When searching for the best time-tracking software, it is important to not only consider what it offers and how much it costs but also look at the features that set it apart from others. We all know that not all time trackers are created equal. It’s crucial to compare and decide which of the competitors is worth a shot.
We must not forget to consider our personal feelings. The final decision you make will affect your personal feelings and impact the productivity of your team.
Time Doctor is one of the most popular apps in today’s productivity market. It has both teams and single users in a stupor for its task- and time-monitoring capabilities. But has it caught us the same way? Read this comprehensive review to find out.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Frank on his YouTube channel Franklin Rivera. To get a comprehensive overview of Time Doctor, you may still want to check out our article below.
A Closer Look at Time Doctor Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
Time Doctor is a time tracking and project-monitoring tool that’s best suited to small and large businesses, freelancers, remote teams, and freelance workers. Its lineup of tools and features aims to help teammates and individuals improve their productivity by an average of 22%.
Time Doctor was launched in 2012, a little over a decade ago. It has gradually gained a large audience and is now a well-known time management tool for companies, no matter how established or new to the field. The client portal feature has made it a favorite among freelancers, who frequently work for multiple clients.
Time Doctor has amassed a user base of over 250,000 businesses throughout its history. Among those who’ve used the service for time and employee management matters include Apple, Ericsson, Better Business Bureau (BBB), Verizon, Boost Media, and Thrive Market.
Time Doctor is well-known for its time and activity tracking functions, as well as advanced capabilities such setting reminders to remind you when the timer should be started and stopped. These features alone may be enough for the platform to position itself way ahead of other time management apps. Still, the lack of cohesiveness in its general user usability stops it from doing so.
We believe Time Doctor can be a great addition to any team or individual looking to increase their productivity. Keep reading to know more about what else this one-of-a-kind platform has to offer and how well each of them works! Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
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The pros
- Time Doctor is best recognized for its excellent, easy-to-use time and activity management tools and functions.
- It includes standout features such as pinpoint-accurate reporting, idle alerts, and automatic reminders.
- Its accessible and comprehensive client portal makes freelancer-client interactions a convenient experience.
- It offers a smooth and sizable list of integrations with third-party platforms.
The Cons
- The platform’s confusing user interface makes navigation difficult for many users, particularly first-timers. Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
- Its mobile apps are not as flexible as its web and desktop counterparts, despite their potential.
- It doesn’t offer smooth switching between the web-based client and desktop apps, especially if you’re both the administrator and the user.
- Only the web extension or desktop app can access the time tracking function.
Plans and Pricing
Before we move on to everything else, let’s talk about the plans and how much they cost first. Time Doctor currently offers three paid subscription tiers, each with a distinctive set of features and tools that become more advanced and packed as the cost increases.
Pricing will increase depending on how many users are added to a team. Let’s check out the following three available plans in the Time Doctor platform.
- Basic – $70/user annually or $7/user monthly
Time Doctor’s Basic tier includes access to the platform’s core features, such as time and activity tracking, task and project management, and unlimited screenshots. You can only access them if the web extension or desktop application is downloaded. Plus, you’re limited to one month’s worth of data storage.
- Standard – $100/user annually or $10/user monthly
Standard plans allow you to access advanced features such as tracking your team’s apps and URLs, the payroll tool, reporting and 60 additional integrations with third-party applications. It also sees upgraded time limitations to its customer support hotline – from three days to 24 hours.
- Premium – $200/user annually or $20/user monthly Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
The Premium tier is the most complete yet out of the three. Those subscribed to it are given access to all of what Time Doctor has to offer – on top of the core tools, they can also explore the client portal, take video screen recordings, and receive VIP-style support.
Those who choose to pay yearly will receive a free charge for the first two months. Time Doctor doesn’t offer a free plan. However, each of the three plans offers a limited 14 day trial that allows you to try it out and decide if it is the right tool for you.
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The User Interface
Time Doctor is a robust tool for managing time and activities. However, it’s well-known for its awkward and poorly designed user interface. It can be a pain to navigate the platform. This is especially true if you are just starting to explore the dashboard and other features.
For instance, many who’ve used Time Doctor have found issues accessing its range of functions. They’ve complained about the lack of in-app centralization, which would have saved a lot of time and effort. Users can access the time tracking feature via the web extension or desktop app. Project management, reporting, and other admin features are exclusive to the website version. With that in mind, switching between the two portals is more frequent – you usually wouldn’t see this on other time management platforms.
