This review covers:
- Overview
- What do users like about Connecteam?
- What don’t users like about Connecteam?
- What Pricing Plans does Connecteam offer?
- What are the Standout Features of Connecteam?
- Selected Positive User Feedback
- Selected Negative User Feedback
- What are Connecteam’s Review Ratings from Review Sites?
- What’s My Final Verdict on Connecteam?
Overview
Connecteam is a time tracking software that offers a multitude of features aimed at improving productivity and increasing team connectivity. It works as a time clock, facilitates scheduling, task management, and the accomplishment of digital forms and checklists, functions as an HR tool, and even as a communication platform for team members. It has quite an ambitious reach, branding itself as a one-stop shop for all business operation needs. But does it live up to that hype? Well, me and my team tried it ourselves to find out.
First, the good stuff. Connecteam has a pretty smooth time tracking feature that allows users to clock in and out instantly, and employers can get real-time alerts for these employee activities. The data captured by the time clock are automatically translated into accurate timesheets and live reports that shed light on the progress of projects and the status of teams as they happen. Using this data, managers can monitor employee attendance and manage absences, overtime, and break hours all in one place. This also allows them to focus support where it is most needed and help struggling team members address pain points to ensure that teams are healthy and working at 100% at all times. Shift and calendar templates make scheduling a breeze, and in-team and real-time communication and collaboration are made possible with the in-app chat which ensures that everyone is kept in the loop.
However, Connecteam lacks an offline mode which doesn’t make it a good fit for teams working in remote locations. It’s also prone to glitches and frequent crashes, particularly on mobile. Even the web app has frustratingly slow loading times, which negatively affects the user experience of an otherwise thoughtfully designed software.
To add to these concerning issues, the interface can be pretty hard to navigate. The colored icons for the different feature tabs don’t help. It’s just not easy on the eyes. These things achieve the opposite of Connecteam’s aim to simplify work management by being a constant source of frustration among users.
Another downside of Connecteam is its pricing structure. There’s just too much to wrap your head around. There are three different hubs with three different pricing. One user said it best, it’s essentially like you’re paying a la carte for these features. This kind of pricing structure can really make it hard to make an informed decision about the software’s value for your business.
What Do Users Like About Connecteam?
- Responsive customer service
- Team collaboration features
- Informative quiz feature
- Detailed documentation for projects
What Don't Users Like About Connecteam?
- Interface looks cluttered
- Setup has a steep learning curve
- Mobile apps are prone to glitches and crashes
- Workflow feature is difficult to navigate and has superfluous steps
- Buggy scheduling system
- Issues connecting with Google Calendar
- Complicated pricing
What Pricing Plans Does Connecteam Offer?
Here is where it gets really complicated. Connecteam has three Hubs or variants that cater to different needs, namely Operations, Communications, and HR & Skills. Each one has one free plan and three paid plans that range from Basic to Enterprise.
The Operations Hub is designed for time tracking, job scheduling, quick tasks, and forms. The Communications Hub has features focused on keeping everyone in the loop with chat, updates, directories, surveys, events, and a knowledge base. The HR Hub is optimized for time off, courses, quizzes, documents, recognition, rewards, celebration, and timeline.
Users get to choose which Connecteam hub(s) they need the most, and which plan. So, for example, if a business needs all the Expert-tier Operations Hub features but also needs core Communications Hub features, they can get the Operations Expert Plan and the Communications Basic Plan together, and their bill will be for the price of both plans combined.
If in the future the company discovers a need for the Advanced-tier HR & Skills features, they can certainly avail of that as well, and they will be billed for the two previous plans plus the HR & Skills Advanced Plan. If they suddenly don’t need a certain plan anymore, they can unsubscribe from the plan that they wish to drop and they will only be billed for the ones they still opt to maintain. This scheme ensures that clients can tailor the features of Connecteam to fit their needs, and they are only paying for the features that they use.
Still with us so far? Alright, let’s continue with a closer look at the pricing and features for the plans offered by Connecteam.
The Small Business Plan
The Connecteam Small Business Plan offers everything a small business needs to manage employees, with seats for up to 10 users and access to all hubs and features at no cost to businesses, for life.
Basic Plan
The Connecteam Basic Plans have a fixed price of $29 per month with grouped seats for 30 users plus $0.50 per month for each additional user when billed annually, or a fixed price of $35 per month with grouped seats for 30 users plus $0.60 for each additional user when billed monthly.
