10 Best Time Tracking Tools and Time Tracker Apps of 2021 for Digital Marketing Freelancers

Time tracking is a crucial thing for digital marketing freelancers, professionals, and businesses. It not only helps them work more efficiently, but it has a technical side as well. They often need to create invoices for their clients, indicating the hours it took to finish a particular job or proof to the man-hours mentioned in their SEO packages.

But how can you rely on just your memory for that?

Well, With all due respect to your incredible potential, our brain mussels should be flexed for more productive works! Trying to memorize the time for every single project you will handle in a particular month is a challenging job.

It just puts too much pressure on your head, which is completely unnecessary. This is where the time tracking tools come to your aid. If you are an individual or freelancer, or owner of a particular company, the time tracker apps will help you learn a lot about your productivity.

It will show you exactly where you, along with your team, are spending the maximum amount of time and the current state of time management. If you wish to provide quality digital marketing services, then effective timekeeping can be an invaluable aspect for you.

And that’s exactly why, in this post, I am going to list 10 of the best time tracking tools for digital marketing freelancers. This is not just some random list of tools but specially curated to give you the ten best options to choose from.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at them.

Best Time Tracking Tools and Apps of 2021 for Freelance Digital Marketers

1. Hubstaff
2. Time Doctor
3. Toggl
4. Harvest
5. Hours
6. Timely
7. TSheets
8. RescueTime
9. TimeCamp
10. Wrike

1. Hubstaff Time Tracking Tool

The first on the list is Hubstaff. This can prove really effective for any employer who wishes to monitor the productive hours of their employees and freelancers and track down how much time they take individually.

This versatile time tracking app works both on desktop and mobile and is also compatible with operating systems like Chromebooks and Linux. With this tool, you can enjoy some great benefits while monitoring the time management of your team. Some of them are:

• You can take up to 3 screenshots randomly per 10-minute period. You can disable this feature if you don’t want it.
• The tool allows you even to track mouse movements and even keyboard clicks.
• You can also monitor the use of the internet and other applications like a chart of time your employees have spent on a particular app or website.
• Once you gather all the data of your freelancers and employees, this time tracking tool can come into play and automatically generate payroll that might include payment methods like PayPal, Payoneer, or Bitwage.
• The tool allows you to make several separate organizations led by its own employees and respective projects.
• This tool has both manual and automatic time-tracking and enables you to determine whether the team members can manually put their details or not.

2. Time Doctor Time Tracking Tool

If you need a tool that can help you track time perfectly across the entire system and works for your remote teams and freelancers as well, the Time Doctor is the right option for you. This time tracker tool can effortlessly give you a fair idea about the amount of time spent by individuals.

Some of its powerful time tracking features are:

• It allows you to have more control over your remote team and freelancers and gives you the option to take screen-shots to check if everyone is on their task or not. Plus, you can view the website and app usage simultaneously to check the time they spend individually.
• At the time of paycheck, this app makes it easy to calculate the payroll, keeping in mind the fixed salaries. Once this is done, this time tracker app allows you to make the payment right away with PayPal, Payoneer, TransferWise, or other methods.
• It gives you detailed reports where you can find every piece of information about time use, attendance, wasted time, and more about every single project.
• There are a number of different integrations, especially with project management tools.
• It’s super easy to use.

3. Toggl Time Tracking Tool

Looking for a premium quality time tracker app? Use Toggl, the best and most flexible time management application for freelancers and marketers to currently exist. It comes with a simple yet powerful time tracking interface that allows you to assign tasks to your team on the go!

Here you get great time-saving features that let you create new projects without even leaving the main dashboard. The app is so widely compatible that you can literally use it anywhere – as a web interface, browser extension, mobile app, and even a desktop application.

