Buddy Punch vs. Hubstaff

Buddy Punch vs. Hubstaff: Side-By-Side Comparison

Buddy Punch vs. Hubstaff: Detailed Comparison

While Buddy Punch and Hubstaff are both employee time tracking apps, the two platforms are built for very different use cases. Read on to determine which option is right for your company.

Buddy Punch is better for preventing time theft by deskless employees

Hubstaff is designed for employees who do all of their work on computers. Buddy Punch, on the other hand, is designed for employees who don’t work at desks (construction, field services, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, etc.). Because of who it’s designed for, Buddy Punch includes a lot of features that help managers keep their teams accountable. You can:

• Collect employees’ locations when they clock in and out to make sure they were on site when logging time.
• Track their locations in real-time the whole time they’re on the clock.
• Set up geofences that prevent employees from clocking in while offsite.
• Require employees to take a photo of themselves when clocking in/out to prevent buddy punching.
• Enable facial recognition on Apple devices to verify employees’ identities before they can clock in or out.

Additionally, Buddy Punch alerts you about issues in the field so you can stay up to date even when everyone isn’t working together in the same place. You can set up notifications to get an alert when an employee clocks in late, clocks out early, or misses a shift entirely, and you can also get a notification when an employee is nearing overtime to prevent unexpected labor costs.

While Hubstaff does have features for geofencing and real-time GPS tracking, they’re not as robust as Buddy Punch’s features, and they’re also significantly more expensive. Hubstaff’s geofences only remind employees to clock in and out when entering or exiting a geofence; they don’t block offsite punches like Buddy Punch.

As far as costs go, Hubstaff’s plans that include real-time GPS tracking and geofencing start at $13.33/seat per month ($10/seat per month for the Team plan plus $3.33/seat per month for the Locations add-on). However, you can get real-time GPS tracking and geofencing in Buddy Punch starting at $6.99/user per month — almost half the cost of Hubstaff.

Hubstaff is the better option for preventing knowledge worker time theft

If your primary goal is to monitor what your employees are doing on their computers while they’re on the clock, Hubstaff is the clear choice. Buddy Punch does not have any employee computer activity tracking features.

With features like screenshots (automatically capture snapshots of employees’ computer screens at regular intervals), idle time detection (identify when employees are clocked in but not doing anything on their computers), and app/URL tracking (see which sites and apps employees are using while they’re working), Hubstaff makes it easy to identify when knowledge workers are stealing time.

If time theft isn’t a concern, Buddy Punch is much more affordable

If you don’t need Hubstaff’s computer monitoring features and are just looking for a better way to track time for your employees, Buddy Punch is a much more affordable option. Here’s a comparison of what you’ll pay in both tools to get access to key workforce management features:

While Hubstaff does offer two lower-cost plans that are similarly priced to Buddy Punch’s lower-cost plans, Buddy Punch’s lower-cost plans give you significantly more for the money. You essentially have to be on Hubstaff’s $10/user Team plan to get the full benefit of using the system for tracking employee time for payroll and compliance purposes.

Both platforms are stronger for different types of integrations

Buddy Punch integrates with nearly 20 different payroll systems, so you’ll likely be able to integrate with your existing payroll provider to pass your timesheet data to payroll automatically. Hubstaff, on the other hand, only integrates with three payroll providers — Payoneer, Deel, and Gusto. It’s built more for salaried employees and teams of contractors where payroll isn’t as much of a concern.

On the other hand, Buddy Punch doesn’t offer integrations with any tools beyond payroll and accounting systems. It does have a Zapier integration and an API you can use to connect it to other tools if you have the technical resources to do so, but there are no pre-built integrations with simple setups.

Because Hubstaff is built for computer-based teams, it offers a lot of integrations with the tools those teams use: project management systems like Asana and Trello, customer support software like Zendesk and Freshdesk, and even messaging platforms and CRMs like Slack and Salesforce. If your team is using these systems to plan their work, log time to client projects, and collaborate as a team, Hubstaff will be the better choice.

Who Hubstaff is right for vs. who Buddy Punch is right for

Hubstaff is best for employees who do all of their wok on computers; Buddy Punch is best for hourly, deskless employees. Both tools are excellent at preventing time theft for the types of businesses they’re best suited for, and both have all of the features those types of teams need. If you pick based between them based on how your employees work, you’ll make the right choice.

However, if affordability is a big concern for your business and one of your primary goals for switching to time tracking software is simplifying payroll, Buddy Punch is the better option for your team. It’s significantly less expensive than Hubstaff for the features you need to keep payroll accurate, and it offers a lot more options for transferring your timesheet data to your payroll software.