Hubstaff Review: Overview, Features, Pricing & Alternatives in 2025

Wasting hours tracking time by hand?

If you’re like most managers, you know the struggle of chasing down timesheets, verifying work hours, and juggling payroll for your team—especially with remote or field staff.

The honest truth is, manual time tracking eats up hours every single week, and it’s probably draining your focus from managing projects or growing your business.

That’s exactly the issue Hubstaff aims to fix, with a toolset designed to automate time tracking, bring transparency to team activities, and roll payroll and project management into one easy system—saving you hours and hassle every pay period.

In this review, I’ll break down how Hubstaff can simplify your administrative workload and help you get back to focusing on real work instead of paperwork.

In this Hubstaff review, you’ll learn what features actually work, what sets Hubstaff apart from other tools, honest opinions on pricing, and whether alternative platforms might suit your situation better.

You’ll walk away with the insights and confidence to choose the features you need to run your team better.

Let’s get started.

Hubstaff Overview

Hubstaff is a software company focused on team productivity and time management. Based in Indiana, they have been developing solutions since 2012 to bring complete transparency to remote and hybrid work.

While they serve businesses of all sizes, from freelancers to enterprises, I’ve found their real strength is providing tools for remote and distributed teams. This specific focus deeply influences their entire product design and workflow.

Instead of acquisitions, their growth comes from consistent, user-driven updates. You’ll see through this Hubstaff review how adding their Hubstaff Tasks tool expanded them into agile project management.

Unlike simpler timers like Toggl, Hubstaff purposefully bundles monitoring with critical business functions. Their key differentiator is its integrated payroll and GPS tracking, making it an all-in-one platform rather than just another time tracker.

You’ll find them used by a real mix of organizations, including marketing agencies, construction firms with mobile teams, and software developers that need to track billable project time with precision.

From my analysis, their current strategy is all about automating your administrative workload. They’re betting that you want to connect time worked directly to both payments and project budgets, saving your business significant administrative hassle.

Now let’s examine their core capabilities.

Hubstaff Features

Struggling to really know where your team’s time goes?

Hubstaff features offer a comprehensive suite of tools designed to optimize your workforce productivity. Here are the five main Hubstaff features that solve common business problems.

1. Time Tracking

Manual timesheets are a nightmare, right?

Inaccurate time logging leads to billing errors and project overruns. This means you’re constantly second-guessing how time is actually spent.

Hubstaff’s foundational time tracking feature allows your team to track hours across devices, generating accurate timesheets you can review. From my testing, the ease of starting and stopping timers for specific tasks is truly intuitive. This feature provides a clear, granular record of all work activity.

This means you get precise data for payroll, client billing, and project progress, ensuring accountability and accurate cost allocation.

2. Employee Monitoring & Productivity Tracking

Worried about what your remote team is actually doing?

Lack of visibility into employee activity can lead to productivity dips and concerns about focus. It’s tough to manage what you can’t see.

This Hubstaff feature provides insights into activity with customizable screenshots and app/URL tracking, while emphasizing transparency. What I found impressive is how employees are notified about monitoring and can even delete their own time and data. This helps identify and address inefficiencies effectively.

So you can ensure your team remains focused on work-related tasks, leading to improved output and better resource utilization.

3. GPS Tracking & Geofencing

How do you track mobile teams accurately?

Manually tracking field teams leads to inaccurate time logs and accountability issues. This often results in billing disputes or lost revenue.

Hubstaff’s GPS tracking and geofencing solutions monitor locations in real-time, even automating clock-ins/outs based on job site entry. Here’s what I found: the automatic timer activation when entering a geofenced area is a game-changer for field service companies. This feature ensures precise time capture for mobile workforces.

This means you’ll reduce manual errors, improve billing accuracy, and maintain accountability for time spent at specific client locations.

4. Payroll & Invoicing

Tired of endless manual payroll calculations?

Automating payroll and invoicing based on tracked time removes administrative burdens and ensures timely, accurate payments. Hubstaff streamlines your financial processes. From my testing, the automated payments to international teams via integrations like PayPal significantly simplify global operations. This feature ensures accurate and timely payments.

This means you can say goodbye to manual calculations, reduce administrative overhead, and ensure both your team and clients are paid accurately.

5. Project Management (Hubstaff Tasks)

Are your projects constantly going off track?

Ineffective task management leads to missed deadlines and budget overruns. You need a clear way to organize and track team progress.

Hubstaff Tasks provides an agile, visual project management tool to organize, assign, and track tasks with different views. This is where Hubstaff shines; the Kanban boards for visualizing workflows make it easy to see project progress at a glance. This feature helps teams manage their workload and stay on budget.

This means your team can stay on schedule, visualize their workload, and ensure projects are completed within their allocated timelines and budgets.