Features for the Connecteam Operations Hub in this tier include time tracking, all report types, GPS, unlimited jobs, payroll software integration, shift info (location, notes, media & files), past-due tasks quick view, and the ability to save tasks as a draft, filter dates for more than 30 days, claim open shifts, and add images to a form.
For the Connecteam Communications Hub, this tier includes features such as private and team chats, chat message read receipts, media & file attachments, and the ability to allow post comments & reactions, view post insights, add custom work contacts to the directory, add location, description, and files to events, create surveys, and create a knowledge base with usage insights.
The Connecteam HR & Skills Hub in this tier has features such as unlimited folders in libraries, unlimited sub-folders, user timeline, export reports, and the ability to search and filter insights, manage employee time off, filter dates for more than 30 days, and see course completion status.
Advanced Plan
The Connecteam Advanced Plans have a fixed price of $49 per month with grouped seats for 30 users plus $1.50 per month for each additional user when billed annually, or a fixed price of $59 per month with grouped seats for 30 users plus $1.80 for each additional user when billed monthly.
Features for the Connecteam Operations Hub in this tier include everything in Operations Basic, plus smart groups and admin permissions, geofence for the time clock, recurring shifts and templates for the schedule, recurring tasks, kiosk-only clock in and out, auto clock out, advanced filtering & bulk actions, and the ability to lock days in timesheets.
For the Connecteam Communications Hub, this tier includes all the features in Communications Basic, plus smart groups and admin permissions, chat message read receipts, and the ability to decide who can do what on the chat, start a chat from anywhere on the platform, add a live poll to a post, customize post background color, customize user field display in the directory, create anonymous surveys, and duplicate your knowledge base.
The Connecteam HR & Skills Hub in this tier has all the features in HR & Skills Basic, plus smart Groups and admin permissions, advanced settings and customization, advanced filtering & bulk actions, unlimited courses, full access to course objects settings, and unlimited documents.
Expert Plan
The Connecteam Expert Plans have a fixed price of $99 per month with grouped seats for 30 users plus $3 per month for each additional user when billed annually, or a fixed price of $119 per month with grouped seats for 30 users plus $3.60 for each additional user when billed monthly.
Features for the Connecteam Operations Hub in this tier include all the features in Operations Basic and Advanced, plus in-app links (shortcuts), multi-branch/location management, live GPS tracking (Breadcrumbs), process automation, conflicts & custom limitations, new device login alert, and the ability for users to view & edit their profiles.
For the Connecteam Communications Hub, this tier includes all the Communications Basic and Advanced features, plus a larger knowledge base storage, new device login alert, process automation, in-app links (shortcuts), and the ability for admins to schedule posts or set them as recurring, require reading confirmation for posts, and pin posts to the top of the feed, and for users to view & edit their profiles.
The Connecteam HR & Skills Hub in this tier has all the HR & Skills Basic and Advanced features, plus new device login alert, process automation, in-app links (shortcuts), custom publishers, onboarding customization, and the ability for users to view & edit personal profiles.
Enterprise Plan
Connecteam Enterprise Plans for all three hubs include all the features of all lower tiers, plus a personal account manager, private branding, SSO, 2FA and biometric lock, API access, and a lot of other features that can be customized for the unique needs of enterprise-level businesses. Interested parties can get in touch with Connecteam to inquire about features, solutions, and pricing.
What are the Standout Features of Connecteam?
1. Accurate Employee Time Clock and Mistake-free Timesheets
Connecteam empowers employees to capture accurate hours with their easy-to-use time clock with advanced GPS capabilities.
Teams can simplify time tracking with quick and easy clock-in and clock-out using on-site kiosks, desktop apps, or even on the go with a single touch on their smartphones. This opens up a whole world of possibilities for companies with on-site or on-the-road operations such as construction, field service, logistics, retail, and hospitality businesses.
Employers also get an edge in ensuring employee attendance and time-theft avoidance with Connecteam’s geofencing and geolocation features. GPS tracking allows admins to determine the exact places employees clock in and out from, while the geofencing feature allows them to set up virtual perimeters to restrict where they can begin and end tracking hours. They can even use Breadcrumbs technology for live tracking to see employee movements on a map as they happen while on the clock. This helps ensure employees’ safety and efficiency, safeguards project profitability, provides important documentation, and gives admins the peace of mind brought about by the knowledge that time theft and buddy punching is virtually impossible when GPS-powered time tracking is as sophisticated as Connecteam’s.
