The Best Employee Monitoring Software for 2024

Employee monitoring software enables supervisors to keep tabs on employee activity, including web content they access, files they download and upload, and external devices they plug into company hardware. Employee monitoring software can be used for local or remote employees and many offer versions that can be used to track independent contractor activity when they’re working on company projects. More than just an employee productivity tracker, most platforms also serve as a security tool, helping to protect a business’s sensitive data and network integrity.

The cost for employee monitoring solutions varies according to the features you need and how many employees you have. For example, a startup that needs basic features and has one or two employees may be able to use a free option, whereas businesses that need top-shelf features may pay up to $150 per user per year. On average, based on the employee monitoring software we reviewed, you can expect to pay between $60 to $80 per user per year.

Pricing is usually calculated on a per-user basis and billed either monthly or annually. This includes the software, updates and tech support. Some vendors charge a one-time licensing fee and then bill separately for annual software updates and support plans.

When you’re comparing pricing, here are four factors you need to look for to ensure the bill isn’t an unwelcome surprise:

• User minimums: Some companies allow you to buy just one or two licenses, but some require a minimum of five or 10.
• Add-on features: If you want specific advanced features, such as geolocation, you may have to pay extra for them.
• Extra fees: Additional fees aren’t common, but it’s important to look for them before you sign up so you know exactly which fees you’re agreeing to. Check for setup fees, which may amount to a few hundred dollars, as well as IP renewal fees.
• Contract requirement: Many employee monitoring software providers offer month-to-month plans, and some offer a discount if you pay annually. As with any service, check if you have to sign a contract. If that’s the case, ask for a copy of the contract and review it, paying particular attention to the term length and the cancellation procedure.

Employee monitoring software may incorporate many features, and the most important ones for your business will depend on how you want to monitor your employees. Consider your reasons for wanting to install this software. Do you want to make sure employees aren’t surfing the internet and scrolling through Facebook when they’re on the clock? Do you worry about confidential information or trade secrets being leaked? Are you looking for a way to monitor cybersecurity risks? 

You also need to decide if you’ll be actively using this software or if you need notifications when it detects prohibited activity and other policy violations.

• Content blocking: There are obviously some types of websites your employees shouldn’t visit during working hours, or even at all when they’re using work-issued computers. The content blocking feature allows you to block those types of websites and individual URLs. Some software allows you to set time limits for certain sites and designate times when blocks are lifted, such as if you allow your employees to visit social media or shopping sites during their lunch breaks. Others allow you to set access permissions by individual or user group.

• App and website tracking: This feature shows you which applications your employees use – such as Microsoft Word or Excel – and the URLs of the websites they visit. It also records how much time they spend on each app, site or program.
• Keylogging: With this feature, you can see every keystroke your employees make in emails, instant messages, Word documents or online.
• Screenshots, video or live feed of monitors: Want to see what your employees are working on? Most employee monitoring solutions take random screenshots of employee monitors (and many support multiple screens). Some record video of monitored activity, and a few even offer a live view.
• Artificial intelligence (AI): Many of the best employee monitoring software employ AI tools to automate some core functions of the system. AI can be used to assign productivity or quality assurance scores to employees based on how well they are performing in their roles, as well as flag cybersecurity threats like malicious software or potential theft of a company’s sensitive data. When using AI for employee monitoring, it’s important to make sure the tools are in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, as well as understand how they conform to existing company policies. You may consider informing employees about the use of these AI tools for employee monitoring and how the company intends to use the data they capture.

• USB and print monitoring: If you’re worried about data leaks, these are must-have features. You’ll receive an alert if the software detects a thumb drive or portable hard drive being inserted into a company computer. Print monitoring means the software tracks the files that have been printed from each computer.
• Productivity tracking: There are various ways to track employee productivity. For instance, some software tracks productivity by detecting keyboard and mouse activity. Others require employees to track their work time against tasks or client projects.
• Mobile apps: If you travel or have employees working across multiple time zones, it’s convenient for the software to have a mobile app for alerts and anytime access. Some apps are platform-specific, however, so make sure the software is compatible with your phone if this feature is important to you.

Employee monitoring software offers several potential benefits to your business.