Another obstacle Time Doctor users need help with is the general look and design. Save for the desktop app, and the website-based dashboard sure does lack a few key intuitive features which would have made for a more convenient user experience. It also needs the diversity of data graphs used for reporting – sure, and the bar graphs are great and all, but what about the circle graphs? Pie graphs, as well? Line graphs, perhaps?
Time Doctor’s interface and design are already a problem. We’ll be reviewing that in a moment! Despite their lackluster appeal, they are not strong enough for the platform to track work activity. Some users don’t even mind the UI issues at all, while others have learned to adjust quickly to it over time. Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
There is still hope that Time Doctor’s UX and UI issues could be fixed in the near future. But for now, those new to the platform will have to go through a rather steep learning curve before getting used to its inner workings.
Key Features Included in Time Doctor
Now, let’s dive deeper into some of the features and tools you may want to explore if you log in to the Time Doctor platform.
Project and Data Management
With Time Doctor’s project management capabilities, individuals or administrators within a team can create tasks and group them into groups with just a few clicks. Admins may also utilize this feature to assign their employees tasks to offload and maximize their teams’ productivity. Although you can set up standalone tasks, you may group them if you’d like into larger projects to keep things tidy and organized – a great idea for big companies whose stability relies on numerous departments beneath them.
Time Doctor knows that a clear workboard is a great way to get things done. With that in mind, admins may opt to limit access to select tasks or projects by assigning them to only a specific employee or group of employees within the team. Do you want to check out who’s working on the task or project now? You may monitor their progress through the dashboard by checking how long they’ve been working, among other things.
Time Doctor is unlike other time management tools. Users can create permanent trackable tasks that they can easily edit, delete, or modify without the need to add one each day. Those who work around repetitive tasks will no longer need to face this burden every time – all they need to do is change them to permanent status! Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
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Time Tracking and Alerts
As already established, Time Doctor’s signature time-tracking tool can only be accessed through either its desktop application or Chrome web extension. Despite not being available in the web dashboard, its capabilities are surprisingly well-versed enough to make it stand independently. It’s quite straightforward – just add in the task you’re assigned to work on and click the timer’s start button to track your progress. It’s simple as that!
All your activities and actions will be recorded as the timer runs through your task. These actions and activities will be recorded and saved to the dashboard. Administrators can then access the dashboard to monitor their employees’ progress. If you’re working solo, you may go through it in the same manner.
Time Doctor’s time tracking tool is unique in that it allows users to set up their own setup until they are happy enough to work. This includes the reminders feature, where the software automatically reminds you when to start or stop your work hours. Another is the “idle time” function, in which users can convert the duration in which they haven’t been working and reassign it to work hours.
The timer will stop the tracking if there is no user activity after a few minutes. If you ever spot something like this and you’ve gone to attend to other things beforehand, you may manually click the play button to resume tracking. Similarly, you may also pause it if you want to time out from work. If you need space to take a proper break and don’t want to resume or stop the timer on your own, Time Doctor lets you incorporate time intervals between your daily tasks.
While Time Doctor can track your progress and work hours online, did you know it could also do this offline? Like some time monitoring apps such as Hubstaff, which have this function, Time Doctor can record your activity and the hours you spend on your task even without the presence of an internet connection. Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
Monitoring Website and App Usage
Time Doctor monitors more than just hours spent on a desktop. It also tracks websites visited and keystrokes made while you work. The platform will immediately pause if it detects that your mouse cursor or keyboard is still stationary for longer than a set time and it will stay there until you do something.
It’s often difficult to determine if someone is productive until you know what they have been doing. It’s an easy relief to hear if they are focusing on their tasks. It’s not the same story if they have been procrastinating and going to other platforms to distract from what they should be doing. No matter if you’re strict or relaxed with it, Time Doctor allows users to check which kinds of websites or applications their fellow teammates have used during work hours and how long they’ve glued their eyes to them.
Time Doctor has a number of monitoring features that allow admins to easily see if employees are wasting their time or attending to a task. This feature can be used to identify if the URL or application name, and the status it is in, are some of the many. This feature is available to managers and administrators to adjust the platform’s productivity rating to any one of the three ranks.
- Productive if it serves the purpose of a project/team as a key driver for its tasks.
- If it serves no purpose and is therefore inefficient, it will be a time-waster
- If it is neither productive nor unproductive, it will be considered neutral.
