Veriato vs. ActivTrak: Features, Pros & Cons Compared

In today’s modern workplace, businesses increasingly recognize the importance of productivity management software and employee monitoring solutions. With remote teams and distributed workforces becoming the norm, tools that enable visibility into employee activities, behavior tracking, and performance metrics are invaluable for optimizing operations and mitigating insider risks.  

Two prominent players in this space are Veriato and ActivTrak. Both offer robust employee monitoring capabilities designed to help organizations maintain productivity, ensure regulatory compliance, and protect sensitive data. These tools offer a range of features, including productivity tracking, web and app usage monitoring, and insider threat detection, allowing employers to track employee activities and gain insights into workforce behavior.

While Veriato and ActivTrak are both comprehensive employee monitoring solutions, they differ in some ways:

• Veriato is more of an insider risk management and employee monitoring software that monitors website and app usage, keystrokes, file transfers, documents, and network traffic. It allows admins to set granular policies and custom alerts.
• While ActivTrak focuses more on employee productivity monitoring and workforce analytics. It provides detailed insights into how employees spend their time, helping organizations identify areas for improvement and optimize workflows. 

In this head-to-head comparison, we’ll explore the key features, pros, and cons of both software.

Veriato Overview

Veriato is a well-established name in employee monitoring and insider threat detection. The platform is an insider risk management solution targeting the finance, healthcare, education, and government industries. Their solution, Veriato Workforce Behavior Analytics, provides predictive behavior intelligence to help organizations detect insider risks and monitor employee activities across remote, hybrid, and office environments.

Noteworthy features of Veriato include psycholinguistic analysis to monitor employee sentiment, provision of real-time alerts, the ability to set granular monitoring policies, and risk scoring based on identified patterns of risky behavior.

Its approach to employee monitoring involves two main products –Veriato Vision for user activity monitoring and Veriato Cerebral for advanced insider threat management through user behavior analytics. It aims to help organizations boost productivity, protect sensitive data, and identify disengaged or potentially problematic employees.

Key Features

• User Activity Monitoring: Veriato offers granular activity monitoring capabilities, tracking user actions across applications, websites visited, file movements, emails, instant messaging, network monitoring, and more. This level of visibility enables organizations to detect abnormal behavior patterns and potential data loss incidents.
• AI-Driven Insider Risk Detection: Veriato utilizes techniques like risk scoring, automatic sensitive data identification, and multi-dimensional analysis of user behaviors across login events, document activity, emails, and more to surface high-risk activities proactively.
• Workforce Productivity: It monitors employee activities and computer usage, providing detailed reports on productivity behaviors such as active time/idle time and classifying activities as productive or unproductive.
• Omni Device Monitoring: Veriato’s solution covers various devices, including Windows, Mac OS, Chromebook, and Android mobile apps.

Veriato Pros

Affordable, Value for Money

Veriato offers a competitive pricing structure, making it affordable for organizations of all sizes. The software’s features and capabilities offer excellent value for money, ensuring a high return on investment.

Well Designed, Easy to Use

Veriato’s user interface is intuitive and user-friendly, allowing administrators to navigate and configure the software according to their needs easily. The software’s clear and concise reporting tools make interpreting and analyzing the collected data easy.

Support

Veriato provides good customer support, offering prompt and knowledgeable assistance to help organizations effectively. It also includes training materials and a knowledge base to help with deployment and usage.

Where Veriato Falls Short

• Limited Monitoring Channels: Compared to other solutions like Teramind UAM, Veriato can only monitor apps, websites, files, keystrokes, emails, networks, and chats. It lacks more comprehensive employee monitoring capabilities like audio recording, optical character recognition (OCR), and clipboard monitoring.
• Limited Behavior Analytics/Reporting: While Veriato offers behavior analytics, it is focused primarily on productivity and lacks the granularity and depth of more advanced solutions. Its reporting feature could also be more transparent and prioritize user behavior over device activity.
• Limits of AI Threat Detection: Veriato’s AI is limited to detecting psycholinguistic triggers such as foul language rather than broad threat detection capabilities. Teramind can do similar things with content rules. 

Pricing

Veriato’s pricing starts at $15 per user per month when billed annually or $25 monthly. Custom pricing is available for larger enterprise deployments.

ActivTrak Overview

ActivTrak is a cloud-based employee monitoring solution that tracks computer usage data, such as applications, websites, and time spent on tasks, to analyze workforce productivity and work patterns. By providing visibility into employee activities, ActivTrak enables small to midsize businesses to identify areas for improving productivity, ensuring policy compliance, and optimizing workloads.

Other benefits of ActivTrak include detailed team insights, productivity scores, and real-time monitoring across different work models. It includes solid tools and security features for data access control and user privacy. Organizations can define productive and unproductive activities, set productivity goals, and receive configurable alerts when employees deviate from expected behavior patterns.

