Why wAnywhere Beats Hubstaff: 6 Hidden Productivity Features You Never Knew You Needed

Productivity monitoring software is setting a new standard—offering businesses deeper workforce analytics that go beyond traditional time tracking. Whether your team is remote, on-site, or switches between both, the right platform helps reveal patterns, uncovers inefficiencies, and empowers better decisions across the board.

If you’re managing remote or hybrid teams, you’ve likely come across Hubstaff—a smart platform known for its time tracking and core productivity monitoring features, including:

• Time tracking
• GPS and location monitoring
• Online timesheets
• Task management
• Integrations with third-party tools

These features work well if your primary need is to monitor the whereabouts of your employees and time log activities. But if you want to understand how your team works, learn about their work habits, and quantify productivity, you may want to explore more comprehensive solutions that go beyond basic tracking and offer broader workforce analytics.

As work evolves, so do the tools we need to manage it. That’s where wAnywhere comes in — not just an hubstaff alternative, but an upgrade. wAnywhere goes beyond time tracking, offering advanced functionalities like,

• Real-time employee activities to understand team behavior and patterns
• Data comparison between different teams and departments
• Work trends for business process optimization
• AI-led compliance monitoring and management
• Insider threat detection and more.

To help you go beyond simple tracking and fully realize the potential of your team, we’re breaking down six potent features in this blog post that make wAnywhere a more intelligent and strategic option than Hubstaff.

wAnywhere vs Hubstaff: Quick Features Comparison

Why Basic Productivity Monitoring Tools Are No Longer Enough

Unfortunately, many businesses today are still relying on basic tools that offer only surface-level insights like:

• Total hours worked
• Check-in/check-out logs with location tracking and geofencing
• Simple productivity metrics (like idle vs. active time)
• App and website usage data without actionable context

Many teams feel confident in their current productivity software—until a security incident, performance slump, or operational blind spot catches them off guard. That’s when they realize visibility and control go far beyond time tracking.

With rising cybersecurity concerns, evolving work models, and growing productivity demands, relying solely on time tracking, such as what platforms like Hubstaff offer, may not be sufficient for today’s dynamic workforce.

What organizations increasingly need is a holistic employee monitoring solution—one that combines productivity insights with security and compliance capabilities.

The following stats show why most businesses miss out on the full potential of productivity monitoring software—only if they have just one in place:

• 58% of companies faced increased cybersecurity hurdles after shifting to remote work. This reinforces why just basic time tracking is not enough while monitoring your employees—it’s equally important to prioritize robust security protocols and comprehensive monitoring standards.
• Studies suggest that employees may disengage from basic productivity monitoring tools over time, especially when those tools rely primarily on keyboard and mouse activity to assess performance. While such data points can be helpful, they may not always reflect the full scope of an employee’s work.

For instance, employees casually do keystrokes and mouse movements just to appear like they are working and being productive. This can make managers believe that the team is working, but in reality, they are bypassing the monitoring tool—distorting productivity reports. Inaccurate reports lead managers to wrong assumptions and poor decision-making.

6 Game-Changing Features That Make wAnywhere a Better Choice than Hubstaff

1. Aux Management:

Unlike Hubstaff, which captures productivity primarily through keystrokes and mouse movements, wAnywhere goes a step further—offering accurate productivity insights even during non-digital tasks.

Every day, employees engage in work that doesn’t require active mouse or keyboard input—like offline collaboration, attending client calls on mobile, interacting with customers, or simply reading work-related documents on screen.

In certain scenarios, tools like Hubstaff that rely on digital input may interpret these activities as idle or unproductive, which can lead to skewed reports and affect team trust and accuracy. wAnywhere’s AUX Management fills this gap by helping managers track and categorize such auxiliary tasks, giving a complete and fair view of how employees spend their time.

Managers can create custom AUX codes for different departments or tasks—like meetings, client visits, or on-site work—and set specific time slots for them. Employees can easily select the right AUX code to log their non-digital activities accurately. They can also manually mark time spent on productive work like collaboration or field tasks, ensuring nothing is missed. This brings greater transparency, flexibility, and accuracy to productivity reporting— a feature not currently emphasized by Hubstaff.

2. Hybrid Analytics:

Measuring hybrid productivity can be challenging for businesses—but not with wAnywhere. wAnywhere offers deep, actionable insights that matter for you to manage your hybrid workforce with clarity and precision. wAnywhere helps you segment productivity data based on work location like remote, on-site, and hybrid. It tells you in which setup your employees are more productive and bring more output.

