects, Tasks and Generate Payroll and Invoices

Teramind’s time tracking and project management lets organizations accurately track employee attendance, log work hours, and generate timesheets, time records, and project/task and cost reports. It helps companies like yours analyze employee activities and payroll to discover your cost drivers, such as unproductive hours, idle time, absence, and other sunk costs.

By automating redundant, manual tasks such as employee clock-ins, scheduling, timesheets, payroll, invoicing, etc., Teramind reduces operational costs by streamlining your administrative, accounting, and HR processes.

Optimize Employee Productivity, Enable Transparency and Accountability

Teramind’s in-depth time tracking, user activity monitoring, and employee productivity analytics help small businesses and large enterprises gain comprehensive business insights into organizational workflows, identify process gaps and anomalies, and flag wastage, inefficiencies, and performance bottlenecks.

By letting employees access their reports, you can enable self-evaluation, employee engagement, and transparency. You can also monitor them silently to analyze employee productivity and accountability objectively.

However, Teramind is more than workforce analytics. You can create automated policies and rules to encourage productive behavior and steer employees away from unproductive, disruptive, or risky behaviors. If you want to track and optimize the productivity of your onsite, remote, or hybrid workforce, then Teramind offers the best solution in its class.

Prevent Insider Threats and Data Leaks

Teramind also offers advanced insider threat management and data loss prevention benefits. Behavior analytics help identify compromised and flight-risk users and dangerous activities. Create policies and rules to get real-time alerts or proactively take actions to prevent insider threats on their tracks.

Conduct forensic analysis and investigate security incidents. Collect solid evidence through screen and audio recordings, session logs, and other case management features.

Pros of Teramind

• Comprehensive time tracking and employee monitoring features: Track time and employee activities for over 17+ touchpoints, such as apps, websites, file transfers, keystrokes, emails, social media, chats, printers, etc. – more than any other solution in the market.
• Business intelligence (BI) turns time-tracking data into actionable insights. It also turns monitoring data into usable workforce analytics, allowing you to easily measure employee productivity, performance, and engagement. You can also customize reports according to your needs.
• Robust policy and rule engine—automatically optimize productivity and prevent insider threats: Use hundreds of pre-built policies and rules for everyday productivity and security anomalies, or create your own rules with an easy-to-use visual Rules Editor.
• Easy Deployment—Get started in minutes: The SaaS solution can be deployed on the Cloud, On-Premise, or Private Cloud. The non-intrusive, lightweight Agent can be installed on Windows and Mac endpoints in minutes to monitor employee productivity and security from day 1!

Cons of Teramind

Pricing

Teramind’s pricing packages could be better: The pricing structure is a bit on the higher side compared to some alternatives with fewer features, such as ActivTrak, Time Doctor, and others.

Feature Overload

Since Teramind offers many functionalities and reports on many data points, it can overwhelm first-time users. It is not built for small organizations that only want essential monitoring and tracking features.

AI/ML Features Not Ready Yet

Lagging AI/ML features: Teramind has only recently beta-tested Omni, its AI/machine learning features. At its current iteration, it can detect productivity anomalies such as time theft and fraud, but it’s not yet fully ready.

Limited Mobile Support

There is no iPhone or Android support, and Mac features aren’t on par with Windows. However, the company has been adding more Mac support at a fast pace.

Hubstaff Overview: Features, Use Cases, Pros & Cons

Here’s what you get with Hubstaff:

Simplified Time Tracking & Workforce Management

It’s a simple-to-use time tracking and timesheet solution that requires minimal/no training. Built-in 20+ reports with no-frills workforce analytics provide a smooth experience for new users.

Payroll & Payment Processing

It lets you process payrolls, create custom invoices, and send automatic payments for international and local employees through ACH/bank/PayPal, etc., based on work hours and pay rates at your chosen frequency.

Geo-Fencing Employee Tracking

It can track mobile device geolocation and automatically start the timer when field crews, such as site engineers, support workers, technicians, etc., arrive at a job site.

