The Best Employee Monitoring Software of 2024

Employee monitoring software is an essential tool for businesses that want to verify that employees are using their time at work to accomplish the responsibilities and tasks assigned to them, not spending hours watching videos and trolling social media, or, worse, engaging in reckless or malicious behavior that jeopardizes the company. User activity monitoring can give you insight into how your employees spend their time each day, uncovering opportunities to improve productivity and cybersecurity.

To find this year’s best employee monitoring solutions, we spent dozens of hours researching and testing all of the top options. We looked for affordable, easy-to-use software with comprehensive features for tracking employee productivity, such as app and website tracking, content filters, and screen capture. Here are the options we recommend.

Employee monitoring software is a digital solution that provides a way for businesses to monitor, record and manage employees’ online behavior while they are on company time. Whether you have a few employees or several hundred, the software can be useful, because there are so many distractions in the modern workplace for both onsite and remote employees, especially for those who use internet-connected devices to complete their daily tasks.

While employees can be trusted to do the right thing most of the time, there is always an opportunity for them to engage in unproductive behavior on company time. Worse yet, employees could be insider threats – exhibiting reckless or malicious behavior that jeopardizes your business.

There are two cost structures for employee monitoring software. Some vendors rely on a per-user licensing system charged at a monthly or annual rate. Others charge a one-time licensing fee that allows the buying company to use the software forever, though you’ll typically have to pay an annual subscription for tech support and software updates. The cost of employee monitoring software can vary widely, with the scope of the solution and the number of licenses you require affecting the price.

Some employee monitoring software can be deployed as an on-premises solution, which means the software is installed and operated on your company’s own servers. This type of monitoring implementation has a higher upfront cost and requires an IT team to maintain and update it, but it grants you greater control over your own data.

Another common deployment option is a cloud-based service (or SaaS), which doesn’t require maintenance and has a lower upfront cost. It does require a monthly or annual subscription – typically $5 to $25 per user per month.

Some companies offer free employee monitoring plans, but these often have very limited features and accessibility.

You should pay attention to three main factors when evaluating pricing.

• Minimums: Few companies allow you to buy a single license. You typically need to buy a minimum number of licenses, usually five to 10, though some require as few as two. This will rule out some software for very small businesses and companies that only want to monitor a few people.
• Fees: Most of these companies don’t charge additional fees, but in our research, we saw some setup fees (which can be several hundred dollars) and an optional IP renewal fee. As with any service you’re considering for your business, you should ask the sales rep what fees the company charges and whether it requires a contract (and how long the contract would last, if so). Read the contract or terms of service to verify that you’ve been informed of all costs you’ll be expected to pay.
• Add-on features: Some vendors offer extra services, such as geolocation tracking and mobile licenses, for an additional cost.

Most employee monitoring software companies are transparent with their pricing and post rates on their websites. However, most of them have custom pricing for businesses over a certain size, so if you have an especially high number of employees to monitor, you will have to contact the software companies and give them some specifics, like the number of licenses you’re interested in and the features you want.

See if the following discounts are available as you compare costs among employee monitoring software.

• Volume discounts: Many companies offer lower prices when you purchase a higher number of licenses.
• Annual prepayment discounts for cloud software (SaaS): The companies that offer cloud-based employee monitoring software typically offer a discount if you pay annually rather than month to month, which can amount to as much as two free months of service.
• Nonprofit and educational discounts: Several companies note on their websites that discounts are available for these types of organizations.

You can track your employees’ activity and productivity on company time with employee monitoring software. The most basic features include web browsing, which allows you to see the websites your employees visit; application monitoring, which shows you the specific apps employees use; and activity tracking, which monitors keyboard and mouse activity so you can detect whether employees are actually working during their work hours.

Many solutions include keystroke logging, which shows you what your employees type across web browsers and applications – including chat messages and emails – along with a dated timestamp. This can be an incredibly useful window into your staff’s activity. Some of these programs even look through the devices’ cameras.

