When comparing AstraChat vs Hubstaff, the Slant community recommends Hubstaff for most people. In the question“What are the most useful collaboration tools for remote teams?” Hubstaff is ranked 10th while AstraChat is ranked 12th. 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
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Pros
Pro Direct connect
Pro Secure
Messages are received from clients using secured (TLS or SSL) XMPP (jabber) protocol.
Pro Network efficient
AstraChat is tuned to make very efficient use of the network connection and processor so you can be confident that it will use very little of your battery or data allowance.
Pro Supports a lot of protocol
- RFC-3920:Core
- RFC-3921:Instant Messaging and Presence
- XEP-0012 Last Activity
- XEP-0016 Privact lists
- XEP-0054 VCARD-temp
- XEP-0085 Chat State Notifications
- XEP-0153 vCard-Based Avatars
- XEP-0172 User Nickname
- XEP-0184 Message delivery receipts
- XEP-0191 Blocking commands
- XEP-0198 Stream Management
- XEP-0199 XMPP Ping
- XEP-0176: Jingle ICE-UDP
- XEP-0136: Message Archiving
- XEP-0045: Multi-User Chat
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 No OTR service
Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. Astrachat doesn't include this protocol, that it is often included in other XMPP services.
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.