5 Top Alternatives to Clockify

Janet Paterson
9 min readJul 20, 2023

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Clockify is a popular time-tracking solution for teams of all sizes: from startups to huge enterprises, from on-site to remote and hybrid workspaces. Its functionality covers three main areas: timekeeping, reporting, and management. Timekeeping allows you to track work hours and time spent on each project or task, create weekly timesheets, visualize and manage your time with the calendar feature, and track usage of applications and websites. Reporting and management features are a true find for managers of all levels. Clockify provides functionality for easy tracking of budget, scheduling work and assignments, creating invoices from billable time, and much more. Rich visual reports make the user experience even greater. Sounds impressive? Truly so! However, like any solution out there, Clockify has its cons. Many customers complain that the interface is not intuitive enough, and they have problems figuring out how to manage and edit projects. Others find reports confusing and lacking much valuable information. These inconveniences may be a dealbreaker for some users and make them begin searching for alternatives.

If you are one of them and looking for options, you’ve come to the right place. Here, we will look at the top five alternatives to Clockify.

5 Alternatives to Clockify

CleverControl

What makes CleverControl the best alternative to Clockify is its extensive monitoring functionality. The software records each employee’s active and idle time but can do much more. CleverControl goes beyond just tracking time on apps and websites — it records everything the user does on the computer. While some unscrupulous employees may easily cheat Clockify and similar solutions by running their work timer and randomly wiggling the mouse or switching between windows to imitate the activity, these tricks won’t work with CleverControl. The software records what the user types, the sites they visit, the apps they run, their activity on social media platforms, and more. CleverControl also takes screenshots, streams the user’s screen in real time, or can be configured to record it throughout the day. In addition to that, the system will calculate each employee’s productivity level and provide statistics on apps, web, and social media usage. Thanks to all-encompassing activity monitoring, you will always know if employees are working or only imitating their activity while watching Netflix on the second monitor.

CleverControl offers a top-notch Face Recognition feature — the software uses the webcam to recognize and register the employee at the сomputer. Face Recognition logs include the employee’s photo, name, and time they access the computer. This feature helps check attendance and is the best way to prevent buddy punching.

Pros

+ All-encompassing monitoring features

+ Graphic statistics on apps and web usage

+ Easy setup and user-friendly interface

+ Comes in on-premise and cloud solutions

Cons

- Lacks timesheets and billing functionality

Compatibility

CleverControl works on Windows and macOS.

Price

There are 3, 6, and 12-month plans available. Prices start at 4.70 per PC per year.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a multifunctional software that makes workforce management easier for all types of teams: in-office, remote or hybrid. Most of Hubstaff’s features center around time-tracking and are flexible enough to configure them for monitoring full-time, part-time, and project-based workers. These features include convenient recording of working hours, customizing reports by week, team member, project, or client, scheduling workings hours, shifts, and time off, alerts for late or missed shifts, expense tracking, and more. The software also has some great extra features, such as GPS tracking and Insights. While most time-tracking solutions can monitor only office employees at their computers, Hubstaff’s GPS tracking app allows monitoring field workers too. All you need to do is to set the job site and shifts in the system, and the app on the employee’s mobile device will start recording time automatically whenever they reach the location. You will also see the employee’s route and the time spent at each job site. This way, you get more accurate work time reports and eliminate buddy punching and payroll mistakes.

Insights is basically a productivity monitor tracking employees’ keyboard, mouse, website, and app usage. Then the system compares this data to the activity benchmarks of other businesses in your industry. You can use this data for better planning and employee management.

Pros

+ Easy to use

+ Location tracking

+ Many possibilities for integrations with other apps

Cons

- Some features are not fully customizable

- Occasional app crashes

Compatibility

Hubstaff is available for Windows/macOS computers and iOS/Android mobile devices. A web interface is also available.

Price

Hubstaff offers several packages with varying functionality. For some, you can get lifetime free plans for one user with limited functionality. To get more, you can go for a Starter or a Pro plan that starts at $7 and $10 per user per month respectively. If you buy an annual subscription, you get two months free. There are also custom Enterprize plans available.

Harvest

Harvest is another popular time-tracking solution for teams of all sizes. The software is easy-to-use: you can start tracking time with one click using the computer/mobile apps or a web interface. Harvest will remind you to start tracking if you forget, so no work will go unrecorded.

Like Clockify, Harvest offers invoicing and reporting functionality. You can track the costs of each project and create automatic invoices from tracked time and expenses. A bonus advantage of the solution is the opportunity to accept online payments — to do so, you will need to integrate Harvest with finance and payment solutions, such as Stripe, QuickBooks, or Xero.