These Hubstaff features actually work together to create a complete workforce management system, giving you unparalleled insights into your team’s productivity.

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Hubstaff Pricing

Hubstaff pricing – clear or confusing?

Hubstaff pricing follows a transparent tiered model, including a free plan, making it easy to understand the cost structure and choose what fits your business best.

Plan	Price & Features
Free Plan	Free • Single user • Basic time tracking • Activity levels • Limited screenshots & reports
Starter Plan	$4.99/user/month (billed annually) • Time tracking & timesheets • Limited app/URL tracking • Client & invoicing • 2-day email support
Grow Plan	$7.50/user/month (billed annually) • Enhanced reports • One integration • Idle timeout detection • Project budgets & expense tracking
Team Plan	$10/user/month (billed annually) • Unlimited app/URL tracking • Payments & payroll • Unlimited integrations • Scheduling & attendance • Timesheet approvals
Enterprise Plan	$25/user/month (billed annually) • Higher API limits • ACH payments • HIPAA/SOC-2 Type II compliance • SSO & account provisioning • Dedicated setup & support

1. Value Assessment

Predictable value, transparent cost.

What I found regarding Hubstaff pricing is that their tiered structure offers clear value at each step, ensuring you only pay for features you genuinely need. The annual billing provides a notable cost saving for your long-term budget planning, aligning with your business growth.

This means your monthly costs stay predictable as you scale, with direct paths to upgrade when your team needs more.

2. Trial/Demo Options

Try before you buy, wisely.

Hubstaff offers a 14-day free trial across all paid plans, allowing you to thoroughly test features without initial commitment. From my cost analysis, what impressed me is how this trial often doesn’t require a credit card, reducing your risk of accidental charges.

This helps you evaluate the software’s fit for your operations and ensure it genuinely adds value before committing to full pricing.

3. Plan Comparison

Choose the right fit.

The Starter plan is great for small teams, but if you need advanced features like payroll automation, the Team plan is a much better investment. What stands out is how more powerful features are often tiered up, pushing you towards higher plans for a comprehensive solution.

This helps you match pricing to actual usage requirements, ensuring your budget aligns perfectly with your team’s needs.

My Take: Hubstaff’s pricing is designed to scale, offering clear options from solo users to enterprises, though some core features nudge you towards higher-value plans for complete functionality.

The overall Hubstaff pricing reflects excellent value for scalable workforce management.

Hubstaff Reviews

What do real customers actually think?

To understand what actual users experience, I analyzed numerous Hubstaff reviews across leading platforms like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius, giving you a balanced view of its real-world performance.

1. Overall User Satisfaction

Users seem generally satisfied.

From my review analysis, Hubstaff consistently maintains strong ratings, typically averaging 4.5/5 stars across various review platforms. What I found in user feedback is how most customers appreciate its comprehensive capabilities, particularly for remote team management, indicating high overall user satisfaction.

This suggests you can expect a reliable and feature-rich experience.

2. Common Praise Points

Its features consistently impress.

Users repeatedly praise Hubstaff’s precise time tracking, robust reporting, and seamless integrations with other tools. From customer feedback, the automation of payroll and invoicing stands out, significantly reducing administrative burden and saving valuable time for businesses.

This means your administrative tasks could be greatly streamlined, boosting efficiency.

3. Frequent Complaints

Some users find it overwhelming.

While largely positive, some reviews highlight that Hubstaff’s extensive features can be overwhelming for businesses with only basic time tracking needs. What stands out in user feedback is how certain essential features are gated behind higher-tier plans, which can lead to increased costs for growing needs.

These issues seem to be minor for most users, but worth considering for your specific context.

The overall Hubstaff reviews reveal a strong, positive user sentiment with minor caveats for specific use cases.

Best Hubstaff Alternatives

Which Hubstaff alternative is right for you?

The best Hubstaff alternatives include several strong options, each better suited for different business situations, team structures, and specific budget considerations.

1. Time Doctor

Need extremely granular productivity insights?

Time Doctor often emphasizes more in-depth productivity monitoring, providing detailed reports on non-work-related usage and a “Poor Time Use” report. From my competitive analysis, Time Doctor offers versatile and comprehensive reporting for identifying time wasted, though its payroll integration is less automated.

Choose Time Doctor if your primary need is robust, granular productivity analysis and deeper insight into time spent.

2. Toggl Track

Seeking simplicity in time tracking?

Toggl Track is known for its ease of use and minimalist approach, making it ideal for teams prioritizing straightforward time tracking without extensive monitoring. What I found comparing options is that Toggl Track prioritizes intuitive user experience for basic time logging, often with a more generous free tier.

Consider this alternative when you need simple, intuitive time tracking without the extensive employee monitoring features.

