Choosing between Hubstaff vs. Insightful often comes down to what you need beyond tracking work hours. Both tools combine time tracking with productivity monitoring, but their focus areas differ.
Hubstaff. Hubstaff is a time tracking software platform with built-in productivity monitoring (with configurable settings), payments, workforce analytics, and more. All the features are built to manage and scale distributed teams across the world.
Insightful. Insightful, on the other hand, emphasizes strict monitoring and workforce analytics with automated time mapping, dashboards, and detailed activity tracking, but it doesn't offer built-in payments.
If monitoring dashboards is your primary concern, Insightful may be sufficient. If you need a platform that ties time tracking to payments and analytics at scale, Hubstaff is the stronger fit.
If you’re not sure where you stand, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s take a look at these two tools to see which one is the best fit for you and your team.
112,000+ businesses trust Hubstaff for time tracking
Hubstaff vs. Insightful at a glance
The table below compares Hubstaff and Insightful side by side, covering key features to help you choose the right fit or consider an Insightful alternative, such as Hubstaff.
| Feature | Hubstaff | Insightful |
|---|---|---|
Starting Price | From $4.99/user/month (Starter), billed annually. | From ~$6.40/user/month. Billed annually. |
Free Trial | 14-day free trial | 7-day free trial |
Time Tracking | Project and task-level tracking with desktop & mobile apps, GPS/geofencing, and idle-time prompts. | Automatic time mapping of apps/sites, monitoring-first time tracking. |
Timesheets & Approvals | Auto-generated timesheets with manager approvals, budgets, pay rates, and overtime. | Timesheets can be created with time tracking data, but there’s no payment workflow available. |
Productivity Monitoring | Configurable: optional screenshots, app/URL usage, activity levels, idle-time detection. | Monitoring-heavy: dashboards, app/web usage, screenshots, productivity scores. |
Payments & Invoicing | Built-in payments (PayPal, Wise, Deel, Gusto, Payoneer); simple invoicing from timesheets. | No built-in payments; invoicing limited to client billing only. |
Integrations | Broad native integrations with PM, CRM, payroll, and accounting. | Fewer native integrations; narrower ecosystem. |
Reporting | Detailed, customizable reports on hours, budgets, activity, idle time; exportable & schedulable. | Strong dashboards, but less flexible/customizable exporting. |
Workforce Analytics | Advanced insights: focus time, unusual activity detection, inefficiency trends, benchmarks. | Productivity dashboards and scores; limited operational analytics. |
Best Fit | Distributed/global teams, agencies, and BPOs needing scale, payments, and analytics. | Companies that prioritize monitoring dashboards over built-in payments. |
Time tracking
Hubstaff. Hubstaff offers time tracking across desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux), mobile (iOS, Android), and browser (Chrome extension). Teams can log hours by task, project, or client with ease. For field teams, GPS tracking and geofenced Job sites ensure accurate, location-based attendance. Idle-time prompts help eliminate inaccurate logs, and tracked hours seamlessly convert into detailed timesheets for efficient, manager-friendly approvals.
Insightful. With an automation-first approach to time tracking, Insightful automatically segments time based on apps and URL usage, making it easy to categorize activity. However, it has limited flexibility for managing idle time. Insightful is best suited for organizations focused on productivity trends and digital behavior, rather than granular task-level tracking.
Comparison. Hubstaff offers flexible, task-based tracking with features like GPS, geofencing, and idle-time prompts — ideal for managing remote and field teams. Insightful, on the other hand, focuses on automated time mapping for digital activity, offering less control over project-level tracking.
Timesheets and approvals
Hubstaff. Automatically convert time tracking data to detailed timesheets, invoices, and payments. Managers can review, approve, reject, or edit entries to ensure accuracy before payouts. Hubstaff also supports custom pay rates, project budgets, and overtime rules, making it well-suited for teams that need more structure and scalability in how they manage tracked hours and payouts.
Insightful. Insightful captures time logs based on user activity, offering visibility into when and how time is spent. However, it does not include formal timesheet approval workflows or direct payroll integrations, making it more suitable for lightweight tracking than operational use in payroll or billing.
Comparison. Hubstaff provides a comprehensive timesheet-to-payroll pipeline with built-in approvals and flexible pay rates, ideal for operational and compliance-intensive teams. Insightful offers basic logging for visibility but lacks the formal controls needed for payroll-ready workflows.