These statuses can be assigned to any app or website and can be set to be restricted to a single user, group/team or company. The ability to track website activity and customize productivity statuses per user makes it highly convenient for teams who work in jobs requiring a strong focus on specific tasks, like content writing, for instance. For what it’s worth, Time Doctor may be lucky this time to have this crucial function included, unlike other time-tracking software. Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
Activity Screenshots and Screen Recording
Remember when we told you about Time Doctor being able to record your tracked time and activity in the background while they’re posting the data to the web dashboard for admins to see? Its built-in screenshot capabilities are there for this reason.
Administrators can specify a time period for screen capture across their project/team. It could be set to 10 minutes, 30 or even 30 minutes. If they please, they may also opt to select any of their teammates who should be allowed access to this feature.
As a measure of user productivity, each image includes additional information about the mouse cursor activity and keystroke activity. While those subscribed to Time Doctor’s Basic and Standard plans have access to unlimited screenshots, Premium users get the upper hand with the inclusion of video screen recording. The platform captures three minutes of actual work activity, instead of just taking photos of the monitor.
There may be rare instances in which someone from a project/team may be at risk of a breach of privacy caused by serious circumstances. To protect their safety, they might be permitted to delete screen recordings or screenshots within the Time Doctor platform. However, this will likely result in the deduction of work hours listed on the day of recording.
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Productivity Reporting & Analysis
Time Doctor lets users view, edit and save pre-built reports. Each report contains the data and insights that the software has collected during the user’s work hours. All of these reports are presented in decent visuals or summaries. Users can request reports to determine which time management and productivity practices are working well and which ones need to be improved.
You have so much to journey through with Time Doctor’s report collection. The Web and App Usage report lets you see how much time you have spent on websites and apps that are considered productive. The Poor Time Use report shows how long you have sat on sites that have been flagged inappropriate for work. However, issues have arisen, especially from multi-screen work set-ups where one could jam to their favorite playlist on one screen while they get to their task on another. Poor Time Use includes the ability to open pop-up windows to block certain websites. This means that if someone goes to YouTube, they will be immediately reminded if they wish to continue or return to their task.
Other types of reports include the Timeline report, which displays all your tracked hours in chronological order, primarily divided into the colors yellow for manual time recording and green for automatic; the Project and Tasks report, where hours spent on assigned tasks and/or projects are broken down in full detail; and the Activity Summary in which your total work hours and the full percentages derived from a combination of all other reports are laid out for you and your admin to see. Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
Time Doctor’s reporting tools are impressive, but some users don’t like the process of creating them. Firstly, the formatting of most reports is generally clunky, further affecting how they’re exported. Second, XSL and CSV are the only two options Time Doctor has made available and nothing else – some may be simply okay with that, but others won’t like this lack of export file diversity as much.
White-labeling and Client Access
If there’s one thing about Time Doctor that dedicated freelancers or solopreneurs can’t get enough of, it’s the ability to share the progress of their tasks with their clients, even if they are not exactly their teammates or don’t share a Time Doctor account.
If your job is to take commissions from a wide variety of clientele, you may be glad to know that the platform’s remarkable Client Portal feature lets you do exactly that!
Simply send the link to the portal directly to your clients. Once they have access to it, they can see how long you’ve been working, how many tasks you completed, and even the archive of screenshots and reports. The great thing about the Client Portal is that you have full control over whatever you want your client base to see, resulting in smooth and tastefully curated interactions across the board.
Time Doctor’s white labeling feature allows you to integrate its tools with your branding if you are the owner or manager of a successful business.
Payroll
Planning to pay your employees based on how much they’ve dedicated their time to their respective tasks? You can do that within the Time Doctor platform through its built-in payroll feature. You can turn on payroll deep within the settings of your web dashboard and your team will be automatically billed. Your teammates may be paid based on their hours worked or on a fixed rate.
Time Doctor’s payroll tool supports every form of currency in existence. As for payment methods, you may ask your employees to have their salary sent through PayPal, Payoneer, or TransferWise. For batch payments, you can export your payroll information to a CSV file if you work for a larger company. Multiple payments are sent at once.
Integration with Third-Party Services
Time Doctor offers a wide range of integrations to various third-party platforms. These integrations are primarily focused on work, business, and productivity. Time Doctor has over 60 integrations to make it simple for you and your team to manage their work together in one interconnected ecosystem.