Employee monitoring software includes a wide range of features to keep tabs on how employees spend their time at work. The best monitoring software lets you and other administrators set specific rules and policies for different members of your company and receive notifications when the rules have been broken.

Whether you run a big company with hundreds of employees or a small business with a handful of workers, you can find monitoring software that fits your needs and budget.

Businesses can use different types of monitoring to optimize their operations. Three of the most common methods are software, email and network monitoring.

• Software monitoring: This is another term for employee monitoring software, which you install on employees’ computers to track their activities. Depending on the software you choose, it can track the websites an employee visits, the programs they use, and every keystroke they make on their computer. Most of these programs take random screenshots of user screens and allow you to see them in real time. Some even use the computer’s camera to take photos that verify the employee is at their desk.
• Email monitoring: This allows you to view the emails your employees send and receive with their company email accounts. It is often available as a feature of employee monitoring software but can also be purchased as a stand-alone application (sometimes called “email server monitoring”).
• Network monitoring: Instead of monitoring your employees, this is an IT process that checks your network to make sure all components (such as routers, servers and firewalls) are functioning properly, with the goal of eliminating network downtime.

The best employee monitoring software for small businesses helps you manage and enforce your acceptable use policy without requiring a lot of your time to install and maintain it. You need a solution that alerts you when your employees attempt to leak vital business information, access inappropriate content, or simply waste time while they are on the clock.

Here are the main aspects to pay attention to in your search.

Content Filtering and Blocking Features

Consider the different types of monitoring features the software offers. For example, how much do you want to control your employees’ internet time? It is all right for them to surf the internet during breaks and lunches, or not at all? What websites do your employees need to access to do their jobs?

With some software, you can select times when the internet or certain sites are blocked or accessible. Most applications also let you create user groups, each with its own rules and permissions. Blocking disruptive sites and creating custom permissions for specific groups is one way you can use this type of business internet software to increase your employees’ efficiency and productivity.

Content filtering and blocking can be an easy way to protect your business. Source: ActivTrak

Time Tracking and Activity Monitoring

Many businesses use employee monitoring software to track employees’ working hours. The software may include login/logout features so employees can record the time they spend working. Activity tracking is a popular feature that shows how active or idle an employee’s keyboard and mouse are during their work hours.

Idle time isn’t always a negative thing, though. For example, if an employee spends a lot of time reading or in meetings, they might have low keyboard and mouse activity. The best software records whether the employee’s activity (or inactivity) is productive or unproductive. This gives you insight into where your employees excel and where they are distracted. This is a great feature for tracking and improving employee productivity.

Application, Website and Email Monitoring

Consider the specific areas of computer activity you want to track. The most comprehensive programs keep detailed logs of the websites your employees visit and the apps they use, along with their emails, online chats, created and downloaded files, print jobs, inserted devices, and even physical locations when they’re on company devices.

You may not want to keep such detailed tabs on your employees. If you choose software with a full suite of features, you can usually customize exactly what it records (and in how much detail) as well as the exceptions.

Screenshots and Keystroke Logging

Depending on your reason for using employee monitoring software, you may want it to record employees’ online searches and takes screenshots of their monitors. These can come in handy if you are sued by a disgruntled employee and need to back up your claims.

You may also want to consider software that records keystrokes; however, this feature could feel particularly invasive to employees, so not all monitoring software vendors offer it.

Some employee monitoring software can take periodic screenshots of user activity. Source: SentryPC

Reports and Notifications

Pay attention to the software’s reports and notification features. It should provide regular reports (at intervals you choose) with easy-to-read statistics and visual breakdowns of employee habits. For more detailed information, though, you’ll need extensive notification options, and the best software has both real-time monitoring and real-time alerts. For instance, you may choose to be alerted if an employee downloads a document online or tries to access a forbidden website. Since notifications alert you to specific occurrences and reports give you a staffwide overview, you’ll get the most out of your software when you use both options together.

