What is Employee Monitoring Software Reviews?
Employee monitoring software reviews is the only website which actually does real software testing to provide authentic reviews of the best employee monitoring software you can buy. Unlike many other employee monitoring software review sites, where you can clearly see they are just an affiliate getting paid to promote whichever product pays the most commission, we are unbiased.
Unlike many other employee monitoring software review sites, where you can clearly see they are just an affiliate getting paid to promote whichever product pays the most commission, we are unbiased.
- We aren’t paid for these reviews and we make no money off them either.
- We test and review the latest employee monitoring software.
- We test using real computers and real test situations.
We do real testing, to give you real reviews that you can trust.
Why should your company use employee monitoring software?
It doesn’t matter if you are a small business or a government organization. All companies need employee monitoring software.
Monitoring your employees whilst at work has several key benefits:
- Determine which of your employees are really being productive
- Spot any employee behaviour that breaches your company IT policy
- Protect your company from the dangers of data breaches and other online threats
However, if you are looking for the best employee monitoring software to meet your business needs, where do you start?
There are literally tons of companies out there who sell employee monitoring software so how do you find out which is the best for your company and employee needs?
By reading our in-depth and knowledgeable reviews of the most popular employee monitoring software you can buy.
We test the best of the current crop of employee monitoring software and deliver you a real and honest verdict.
That means you get real reviews of real software use, so you know exactly what you are going to get if you choose any of the employee monitoring software packages here to monitor your company and its employees.
What type of employee monitoring software should you choose?
When you are looking for employee monitoring software to monitor your company employees you have two choices: cloud-based or server based.
- Cloud-based
- Server-based
Cloud-based employee monitoring software
Pros
- Easy to install – no server hardware needed.
- Always online.
- Always accessible from an online portal.
- Easy to maintain & automatic updates.
Cons
- Requires a monthly fee.
- Always requires an internet connection.
You can read our detailed article here for more information on why a cloud-based employee monitoring solution is best for monitoring your employees.
Server-based employee monitoring software
Pros
- Allows you to have the server in a centralised location – like your office.
- No monthly fees.
Cons
- Requires an I.T. team to install and set it up.
- Servers can be expensive to buy and maintain.
For a real-world example of how hard it can be to set up server-based employee monitoring software, see our in-depth article here.
How do we test the best employee monitoring software?
Just like any company, we test our software in real-world situations, using the same kind of hardware that companies around the world are also using. This allows us to get the most accurate results for what a company would expect to encounter using the same employee monitoring software in their workplace.
- We test all employee monitoring software on computers running Windows 7.
- We install AVG Free onto all of our test computers.
The majority of workplaces are still running the older version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, either because they cannot afford to upgrade the hardware, or they don’t want to pay the licensing fees to upgrade to Windows 10.
We chose AVG Free because companies pick the free option as their main antivirus choice.
What are the employee monitoring software packages we review?
We review only the best employee monitoring software packages for PC and Mac.
Below you can see the highest ranking employee monitoring software packages we have reviewed, based upon our strict review criteria.
KnowIT
KnowIT is new to employee monitoring software but is already the best employee monitoring software from what we have reviewed. Unlike all other employee monitoring software here, they really do seem designed for employee monitoring, offering monitoring for both smartphones and computers, as well as realistic attendance and productivity monitoring.
Teramind
Teramind is a well-established employee monitoring software package and is our second favourite so far. Unlike Activtrak is offers a very comprehensive range of features for both PC and Mac. Teramind was our second best-performing employee monitoring software, compared to the others that we have reviewed here.
Worktime
Worktime is one of the weakest of all the employee monitoring software we have reviewed. Not only did it offer the least amount of monitoring features but their support team is not that knowledgeable about the product either. This still makes it better than Workpuls or iMonitorSoft though overall.
Desktime
Desktime is another new employee monitoring software package. It didn’t offer any real features for employee monitoring which means that what it captured could not really be used in-depth to help companies monitor their employees or protect their company from insider threats. Because of this we don’t rate it highly amongst all the products we have reviewed so far.
Workpuls
Workpuls advertises itself as employee monitoring software designed for employee productivity and attendance tracking as its main feature. Unfortunately it falls short on achieving both these goals and its customer support model is also questionable. That is why we rate it as one of the weakest employee monitoring packages we have reviewed to date.
iMonitorSoft
iMonitorSoft is the first client/sever based employee monitoring software product that we reviewed. This is not an actual attendance or productivity monitoring product and instead is only marketed that way. Even so, it still offered a wide range of data capturing features but cannot be recommended for actual employee monitoring.
Activtrak
Activtrak is a well-established employee monitoring software package, but they are our least favourite of the software reviewed here. They support PCs and Macs. Activtrak, however, are not recommended as the number one employee monitoring software because they do not offer in-depth employee monitoring features that companies need, such as keyloggers for example.
