If you bill clients in USD
A team invoicing US clients in dollars may prefer a vendor in the same currency, and Hubstaff invoicing from tracked hours fits that workflow directly.
Comparison · India
A Hubstaff alternative built for India
Rupee pricing with GST invoices, IST support hours, attendance and leave that match how Indian companies actually run them, and the option to keep everything on a server inside your own office.
- 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
A global platform, billed globally
Hubstaff is a US-headquartered product serving distributed teams worldwide. It works perfectly well for Indian customers, and for a company billing clients in dollars it may be the more natural fit.
The friction Indian buyers report is not about product quality. It is USD billing and the card statement that follows, GST treatment on an overseas invoice, support hours that do not overlap the Indian working day, and a time-tracking model that assumes hours rather than an attendance register with shifts, grace windows and a late policy.
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 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing currency | INR | USD |
| GST invoice from an Indian entity | Yes | Overseas invoice |
| Support hours | IST | Primarily US hours |
| On-site visit possible | Yes, Mohali / Chandigarh / Panchkula | No |
| Attendance register with shifts and grace | Yes | Time tracking model |
| Late policy and half-day rules | Yes | No |
| Casual / sick / earned leave with accrual | Yes | Generic time off |
| Indian holiday calendar | Yes | Generic calendar |
| Data hosted in India | Yes | Check current regions |
| Self-hosting inside your own office | Yes | No |
| Payroll-ready CSV in an Indian format | Yes | Generic export |
| GPS and mobile field tracking | No | Yes |
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
Billed in rupees, with GST
A GST invoice from an Indian entity that your accountant can claim input credit against, and no foreign-exchange markup on the card.
Pricing → 02Indian attendance conventions
Shift start with a grace window, late marks that convert to half-days, lunch deduction, regularisation with approval — the register Indian HR teams already maintain, automated.
Attendance → 03Leave types that match the handbook
Casual, sick, earned and work-from-home with monthly accrual, carry-forward caps and encashment. Not a generic time-off counter.
Leave → 04IST support and local presence
Support in your working day, and for companies near Mohali an actual person who can come to the office for the rollout.
Contact → 05Data in India, or in your building
Cloud hosted in an India region, or the whole application self-hosted on a server in your own office.
Self-hosted → 06Priced for Indian salary bands
From ₹59 per user per month. Per-seat pricing designed around dollar salaries reads very differently against an Indian payroll.
Cost →Where Hubstaff may be stronger
Written plainly, because a comparison page that finds no fault with itself is not worth reading.
Field staff with GPS
Drivers, site engineers and field sales. Hubstaff tracks them; Employee Desk does not.
Global teams
If half your team is outside India, multi-currency billing and follow-the-sun support are worth more than IST support hours.
Review base
A far larger volume of public reviews on the major software directories, which some procurement processes weight heavily.
Which should you choose?
Choose Employee Desk if
- You are an Indian company paying from an Indian bank account and claiming GST input credit.
- You need an attendance register, not only tracked hours.
- Your leave policy is the Indian casual / sick / earned structure.
- You want support during the Indian working day.
- You want the option to move the whole thing onto a server in your own office later.
Choose Hubstaff if
- Your team and clients are largely outside India.
- You need GPS tracking for field staff.
- You want invoicing and contractor payments driven by tracked hours.
- Native integrations with your existing stack matter more than local billing.
Pricing
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
All prices in INR, exclusive of GST. Self-hosted licences start at ₹40,000 per year. See the pricing page and what employee time tracking costs in India.
Frequently asked questions
Is Employee Desk an Indian company?
Yes. We are based in Mohali, Punjab, and invoice in rupees with GST.
Can we pay by UPI or bank transfer?
Yes. UPI, NEFT and bank transfer are all fine, alongside card payment. Annual invoices are common for self-hosted licences.
Is the data hosted in India?
Yes, our cloud runs in an India region. If your requirement is stricter than that, private cloud puts a single-tenant instance where you specify and self-hosting puts it in your own building.
Do you support Indian statutory leave rules?
The leave engine is configurable rather than pre-loaded with a specific state shops-and-establishments schedule. You configure your entitlements, accrual and carry-forward, and the product applies them consistently.
Do you visit offices?
Yes, across Mohali, Chandigarh, Panchkula and the surrounding area. Elsewhere in India we do the rollout over a call.
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