Archive Storage

Make sure your office web monitoring software automatically archives the data it captures. You never know when you may need to review an employee’s internet history. [Related article: 10 Ways Employee Monitoring Software Can Benefit Your Remote and In-Office Teams]

Mobile Apps

In addition to dashboards you can access from any browser, the best employee monitoring software offers mobile apps that let you monitor your staff when you’re away from the office. Some have both Android and iPhone apps, and others are platform-specific, so if this feature is important to you, verify that the app is compatible with the operating system you use.

Ease of Use and Support

Good monitoring software should be intuitive to use, with a visually appealing interface that displays all the options without being cluttered and overwhelming. You and the other admins should feel confident using the software, getting a good grasp of the monitoring options after a few minutes of clicking around.

In case you do run into issues, though, you want to work with a company that’s easy to reach. You should be able to reach tech support by phone, email, live chat, or online ticket, though even some of the best companies only offer one or two of these support avenues. Live chat is typically the fastest way to connect with a representative. Most companies also have extensive self-help resources on their websites for your reference, such as how-to guides, video tutorials, and FAQs pages.

Some companies charge extra for ongoing upgrades and support after the first year. You can forgo this option, but you run the risk of operating outdated and possibly insecure software without help from the manufacturer.

While monitoring employees’ computer and internet usage seems like an infringement of their privacy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that it is legal for companies to monitor employees’ actions while they are on the clock or using company equipment, including laptops, pagers, USB drives, and mobile devices. However, there have never been any regulations on the type of programs companies can use to monitor employees. This means you can use programs that monitor keystrokes and capture passwords; however, there is some ethical controversy around whether these features should be used.

While the federal government doesn’t place restrictions on employee internet monitoring, some states require employers to notify their workers if they monitor online activity, including emails and keystrokes. You can disclose this within your use policy or employee handbook, address it in orientation for new employees, or simply send out email reminders.

Employee monitoring software (and how employers use it) could also be impacted by the passage of new data privacy laws in the U.S. Provisions in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), for example, give individual employees the right to request that certain businesses disclose the personal information that has been collected about them. Businesses could also be required to notify individual employees when their personal information has been collected and how that information is being used. These provisions could extend to employee monitoring and require companies to revisit their policies.

If your business is subject to the CCPA or similar data privacy regulation, consider whether the employee data you want to collect serves a clear business purpose. Also determine how long you need to store that data and how you’ll ensure its protection from data breaches. Failure to secure it in accordance with data privacy laws could result in fines and lawsuits against your business.

If you’re still looking for the right employee monitoring software for your business, here are a few more top-rated vendors worth exploring.

Controlio

Controlio by EfficientLab is a good choice for users who prioritize video monitoring, as it tracks employees’ behavior with snapshots and live video recordings of their screens. You can view your employees’ screens in real time, or watch the video recordings to see current or past activities. This real-time session information is important for companies that need to maintain high security over their employees.

Insightful

Insightful, formerly Workpuls, is a great solution for companies that want to monitor employee activity while letting their staff maintain some privacy. The software monitors activities in real time, giving you an up-to-date view of your staff’s behavior. You can track your employees’ productivity, website and app usage, and time spent on each project or task. To respect your staff’s privacy and data security, you can disable activity tracking and screenshots for specific apps and websites, such as online banking. Insightful encrypts all data with AES-256, secures client data through HTTPS connections, and protects passwords with an advanced hashing algorithm.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a good employee monitoring software for accurately tracking your staff’s hours. Its unique combination of features, which include activity monitoring and time tracking, focuses on ensuring your employees are doing their work and being paid accurately for it. The specific features you can access depend on which service tier you choose. The free plan tracks employees’ time and activity levels, takes random screenshots, and enables automatic payments. As you scale up into paid plans, you gain access to more time-centric features like employee scheduling and attendance tracking, PTO management, idle-time monitoring, invoicing, client and project budgeting, payroll integration, timesheet approvals, and expense tracking.

