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Veriato is our choice for the best employee monitoring software for maintaining staff morale and minimizing employee turnover. Its features include the ability to monitor employee disengagement, with detailed productivity tracking that enables managers to identify employees whose engagement is dropping or whose behavior seems erratic. The software has been honed over more than two decades, and it includes a full array of employee monitoring tools. It lacks iOS compatibility, but its granular control is impressive even by the standards of competitor products such as InterGuard and Teramind.
8.6 / 10
In a competitive job market, business owners need insights into how happy their employees are and whether staffers are committed to the company. Veriato’s artificial intelligence (AI) can detect changes in employee sentiment through written documentation such as emails and automatically send alerts to managers flagging concerns.
Those changes in sentiment often are early signs of disengagement and job dissatisfaction. The primary purpose of employee monitoring software may be to ensure productivity and compliance, but it can also be used more holistically to intervene if staff members begin behaving out of character. That’s why Veriato is our recommendation for the best employee monitoring software focused on employee retention.
Given the costs and manpower involved in the recruiting process following an employee’s departure, the level of insight provided by Veriato’s software can be invaluable to companies of any size. The platform also helps managers address negative sentiments felt or criticisms leveled by individual workers, which could seep out and become widely shared by their colleagues.
There are plenty of ways to set up and use Veriato, with a variety of hosted or on-premises deployments. Installation is straightforward on any device, while the interface is reminiscent of older versions of Windows. It feels dated at times, but it’s always straightforward to use and the productivity metrics are easy to interpret at a glance. We have to highlight the lack of iOS compatibility as an issue, though, which is baffling considering Veriato offers Android device monitoring. It’s good to see that printer and USB monitoring are incorporated.
Veriato’s dashboard offers a color-coded overview of employee monitoring tools, offering a quick and easy glimpse into what your employees are doing.
Threat detection | Prevent security incidents by highlighting risky user behavior. |
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Granular recording | Capture screenshots and video recordings as evidence. |
Company-wide coverage | Monitor up to 300,000 devices. |
Versatility | Use the platform as a cloud or on-premises service on desktop or mobile devices, whether remote or in the office. |
Productivity monitoring | Identify staff members who are losing focus or motivation. |
Veriato offers various monitoring features for small and large businesses alike, but whether you can take advantage of them will depend on which version of the software you purchase.
Veriato’s platform combines user and entity analytics with activity monitoring. In practice, that means the platform uses AI to spot anomalies in employees’ behavior, attitude or even use of language. The technology is always a work in progress (machine learning often starts from a relatively low base), but the software offers daily risk scoring that is displayed in a dashboard format for instant oversight of risky behavior across your business. Keep in mind that the lower plans don’t offer the function.
The system’s video playback feature supports unobtrusive screenshotting for comprehensive employee activity overviews. That can be invaluable in the case of a breach, enabling real-time response and swift action. Best of all, you can review video footage from months ago if issues come to light much later. Screenshots and video files can be time-stamped and exported as evidence, while keystrokes and hidden characters can also be captured.
We noted the absence of an iOS app, but extending Veriato’s usability to Android devices is a smart move that allows it to record geolocation data. That means you can monitor employee productivity and activities can be monitored across a wider array of platforms. It’s even possible to identify employees accessing dark web addresses at .onion URLs, which isn’t a feature we’ve seen any other employee monitoring software promote. Given the numerous threats lurking on the dark web, it’s a feature that sets Veriato apart and one that other employee monitoring platforms should offer.
Veriato offers a comprehensive suite of productivity-monitoring metrics. They include login and logout times, the proportion of time spent on individual sites or apps, still and video recording, and document tracking. That type of employee monitoring is ideal for keeping employees on track so you don’t lose money through workplace distractions.
Review all users quickly and easily on the Veriato dashboard’s user view, or drill down into specifics for each user to identify areas where their productivity is lapsing.
Veriato offers two distinct plan options, available via cloud or on-premises: User Activity Monitoring (UAM) and Insider Risk Management (IRM). Its UAM cloud-based plan costs $15 per user per month (billed annually) or $25 per user per month (billed monthly).
Unfortunately, Veriato doesn’t list pricing online for its IRM cloud-based plan or any on-premises plans. Instead, you have to request a custom quote. That involves negotiations with a sales rep and becomes a much more involved process than it is with other vendors that are upfront about the cost of individual licenses or deployments. Our SentryPC review, for example, outlines how the provider very clearly and publicly breaks down its pricing.
We like that Veriato offers variable discounts for firms with larger numbers of employees. It’s also worth noting the distinction between users and devices — you could potentially monitor one member of your staff across a desktop PC, laptop, smartphone and tablet with a single user license. That is helpful for companies that rely on hot desking or provide their workers with desktops, laptops and mobile devices.
Veriato offers a free trial, which some rivals also do.
After setting up your employees in Veriato, you can easily view active devices by location and sort them by department. You can also keep tabs on any devices that are reported stolen by employees.
Veriato offers customer support primarily by phone and online ticketing. The Veriato website features many resources, including webinars, case studies, white papers, videos and podcasts. Some are sales-oriented, but others provide valuable takeaways for firms that want to exploit the platform’s full potential. The videos are beneficial for new customers. We like that Veriato’s resources can be browsed by category (e.g., cybersecurity, data loss prevention, employee monitoring, etc.)
Veriato’s lack of pricing information for most of its plans could be a red flag for some businesses. We’re also not fans of asking people to hand over their contact information to find out how much something costs; many managers won’t be comfortable with the inevitable hard sell that will follow. Most competitors offer transparent online pricing for its plans.
We’re pleased to see macOS and Android support, in contrast to Windows-only platforms such as Controlio and Work Examiner. The lack of iOS compatibility, however, means businesses already embedded in Apple’s ecosystem may be better off looking at cross-platform packages from Hubstaff or InterGuard.
Did you know? We put 13 other employee monitoring solutions through an equally rigorous product test. You can read our full InterGuard review to closely compare it to Veriato and other vendors in this category.
To identify high-quality employee monitoring platforms, we closely examined nearly a dozen options. We looked at each platform’s features, pricing, usability, downsides and other critical factors business owners should weigh when choosing employee monitoring software. When possible, we took part in demos and online presentations with company representatives.
It was also important to consider each employee monitoring solution from the employees’ perspective. Some staffers may see computer monitoring as a privacy issue, but businesses can gain a lot from using such systems. In Veriato’s case, the ability to find out if employees are becoming disenfranchised and address their concerns can halt declining productivity and potentially reduce the risk of resignations.
We recommend Veriato for …
We don’t recommend Veriato for …