Free/Cheap

Comes with a free version. Also, it is comparatively cheaper than other time-tracking solutions with good value for money for small businesses and freelancers.

Hubstaff’s Main Use Cases

Time Tracking for Remote Teams

Businesses use Hubstaff for basic timekeeping and employee time-tracking purposes. Companies with hybrid workforces with onsite and remote employees can use the SaaS solution’s multi-platform support to manage a distributed team from a centralized dashboard.

Automated Payroll & Billing

Hubstaff makes it easy to generate payroll and exports the report with a simple click of a button. The verified timesheets can be integrated with payment gateways such as Gusto, TransferWise, and PayPal to quickly manage invoices and pay contractors and freelancers.

Project Management

Its Hubstaff Tasks project management app (similar to Trello) lets you track tasks, projects, budgets, and costs. It can also integrate with external PM solutions like Asana, Monday, etc.

Field Services Management & Agencies

The software suits agencies and field services organizations, such as construction companies with temporary workers, freelancers, and field crews. It lets them easily manage campaigns, billable hours, client budgets, project budgets, invoices, etc.

Pros of Hubstaff

In addition to the features mentioned above, Hubstaff comes with a few unique perks:

• Ubiquitous: Its Time clock app can be used on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux, and web browsers.
• Diverse Integrations: Supports dozens of integrations with Project Management, Communications, Payroll/Account/Invoicing, CRM, and Help Desk solutions.
• Strong Customer Base: The software’s ease of use has made it a popular time-tracking software among 40,000+ customers who seem very satisfied.

Cons of Hubstaff

• Not an Employee Monitoring Solution: It’s time-tracking software, and they don’t claim otherwise. Unlike Teramind’s comprehensive 17+ monitoring channels, Hubstaff only has basic web and app time tracking.
• Limited Productivity Features: It does not have in-depth productivity analytics or BI features. It can only track active/idle time. There are no productivity rules or baseline analysis features. You cannot create custom productivity categories.
• No ITM or DLP Features: It comes with no insider threat management, data loss prevention, or security features (except for screen snapshots).
• Not Scalable: It is suitable for a maximum of 1,000 users. There is no multi-tenant support, and no on-premise deployment option. Compliance features require a higher-priced Enterprise tier ($25/month).
• Extra Cost for Add-Ons: Extra features cost $2-$4 per feature/user/month, which can add up. This can sometimes make it more expensive than Teramind UAM, which has more features.

How To Choose an Employee Monitoring Solution For Your Business

Choosing an employee monitoring solution doesn’t have to be a hassle. Here are some things to remember when choosing an employee monitoring tool for your organization.

How comprehensive are its employee monitoring and time-tracking capabilities?

Choose an employee monitoring software that not only lets you track employee time for apps and websites but also provides comprehensive employee monitoring capabilities for uploads/downloads, keystrokes logging, social media, instant messengers/chats, emails, files, cloud drives, webcam usage, geolocation, removable media, screen recording, audio, etc.

The more. The better. You can monitor virtually all employee activities to get the most accurate time-tracking reports and employee engagement, productivity, and performance. If you have a distributed team, ensure the solution can track remote work activities and external users like freelancers, contractors, etc.

How user-friendly is it according to independent user reviews and user ratings?

Many employee monitoring tools offer advanced monitoring features. However, if the interface isn’t intuitive, the tool becomes useless. Choose employee monitoring software that’s easy to use and requires minimal training, especially if you plan on giving access to department managers, HR, and other non-security professionals.

Also, consider how flexible and customizable the solution is. Check out user reviews and see what others are saying about the software. Assess the vendor’s customer support policies. 

Can it help you improve employee productivity and efficiency?

Time tracking tools provide excellent time management features, but not all come with robust productivity metrics and workforce analytics. Only a few can help you drive workforce productivity, improve employee engagement,  and boost workplace performance. They do it by offering automation and behavior rules.

