Running a remote e-commerce agency is not only about knowing whether employees are online. Owners need to monitor the time spent on the customer support queue, advertising account, and more.
This helps them analyze the performance of not only individuals but also of the company itself, allowing them to scale further. The best remote employee monitoring software should therefore perform many functions, instead of simple monitoring.
This article lists the top remote monitoring software that helps e-commerce agencies achieve greater success and have more control over business functions.
Here’s a quick summary of every software mentioned in the list and their uses:
| Rank | Software | Best for | Editorial score | Recommended plan |
| 1 | Apploye | Best overall value for remote e-commerce agencies | 9.1/10 | Elite |
| 2 | Hubstaff | Established agencies managing global contractors | 8.9/10 | Team |
| 3 | WebWork | E-commerce-specific workforce workflows | 8.8/10 | Plus |
| 4 | Time Doctor | Detailed activity analytics and screen recording | 8.3/10 | Standard |
| 5 | Insightful | Workforce analytics and capacity insights | 8.1/10 | Workforce Analytics |
| 6 | ActivTrak | Enterprise productivity and compliance analytics | 7.9/10 | Workforce Management |
| 7 | Monitask | Straightforward, employee-controlled tracking | 7.8/10 | Business |
| 8 | TMetric | Client billing and profitability with lighter monitoring | 7.7/10 | Business |
This table compares the best remote employee monitoring tools for e-commerce agencies:
| Software | Listed annual price used in this review | Screenshots | App and website monitoring | Clients and projects | Payroll or pay calculation | Client invoicing | Free trial or plan |
| Apploye Elite | $4.50/user/month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free plan; 10-day trial |
| Hubstaff Team | $10/user/month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 14-day trial |
| WebWork Plus | $6.39/user/month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 14-day trial |
| Time Doctor Standard | $11.67/user/month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Integrations/workflows | Limited compared with agency-first tools | 14-day trial |
| Insightful Workforce Analytics | $8/user/month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Payroll listed as coming soon | Project and billable-hour tools | 7-day trial |
| ActivTrak Workforce Management | $15/worker/month | Add-on | Yes | Limited agency-finance functionality | No native agency payroll workflow | No native agency invoicing focus | Free plan; 14-day trial |
| Monitask Business | $8.99/user/month | Yes | Yes | Yes | Rate-based reports | Client access | 10-day trial |
| TMetric Business | Approximately $7.50/user/month annually | Yes | Yes | Yes | Payroll-ready reports | Yes | Free plan; 14-day trial |
An e-commerce agency has different priorities from a general corporate office or field-service business. A platform that excels at broad workforce analytics may still be a poor choice when an agency needs to connect every hour to a client, campaign, store, or contractor payment.
We weighted the software using these criteria:
| Evaluation criterion | Weight |
| Client, project and billable-time management | 18% |
| Monitoring depth and configurability | 17% |
| E-commerce-agency workflow fit | 15% |
| Project profitability and payroll usefulness | 12% |
| Ease of setup and employee adoption | 10% |
| Price-to-value ratio | 10% |
| Integrations, API and exports | 7% |
| Privacy and security transparency | 6% |
| Platform support and offline reliability | 3% |
| Support and customer evidence | 2% |
| Total | 100% |
This guide is primarily for an agency owner, founder, COO, or operations director managing approximately 10 to 100 remote employees and contractors.
The agency may provide:
These readers need more than a screenshot gallery. They need to separate time by client and project, verify billable work, manage contractors, detect scope creep, protect client credentials, and understand whether a project remains profitable. Those requirements were central to the uploaded research brief.
The following are the eight best monitoring software platforms that help an e-commerce agency grow effectively:
Editorial score: 9.1/10
Recommended plan: Elite for most agencies; Power when higher screenshot limits or API access are necessary
Listed annual price: Elite from $4.50 per user per month
Trial: 10 days, no credit card required
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Chrome extension and web dashboard
Apploye earns the top position as remote employee monitoring tool because it covers the broadest combination of agency requirements at a comparatively accessible price.
