Purchasing an employee monitoring software is a big decision, and there are many factors which will affect your final choice. One of them is definitely the price. Even though there are software options which aren’t expensive at all, free monitoring software is available, but at what cost?

Yes, you can get an employee monitoring software without paying for it, but it will have limited features, and it might not be as useful as a paid solution. Which is why we created this article, to show you the main differences between paid and free employee monitoring. So let’s dive in.

Limited Growth Capabilities

When you get a desktop monitoring software for free you can’t expect to use it freely forever. Most of these free options are only limited to up to 10 team members. That’s amazing if you’re just starting out and your team is still small. However, as time goes by your team will certainly grow, and sooner or later you’ll need to pay for the software.

When the need for a new software shows up, you’ll need to invest a lot of time to do research all over again and find the solution that suits you. Basically, you would be doing double work only to get a couple of months for free. Is it really worth it?

Absence of Support

Every tool out there has support. However, free tools usually get non-priority emails they can contact in case of an issue. With the paid options, you would have access to a dedicated account manager (in most cases), and a phone support which is available 24/7.

It might not seem like much, but having access to priority support can be extremely valuable. No software is perfect, things can go wrong at any point, and you would want that those issues can be resolved in a timely manner.

Limited Data Storage

If you want to monitor employees’ computer activity for free the data this software collects will be stored on the cloud, and you can expect that it will be really limited. This maybe doesn’t seem like an issue, but let us explain a few things.

One of the benefits of employee tracking systems is that you can deliver fair employee evaluations. If you lose the tracking data after a month, this won’t be possible. Another benefit are improved project estimates, and again – once you lose the data you won’t have any use of this benefit.

Inadequate Features

One of the main reasons free software is free is the fact that it has limited features compared to the paid version. This is why you should carefully research the options and pay attention to all features these manufacturers offer.

Some tools might give you the option of attendance, but no project time tracking, and if you want to use the software because of projects it’s definitely better to pay for a monitoring solution.

Wrap Up

These are just the main reasons why free monitoring solution could cost you more than a paid one. We don’t have anything against free options. We’re grateful to people who make them, and they are very useful for small teams and freelancers. But if your team consists of more than 10 people, you should definitely go with the paid software.

Furthermore, we recommend you use the free trial of each solution to the maximum, test out all options and features to make sure it has exactly what you need.