Looking for the Best Hubstaff Alternative? Here’s What You Should Know
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Although Hubstaff is recognized for time tracking, several teams question whether it is truly of daily relevance. It usually over-monitors staff, is slow to learn, and does not integrate well with other applications unless you steeply increase your cost. This can create headaches when solutions are supposed to simplify them. Instead of maximizing productivity, in some cases it can slow teams down and create uncomfortable anxiety. For this reason, a large number of companies are looking for better solutions than Hubstaff that will be both easy to use and gentler on teams.
Hubstaff relies on monitoring, while businesses today want trust-based time tracking.
Timesheet 365 delivers accurate timesheets, project insights, and reporting without surveillance.
With a growing number of professionals working remotely or in a mixed remote / office capacity, companies are opting for simple time tracking tools instead of cumbersome applications. Teams want to be able to use an intuitive time tool without a high learning curve, have good reporting features, and ultimately be monitored enough without feeling like they are being “spied” on.
To assist in evaluating what tools may work better for you, we took a look at some of the more popular time tracking tools on the market today that are more user-friendly, customizable to your specific needs, and get you more bang for your buck than Hubstaff. We looked at what each one does, how much it costs, what other apps it works with, and if it’s a good fit for different teams and types of businesses.
Other Options Besides Hubstaff: What You Need to Know
1. Reasons for Seeking Alternatives to Hubstaff
Numerous teams depart Hubstaff due to it being heavily focused on the monitoring of individual workloads instead of creating an environment focused on flexibility and trust. With the evolution of work, companies are looking for tools that enable performance without the feeling they are spying. They also want their processes to be homogenous and their workplace to extract more value for their time.
- Overemphasis on Output
Hubstaff places a great emphasis on tracking what the worker output is rather than measuring productivity for the organization. This auxiliary output tracking can potentially cause even monitoring teams’ stress instead of making them feel like they’re being supported. Modern organizations would prefer an output tracking platform that supports workers and provides meaningful feedback as opposed to just activity reports.
- Monitoring Workers Too Much
Features that provide screenshots, follow what users are doing, and report on inactivity are too many features for most people and create the feeling of a workplace, not support. Modern teams want workplace monitoring that helps productivity and supports a remote workforce.
- Features Not Working
Users report several features not working correctly such as: GPS tracking, setting-up boundaries, and there are not very many add-on features for the basic plans. All these things can make the experience with Hubstaff frustrating, especially the GPS tracking feature which may not work in any performance but just to have employees visit clients.
Hubstaff is great for many teams, and there are options that could be a better fit for you. The right tool can improve productivity, improve team mood, and save you money. Let’s take a look at some interesting options.
B. How We Evaluated Our Alternatives to Hubstaff
In compiling this list, we combined actual user experiences and tests, looking at each product in real-world scenarios.
C. We compared four significant things
- Ease of use: How easy is it for people to start and use the instrument?
- Time Tracking: Does the software provide an easier process to track work time than Hubstaff?
- Analytics: Are the reports more useful than the reports from Hubstaff?
- Cost: Are you getting more for your cost?
We created a fictitious writing project on each platform for testing. This included things like time tracked for research, writing, and edits. We then analyzed individual experiences based on the criteria above.
At Timesheet 365, we are not into spying on people. But we also understand that some teams prefer this feature. So, we separated the list of alternatives into tracking teams or non-tracking teams to give you a choice about this feature for your team.
Best Hubstaff Alternative without Employee Monitoring
Timesheet 365 – Best Overall Alternative
- G2: 4.6 | Capterra: 4.7
- Ease of Use, Tracking & Analytics: 5/5
- Starts at $49/user/month
Best for medium–large teams needing in-depth analytics and secure, non-monitoring time tracking.
Toggl Track – Best Without Project Management
- G2: 4.6 | Capterra: 4.7
- Smooth, simple, monitoring-free tracking
- Starts at $9/user/month
Ideal for teams that want fast, clean time tracking without extra features.
Paymo
- G2: 4.6 | Capterra: 4.87
- Great for teams needing project management + tracking
- Starts at $9.90/user/month
Harvest
- G2: 4.3 | Capterra: 4.6
- Easy invoicing + simple time tracking
- Starts at $11/user/month
Perfect for freelancers and small teams.