3. DeskTime

Focusing on automated activity categorization?

DeskTime provides a strong focus on automatically categorizing websites and applications as productive or unproductive, offering clear insights into efficiency. From my analysis, DeskTime offers detailed productivity analysis with automatic activity categorization, which simplifies understanding productive time versus unproductive time.

Choose DeskTime if your main requirement is detailed productivity analysis with automatic activity classification.

4. ClickUp

Prefer an all-in-one project management solution?

ClickUp is primarily a comprehensive project management platform with integrated time tracking, excelling in task management, workflows, and collaboration tools. Alternative-wise, ClickUp provides a full-fledged project management suite with time tracking built-in, though it’s less specialized in workforce monitoring.

Opt for ClickUp if your core need is an encompassing project management tool that includes time tracking.

The best Hubstaff alternatives depend on your specific business needs and feature prioritization rather than just general comparisons.

Hubstaff Setup

Is Hubstaff implementation a complex undertaking?

A Hubstaff review reveals a generally straightforward deployment, though the actual Hubstaff setup can vary based on your desired feature depth. My analysis sets realistic expectations for your implementation journey.

1. Setup Complexity & Timeline

Don’t expect instant, comprehensive deployment.

The initial Hubstaff setup for basic time tracking is simple, but configuring advanced features like monitoring, geofencing, or payroll rules requires more time. From my implementation analysis, the depth of configuration significantly impacts your timeline, so plan for what functionalities you truly need from day one.

You’ll need to define your requirements clearly to avoid setting up features not included in your chosen plan.

2. Technical Requirements & Integration

Consider your existing IT landscape.

Hubstaff is cloud-based with native desktop and mobile apps, offering broad compatibility. What I found about deployment is that it runs quietly, consuming minimal resources, so major infrastructure overhauls are rarely needed. This makes it adaptable for diverse teams.

Your IT team will focus on device installation and ensuring internet connectivity, rather than complex server configurations.

3. Training & Change Management

Prepare for user adoption and ongoing communication.

Employees will quickly grasp basic time tracking, but managers need training for reporting, project tools, and payroll features. From my analysis, clear communication minimizes privacy concerns related to monitoring features and helps ensure smooth user acceptance.

Invest in internal communication plans and leverage Hubstaff’s tutorials to guide your team through new processes.

4. Support & Success Factors

How much help will you get?

Hubstaff offers tiered email support, from two-day SLA for Starter to concierge setup for Enterprise plans. From my implementation analysis, support quality varies by plan tier, so consider your team’s technical comfort and complexity needs when choosing.

Prioritize understanding your chosen plan’s support level to align with your internal resources and ensure a successful rollout.

Overall, Hubstaff setup is largely straightforward, but successful implementation hinges on clear planning and managing user expectations, especially for monitoring features.

Bottom Line

Does Hubstaff fit your business needs?

This Hubstaff review synthesizes the key findings, offering a clear final recommendation to help you decide if it’s the right time tracking and workforce management solution for your business.

1. Who This Works Best For

Ideal for managing remote or field teams.

Hubstaff excels for businesses with remote, hybrid, or field-based employees needing detailed insights into time utilization, productivity, and project progress. Based on my user analysis, companies requiring robust GPS tracking and geofencing will find immense value, especially for mobile workforces and accurate job site timekeeping.

You’ll succeed if your primary goal is gaining clear visibility and accountability across a dispersed team.

2. Overall Strengths

Comprehensive features deliver unparalleled visibility.

Hubstaff succeeds by offering robust time tracking, detailed employee monitoring, automated payroll, and invoicing, alongside strong GPS capabilities for mobile teams. From my comprehensive analysis, its integrated project management tools enhance workflow efficiency, streamlining tasks from time entry to client billing with precision.

These strengths translate directly into reduced administrative burden and improved operational efficiency for your business.

3. Key Limitations

Extensive features can feel overwhelming.

While powerful, Hubstaff’s broad functionality might be too much for businesses with only basic time tracking requirements, leading to potential overspending. Based on this review, some core features are tiered, increasing costs for those needing a complete solution, and monitoring features might raise privacy concerns for some employees.

These limitations are manageable if you prioritize comprehensive control, but consider alternatives if simplicity or lower cost is paramount.

4. Final Recommendation

Hubstaff earns a strong recommendation.

You should choose this software if your business requires detailed accountability, productivity insights, and automated administrative processes for a remote or mobile workforce. From my analysis, it offers a powerful, integrated suite of tools that effectively addresses the complexities of managing dispersed teams.

My confidence level is high for businesses seeking comprehensive workforce management and clear operational visibility.

This Hubstaff review highlights its strong value for businesses prioritizing detailed workforce management, though you should align its comprehensive features with your specific needs.