From accurate attendance reports to live location tracking, login/logout sessions, and deep performance insights—you get full visibility into when, where, and how your team works best—so you can allocate resources better, optimize budgets, and more. Unlike Hubstaff, which may not provide such granular hybrid reporting, wAnywhere empowers managers to optimize workflows, maintain trust, and support employees wherever they are.

3. AI-powered Facial Recognition:

Most productivity monitoring tools, like Hubstaff, still rely on outdated check-in methods like credentials. wAnywhere offers an AI-powered facial recognition feature that helps ensure accurate attendance and makes sure the right person is logging into the system. Facial recognition technology eliminates proxy attendance and buddy punching.

Generally, companies judge employee productivity based on how many hours they work and what results they deliver. But buddy punching and proxies can completely distort productivity data. By integrating biometric validation with productivity tracking, businesses can foster a culture of transparency while enhancing both performance and data security—something tools like Hubstaff don’t currently offer.

4. AI-powered Compliance Monitoring

A business can only be productive as long as it’s secure, compliant, and risk-proof.

According to studies, 46% of organizations admitted that remote employees intentionally put company data at risk — this can derail the productivity and security standards of a company. wAnywhere is a one-stop productivity monitoring software that also provides AI compliance monitoring solutions.

It comes with advanced features such as:

• Person detection (no person/unknown person/multiple person at desk)
• Object detection like mobile
• Voice detection
• PHI/PII masking
• Audit trails
• Remediation workflow and more.

wAnywhere is the best Hubstaff alternative because it’s a holistic platform that provides security-focused features along with productivity monitoring. With wAnywhere, you can minimize insider threats, safeguard compliance, and protect sensitive data — all while maximizing productivity.

5. Micro to Macro Reporting

wAnywhere offers real-time organization-wide productivity data with scores and percentages to help drive better decision-making, improve transparency, and set clearer performance benchmarks. This software takes business productivity to the next level by offering work trends, behavior, and patterns from micro to macro level. You can also compare productivity reports between different departments, managers, and individuals.

Enable goal alignment from top leadership to frontline employees, detect and address bottlenecks or inefficiencies more accurately, and support fair performance evaluations and appraisals with wAnywhere. While Hubstaff provides productivity metrics, it may not currently offer the same depth of team-level comparative insights or advanced behavioral analytics.

6. Deeper & Actionable Workforce Analytics

Designed to support teams of all shapes and sizes—whether remote, hybrid, on-site, or field-based—wAnywhere offers more than just surface-level tracking. It delivers meaningful workforce data that helps you allocate resources wisely, empower your employees, and lead with insight rather than assumptions.

What makes wAnywhere a standout Hubstaff alternative is its ability to give you a clear picture of how, where, and when your teams work best. You can break down and compare performance across departments and teams, spot productivity gaps, and identify roadblocks that may be slowing your business down.

For organizations with distributed teams, it offers real-time comparisons between remote, hybrid, and in-office productivity—backed by intuitive analytics. It even helps you understand each team’s contribution with measurable productivity percentages.

How wAnywhere Delivers More Than Just Time Tracking

Conclusion

Hubstaff might check the boxes for basic monitoring, but wAnywhere is designed for companies that want more—more clarity, more control, more meaningful results. Success in the dynamic work environment of today depends on visibility, trust, and data that drives action in addition to activity logs.

If you’re ready to lead with insight—not assumptions—it’s time to level up your productivity strategy.

FAQs

1. What makes wAnywhere better than Hubstaff for productivity tracking?

wAnywhere does more than just track time. It provides department-level analytics, AI-driven compliance features, hybrid productivity insights, real-time activity monitoring, and AUX (auxiliary task) tracking for non-digital work. Unlike Hubstaff, which primarily concentrates on time logs and keyboard/mouse activity, it provides a comprehensive picture of how your teams operate.

2. Does wAnywhere support real-time employee monitoring like Hubstaff?

Yes, wAnywhere offers real-time visibility into employee activities including login sessions, app/website usage, active/idle time, AUX tasks, and more—presented in a live, intuitive dashboard for managers.

3. Are the productivity features in wAnywhere customizable?

Yes, every feature that wAnywhere offers is easily customizable and configurable to fit your company requirements. You always have control from defining department-based AUX codes to setting team-specific productivity goals to changing screenshot intervals and facial recognition configuration. It’s designed to be the most user-friendly software in its category, making employee monitoring feel like a breeze, not a burden. Whether you’re an admin, manager, or team lead, wAnywhere simplifies productivity tracking without the complexity.

4. Can wAnywhere track productivity without invading employee privacy?

Yes, wAnywhere track productivity without invading employee privacy by using features like screen blurring outside the region of interest. This ensures that only work-related activity is monitored, keeping personal information private. In addition, employees can manually log in and log out from the software to ensure balanced monitoring practices.