Timely – Best for AI Time Tracking
- G2: 4.8 | Capterra: 4.7
- Automatic time capture with no monitoring
- Starts at $9/user/month
TimeCamp – Most Budget-Friendly
- G2: 4.7 | Capterra: 4.7
- Strong analytics at low cost
- Starts at $2.99/user/month
Clockify – Best for Small Teams
- G2: 4.5 | Capterra: 4.8
- Unlimited users + simple tracking
- Starts at $5.49/user/month
Time Doctor
- G2: 4.6 | Capterra: 4.5
- Great for remote teams needing productivity support
- Starts at $6.70/user/month
DeskTime
- G2: 4.5 | Capterra: 4.5
- Ideal for freelancers tracking personal productivity
- Starts at $6.42/user/month
Everhour
- G2: 4.7 | Capterra: 4.7
- Centralized time tracking + project management
- Starts at $8.50/user/month
Hubstaff Alternatives That Don’t Track Employees
Not every team wants or needs to be constantly monitored to stay effective. Research shows that people are more engaged, creative, and productive when they feel trusted.
So, if privacy, autonomy, and a healthier workplace culture are important to you, these are the best Hubstaff alternatives that will help you record your hours without intrusive tracking.
Below are the Complete Breakdown of Each application
1. Timesheet 365 – Best Overall Hubstaff Alternative
Overview
Timesheet 365 sharply enhances tracking hours and attendance every day for teams big or small. Its real strength lies in the advanced Analytics & Reporting that lets managers see productivity, projects in real-time, and employee allocation to specific clients. Thanks to this privacy-first approach, using Timesheet 365 is great for building a healthy, trust-based work culture. Privacy is respected, as Timesheet 365 does not take screenshots or track idle time. Well within modern workflows, Timesheet 365 doesn’t break the office vibe. It runs in the background and even makes tracking hours painless.
Pros
- Free trial for teams
- Customizable analytical dashboards
- Web, desktop, and mobile apps
- Fully integrates with popular tools
- Easy, simple to use interface
Cons
- Some advanced features only on paid plans
- Free trial does not support many users
Time Tracking – Best Alternative Without Monitoring
Timesheet 365 syncs well across apps with web, desktop, and mobile capabilities
The tracking capabilities of the desktop app include:
- Autotracker for automatic time logging
- Timeline that records activity and turns it into timesheets
Unlike Hubstaff, it takes a hard pass on taking screenshots or constant tracking of activity; tracking your teams’ productivity happens entirely on idle time detection, reminders, and focus timers for encouraging good work habits. And teams can easily see when they need to spend more (or less) time on certain projects based on built-in reports of activity.
Analytics – Best for Business Insights
Timesheet 365 offers three key dashboards to track productivity
Reports: Shows hours and project progress by employee, client, or project.
Analytics: Capture and build your own dashboard from existing data, getting better insights into your team’s work.
Profitability: Identify trends among clients, teams, tasks, and time being clocked against work management activity.
While Hubstaff prioritizes monitoring productivity, Timesheet 365 focuses on business impact and output value, not just hours worked.
Ease of Use – Best for Simple Workflows
The interface is clean and straightforward, with time tracked in list, weekly, or calendar view.
Managers can handle reporting, projects, and team activity from the web app, keeping employees focused on work. Unlike Hubstaff’s widget-heavy setup, Timesheet 365 keeps things simple and fast to learn.
Use Timesheet 365 If You Want:
- Time tracking without intrusive monitoring
- Actionable analytics to boost productivity and profitability
- A work culture built on trust, autonomy, and transparency
2. Toggl Track – Best Hubstaff Alternative Overall
Overview
Inaugurated in 2006, Toggl Track was created especially to have a simple and transparent way to track time for teams. Today, Toggl Track is part of a complete productivity suite, Toggl Plan and Toggl Hire – designed to keep teams focused and productive.
What you will absolutely love about Toggl Track is the ease of time tracking, auto-tracking and smart reminders! However, where Toggl Track shines are its Analytics & Insights that allows teams to learn how time is spent by projects, clients and employees.
Toggl Track offers 145+ integrations and a privacy-first approach (no screenshots or excessive monitoring) so that you can make Toggl Track a part of your modern workflows and trust-based culture.
Toggl Track Pros
- Free time tracking for freelancers
- Customizable analytics dashboards
- Web, desktop and mobile apps
- 145+ native integrations
- Easy, intuitive UI
Toggl Track Cons
- Tasks/Sub Projects only in paid plans
- Free for 5 user’s maxes
- Time Tracking – Excellent Hubstaff option without being a stalker
Toggl Track works great with your browser, computer, or phone, so you can track your time in an accurate real-time format.
Autotracker: It logs time automatically, depending on what’s happening.
Timeline: It keeps track of what you do so you can fill out timesheets fast.
Unlike Hubstaff, Toggl Track doesn’t take screenshots or watch what you’re doing. Instead, it helps you work well with reminders, noticing when you’re not active, and focus on sessions. The reports help teams find problems and make more money.
- Analytics: Great for Business Smart
Toggl Track has three dashboards:
- Reports: See quick summaries of time and money.
- Analytics: Make your own dashboards with different views.