Its central value is not screenshots alone. Apploye connects time and activity data with:
That combination matters for e-commerce agencies because managers need to answer financial questions, not merely observe screens.
For example, an agency can create a project for a Shopify client, assign developers and designers, track their time, compare the labor cost with the client’s billing rate, and use the resulting records for invoicing and payroll.
Apploye’s Elite plan includes time tracking, screenshots, applications and URLs, real-time active views, projects, clients, invoicing, payroll, reports and integrations. Power raises the screenshot allowance and includes API access. The current pricing is one screenshot per hour on Starter, up to 18 per hour on Elite, and up to 60 per hour on Power.
Apploye can document:
Screen recording is available as a separate paid add-on rather than being included in the base Elite or Power subscription.
Apploye counts keyboard and mouse activity but does not record the characters typed or the locations clicked. It also states that screenshots are uploaded through SSL over HTTPS and that Apploye is not a keylogger.
The desktop application supports Windows, macOS, and Linux and is required for activity and screenshot monitoring.
The mobile applications and Chrome extension can track time, attendance, projects, and tasks, but they don’t include screenshots or activity monitoring.
Apploye supports integrations with Trello, ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Zoho Projects, Monday.com, and Deel. Slack, QuickBooks, PayPal, and Zapier are displayed as coming soon on the public integration page.
Apploye currently has integrations with Trello, ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Zoho Projects, Monday.com, and Deel. Slack, QuickBooks, PayPal and Zapier are displayed as coming soon on the public integration page.
Choose Apploye when your agency:
Apploye can also support call center time tracking for e-commerce agencies that manage remote customer-service teams, helping supervisors monitor attendance, active time, shifts, and payroll across multiple client accounts.
Apploye is the strongest overall value for a remote e-commerce agency because it connects work evidence to the commercial side of agency operations.
Editorial score: 8.9/10
Recommended plan: Team
Listed annual price: $10 per seat per month
Trial: 14 days, no credit card required
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and web
Hubstaff is a strong choice for established remote agencies with large contractor networks, complex payment workflows and extensive integration needs. Its Team plan includes time tracking, screenshots, app and URL monitoring, project budgets, scheduling, attendance, payroll, invoicing and workforce insights.
Hubstaff also has relevant agency evidence. Its RocketCare case study describes a remote Shopify CRO agency that improved client-level time visibility and reportedly cut payroll-processing time by about 50%.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: Hubstaff is a dependable option for growing global agencies, but Apploye offers better value for teams with simpler billing and payroll needs.
Editorial score: 8.8/10
Recommended plan: Plus
Listed annual price: $6.39 per user per month
Trial: 14 days, no credit card required
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, browser extension and web
WebWork is well suited to e-commerce agencies that manage remote support teams, scheduled shifts and multiple client projects. Its Plus plan combines screenshots, app and website monitoring, payroll, invoices, project budgets, expenses, scheduling, reports and multiple currencies.
It also offers screenshot-frequency controls and privacy-focused blurring for selected applications and websites.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: WebWork is a strong alternative for support-heavy e-commerce operations, while Apploye offers a simpler value proposition for client-service agencies.
Editorial score: 8.3/10
Recommended plan: Standard
Listed annual price: $11.67 per user per month
Trial: 14 days, no credit card required
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux and Chromium OS
Time Doctor is designed for agencies that prioritize detailed monitoring and productivity reporting. Its Standard plan includes automatic and interactive time tracking, screenshots, schedules, attendance, approvals and detailed activity reports. Video recording and other advanced capabilities may depend on the plan or add-ons.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: Time Doctor is a strong monitoring platform, but Apploye provides a better balance of price, billing, and payroll for most e-commerce agencies.
