GPS and mobile
Field staff tracking with geofencing. We do not have it and are not pretending otherwise.
Head to head
Employee Desk vs Hubstaff
Two products that overlap on time tracking and diverge almost everywhere else. Hubstaff is a global time tracking platform with payroll, invoicing and GPS. Employee Desk is employee management with tracking attached.
- 7-day trial
- No keystroke logging
- INR pricing published
What each product is
Employee Desk
Employee management with time tracking attached
Attendance, leave, holidays, employee records, projects, tasks and daily work reports, with an optional desktop time tracker on top. Available as a cloud subscription. Built in India, priced in rupees.
- Attendance and leave are core, not an add-on
- Per-user pricing: pay only for active employees; admins are free
- No keystroke content is ever recorded
- Employees see everything recorded about them
Hubstaff
Time tracking first, with payroll and invoicing around it
Hubstaff started with time tracking for distributed teams and built outward: activity measurement, screenshots, GPS and mobile tracking, payroll for contractors, and client invoicing from tracked hours. It is cloud only.
If tracked time is the axis your business runs on — hourly contractors, field teams, agencies billing by the hour — that architecture is a good match.
Feature comparison
Compared on facts that can be checked from public documentation. Where something is genuinely unclear it is marked rather than guessed at.
| Employee Desk | Hubstaff | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Employee management + tracking | Time tracking + payroll/invoicing |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud only |
| Attendance register with shift policy | Yes | Time-based, not a register |
| Leave management with accrual | Yes | Time off requests |
| Holiday calendar | Yes | Varies |
| Projects and tasks | Yes | Yes |
| Daily work reports | Yes | Notes on time entries |
| Desktop tracker | Windows · macOS · Ubuntu | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Mobile app | No | Yes |
| GPS and geofencing | No | Yes |
| Screenshots | Optional, off by default | Yes, configurable |
| Employee sees own screenshots | Always | Configuration dependent |
| Keystroke content | Never | Not recorded |
| Stealth mode | Does not exist | Check current options |
| Payroll processing | Monthly payroll with payslips and PF/ESI/PT | Yes |
| Client invoicing | No | Yes |
| Native integrations | No | Extensive |
| Currency | INR | USD |
| Support hours | IST | Global |
Check Hubstaff’s own site before you decide. Last checked against Hubstaff’s public pages on 8 October 2026. Software changes. Everything on this page is written from Hubstaff’s public documentation and pricing pages at the time of writing, we do not restate their prices here because they move, and we correct this page when we are told it is wrong. If you find something inaccurate, email contact@digitalgeniussolution.com and we will fix it.
Where Employee Desk is stronger
01
Attendance and leave depth
A real attendance register with shifts, grace, late policy and shift rosters, plus leave with accrual and balances.
Attendance → 02Enforced transparency
Employees see their own screenshots. No stealth mode exists. That is a product guarantee rather than a configuration.
Privacy → 03INR pricing and GST
Rupee prices, GST invoices, and IST support hours.
Pricing → 04Per-user pricing
Pay only for active employees; admins are free.
Pricing →Where Hubstaff may be stronger
Written plainly, because a comparison page that finds no fault with itself is not worth reading.
Contractor payouts and invoicing
Paying contractors and invoicing clients from tracked hours, inside one product.
Integration breadth
A large catalogue of native integrations, where Employee Desk offers file exports only.
Track record and reviews
A longer history and thousands of public reviews, which some procurement processes weight heavily.
Global scale
Multi-currency, multi-region and around-the-clock support for teams spread worldwide.
Which should you choose?
Employee Desk
- Indian company paying in rupees.
- Needs attendance and leave as well as tracking.
- Team will accept a tracker only if it is genuinely transparent.
- Wants published rupee pricing without a sales call.
Hubstaff
- Distributed or global team, especially with field staff.
- Needs GPS, mobile tracking or geofencing.
- Wants payroll and client invoicing from tracked hours.
- Depends on native integrations with an existing stack.
- Procurement requires a large established vendor.
Pricing
Our cloud prices, published. For Hubstaff’s current numbers, check their pricing page — we will not restate a figure that may already have changed.
Cloud
Starter
Core HR, shifts and chat
₹59 / user / month
+ 18% GST
- Employee records
- Attendance
- Leave management
- Holiday calendar
- Custom roles & permissions
- Organization settings
- Session control
- Shifts & roster
- Team chat
Cloud · most chosen
Growth
Projects, tasks, work reports, timesheets and activity tracking
₹99 / user / month
+ 18% GST
- Everything in Starter, plus:
- Projects
- Tasks
- Daily work reports
- Timesheets
- Desktop time tracker (hours, active/idle)
Cloud
Pro
Screenshots, live productivity, planning, payroll and audit
₹149 / user / month
+ 18% GST
- Everything in Growth, plus:
- Screenshots, live board & retention
- Live screen capture, day timeline, browser tab history, top apps & pages, screenshots
- Productivity insights
- Workforce planning
- Payroll
- Audit log
Prices exclude 18% GST. Billed monthly per active user.
Need an on-premise deployment? Contact sales. See the cost comparison for how the pricing models differ.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Employee Desk or Hubstaff?
Neither, in the abstract. If you need GPS, contractor payouts or a wide integration catalogue, Hubstaff is the better product. If you need an attendance register with Indian shift and leave conventions, or rupee billing, Employee Desk is. The requirement decides it, not the feature count.
Can we migrate from Hubstaff?
There is no built-in importer. Employees and projects are set up in the portal; historical time entries and screenshots do not migrate.
Does Employee Desk have a mobile app?
No. The web portal is responsive so attendance can be marked from a phone browser, but there is no native mobile app and no GPS tracking.
Can we run both during an evaluation?
Yes, and for a two-week evaluation it is the sensible thing to do. Run both trackers on the same machines and compare what the reports say about the same day.
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Run both for a week
A 7-day trial with your real team is a better comparison than any table. Install the tracker on two machines and look at what the reports actually say.
- 7-day trial
- No credit card
- Cancel anytime