Explore Hubstaff's Robust Feature Set
Delve into Hubstaff with a detailed breakdown of time tracking, employee productivity, reporting, and other features in our interactive demo.
Productivity and activity monitoring
Hubstaff. Hubstaff’s built-in productivity monitoring is fully configurable to match your business needs. Gauge team productivity by tracking app URL usage, activity levels from mouse and keyboard input, and optional screenshots. Settings are flexible, letting you enable, disable, or blur settings to adapt the tool to your business’s needs. Team members can view their own productivity metrics for better self-evaluation, with the goal of transparency without micromanagement.
Insightful. Instead of a data-driven approach, Insightful focuses more on monitoring heavy controls like live screen recording, app/web usage, screenshots, automatic productivity labels, and web and app monitoring. The live screen monitoring feature is built for high-security environments, but there is debate around the need for such intensive monitoring for everyday productivity purposes.
Comparison. Hubstaff prioritizes configurability and team trust, while Insightful leans into stricter monitoring. Teams that value productivity monitoring over surveillance may find Insightful's heavier monitoring excessive or harder to scale back.
Payments and invoicing
Hubstaff. With Hubstaff, teams can track time, seamlessly convert time into automated timesheets, and submit them for approvals that trigger payments. Once approved, the built-in payment system sends payouts to global teams through popular payment platforms like PayPal, Wise, and Deel. Hubstaff supports multi-currency payments to ensure team members are paid in their local currency on recurring schedules. You can also generate invoices based on tracked hours for accurate billing.
Insightful. Insightful does not offer payroll management features, as invoicing features are limited to client billing. While it generates timesheets through time tracking data, businesses will still need to handle payroll separately.
Comparison. Hubstaff offers built-in payments with multi-currency support and automated payouts, making it an ideal platform that can function as payroll software. Insightful lacks payment features and only supports basic client invoicing, which requires users to look elsewhere for external payroll handling.
Integration options
Hubstaff. Hubstaff easily integrates with your existing tech stack and offers broad native integrations across project management, CRM, accounting, and payroll platforms. Tools like Trello, Asana, QuickBooks, Gusto, and more integrate seamlessly, reducing friction and helping your team stay in sync across departments.
Insightful. Offers a limited selection of integrations, primarily focused on productivity tools. While core functions work well, teams may need to implement manual processes or utilize third-party connectors (such as Zapier) to sync with CRMs, accounting software, or payroll platforms, which can slow down workflows.
Comparison. Hubstaff stands out with its robust native integration ecosystem, making it ideal for scaling teams that rely on a connected workflow. In contrast, Insightful's narrower integration options may require extra setup time or custom solutions to achieve the same level of connectivity.
Reporting and analytics
Hubstaff. Hubstaff offers a fully customizable dashboard with real-time widgets for tracking hours worked, PTO, employee activity, and other workforce analytics insights. You can also take a hands-off approach to management by scheduling up to 20+ reports like Time & Activity, Payments, and Amounts Owed, applying custom filters, and email them directly from the app. From your fully customizable dashboard, you can also see real-time productivity data, hours worked, project spend, and more.
Insightful. Combines detailed reporting features like live dashboards and activity summaries to help managers analyze tracked time spent on tasks. Strong productivity tracking dashboards to spot work patterns and productivity trends. There's limited report customization available.
Comparison. Insightful focuses primarily on productivity metrics, while Hubstaff can produce reports for broader business aspects, such as project budgets, payroll, and schedules, with high-level customization options for a versatile business case.
Workforce analytics
Hubstaff. With built-in workforce analytics, Hubstaff is designed to optimize productivity at scale — without micromanagement. The Insights add-on transforms raw work data into actionable metrics like focus time, work-time classifications, and core versus non-core task tracking. Managers can uncover inefficiency trends, detect burnout signals, and benchmark teams across roles or time periods to drive accountability, coaching, and operational clarity.
Insightful. Delivers a clear, real-time view of employee activity through app and website usage tracking, activity levels, and productivity scores. Its visually strong dashboards help surface workflow bottlenecks and individual performance trends. However, it offers fewer financial and payroll integrations, which limits its utility for broader operational optimization.
Comparison. Hubstaff goes deeper, turning workforce analytics into actionable levers for scaling operations. Insightful provides visibility, but Hubstaff delivers the data and context needed to truly optimize team performance, reduce inefficiencies, and support smarter growth.
Hubstaff vs. Insightful cost comparison
Hubstaff and Insightful both offer tiered pricing structures, but their feature sets vary significantly, especially in terms of payments and workforce analytics.