For example, it automatically warns employees if they are idle for too long, identifies time theft and fraud, conducts psychometric analysis, and warns HR if it detects discontent in communications channels.

Can it help you address insider threats and data loss?

Employee productivity and security go hand in hand. Numerous studies have found that most insider threats occur from disgruntled and unproductive employees. Consider an employee monitoring tool that offers workforce analytics and can also help you prevent insider threats and data leaks—a direct byproduct of an unproductive workplace.

FAQs

What is Teramind, and what does it do?

Teramind is an employee monitoring and workforce analytics platform. It benefits all stakeholders in financial services, healthcare, government, energy, utilities, retail, etc.

It helps your organization’s management, HR, and accounting by providing company-wide visibility with activity monitoring, time tracking, productivity, and business process optimization tools.

At the same time, its cybersecurity capabilities mean that it can be utilized by your IT, security analyst, CISO, risk managers, and compliance team to detect insider threats and prevent data loss incidents effectively.

What is Hubstaff and what does it do?

Hubstaff is an automated time-tracking workforce management software with basic productivity monitoring features.

It offers time tracking, timesheets, time reporting, time clock, habit tracking, project management, job scheduling, word order preparation, and payroll management. The solution suits HR, payroll, and managers who oversee employee attendance and worktime performance.

Does Teramind take screenshots of employees’ screens?

Yes. Teramind can also record videos and audio from user desktops, including virtual desktops and multi-screen setups. It also has built-in remote desktop control (RDP) features. Its Session Player is more than a video player. It comes complete with activity logs and timeline markers for interesting incidents. Video/screen recordings can be annotated and searched for text with the patented OCR feature.

How does Hubstaff compare to Teramind in terms of user activity monitoring features?

Hubstaff comes with basic activity monitoring features primarily for websites and applications. It also has a screen recording feature. Regarding reporting, it comes with about 20 built-in reports for basic time-based metrics, which aren’t customizable.

On the other hand, Teramind is a fully functional employee monitoring solution with the most comprehensive tracking capabilities in the market. It can monitor 17+ channels such as websites, applications, emails, instant messenger/chats, social media, file transfers, networks, printers, etc. It has video and audio recording with built-in RDP and OCR support. In terms of reporting, it comes with dozens of BI reports and lets users create their custom reports with hundreds of data points, filters, and other configuration options.

What are the critical differences between Hubstaff and Teramind regarding features and pricing?

Hubstaff comes with time tracking, project & task management, and payroll processing features. However, all of these features are related to time-based reporting.

Teramind is a fully functional employee monitoring solution with the most comprehensive 

tracking capabilities in the market. It can monitor 17+ channels, such as websites, applications, emails, instant messengers/chats, social media, file transfers, networks, printers, etc. 

It has dozens of BI reports and lets users create custom reports with hundreds of data points, filters, and other configuration options. Its pricing starts at $11.25/user/month for the Starter pack and goes up to $$26.25/user/month for the DLP pack on a yearly commitment.

What kinds of companies use Teramind and Hubstaff?

According to Zippia, 67.6% of North American employers with 500+ employees use employee monitoring software. And according to Factorial, about 62% of US companies use software-based time tracking.

Teramind servers SMBs and enterprise customers in all the major industries, such as financial services, healthcare, government, energy & utilities, call centers, education, etc. While Hubstaff focuses on field services companies, construction companies, freelancers/consultants, marketing agencies, real estate, e-commerce companies, staffing, and recruiting agencies

What’s so great about Teramind?

Teramind is the most comprehensive employee monitoring solution that can solve any use case involving time tracking, productivity optimization, insider threat detection, and data loss prevention. This is the only product in the market offering many features in a single solution. Even with Teramind’s powerful capabilities, it’s simple and intuitive, making it popular among non-technical users and experts.

In what scenario would it make sense to choose Teramind over Hubstaff?

Suppose you need a comprehensive employee monitoring solution and have simple to complex use cases involving time theft, fraud, productivity optimization, insider threat detection, and data loss prevention. In that case, Teramind is a sure bet.