Such includes connections with project management platforms like Asana and Trello, payment services like PayPal, work messaging apps like Slack, and CRM platforms like Salesforce. A public API tool is also available to integrate with other apps. This can be used if you know something about coding or you and your teammate are good at it.
The Time Doctor Mobile App
Time Doctor’s desktop program is available to download and install on Windows PCs, Mac OS devices, and Linux OS computers. At the same time, its recent web extension is offered exclusively on Google Chrome. However, the time-tracking software also offers its users unlimited access through their smartphones: Time Doctor currently offers not one but two mobile app versions, both of which you can download on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
No matter how you look, you may be able to track your work hours and progress even if you’re out of the office. On one side, the classic version of the app lets you overview the tasks within a project that need to be done, as well as track where your teammates are through GPS – both on top of the basic time-tracking tools and limited dashboard settings.
Time Doctor 2 is the latest version. It has almost the exact same functionality as the older version. Only two differences distinguish the two versions: 1) TD2 can only be used on Android devices and 2) you won’t have access to other features other than time tracking – a notable downgrade from TD Classic.
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How Safe and Secure is Time Doctor?
You may be questioning whether Time Doctor is worth using as a time management tool. You may also wonder if its surveillance tools could keep track of your actions, even as you pause your timer momentarily to catch a quick break. Although the aspect of a 1984-esque work scenario may seem intimidating, we’re glad to tell you that your activities as the timer stops will not be tracked and saved to Time Doctor’s cloud-based database. It’s 100% not spyware material, so you’re in good hands.
We want to remind you that screenshots and recordings can be used to track your work activity. Project managers may also use the webcam shot feature to see their coworkers right in front of them.
Okay, maybe the thought of that may be quite concerning, especially for some who are protective of their privacy, but don’t worry – not all admins want to use this, so there’s a good reason why the webcam shots and screengrabs are optional and can be enabled or disabled depending on how the admin user feels.
Time Doctor assures that your likeness and activity will not be forced-shared in vain. The same sentiment can also be applied to payment information entered into the platform by yourself or your colleagues. These will then be automatically deleted after a while for privacy reasons.
Time Doctor further takes up drastic security measures to ensure that every user’s account isn’t easily breached. These measures include guaranteed protection by 2FA and a strong password policy, and all the data made within the platform is safeguarded by strong SSL encryption in maximum security facilities. Plus, since Time Doctor is cloud-based, expect all your stored data to be backed up regularly. You may be able to have your data restored quickly in the event of an internet or power outage. This will ensure that you don’t lose any progress.
The Bottom Line: Should You Use Time Doctor?
Time Doctor provides a steady user base of professional teams and freelancers with the benefits of a simple, straightforward task management space and the charms of an advanced-level time tracker, creating a harmonious balance between the two.
While its line-up of dynamic features has admittedly left us in awe, the experience would have been significantly better if it weren’t for the disorienting UI and UX, lack of functionality and cohesiveness in the mobile apps, and, to an extent, undersupply of report graphics options. These problems may have hindered other users as well as us from enjoying the experience to its fullest. Still, others don’t mind anyway because it works exceptionally in what it was originally designed to do – track time.
Overall, we ultimately believe that Time Doctor has what it takes to stand on its feet, despite not offering the same easy accessibility as other apps do. Besides, every time management platform shines uniquely, right?
FAQ Doctor Jones Doctor Jones
How can I approach Time Doctor’s customer service team?
Time Doctor’s customer service hotline can be approached either through e-mail or live chat. At this time, there is no telephone support. However, if you have an important matter and the best and only thing you think to solve this is through talking over the phone, you may leave behind your contact details and preferred call time through any of the available outlets. A member of the hotline will notify this and reach you any day.
You won’t find any tutorials or tips for Time Doctor anywhere else.
YouTube videos and how to articles by independent creators can be found. However, Time Doctor offers its users an alternative via its dedicated help center. Here, most of the information is provided by the team behind Time Doctor.
Do I need to add credit card details to apply for a free trial to any of Time Doctor’s paid plans?
You don’t have to sign up with your credit card for the limited 14-day trial. If you are done with the trial period, you can bring it up again to purchase a Time Doctor subscription.
Does Time Doctor comply with HIPAA?
Yes. Time Doctor adheres to the standards and rules of the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The platform is technically flexible enough to be used in a wide range of industries and niches. However, it can also be useful for healthcare teams.