DeskTime vs. Time Doctor: compare the alternatives

IF YOU NEED:

to track overall company productivity levels and analyze employee behavior

CHOOSE:

DeskTime provides the most wide-ranging and flexible company-wide productivity data. Because it includes a mix of different features, such as employee monitoring, project management, and productivity analysis, you can adapt it to meet your specific requirements for each project. It also lets you gather data and analyze the aspects that are most important to you.

You can collect a wide variety of data: from the most unproductive employees or the most often used unproductive applications/sites to projects that take up the most time and more.

Data is represented in a ready-made “Reports” section, emailed to company admins, and it can also be segmented manually. Any data can also be exported to .csv if any in-depth analysis is necessary.

With Time Doctor, you can also track your daily work habits, but it offers you fewer customization options. However, if you need to do the above and also want the option to analyze your productivity in detail, DeskTime might be the more convenient tool.

IF YOU NEED:

to track freelancer work and pay by the hour

CHOOSE:

Time Doctor lets you track specific tasks and projects. This can be combined with the “Payroll” feature, which allows the employer to automate pay based on the amount of work done.

This feature reduces the time spent on calculating pay for employees who are paid by the hour. It also increases transparency about work done and ensures smoother cooperation, especially for remote workers.

Although DeskTime offers project tracking, it's not integrated with payroll systems. For that reason, where payroll is required, Time Doctor will be the best choice.

IF YOU NEED:

to record team absences and time away from the computer

CHOOSE:

For teams that frequently have meetings, business trips, or phone calls, DeskTime is a great way to maintain transparency and understanding of where each team member is at any given moment.

DeskTime lets employees record their “away time” by noting if they will be on vacation, out of town, or simply at a meeting or on a phone call. This feature is available both on desktop and the mobile app, making it great for team members on the go.

By being able to log absences in the absence calendar, teammates can quickly see who's not at work; plus, it makes vacation planning easier since you can see the status of everyone in the company.

IF YOU NEED:

task management

CHOOSE:

Time Doctor puts an emphasis on task management, providing a tool to easily enter tasks, mark them as complete, set priority tasks, and even create “permanent” tasks that can't be marked as complete.

While both DeskTime and Time Doctor productivity tools integrate with a variety of other task-based software, such as Asana and BaseCamp, Time Doctor provides more in-depth options to track time for the integrated projects. Productivity is based not only on the amount of time using “productive” applications, but also on the number of tasks completed, as well as the user's ability to maintain focus on the task at hand without getting distracted.

While DeskTime users can attribute time spent on different projects, they do not require “completion” and cannot be ordered in terms of priority.