Employee Engagement and Attendance

Software monitoring features like website tracking, content filtering and screen capturing can provide insights about the content your employees are engaging with, including which websites and applications they spend most of their time on. Are they staying engaged with work-related websites, or are they getting distracted watching YouTube videos? You might even notice an employee is spending their day filling out job applications. With employee monitoring software, you can see (and block) the websites your employees use and discover any performance or engagement issues.

Employee Productivity

Software monitoring features like keystroke logging, mouse activity tracking and webcam recording can show you how active your employees are on their work computers. Is their device idle for long periods, or are they actively engaging in work activity throughout the day? Although employee activity monitoring features vary by platform, it can be useful to have some idea of which employees are working at any given moment.

One of the most significant advantages of employee monitoring software is managing employee productivity.  Source: Interguard

Company Security

Software monitoring can help with security and legal disputes as well. If you’ve recorded and archived employee behavior, it could help you back up a claim if an employee files a complaint against the company or a co-worker. Managing website permissions and monitoring USB usage and print jobs can help you prevent leaks of confidential data. Employees will be restricted from viewing malicious websites or behaving maliciously themselves.

Your choice of employee monitoring software will depend on various factors. We outline some of the key areas to consider below.

1. Review compatible devices

If your company uses PCs exclusively, you can choose any of the 10 packages we’ve reviewed. However, if your employees routinely work on mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure your chosen platform offers both iOS and Android compatibility. Similarly, if employees often use USB sticks, check whether portable devices can be monitored and scanned. Some platforms are unable to monitor peripherals like printers and data keys.

2. Consider additional services

In an attempt to differentiate their packages, some software providers have incorporated extra services, such as onboarding and offboarding tools, payroll and performance management, and COVID-19 vaccination tracking. This might be superfluous, but if you don’t already have software providing these services, it may be worth considering a package like BambooHR, which brings different HR tools under one roof. [We recently reviewed the best time and attendance software of 2024.]

3. Check support and assistance options

While some of the best employee monitoring software providers offer a variety of ways to get in touch, others provide web support only. Some offer customer support 24/7, but others don’t. In fairness, this is rarely a sector where after-hours or overnight support is pivotal for maintaining productivity, but ensure you’re happy with the variety of support on offer – and when it’s accessible – before signing up.

4. Test the usability of the software

Given the wealth of metrics tracked by the best employee monitoring software packages, it’s important to ensure that you’re not overwhelmed by the scope and scale of a particular platform. If Insightful’s second-by-second raw data generation or Veriato’s disengagement analytics are too granular, you might feel more comfortable with Hubstaff’s basic monitoring or InterGuard’s choice of six types of report views on its dashboard.

5. Examine the cost and consider your budget

It would take a very detailed spreadsheet to outline all the plan options and costs associated with signing up for employee monitoring software. However, key areas to consider include how many employees are covered, whether you’re signing up for a month-to-month arrangement or an annual contract, if there is a free trial available, and whether you have to upgrade to a more expensive package to unlock certain features. The freemium model is commonly used, with the likes of ActivTrak offering free plans for a couple of users. Work Examiner offers decreasing fees per user, which will particularly appeal to businesses with 25 to 100 employees.

If you are interested in learning about more top-rated employee monitoring software, these alternative solutions are worth considering.

Controlio

Controlio offers cloud-based and on-premises employee monitoring software that tracks and records employees’ PC activity in real time. If you want to review past activity, you can watch previously recorded video footage of an employee’s computer behavior as well. The software also offers keylogging in case you need further visibility into employee activity. It can track employee attendance, monitor web and application usage, store up to six months of data (unlimited storage for the on-premises and private cloud plans), record file usage, and generate productivity scores. You can set web filters so that employees don’t access unproductive or risky websites, and establish behavior rules and alerts for when an employee attempts an unacceptable action.

This example of Controlio’s dashboard gives you a look at some of the information it can reveal.  Source: Controlio

Insightful

Insightful is an ideal monitoring solution for employers that want to track their employees’ activity while retaining employee privacy and giving staff control over what’s recorded. It can support office employees, remote workers and enterprises. Every Insightful account includes two-factor authentication, an API and live support. It also has standard features like real-time activity monitoring, productivity tracking, and app and website monitoring. It streamlines this type of monitoring by offering organization-level productivity labeling – a tool that allows administrators to assign activities as productive or unproductive in bulk. Team managers can also handle productivity labeling on a smaller scale if needed. These features are great for ensuring your employees are on task and productive.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a great monitoring software for employee productivity management. It can be difficult to know how productive every employee is, especially remote workers. To alleviate this problem, Hubstaff has non-invasive features that allow you to accurately track employee time and user activity, improving your team’s overall productivity. It uses mouse and keyboard activity levels to gauge how active your employees are; instead of tracking the exact information they type (keylogging), Hubstaff assigns a true or false value to the activity to indicate productivity. It can take screenshots at regular intervals, but employees can delete screenshots containing sensitive information (e.g., banking information or medical details).

