ActivTrak Reviews

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Editor's Rating
Overall
Features
Price
Customer Service

Positives

• Non-evasive screenshots
• Thorough reporting
• User-friendly
• Free plan available
• Admin mobile app

Negatives

• Integrations paid separately
• Lack of email tracking

Monitoring your employees isn’t the most glamorous thing to do, but it’s necessary. Fortunately, companies like ActivTrak have come up with smart ways for you to be on top of your workers’ productivity without breaching their privacy. Unlike other monitoring systems, ActivTrak doesn’t take screenshots all day long, but the app does take screenshots when an employee goes against your company policies. The software will also automatically blur any personal information on the image, such as Social Security numbers. To make things even better, the comprehensive reporting ActivTrak offers is the perfect way to check where you need to improve operational bottlenecks, which employees may need help, and more. Prices start at $9 per month per user, but you can try ActivTrak’s paid features with the 14-day free trial available. Plus, there’s a free plan that supports up to three users.

Features

ActivTrak is a thorough monitoring platform that allows managers to easily track employees’ work time, productivity, and most-used apps. Since it’s a stealthy monitoring system, the software doesn’t let employees start and stop tracking. Instead, ActivTrak either works non-stop or during a working schedule set by the admin. Due to this, it’s not the best solution for companies who offer employees a flexible schedule or need them to work from their personal computers.

Even so, the system is great when it comes to idle detection and setting up specific alerts. For instance, a manager can have a warning sign sent to their email when someone goes on Facebook or googles a particular term, such as ‘job search’. That being said, ActivTrak doesn’t monitor keystrokes, nor does it take recurrent screenshots. The company believes that employees deserve a certain level of trust and privacy – that’s why admins only have access to real-time screenshots of workers’ screens or when a violation against your business’s policies happens.

ActivTrak offers a lot of freedom when it comes to its configuration. Starting with alarms, you can create warning signs for virtually all types of infringements, including USB plugins, file transfers, app usage, and website visits. A neat addition is that you can set up pop-up messages that appear when employees do something they shouldn’t. For instance, if they log into Facebook, a reminder appears telling them to only spend a certain amount of time on social media. Additionally, you can filter or even block specific domains within the platform, such as social media platforms, YouTube, adult websites, etc.

Reporting

The icing on the cake is the automated reports that ActivTrak creates. When you log into your admin account, you can easily find visual charts with everything you need to know about your employee’s productivity. Besides letting you know whether a specific worker has been slacking off, these reports help you find coaching opportunities, bottlenecks, and more. It’s also easy to find this type of data for specific departments, such as customer service or marketing, as ActivTrak allows you to group users the way you prefer.

The platform goes even further with Workforce Insights. Here, you’ll find more detailed information about employees’ productivity, efficiency, and focus over a certain period of time. There are even dedicated tabs for workload balance, technology usage, and activity breakdown.

Integrations

ActivTrak offers some useful third-party integrations, but they come as paid add-ons. This means that for you to integrate the software with other apps, you’ll need to pay $2 extra per month per user. The company calls the integration service ActivConnect, and it offers pre-built productivity dashboards for Microsoft Teams, Power BI, and Tableau. It also works with monday.com by including ActivTrak’s dashboards and reports into your stack. ActivConnect includes other integration options, like Splunk, Zapier, Salesforce, Xero, and Jira.

Mobile

Admins can access their dashboards on the go with ActivTrak’s iOS and Android apps, but there isn’t a mobile tracking solution. In other words, ActivTrak can’t monitor employees’ work phones, which may be a downside for some. Still, the dashboard on mobile looks great and works perfectly, allowing managers to check on their teams’ productivity and create new rules wherever they are. Those who don’t want to install the app can also log into the admin dashboard on the mobile-optimized website.

Setup

Setting up ActivTrak might take some time, but the process is a piece of cake. Everything is logically placed, and you won’t have any problems going through the settings. The best part is that ActivTrak already comes with pre-built configurations, which saves a lot of time. An example of that is website and software categorization, as the monitoring platform already knows what is deemed productive and unproductive by most companies. Of course, you can always change this pre-configuration by toggling the productivity button.

The only thing we didn’t love about this process was that the software doesn’t accept manual entries. Instead, you’ll have to wait for employees to use a certain app for more than five minutes for it to appear. But since the platform allows you to define unique productive websites and apps for different teams and individual workers, we’ll let it slide.

Installing the monitoring software is easy. The user only needs to download the installer, double-click on it, and wait for a few seconds – it’s that simple. ActivTrak desktop tracker doesn’t need any configuration either. It’s also possible to install the app remotely, which is a great advantage for companies that have a dedicated IT staff.

Pricing

ActivTrak offers a limited free plan that monitors up to three users and comes with 3GB of storage. Although this isn’t enough for a big company, it can be a good way for small businesses with limited budgets to monitor new hires. However, a paid account is necessary in the long run. Prices start at $9 per month per user with an annual plan, and ActivTrak offers all the tools required to check users’ productivity and distractions. For more comprehensive reporting – such as goal settings, health dashboards, and work efficiency – you’ll need a Premium subscription, which costs $15 per month per user. Thankfully, there’s a 14-day free trial available to test these advanced features.

It’s also possible to get a personalized platform and integrations by contacting ActivTrak directly. The provider only accepts credit cards as a payment option for periodic billing subscriptions, but some customers may be eligible to pay invoices by check, credit card, wire transfer, or direct deposit.

Customer Service

Regardless of your subscription, you can contact ActivTrak via email, live chat, or phone. But paid users enjoy priority support. For Advanced customers, this means 12 hours of customer service on weekdays, while Premium users get support around the clock. Paying customers also get periodic diagnostics and health checks, and the Premium plan comes with Productivity Lab recommendations.

Of course, there are also plenty of materials available online. From tutorial videos to in-depth guides, a blog, and case studies, you’ll find answers to everything you may need on ActivTrak’s website. Another option is to go to the company’s social media pages. ActivTrak is active on Twitter and Facebook, and you can even contact the provider via Messenger and expect a response within a day.

Bottom Line

Overall, ActivTrak is a great platform to monitor employees. But it isn’t ideal for all types of companies. Since users can’t start and stop tracking whenever they want, the software isn’t a good fit for remote companies with flexible schedules. It’s also not recommended for smaller companies where employees use their personal computers for work. Still, other types of businesses can benefit from ActivTrak’s non-evasive yet comprehensive features. For example, the alarm system is the perfect way for you to know when an employee is doing something they shouldn’t while at work.

Meanwhile, the ability to block domains within the platform allows you to set up clear virtual boundaries without using confusing firewall settings. Then, there are the automatic productivity reports that ActivTrak creates, which enable you to quickly pinpoint problems within your team. The best part is that you can use ActivTrak for up to three users at zero cost and try all the paid features by taking advantage of the 14-day free trial.