Hubstaff is a mature, well-built global time tracking platform. The reasons teams move to Employee Desk are consistent and specific: they need it on their own server, they need attendance and leave in the same system, or they need to be invoiced in rupees.
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.
Hubstaff is a cloud time tracking product with strong roots in remote and distributed teams. Its centre of gravity is time tracking, activity measurement, GPS and mobile tracking for field teams, plus payroll and invoicing built around tracked hours.
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 | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Cloud, self-hosted, private cloud, white label | Cloud (SaaS) |
| Run it on your own server | Yes | No |
| Attendance with shifts and late policy | Yes | Time tracking rather than an attendance register |
| Leave management with accrual and balances | Yes | Time off requests; policy depth differs |
| Holiday calendar | Yes | Varies by plan |
| Desktop tracker | Windows, macOS, Ubuntu | Windows, macOS, Linux, plus mobile |
| Mobile app with GPS | No | Yes |
| Screenshots | Optional, randomised, employee-visible | Yes, configurable |
| Keystroke content logging | Never | Not recorded; activity counted |
| Employee sees own screenshots | Yes | Depends on configuration |
| Payroll processing | No | Yes |
| Invoicing and client billing | Hours export; no invoicing module | Yes |
| Integrations | REST API and webhooks | Large native integration catalogue |
| Currency and invoicing | INR with GST | USD |
| Support timezone | IST, with on-site visits in North India | Global, primarily US hours |
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.
A self-hosted licence puts the whole application, including screenshots, on your own server. This is the single most common reason customers arrive from Hubstaff, and it is not something a cloud-only product can answer.
Self-hosted → 02Shifts, grace windows, late policy, regularisation, leave types with accrual and a shared holiday calendar. If you would otherwise buy an attendance product alongside a tracker, that is one system rather than two.
Attendance → 03Published INR pricing, GST invoicing, and no exchange-rate line item on your card statement each month.
Pricing → 04Employees see their own screenshots in the same gallery their manager uses and are notified at capture. There is no configuration that hides monitoring from the person being monitored.
Privacy → 05IST support hours, and an on-site visit is possible across Mohali, Chandigarh and Panchkula. For a first rollout that is worth more than it sounds.
Contact → 06A self-hosted licence is a flat annual band. Per-user billing keeps climbing with headcount; a band does not.
Cost comparison →Written plainly, because a comparison page that finds no fault with itself is not worth reading.
Hubstaff has a considerably larger catalogue of native integrations with project management, accounting and payroll tools. We have a REST API and webhooks, which covers the same ground but as an integration project rather than a switch you flip.
If you have field staff, drivers or site engineers and you need GPS and geofencing, Hubstaff does that and Employee Desk does not. This is a genuine gap rather than a positioning choice.
Hubstaff can pay contractors from tracked hours and raise client invoices. Employee Desk exports clean data and stops there, so you keep whatever runs your payroll today.
A larger company, a longer track record and a bigger public review base. If procurement wants an established international vendor with thousands of published reviews, that is a real advantage.
Multi-currency billing, regional data centres and support across time zones. If your team is spread across four continents, that infrastructure matters.
We do not restate Hubstaff’s prices here because they change; check their pricing page directly. Ours are published in full, in rupees, and are the same numbers on every page of this site.
Attendance, leave and holidays for a team that just needs the records right.
₹59 / user / month
Adds the work side: projects, daily reports and the desktop time tracker.
₹99 / user / month
Adds screenshots with context, the live board, retention rules and the API.
₹149 / user / month
Self-hosted licence bands start at ₹40,000 per year. Full detail on the pricing page, and a headcount-by-headcount cost comparison on the cost page.
No. Hubstaff is a cloud product and does not offer a self-hosted edition. If running the application on your own server is a requirement rather than a preference, that requirement rules it out regardless of everything else.
We can import employees, projects and historical time entries from a Hubstaff CSV export. Screenshots do not migrate, which in practice matters less than people expect because old captures are rarely looked at.
Hubstaff measures activity from keyboard and mouse input rather than recording what is typed, which is the same approach Employee Desk takes. Neither product is a keylogger.
It depends on headcount and plan, and the honest answer is on the cost comparison page. Cloud plans start at ₹59 per user per month; the self-hosted licence is flat by band, which is where the difference becomes large at scale.
No. If you need field-staff GPS tracking, Hubstaff is the better product for that requirement and we would rather say so than sell you something that does not do it.
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.