InterGuard

InterGuard is comprehensive, cloud-based employee monitoring software. It monitors your workforce’s apps, emails, website history and searches, social media, files, chats, print jobs, and keystrokes. It’s especially useful for tracking your remote staff’s productivity. For companies that need to monitor employees from afar, InterGuard’s software tracks start and stop times, lunch breaks, geolocations, and idle vs. active time. We like the software’s six-view dashboard that features a chart view for executives, a user view for managers and HR staff, an alert log view for security tech, a data view, a reports and notification view, and a search view for when you’re conducting an investigation. Learn more in our detailed InterGuard review.

To determine the best employee monitoring software on the market, our team of HR experts and software analysts evaluated an initial list of 29 platforms. After whittling our list down to 14, we chose five monitoring solutions as our top recommendations. Our experts and analysts studied each solution’s functionality and evaluated the products on nearly 100 factors.

These factors were broken down into categories and weighted differently in our overall conclusion. The weights were determined based on how much business owners prioritize these criteria when shopping for business software and services and making purchasing decisions.

• Pricing: (30%): Our experts and analysts compared and contrasted each vendor’s plans, judging which packages offered the best bang for your buck. They took into account monthly subscription fees, costs per user, on-premises vs. cloud-based pricing, contract requirements, free trials, available discounts, and the costs of optional add-on features.
• Features (25%): We looked for standard employee monitoring software functions like activity tracking, website and application monitoring, keystroke logging, content filtering, website blocking, and reporting and analytics. We also assessed the available integrations and awarded extra points for advanced features, like AI-powered tools and high-end security settings.
  
• Ease of Use (20%): We tried the software solutions firsthand, gauging each platform’s learning curve, user-friendliness and customization options. We also considered what selection of platforms could be monitored, such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome, iOS and Android.
  
• Customer Service: (15%): We evaluated the range of customer service options, including whether phone, email and web chat assistance was provided with all package tiers. We also examined each vendor’s online resources for businesses interested in self-guided help.
  
• Expert Analysis (10%): Given that our human resources experts know and understand employee monitoring software better than anyone, we also considered their personal insights from years of experience and hands-on testing when deciding our best picks.

Based on these criteria, we not only determined which employee monitoring software our readers could trust but also the ways in which each solution could best serve different business needs. Some platforms were better at certain tasks than others or more suited to a particular type of company. These takeaways informed the “Best for” use cases you see on this page.

To learn more about our methodology, see our full editorial process.

The workplace in 2024 will be more diverse and distributed than ever, and we expect employee monitoring software to play a significant role in accommodating the shift in employee and employer expectations. For example, employers want to know that their staff is productive wherever they work. Monitoring software can provide insights into which work locations are most effective for each employee. Instead of using employee hours as a metric for success, employee monitoring software can track how productive employees are at various locations. As such, we can expect features and tools related to productivity tracking, project and task tracking, and GPS tracking to take center stage in the coming year.

Employee health and wellness has also come to the forefront of many company agendas, and certain aspects of employee monitoring software can help facilitate that. Features that monitor employee productivity and behavior can help employers identify patterns that may lead to burnout. For example, monitoring software can show you when an employee is working extensive hours, which may indicate they need a lighter workload. It can also tell you when resources may need to be reallocated to particular individuals or teams to foster more effective and satisfied employees.

Another trend we can expect to see in 2024 is an increase in cybersecurity. Employers are at a higher risk of security breaches with employees working across a wider range of locations, devices and networks. As a result, we anticipate more security features being used, such as content blocking, user permission settings, content filtering, screenshot recording, network monitoring, and security alerts.

A trend that gained popularity in 2023, and we can expect to grow in 2024, is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). In 2024, AI is poised to revolutionize employee monitoring by automating certain functions like data analysis, cybersecurity and performance support. For example, we may see a rise in virtual coaching based on employee monitoring analytics like performance, efficiency and work patterns.