This example of Hubstaff’s dashboard gives you a look at some of the information it can reveal.  Source: Hubstaff

Interguard

InterGuard has many tracking and security features that are ideal for keeping a (virtual) eye on employees from afar, ensuring they’re productive and safe. It can monitor website and application usage, social media activity, email, programs, files, chats, print jobs, and keystrokes. You can block employees from unproductive or harmful websites and applications, and program the software to send you alerts when suspicious activity occurs. In addition to the standard monitoring features, you can access InterGuard’s data loss prevention software, which has endpoint lockdown and data retrieval features. That means you can instantly retrieve company data and lock down a device if an employee leaves the company. You can also block and report email and USB activity.

Once you’ve chosen your employee monitoring software provider, you will need to install the software and explain the change to your employees. Here are a few best practices for effectively implementing employee monitoring software:

1. Consult your employees. The first step in implementing employee monitoring software is to discuss it with your workers. Transparency is key. Explaining how and why the software is being used can be a great way to get everyone on board.

2. Create a formal, written employee monitoring policy. Establish a formal, written policy that outlines acceptable device usage and employee monitoring guidelines. Clearly discussing these policies with your staff will help employees understand what is expected of them. In some states, you are legally required to get consent from employees before monitoring them.

3. Install the monitoring software. Have your IT team set up the monitoring software on the appropriate devices. This may require them to remote access employee devices for the configuration.

4. Set up software policies and settings. Employee monitoring software can be customized with various settings and permissions, so you will want to set these up within the software. This can include things like establishing monitoring timeframes, designating certain activities as productive or unproductive, setting up data reports and alerts, and blocking and filtering certain websites.

5. Train employees on software usage. Train your HR staff, managers, and any applicable employees on how to use the software. This can include things like how to navigate the software, create reports, and view monitoring data, among other best practices.

6. Audit your monitoring process. Once the software is in use, it’s important to track how it’s being used to ensure you are getting the results you were hoping for. It can also be beneficial to survey your employees on how things are going. 

At Business News Daily, our team of small business human resource experts has been researching and testing employee monitoring software for years, comparing some of the leading solutions across nearly 100 key metrics. We considered 29 employee monitoring software platforms and closely reviewed and tested 14 of them before selecting our five best picks above.

Below are the factors we considered when determining our best picks. Each is weighted according to how much the criteria typically influences business owners’ buying decisions.

• Pricing (30%): We considered not just the base cost of the software but also the on-premises vs cloud-based pricing plans, per-user fees, contract requirements, and add-on costs to determine which provide the most value per dollar.
  
• Features (25%): We particularly evaluated the dashboard and tested features such as website and application monitoring, activity and productivity tracking, keylogging, screenshots, content filtering and blocking, and USB and print monitoring. We also considered integrations for connecting each platform to other popular business software.
• Usability (20%): We paid close attention to the ease with which the software could be set up, how intuitive we found the navigation and use of key features, and the training and informational resources available to new users. We also considered what devices the software could monitor, and whether it offered a responsive mobile app or mobile browser for monitoring on the go.
• Customer Support (15%): We examined the ease with which customers can contact the team when in need of help. We reviewed customer feedback to determine how well the customer service team meets the needs of existing customers.
• Expert Insight (10%): Our product reviews are conducted by software and industry experts who are deeply familiar with employee monitoring solutions. Given their institutional knowledge of different platforms and firsthand experiences using these programs, we take their judgment into account when determining our best picks.

In addition to scoring each employee monitoring software we reviewed based on these criteria, we also determined the best use case scenarios for each. No two businesses are exactly alike, so we put ourselves in the shoes of different types of small business owners to identify the best employee monitoring software for a variety of needs.

To learn more about how we review and test human resource products and services for small businesses, read about our editorial process here.