Editorial score: 8.1/10
Recommended plan: Workforce Analytics
Listed annual price: $8 per monitored employee per month
Trial: Seven days, no credit card required
Platforms: Windows, macOS and Linux
Insightful helps agencies analyze workload, capacity, productivity and operational bottlenecks. Its Workforce Analytics plan includes real-time activity views, app and website usage, screenshots, attendance, billable hours and project tracking.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: Insightful is better for workforce analysis, while Apploye is the stronger value choice for everyday agency operations.
Editorial score: 7.9/10
Recommended plan: Workforce Management
Listed annual price: $15 per monitored worker per month
Trial: 14 days; free plan for up to three workers
Platforms: Windows, macOS and ChromeOS
ActivTrak is an enterprise workforce-intelligence platform focused on productivity, capacity, compliance and risk. It offers automatic activity tracking, application and website monitoring, schedule analysis, sensitive-content detection and advanced business-intelligence integrations.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: ActivTrak is best for enterprise analytics and governance, but it is excessive for most small and midsize e-commerce agencies.
Editorial score: 7.8/10
Recommended plan: Business
Listed annual price: $8.99 per user per month
Trial: 10 days
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and Chromebook
Monitask provides a simple employee-controlled timer with screenshots, app and website tracking, task management, scorecards and client access. Its standard mode allows employees to start and stop tracking visibly, although stealth deployment is also available.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: Monitask is useful for basic proof of work, but Apploye offers stronger client-management, payroll, and pricing advantages.
Editorial score: 7.7/10
Recommended plan: Business
Listed annual price: Approximately $7.50 per seat per month
Trial: 14 days; free plan for up to two seats
Platforms: Web, Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and browser extensions
TMetric is primarily a time-tracking and project-profitability platform. Its Business plan adds screenshots, app and website monitoring, activity tracking, team timesheets, client access and advanced integrations to its core billing, budget, expense and invoicing tools.
Strengths
Limitations
Final verdict: TMetric is a strong billing and profitability tool, but its lighter monitoring makes it less suitable for agencies seeking deeper employee visibility.
The following estimates use the recommended plans shown in this article and annual billing.
For Apploye, the calculation assumes that one of the listed team members is the organization owner and therefore is not billed. Other products are calculated using the complete team size as the number of paid or monitored seats. Taxes, payment fees, implementation services, and optional add-ons are excluded.
| Software and plan | 10-person agency | 25-person agency | 50-person agency |
| Apploye Elite | $486/year | $1,296/year | $2,646/year |
| WebWork Plus | $766.80/year | $1,917/year | $3,834/year |
| Insightful Workforce Analytics | $960/year | $2,400/year | $4,800/year |
| Monitask Business | $1,078.80/year | $2,697/year | $5,394/year |
| Hubstaff Team | $1,200/year | $3,000/year | $6,000/year |
| Time Doctor Standard | $1,400.40/year | $3,501/year | $7,002/year |
| ActivTrak Workforce Management | $1,800/year | $4,500/year | $9,000/year |
For most remote e-commerce agencies, Apploye is the best overall choice because it combines employee monitoring, project tracking, client billing, payroll calculations and competitive pricing in one platform.
Hubstaff is a stronger alternative for agencies with complex contractor-payment workflows, extensive integration requirements and enterprise needs, while WebWork is worth considering for support-heavy e-commerce operations that need scheduling, payroll and configurable screenshot monitoring.
Ans: Use screenshots only when there is a defined business requirement. Apply privacy exclusions, restrict manager access, choose a proportionate frequency, and establish a retention period.
Ans: Apploye offers an affordable combination of projects, screenshots, invoicing, and payroll. WebWork has dedicated e-commerce workforce positioning.
Ans: Apploye, Hubstaff, and TMetric provide the strongest client-billing workflows in this list. Choose Apploye when monitoring and payroll are equally important. Choose Hubstaff for more advanced global operations.
Ans: Apploye can calculate payable amounts using tracked hours and configured rates. Hubstaff and WebWork also include payroll and payment-related workflows on appropriate plans.