Key Features

• Productivity Reports: The platform’s productivity analysis tools allow managers to measure productive, focused, and unproductive time for individual employees or teams. This data can be used to identify bottlenecks, optimize workflows, and enhance overall efficiency.
• Time Tracking and Reporting: ActivTrak offers seamless time tracking capabilities, enabling employees to log their time on specific tasks or projects. Comprehensive reporting and visual analytics provide insights into time allocation and project costs.
• Application & Website Monitoring: The software tracks and monitors web and app usage, helping organizations identify potential distractions or time-wasting activities.
• Productivity Coaching: ActivTrak’s coaching tools help employees understand their work habits and provide personalized recommendations for improving productivity and time management.

ActivTrak Pros

Easy Hybrid & Remote Employee Management

ActivTrak is particularly well-suited for managing hybrid and remote workforces, as it provides real-time visibility into employee activities, regardless of location. This feature helps organizations maintain productivity and accountability in distributed work environments.

All-in-one Employee Monitoring

ActivTrak offers an extensive suite of employee monitoring features, including application tracking, website monitoring, and productivity reporting, all within a single platform. This streamlined approach simplifies workforce management and eliminates the need for multiple tools.

Improve Employee Well-being

By providing insights into work habits and productivity patterns, ActivTrak can help organizations identify areas where employees may be experiencing burnout or excessive workloads. This information can be used to implement strategies to promote better work-life balance and overall employee well-being.

Where ActivTrak Falls Short

• Limited Employee Monitoring Channels: ActivTrak primarily focuses on app and website tracking and lacks comprehensive user activity monitoring across channels like email and Slack/Teams. Its limited monitoring features and metadata collection position it more as a workforce analytics tool than a robust employee monitoring solution.
• No Insider Threat or Data Loss Prevention Features: ActivTrak primarily focuses on productivity monitoring and workforce analytics, lacking advanced insider threat detection or data loss prevention features.
• Limited Customization Capabilities: Some users may find ActivTrak’s reporting and analytics capabilities less customizable than those of other solutions, potentially limiting the depth of insights and analysis.

Pricing

Here are the pricing details for ActivTrak’s various plans:

• Free: $0 per user per month, limited to 3 users
• Essentials: $10 per user per month, billed annually
• Professional: $17 per user per month, billed annually
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for large organizations

Teramind: An Alternative to Veriato & ActivTrak

While Veriato and ActivTrak offer robust employee monitoring solutions, Teramind is a comprehensive alternative combining productivity tracking, insider threat detection, and data loss prevention capabilities on a single platform. 

Basically, you get all the features of Veriato and ActivTrak and more.

Key Features

• Comprehensive Employee Monitoring: Teramind is the best solution for employee monitoring. It provides a wide range of monitoring channels, including keystrokes, file transfers, email, instant messaging, and more, ensuring a holistic view of employee activities. It also lets you record employee screen activity for security and compliance purposes.
• Productivity Tracking: Similar to ActivTrak, Teramind offers detailed productivity reports, application monitoring, and website tracking, enabling organizations to identify areas for improvement and optimize workflows.
• Smart Rules & Automated Alerts: Teramind allows administrators to define custom rules and triggers based on specific activities or behavior patterns, enabling automated responses and real-time alerts for security incidents. 
• Remote Desktop Control: Teramind offers an integrated remote desktop client and host, allowing you to control any computer directly from your browser. You can lock out or freeze input, send special commands, and manage multiple desktops and virtual screens without needing external RDP software.

How Teramind Stands Apart from Veriato and ActivTrak

Teramind sets itself apart by offering a comprehensive suite of features beyond traditional employee monitoring and productivity tracking.

Insider Threat Detection

Teramind’s advanced insider threat detection capabilities leverage machine learning algorithms and user behavior analytics to identify potential threats, such as data exfiltration, unauthorized access, or suspicious activities. This proactive approach helps organizations mitigate risks and protect sensitive information.

Data Loss Prevention

Teramind’s data loss prevention (DLP) features enable organizations to monitor and control the flow of sensitive data, preventing unauthorized access, copying, or transferring of confidential information. This helps maintain compliance and safeguard intellectual property.

UEBA

Teramind’s User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) technology, analyzes user behavior patterns and anomalies, providing actionable insights into potential risks and enabling organizations to mitigate threats appropriately.

Business Process Optimization

By combining productivity tracking, behavior analytics, and process mining capabilities, Teramind helps organizations identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for process improvement, enabling data-driven optimization of business operations.

Conclusion

While Veriato and ActivTrak are excellent employee monitoring and productivity tracking solutions, Teramind offers a more comprehensive and feature-rich platform that addresses various organizational needs. 

With its advanced insider threat detection, data loss prevention, and user behavior analytics capabilities, Teramind provides a robust solution for organizations seeking to optimize productivity, mitigate risks, and protect sensitive information.