- Profitability: See trends for clients, workers, projects, or teams.
Hubstaff watches people, but Toggl Track looks at how the business is doing and how much value it’s producing, which helps leaders see the real results.
- Easy to Use – Perfect for Simple Ways of Working
- The look is neat and easy to understand, with ways to see your time in lists, weekly views, and calendars.
- Reports, billable hours, and team management are all in the browser app, which makes things easy for workers and bosses.
- Hubstaff needs a bunch of gadgets and it is harder to set up.
4. Paymo – Great for Time Tracking on Projects
Overview
Paymo tracks time easily on web, phones, and computers, like Hubstaff, but it’s better because it has project management built right in. It has project templates, Kanban boards, task management, and expense tracking, so teams can handle time and projects together. You can even turn tracked hours into invoices, which is good for teams that bill clients a lot.
Pro’s:
- Employees have more control over tasks
- It automatically notices when you’re not working
- It tracks tasks automatically
Con’s:
- Reporting is simple
- Customer support is limited on cheaper plans
- The computer app isn’t great
Use Paymo if:
- You manage project teams
- You want one tool for project planning and time tracking
- You need a cheap tool that can grow with you and has good productivity.
5. Harvest: A Good Hubstaff Option for Tracking Contractor Time
Overview
Harvest has a nice, easy-to-use setup, so keeping track of contractor hours is quick and easy. The timer is right there on the main page, so things are simple and focused on getting accurate times.
It also has good billing options, letting you make clear, itemized bills for clients, broken down by task, worker, or project – great for freelancers and contractors.
What’s Cool:
- Easy to understand
- Good price
- Good billing and project handling
What’s Not:
- No automatic time tracking
- Simple reports
- Not many options for task sorting
Go with Harvest If:
- You need to send itemized bills to clients
- You’re a freelancer or contractor
- You want a simple timer with a good free option
6. Timely – A Great Hubstaff Option with Smart Time Tracking
Overview
Timely does time track differently than Hubstaff, which focuses on location. Timely uses smart tech to automatically track what you’re doing across different apps and tasks, doing it pretty accurately. It learns from what you’ve done before, puts work under the right projects by itself, and fills out your timesheet even if you don’t hit start. You can still change stuff by hand if you want to adjust it.
Timely: The Good Stuff
- Time tracking that does itself
- Catches when you’re not doing anything, so your logs are spot on
- Plays nice with Zapier, Asana, Jira, Trello, and Slack
- Timely: The Not-So-Good Stuff
- No free version (just trials)
- Costs more than a lot of other choices
- If you want task stuff, you gotta pay extra
Go with Timely If:
- You want time tracking that runs itself with some smart tech
- You want to know how people work and where time goes on projects
- You want as little manual time entry as possible and still get really correct info
7. TimeCamp – A Great, Cheaper Option Than Hubstaff
Overview
TimeCamp is a time tracker that doesn’t break the bank. It helps teams keep it together and get stuff done. It keeps tabs on time automatically and makes reports that break down where the hours go – tasks, apps, websites; you name it.
The cool thing is, TimeCamp gives you productivity tracking even in its cheaper plans. So, you get good stuff without a high price tag. It also plays nice with tools like Trello for keeping an eye on project budgets. Plus, it has employee monitoring if you want it (like screenshots every 10 minutes).
What’s Good About TimeCamp:
- Free version with basic time tracking
- Dashboard that’s easy to use
- Plans that are easy on the wallet
What’s Not So Good:
- Fewer integrations if you’re on a lower plan
- The timer can be a bit wonky sometimes
- Editing time by hand can be a pain
Go with TimeCamp If:
- You need good features but don’t want to spend a lot
- You want reports and dashboards you can tweak
- You need tools to keep track of project budgets
8. Clockify – A Top Hubstaff Alternative for Smaller Teams
Overview
Clockify has a lot of the same main stuff as Hubstaff – like a Pomodoro timer, a way to see when people aren’t working, and location tracking – but it’s a bit easier to use. It can automatically keep tabs on apps and websites while the timer is going, but this info isn’t in the reports, so it’s not great for really digging into the data.
But, if you’ve got a small team that doesn’t need to be watched too closely, this simple setup could be just right. Managers can still see screenshots and schedules to keep an eye on things.
Clockify: The Good Stuff
Totally free, and you can have as many people using it as you want. Tracks activity automatically. No limits on users or projects.
Clockify: The Not-So-Good Stuff
Not a ton of project tracking tools. The timer might not stop on its own. The way it looks is a little old-school.
Go with Clockify if:
You’re a small team watching your spending. You want a free time tracker that anyone can use. You need simple monitoring stuff like screenshots but don’t want anything too complicated.