Harvest’s reporting features include creating reports on budgets, time, team capacity, costs, and more. You can easily track and record the project expenses, add photos of receipts, and receive alerts when the project exceeds its planned budget.

To sum it up, Harvest functionality collects vital information to keep ongoing projects on track, learn from previous ones, and better plan and estimate future undertakings.

Pros

· Detailed reports on the project budget, team capacity, and expenses

· Integration with dozens of popular project management and finance tools

· Time-tracking in one click

Cons

· The program does not track what the employee actually does when the timer is ticking.

· High cost

Compatibility

Harvest is compatible with Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. There is also a web interface available.

Price

Harvest offers a lifetime free plan for one user for two projects which is great for personal use. The Pro plan, suitable for teams, costs $10.80 per seat per month when billed annually. The monthly subscription will cost you $12 per seat. You can also test the Pro features for free with a 30-day trial.

RescueTime

RescueTime is your personal productivity assistant app that will help you stay focused throughout the workday. The software is not yet another time-tracker — it combines the analysis of over a decade of people’s work activity and your work and meeting schedule to set you a personalized daily focus goal. If you go off track by multitasking or browsing cute kittens on Youtube, RescueTime will send you gentle nudges to help you regain focus. The tool will also remind you about upcoming meetings and the best time to focus.

Focus mode is a curious feature many easily distracted people will find valuable. In this mode, RescueTime will automatically block any unproductive websites and apps you try to access to keep you focused on work. RescueTime marks apps and sites as productive or distractive based on its analytical data, but you can change the categorization manually, for example, if your work involves generally unproductive sources, such as social media.

Few things are more inspiring and uplifting than the feeling you’ve done well. Boost your motivation and understand where your time goes with daily statistic reports.

Pros

· Can truly measure your focus

· Helps you discover and block distracting activities

· Gentle reminders about upcoming meetings and lost focus

· Perfect for personal productivity

Cons

· Inconvenient for teams and is not a replacement for a time tracking software for contractors

· Outdated interface

Compatibility

RescueTime works on macOS 10.12 and above, Windows 10 and above, and is also compatible with mobile devices Android 5.0 and above and iOS 15.4 and above.

Price

RescueTime offers a free 14-day trial period. Plans start at $6.50 per user per month.

Everhour

Everhour is a solid workhorse for time tracking, project management, and budgeting. Its time-tracking features are a rather standard set that includes a timer, manual entry of working and out-of-office hours, time estimates functionality and reminders. The system will send alerts about long-running timers and remind employees to track their time. Additionally, you can set the tracker to stop automatically at the end of the workday — a perfect feature for those employees who often forget to do it.

Among billing and budgeting features are client management, labor costs calculator, setting project budgets and prohibiting overbudget, and alerts when you have spent a set part of your project budget.

Robust task and team management functionality distinguishes Everhour from the solutions described above. Now you do not need separate solutions for task management, project management, and payroll — Everhour combines all these in one tool. You can create tasks, assign them to employees, set priorities, schedule time to complete, and more. You will see an interactive project plan with your team schedule, each employee’s progress compared to the scheduled time for the task, and also when the employee will be available for the new assignment. This plan is also a handy tool to monitor absence and workload at a glance — and avoid overbooking that may lead to employees burning out and leaving the company.

Everhour also offers robust invoicing and expense-tracking functionality, making it an all-in-one solution for businesses of any size.

Pros

+ Comprehensive time-tracking, management, and budgeting functionality

+ Helps to see how you spend your work time and budget and reallocate those resources

+ Integrations with other project management tools

Cons

- Does not track employee activity, such as apps and web usage, social media usage, etc.

- Confusing interface

- No apps for mobile devices or computers

Compatibility

Everhour offers only the web interface.

Price

Everhour offers a lifetime free plan with limited functionality for freelancers and small teams of up to five employees. The Lite plan, available for 2–10 users, offers more (yet still limited) functionality, including integrations with Notion, Trello, and Todoist, and costs $6 per user per month. Finally, the Team plan for teams of above five employees offers all the functionality of Everhour and costs $10 per user per month. Choosing an annual subscription will grant you a 15% discount. And if you would like to test the solution first, there is a 14-day trial available.

Conclusion

While Clockify is one of the most popular time tracking solutions on the market, its several alternatives are no inferior and sometimes even surpass it in functionality. Each solution has its strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, the choice of the best alternative to Clockify will depend on your specific needs, budget, and the features that are most important to you. I recommend trying out a few options and seeing which matches best with your requirements before making a final decision.

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Janet Paterson

Professional copywriter. Interested in tech, coding, HR management.