What is the best employee monitoring software for measuring staff productivity?
Are you looking for the best employee monitoring software for monitoring how productive your employees are in the workplace?
Monitoring employee productivity is important to the majority of organizations these days, with the temptation of using the internet whilst at work.
If you are unsure if your employees are really using the internet to view their webmail to talk with clients, or if they are just wasting time on YouTube or worse, these are the employee monitoring software packages you need to check out.
| KnowIT | Activtrak | Teramind | Worktime | Desktime | Workpuls | iMonitorSoft | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended Employee Monitoring Software | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | ||
| Productivity Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Set applications as productive or not productive | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Set websites as productive or not productive | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Normalised productivity score for every employee | ✓ | ||||||
| Customised daily productivity reports | ✓ | ||||||
| Ability to send producitivity reports to employees and/or managers | ✓ |
What is the best employee monitoring software for measuring staff attendance?
Being able to monitor when your employees start and finish work is just as important as measuring how productive they are when they are at work.
Not all employee monitoring software tracks employee attendance or they do not do it in an accurate enough manner for companies to gain valuable employee insights.
The employee monitoring software programs below are the ones we recommend if your company is specifically looking for employee monitoring software to effectively manage your employee’s attendance.
| KnowIT | Activtrak | Teramind | Worktime | Desktime | Workpuls | iMonitorSoft | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended Employee Monitoring Software | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | ||
| Attendance Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Track employee log on/log off times | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Set company or employee work schedules | ✓ | ||||||
| Normalised attendance score for every employee | ✓ | ||||||
| Customised daily attendance reports | ✓ | ||||||
| Ability to send attendance reports to employees and/or managers | ✓ |
What is the best employee monitoring software with the most employee monitoring features?
Of course, employee monitoring can go beyond just monitoring attendance and productivity.
Being able to monitor browser history or keystrokes can be important for a company who may be monitoring thousands of employees in different offices around the world.
We compare the best of the rest, the main features, so you can see what employee monitoring software is best suited to your company and its employee monitoring needs.
| Main features | KnowIT | Activtrak | Teramind | Worktime | Desktime | Workpuls | iMonitorSoft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended Employee Monitoring Software | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versis KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | ||
| IM Capturing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| AIM | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Hangouts | ✓ | ||||||
| iMessage | ✓ | ||||||
| LINE | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
| Skype | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Trillian | ✓ | ||||||
| Viber | ✓ | ||||||
| ✓ | |||||||
| Yahoo Messenger | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Websites Visited | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Chrome | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Firefox | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Internet Explorer | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Browser Search Terms | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
| Yahoo | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Bing | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Ask | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Dogpile | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Duck Duck Go | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Yippy | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Webopedia | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| The Internet Archive | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Mahalo | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Baidu | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| AOL | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Nate | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Naver | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Daum | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Zum | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Webmail | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Gmail | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Yahoo! | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Outlook | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Screenshots capturing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Requested screenshots | ✓ | ||||||
| Scheduled screenshots | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| File Transfer Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| USB File transfer tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Web File transfer tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Cloud file transfer tracking | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| File Activity Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Files created | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Files copied | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Files moved | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Files deleted | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Files modified | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Application Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Application usage | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Installed applications | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| User Log On Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Log on/ log off | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Lock/unlock screen | ✓ | ||||||
| Global Application Discovery | ✓ | ||||||
| Network Connections Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Network Traffic Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Print tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Keystroke recording | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| Clipboard Tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
What is the best employee monitoring software for your money?
As a company owner, you need to make sure you are getting value for money from whatever employee monitoring software package you choose to monitor your employees.
That means that the price and how many devices you can monitor can be an important buying decision in what you choose to meet your company needs.
Not only that, but the supported platforms is also important.
If you want to monitor beyond the PC’s of your employees, for example, they use Macs, or you want a complete package and you want to monitor their smartphone use at work too, you need to know which of these employee monitoring software products are the best fit for your company.
| KnowIT | Activtrak | Teramind | Worktime | Desktime | Workpuls | iMonitorSoft | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended Employee Monitoring Software | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | Versus KnowIT | ||
| Pricing | $19.99 per month per user | $69 per month for ten users | $15 per month per user | $2,99 per month per user | $7 per month per user | $6 per month per user | $65 per license per machine |
| Monthly subscription packages | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free trial | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Flexible server options | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hosted in the cloud | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Host it on your own company server | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Rebrandable with your own corporate logo | ✓ | ||||||
| Full API support for integration into other applications | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Full API support to completely redesign the user interface | ✓ | ||||||
| Multi-Platform | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PC | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mac | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| iPhone | ✓ | ||||||
| Android | ✓ |