9. Time Doctor – Great Hubstaff Alternative If You Want to Avoid Distractions
Overview
Time Doctor is all about helping teams stay on track by spotting things that kill productivity. Like Hubstaff, you can mark some sites as timewasters. But Time Doctor does more – it sends alerts to nudge people back to work if they’re goofing off. It logs out these slip-ups in a Poor Time Usage report, which can be really useful for remote teams working on tight deadlines.
What’s good about Time Doctor?
- It’s got built-in tools to keep people from getting distracted
- You get detailed reports on how people are spending their time
- There are no limits on the number of projects and tasks you can track
What’s not so good?
- The web app doesn’t have a built-in timer
- There’s no free option
- Some users say time tracking isn’t always spot-on.
When should you use Time Doctor?
- If you’re trying to keep an eye on productivity and make it better.
- When you’re managing remote teams that are working on important projects with deadlines.
- If you need strong options to avoid distractions, plus project tracking, all in one place.
10. Everhour: A Great Hubstaff Alternative for Project Management
Overview
So, Hubstaff’s big on keeping tabs on folks and GPS, but Everhour? It’s all about getting projects done right and seeing what your team is up to. The dashboard is clean – you can see who’s working, who’s not, and what’s getting done, all without feeling like you’re spying on everyone.
Plus, Everhour lets you keep all your project stuff together. You can upload files, instructions – anything your team needs.
What’s cool about Everhour:
- Keep your projects and team organized in one spot.
- Simple pricing, plus a free option.
- Perfect if you need time tracking and project management that work together.
What’s not so cool:
- I can’t tweak things too much.
- No super cheap plans to start with.
When should you use Everhour?
- If you want all your project and team info in one place.
- If you need time tracking, that plays nicely with your project management tools.
- If you like super simple pricing.
Why Think About Other Options Besides Hubstaff?
Hubstaff is well-known, but it’s not for everyone mainly if your team cares about trust, openness, and getting work done without feeling like they’re being spied on. Workplaces today are dropping strict monitoring, so companies want tools that help their people instead of bossing them around.
The options here fix what Hubstaff doesn’t do well. They give you better info, simpler ways to work, and privacy features that teams will actually like. If you’re after honest time tracking that doesn’t feel like surveillance but still gives you good info on how things are going, Toggl Track is a top pick. It’s made for teams that care about results, not micromanaging
Want time tracking that helps your company culture rather than holding it back? These other choices can lead you there.
Conclusion
Picking the right time tracker is more than just clocking hours. It’s about making workflow better, building trust in your team, and getting the info you need to help your business grow. There are a lot of Hubstaff options, but Timesheet 365 is a good modern choice because it’s flexible and keeps privacy in mind for today’s teams.
With automatic reminders, correct tracking on different devices, project info, and good reporting, Timesheet 365 gives managers the info they need without feeling like they’re spying. No screenshots or snooping. Just clear, useful data that helps people focus and helps leaders make good calls.
It’s simple design, strong data analysis, and easy integration make it a great fit for both new and old companies that want to work better and earn more, without losing trust or hurting their work culture.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What makes Timesheet 365 a better alternative to Hubstaff?
Timesheet 365 offers a more modern, privacy-friendly approach than Hubstaff. Instead of relying on screenshots or intrusive activity tracking, it provides accurate time logging, automated reminders, project-level insights, and powerful analytics. Its native Microsoft 365 integration and clean interface make it easier for teams to adapt, while giving managers deeper visibility into productivity, workload, and project performance.
Can Timesheet 365 handle both team and individual time tracking?
Yes. Timesheet 365 supports both team-wide and individual time tracking with real-time sync across the web, desktop, and mobile. Employees can log their hours easily, while managers get clear dashboards showing project-level progress, team capacity, and time distribution. It works seamlessly for remote, hybrid, and on-site teams.
Does Timesheet 365 integrate with other tools?
Absolutely. Timesheet 365 integrates natively with Microsoft 365 including Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, and Power BI, making it simple to fit into existing workflows. It also supports API-based integrations, allowing companies to connect with HR, payroll, project management, and analytics tools without extra effort.
How does Timesheet 365 help with project profitability?
Timesheet 365 offers advanced analytics dashboards that track billable vs. non-billable hours, resource allocation, and project progress. Its Profitability dashboard highlights trends across clients and projects, helping managers understand where time is spent and which projects drive the highest returns. This data enables better forecasting, budgeting, and decision-making.
What pricing options does Timesheet 365 offer?
Timesheet 365 offers flexible pricing plans designed for teams of all sizes. Plans typically include time tracking, reporting, project management features, and advanced analytics. Higher-tier plans offer customizable dashboards, integrations, and profitability tracking. This makes it cost-effective for both small teams and large organizations seeking scalable, privacy-first time tracking.
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