If you want to track the time and attendance of your employees with essential website and application monitoring, then you will be better off with Hubstaff, as it’s simple and easy to use.

How does pricing for Teramind compare to Hubstaff?

Teramind UAM is priced at $22.50/user/month, which offers more features than Hubstaff’s Enterprise offering, which is priced at $25/user/month. So, price vs. value-wise, Teramind is preferable if you want the extra benefits.

Do both Teramind and Hubstaff offer free trials?

Yes.

Which software offers advanced data loss prevention (DLP) features?

Only Teramind offers endpoint DLP and insider threat detection features.

Do Teramind and Hubstaff integrate with project management tools like Jira?

Yes, they have built-in integration with PM software like Jira, Zendesk, etc.

Can both software monitor employee activity on macOS, Windows, and Android?

Teramind can monitor employee activities on macOS and Windows.

Hubstaff isn’t designed to monitor employee activity. However, its time-tracking software is available on all three platforms.

Do Teramind and Hubstaff provide detailed reports on employee activity?

Only Teramind offers detailed reports on employee activity on over 17 channels, such as apps, websites, emails, file transfers, printing, networks, and social media.

Hubstaff only provides time-based reporting for apps and websites.

Which software offers more detailed user behavior analytics?

Only Teramind provides complete user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA). It offers anomaly detection and a complete picture of employee productivity and security behaviors.

Hubstaff comes with some behavior reports that show how a user spends their time on various tasks, but they aren’t as in-depth or comprehensive as Teramind’s.

Do both software distinguish between idle time and active work time?

Yes. However, Teramind can also detect focused time, activity level, employee engagement, discrepancies, time theft, etc.

Can Teramind and Hubstaff monitor social media usage?

Only Teramind comes with dedicated social media reporting.

Do both Teramind and Hubstaff offer user activity monitoring (UAM)?

Teramind was designed as a fully featured user activity monitoring solution from the ground up.

Hubstaff is a time-tracking solution with some activity monitoring features (apps and websites).

Is on-premise deployment available for either Teramind or Hubstaff?

Only Teramind offers On-Premise, Private Cloud, and Cloud deployments. Hubstaff is Cloud-only.

Does either software record keystrokes?

Only Teramind can record keystrokes.

Does either software offer employee notifications or coaching features?

Teramind’s customized notification and session recording features help you build training content. Teramind also comes with the Teramind Academy, which offers free coaching courses.

Hubstaff doesn’t have a coaching feature but supports limited in-app notifications.

What security features do Teramind and Hubstaff offer for user data?

Both offer adherence to compliance standards such as SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, etc. Teramind provides better data protection and compliance with support for On-Premise and Private Cloud deployments.

Are Teramind and Hubstaff suitable for small businesses?

Yes. Both are suitable for small businesses, especially the Starter version of Teramind. The Starter version of Hubstaff allows small companies to test their hands with either and then gradually upgrade as they scale.

Do both software offer timesheet functionality?

Both offer timesheet functionality, but Teramind has an automated time-tracking system with a hidden/silent feature.

Do Teramind and Hubstaff support Linux systems?

Only Hubstaff supports Linux.

Can either software monitor messaging applications?

Teramind has dedicated chat monitoring support for instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Skype, Teams, etc., and can report on participants, attachments, etc., and capture actual chat conversations.

Hubstaff monitors messaging applications generally and doesn’t offer any of the granularity of Teramind’s IM features.

The Big Question: Which Employee Productivity Software Will You Choose?

Teramind and Hubstaff are solid options for organizations looking to monitor and improve employee productivity.

Hubstaff is a good solution if you only want basic employee productivity tracking. However, Teramind is the leader in employee productivity, monitoring, insider threat, and DLP solutions.

If you want more than just employee productivity and want to protect your organization from insider threats, data loss, unproductive employees, and more, then Teramind is the best solution.