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Add to SafariWhen comparing Emacs Org-mode vs Hubstaff, the Slant community recommends Hubstaff for most people. In the question“What are the best time tracking apps for freelancers?” Hubstaff is ranked 3rd while Emacs Org-mode is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Hubstaff is:
Set up your team to automatically get paid for the hours they log using the Hubstaff app. Just input their hourly rate, the schedule you want them to be paid on (weekly, monthly, bi-weekly?), and integrate with your favorite payment service (PayPal, Payoneer, etc.)
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Ultimate flexibility
This app's flexibility is based on its minimalist approach, giving the user near-infinite freedom.
Pro Absolutely free
Emacs with Org-mode is free as in beer and free as in speech – that is, it costs nothing and it’s totally open source.
Pro Files are usable anywhere at anytime
Users are not tied to one service provider, program, platform, or database engine.
Pro Incredibly extensible
There are many plug-ins for Org-mode, including Org-habits and Org-notify. If Org-mode lacks some piece of functionality, it is very easy to add it.
Pro Agenda views
Pro Excellent unofficial Android app (orgzly)
Pro Offline support
Pro Efficient features for deadline organization
Pro Supports plaintext spreadsheets
Pro There are a lot of extensions, for exporting to html, bootstrap, js-reveal and much more
Pro Quickly add rich text
Pro Automatic payments and payroll
Set up your team to automatically get paid for the hours they log using the Hubstaff app. Just input their hourly rate, the schedule you want them to be paid on (weekly, monthly, bi-weekly?), and integrate with your favorite payment service (PayPal, Payoneer, etc.)
Pro Integrations
Hubstaff integrates with multiple project management tools and will automatically sync to update your task list.
Pro Screenshots
Hubstaff takes randomized screenshots while users are logging time. Frequency can be adjusted and screenshots can be blurred.
Pro Idle time indicator
Hubstaff detects when someone has been idle and will notify the user.
Pro URL tracking
View the URLs you've visited while tracking time on Hubstaff, and how long you spent on each one.
Pro Works offline
Users can track time offline. The software will upload screenshots, activity levels and time logs once the user reconnects to the Internet.
Pro Automatic time reports and timesheets
Hubstaff will generate reports based on time tracked by users. These can be filtered by user, project and date and exported as a PDF, CSV or in Quickbooks
Pro Activity levels and productivity measures
Activity levels are measured based on keystrokes and mouse movements (which keys were used are not recorded) and give an indication of how productive a user has been while their Hubstaff timer was running.
Pro Application monitoring
See which apps you've used while tracking time to Hubstaff and for how long.
Pro Work notes
Hubstaff users can attach work notes to their time entries to describe what has been done.
Pro Budgets
You can limit how many hours an individual in your organization is allowed to work per week to stay within budget.
Pro Has a free tier and trials for paid plans
Free for one user.
Cons
Con Unintuitive user interface
The key combinations are unintuitive and difficult to remember. This is probably because there are a lot of hidden "modes" depending on where the cursor is. Actions aren't paired with reversing actions like in other todo apps. For example, hitting shift-tab does NOT reverse the effect of hitting tab.
Con Android app isn't very good
There are several user-created apps for Android, but none seem to offer the same level of functionality as other to-do apps.
Con Not really cross platform
Although it is possible to get a lot of it working, no all in one, sync included, out of the box solution is available for mobile devices.
Con By default, a hard-to-read display
The default way of writing an outline or checklist creates a very messy wall of text that's difficult to read with no vertical spacing. You can manually add vertical spacing, but the Org operations don't preserve it. There are pretty-display modes, but you need to remember how to enable them, etc. etc.
Con Task Mangement
Built-in task manager is not too great, it's best to use a third party app for that. It could be much simpler to create and assign tasks, (5/18/2018).
Con Free options are fairly limited
Hubstaff has a free tier and two paid tier options with free trials. The free tier allows 1 user with time-tracking and activity levels functionality. If you want the rest of the functionality, you'll have to pay $7 or $10 per month for the basic or premium plan respectively. You can see the full comparison between the tiers on their website.