Hubstaff: Pricing starts at $4.99 per user/month with the Starter plan, which covers core time tracking and productivity monitoring. Higher-tier plans come with advanced reporting, workforce analytics, and built-in payments through payroll integrations. A 14-day free trial is available to test out all plans.
Starter ($4.99 per user/month/annual)
Time tracking and timesheets
App & URL tracking and limited screenshots
Clients and invoices
Basic payments and reports
Grow ($7.50 per user/month/annual)
Reports and project budgets
Idle timeout and work breaks
Expenses tracking
Team ($10 per user/month/annual)
Insights add-on (Trial)
Tasks add-on
Payments, payroll, and scheduling
Insights and team management
Overtime, time off, and holiday tracking
Enterprise ($25 per user/month/annual)
Location tracking
Higher limits on public API
HIPAA and SOC-2 Type II Compliance
Single sign-on and the Hubstaff Corporate app
Insightful: Pricing starts at around $6.40 per user/month (billed annually), with a focus on time tracking and activity monitoring. Insightful offers a 7-day free trial.
Time tracking
App and website usage monitoring
Screenshots
Productivity dashboards
Client invoicing (not payroll-related)
Comparison: Higher-tier plans approach $15 per user/month, depending on the depth of monitoring and number of features included. However, Insightful does not offer built-in payments or payroll processing — something to consider if your team requires integrated payouts.
Ease of Use & Support
Hubstaff. Hubstaff strikes a strong balance between being feature-rich and user-friendly. The platform supports easy onboarding, as teams can start tracking with just a quick download on Mac, Windows, iOS, or Android. The intuitive dashboard provides live data on hours worked, budgets, activity, payments, and more.
You also gain access to extensive support resources, including step-by-step onboarding guides, help documents, and live customer support, to keep your operations running smoothly. As one G2 reviewer put it, "It is so user-friendly and all the information are easy to find and check." – Pepe C., Small Business
Another G2 reviewer highlights how seamlessly it fits into daily work:
"Simple to use and very reliable for time tracking. The desktop app runs smoothly in the background… integrates with tools I already use, so I don't need to switch between platforms constantly." – Himanshu G., Mid-Market
These user experiences underscore Hubstaff's ability to scale across teams quickly — without a steep learning curve.
Insightful. Insightful features a clean, modern interface that makes dashboards easy to read and navigate. However, its automation-heavy approach may require more initial setup and configuration to ensure accurate tracking and reporting. Support documentation is available; however, with fewer built-in tools for payroll, invoicing, or classification, users may need to create additional workflows or integrations to tailor the platform to their business operations.
Comparison. Both platforms are user-friendly, but Hubstaff offers a more guided experience — especially for scaling teams that need fast adoption and multi-functional tools. Insightful delivers visual simplicity but may demand more setup to match business-specific workflows.
Each month, Hubstaff tracks:
What our customers say
“We work in a lot of different industries, so I can’t always know what’s a 45-minute task and what’s a four-hour task. With tools like Hubstaff, you can tell. You then decide if a whole project should’ve taken 16 hours or if someone is just not the right fit.”
OneIMS President and Founder
“We believe — just like Hubstaff — that talent is everywhere and people should be able to work any time, anywhere, even in their pajamas,” says Kothari. “As a company, we believe in the same future of work as Hubstaff, which is great because our values align.”
Co-founder at Tallyfy
Who should use each?
Hubstaff. Best for globally spread remote or hybrid teams, agencies, BPOs, and growing service businesses that need more than just time tracking. With native support for payments, workforce analytics, and integrations, it's built for giving teams visibility and operational control.
Insightful. Ideal for organizations seeking robust monitoring with visual dashboards and time usage insights. It's well-suited for teams that want to track activity and performance without the need for built-in payments or in-depth analytics.
Final Verdict: Hubstaff vs. Insightful
Insightful shines as a monitoring-first platform with strong visualization tools, making it a suitable fit for teams that want basic oversight and activity tracking without the complexity of financial or operational requirements.
If you're looking for a complete workforce optimization solution from time tracking and payments to productivity insights, Hubstaff is the more powerful, scalable choice. It's designed to support growing businesses that need real-time data, automation, and integration across operations. If you think Hubstaff could be the right fit for your business, take it for a test drive with a free, 14-day trial.
Want to unlock your team's full potential?
Start a free 14-day trial of Hubstaff for better time and activity tracking.