Some of its great features are:

• When you use the Toggl desktop app, you can easily track the activities and even set reminders. This is a very cool feature compared to other apps where you have to do it manually.
• You can make outstanding reporting invoices, as well as enjoy up to 100+ integrations with a host of popular tools like Trello, Asana, and lots more.
• Tag your freelancing clients and projects easily, and creating new projects will take just a few seconds. Avoid time-consuming page-loads or clicks easily.
• Thanks to its detailed reporting functions, you can quickly visualize the places where you have spent your freelancing hours.
• You will also get flexible time tracking filters to make the reports more productive and insightful.

4. Harvest Time Tracking Tool

Harvest is more than just a simple time-tracker for freelancers. Apart from effortlessly tracking the time, it can also help you track expenses and billable hours.

This app also supports the making of invoices and helps you turn the billable hours in the form of an invoice.

Its features include:

• You have a ton of integrated tools to use here, ranging from project management, invoicing, CRM, customer support, developer tools, and more.
• Here you can track down the time your employees spent on Harvest’s web app, browser extension, desktop app, and mobile application.
• The built-in expense tracking gives you the facility of receipt scanning.

5. Hours Time Tracking Tool

Up next, we have Hours! This time tracking tool arguably has the best interface that can be there on a time tracker. Some digital marketers, freelancers, and other professionals even compare it with Toggl and consider Hours to be better!

Thanks to its intuitive interface, it’s super fun to use, and you can stop and start timers easily. Plus, it comes with a very helpful Timeline feature that allows you to fill in gaps in your time tracking so that nothing gets left out.

Some of its features are:

• The interface for the report making is one of the best in the market and comes with a bunch of filters so that you can make your necessary adjustments effortlessly.
• This is a new time tracking app compared to other tools, and you can only use it via its website or iOS app.
• Thanks to its Timeline feature, you won’t have to worry about filling the gaps if you make manual errors.
• You can even track an offline event using Hours.

6. Timely Time Tracking Tool

One of the best features of Timely is it comes with an automatic time-tracking facility. Now you might think that automatic time tracking can be nothing but a hoax – so here are some insights.

At first, it records all the activities and creates a group based on the work that has been done. Then based on that work, it labels the group and adds tags to it. You can accept its suggestion, slightly edit it manually, or discard the matter completely.

Now, here comes the coolest part. Every single time you give some sort of input, the app takes it in and tries to improve it in the future. So basically, it does not just obey your orders; it learns from them as well – one of the many reasons freelancers use this time tracking app!

Some of its other features include:

• The automatic time tracking facility makes things a lot easier and saves a lot of time. It ensures that you don’t miss hours and stay on track.
• If you want a time tracker app that can update you about all that’s been going on with your employees, then this is it!
• You also get a built-in Project Health Dashboard that helps you keep a tab on your billable hours. This ensures that you or your team never goes without a paycheck.
• Lastly, the Timely dashboard will always give you the necessary insights you need about the productivity of your entire team.

7. TSheets Time Tracking Tool

TSheets works on multiple platforms – it can help you with time tracking through the web, mobile, and time clock kiosk. It indeed gives you one of the best time tracking solutions on the internet. As a matter of fact, this time tracker app hosts more than one million freelancers and professionals across the globe.

This application makes your payroll completion much more streamlined with its clock feature. If you hate punch clocks, then this can be the most suitable alternative.

Some of its other features are:

• Apart from making payrolls, you can integrate this app with a host of other software and convert the billable hours into client invoices.
• It offers you perhaps the best time tracking mobile app that is there on the market today. With this, you can have Geofencing technology that allows your clock to function automatically when you enter or exit a pre-destined boundary.
• If you have employees who often need to go out in the field, this app is the best choice.
• As a digital marketing freelancer or professional, you can easily get insightful team and project management reports to have a better idea about the ongoing jobs.

8. RescueTime Time Tracking Tool

Next, we have Rescue Time that has a unique caliber of tracking your time in the background. Apart from that, it also has the power to block distracting websites.

