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, available on your own server.
- 7-day trial
- Self-hosting available
- 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 or as a licence you install on your own server. Built in India, priced in rupees.
- Attendance and leave are core, not an add-on
- Self-hosted and private cloud are first-class options
- 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, self-hosted, private cloud, white label | 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 | No | Yes |
| Client invoicing | No | Yes |
| Native integrations | REST API and webhooks | Extensive |
| Currency | INR | USD |
| Support hours | IST | Global |
| Team size sweet spot | 10 to 250 | 5 to 1000+ |
Check Hubstaff’s own site before you decide. 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
Deployment choice
Cloud, self-hosted, private cloud or white label. Hubstaff is cloud only, which is decisive when data location is a requirement.
Self-hosted → 02Attendance and leave depth
A real attendance register with shifts, grace, late policy and regularisation, plus leave with accrual and balances.
Attendance → 03Enforced transparency
Employees see their own screenshots. No stealth mode exists. That is a product guarantee rather than a configuration.
Privacy → 04INR pricing and GST
Rupee prices, GST invoices, and IST support hours.
Pricing → 05White-label resale
Partners resell it under their own brand with signed desktop builds. Not something Hubstaff offers.
White label →Where Hubstaff may be stronger
Written plainly, because a comparison page that finds no fault with itself is not worth reading.
Payroll and invoicing
Paying contractors and invoicing clients from tracked hours, inside one product.
Integration breadth
A much larger catalogue of native integrations than an API and webhooks.
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, 10 to 250 employees.
- Needs attendance and leave as well as tracking.
- Data location is a hard requirement, now or foreseeably.
- 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 prices, published. For Hubstaff’s current numbers, check their pricing page — we will not restate a figure that may already have changed.
Cloud
Starter
Attendance, leave and holidays for a team that just needs the records right.
₹59 / user / month
- Attendance with shifts, grace window and late policy
- Leave types, balances and approvals
- Holiday calendar
- Employee records and documents
- Web portal, mobile ready
- CSV export for payroll
- Email support
Cloud · most chosen
Growth
Adds the work side: projects, daily reports and the desktop time tracker.
₹99 / user / month
- Everything in Starter
- Projects, tasks and completion tracking
- Daily work reports written against a project
- Desktop time tracker for Windows, macOS and Ubuntu
- Active and idle time from real input activity
- Team chat and web push notifications
- Attendance and tracked-time reports
Cloud
Pro
Adds screenshots with context, the live board, retention rules and the API.
₹149 / user / month
- Everything in Growth
- Screenshots at a randomised interval
- Live tracker board
- Configurable screenshot retention
- Access audit log
- REST API and webhooks
- Priority support
Self-hosted from ₹40,000 per year. See the cost comparison for the headcount arithmetic.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Employee Desk or Hubstaff?
Neither, in the abstract. If you need GPS, payroll or a wide integration catalogue, Hubstaff is the better product. If you need self-hosting, 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?
Yes. Employees, projects and historical time entries import from a Hubstaff CSV export. 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.
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