Thanks to its features and powerful user-interface, some call it the king of time tracking productivity apps. Although that can be debatable, there is no doubt that this is one of the best time management apps for freelancers to have ever existed. It is now available on various platforms like Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.

This unique time tracker app runs in the background of your devices, and you won’t have to hit the start or stop button to switch between tasks. This app can automatically track and categorize exactly where you are spending your productive hours.

Some of its other features are:

• It has a complete focus on productivity and even has a feature called FocusTime. This feature makes this app so amazing that it can literally compete with other site-blocking apps like Freedom.
• Here you can also have recurring sessions whenever you want to block any distracting websites.
• It even comes with a blocker that allows you to block a site even after browsing it for some time.
• Lastly, another interesting feature is Rescue Time adds the sites tracking your FocusTime blacklist so you won’t have to add them all the time manually.

9. TimeCamp Time Tracking Tool

If you are a freelancer or digital marketer, and your business needs to track the projects based on their billable hours, then TimeCamp is the best time tracking tool for you.

This is why this tool is the most preferred one for various digital marketing agencies. Around the globe, almost 10,000 teams use TimeCamp for tracking their time.

Some of its most useful features include:

• With TimeCamp, you can automatically record time and assign it to a designated project. For this, you won’t have to make a single click.
• TimeCamp is flexible and can be used as a desktop app, web application, and mobile app.
• Apart from the task management of various projects, this tool can help you with time management and attendance tracking of your employees.
• It makes managing your projects effortless since it can integrate a number of other helpful applications.
• As a freelancer, you can easily create invoices and automatically fill them up by following the previously applied settings.
• TimeCamp’s basic plan, more or less, covers everything that you can think of like time management, task management, and many more.
• If you unlock the pro-features, you will get a ton of extra benefits.

10. Wrike Time Tracking Tool

Last on the list; we have Wrike. Much like other time tracking apps here in this post, Wrike also allows you to track time, manage your work, and collaborate with your clients and employees online.

This tool offers you time management software that allows you to add a time log entry manually.

Some other cool features are:

• Use the task timer to keep a tab on the time you are spending and create custom data reports.
• With this time tracker app, you can centralize all the tasks, files, and discussions in just one place. This makes the entire process much fast and more streamlined.
• You can even get real-time updates about your task and progress of work.

Final Words on Time Tracking Apps and Tools

So there you have it, 10 of the best time tracking tools every digital marketer needs to have in their armory. Always keep in mind that there is no golden rule for choosing one particular tool for your business; otherwise, this list wouldn’t have existed.

Almost all the time tracking apps are perfect for tracking the hours used on a real-time basis. Basically, they will give you a running clock, and you can hit play and pause according to the start and termination of your work. Some of the most effective time tracker tools let you revisit and correct the time in case any manual error has occurred like you forgot to stop the time, but you are already done with the work.

Also, remember, companies that bill their clients on an hourly basis can use these apps to create the invoice. Otherwise, it’s still helpful to track your team’s time management skills. After all, who would want to spend hours on a job as a freelancer, which is not necessary? This decreases the value of your services! Isn’t it?

So do you have any experience of using any of these time tracking tools mentioned in our list? If yes, tell us about your preferred one and also let us know about your experience of using the tool.

Your first-hand experience will help several freelancers and aspiring digital marketers out there.

Till then, best of luck!

Disclosure: This blog post doesn’t contain any affiliate links.

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Soumya Roy

Founder, CEO at PromozSEO

Soumya Roy is the Founder, CEO of PromozSEO Web Marketing Academy, a leading digital marketing course in Kolkata, India. He is a seasoned digital marketer and coach with over 13 years of extensive experience under his belt. In his long years of experience, Mr. Roy has worked with 100s of brands of different sizes, and mentored and trained more than 7000 professionals and corporate clients.
Being an entrepreneur and digital marketer, he loves to share his knowledge and experience in topics related to internet marketing, SEO, SEM, social media, content marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, and many more.

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