With Connecteam’s GPS time tracking, admins can also view how much time employees spend on specific locations, jobs, or clients, which gives businesses invaluable and actionable insight into resource allocation. This is extremely useful for billing, invoicing, and ensuring the profitability of any project.
The hours captured by Connecteam’s time tracking features are automatically organized on digital timesheets that can be seen, reviewed, and corrected by users before payroll. The software automatically flags irregularities to ensure that employees are paid what they are due and that employers are protected from costly payroll mistakes. The payroll process is made even easier by the ability to automatically calculate work hours, breaks, and overtime. Connecteam also allows employers to apply different rates for various employees or jobs, saving businesses precious time, tons of effort, and ultimately, money.
Once timesheets are ready to roll, they can be seamlessly exported into Connecteam’s payroll integrations, Xero and Gusto, or any preferred payroll software.
2. Robust Attendance, Overtime, and Break Management
Employee attendance is one of the key factors that affect the success — or failure — of most businesses. Employers must ensure that physical sites are manned at all times by competent and qualified employees who follow reliable shift, time off, and break schedules. With Connecteam’s attendance, break, time off, and overtime management tools, the chaos and confusion of staying on top of schedules and enforcing attendance policies are made easy and reduced to a mere series of clicks.
Using the employee attendance policy template provided by Connecteams, employers can help instill the value of showing up and being present among the ranks. Data gathered from time tracking and GPS tracking help employers gain insight into who’s showing up at the right place and at the right time, who’s late, who didn’t clock in or out when and where they are expected to, and who simply didn’t show up. These insights will help in the shaping and implementation of corrective and disciplinary actions to ensure that everyone stays in line and that disruptions caused by tardiness and unexpected absences are minimized.
And when employees do need to be away from the action as mandated by law with breaks and time off, Connecteam does the heavy lifting and streamlines the handling of time off schedules, requests, and approval. It also makes compliance with state break laws a breeze with intuitive scheduling that allows for flexible, fully customized, and automated break scheduling tailored to the unique needs of any business. It can even be set up so that employees themselves can request when to take their breaks, giving them full control of their schedules and ensuring that they get the downtime they deserve while also keeping the staffing needs of job sites in consideration.
On the other hand, overtime usually means more expenditures for the company. Connecteam helps teams comply with company policies and state laws on overtime by minimizing unnecessary overtime with planning and restriction features, customizable rules, and automatic clock-outs for employees who go into unapproved overtime. Connecteam also saves businesses time and resources by automatically calculating overtime pay and exporting them to payroll with ease.
3. Automated and Highly-Detailed Reports
Reports are the backbone of business decisions and the bane of those tasked to write them. While their importance in guiding future actions cannot be overstated, the process of creating reports can be a total nightmare for those who are stuck in the pen-and-paper system.
With Connecteam, reporting is made easy by using accurately captured data from the employee time clock, GPS tracking, expense tracking, and project documentation. The software organizes all the data into orderly and easily digestible information that can be presented in any way that suits business needs using powerful filters that get to the meat of the matter. This is especially useful in client invoicing and ensuring that payroll is never late, ever.
Best of all, they can be automatically sent to intended recipients as PDF or Excel files in-app or via email regularly without any manual input from users — it’s a set-and-forget situation that only requires admins to set up parameters in the beginning and then never again. The reports will come in on time, every time, for as long as they are needed. The Connecteam auto reporting feature is a great way to get the exact information a business needs, minus the hassle.
4. Task Management and Scheduling
Last but definitely not least on our list of Connecteam’s standout features are its scheduling and task management tools. I believe in saving the best for last, so here we are with this segment discussing how automated scheduling and task management is a literal game changer.
Creating a well-rounded employee schedule is probably the most thankless and time-consuming task for business owners because there are just so many factors to consider, such as availability, qualifications, time off, preferences, and a whole lot more. With traditional paper-based and spreadsheet systems, this process is guaranteed to take a lot of agonizing hours, and the result almost always contains inconsistencies and errors that would require even more time to rectify.
Connecteam takes the stress of the process away and allows admins to painlessly create employee schedules that make the best out of available resources with its auto-scheduling feature. Automating the process reduces mistakes, ensures consistency, saves time and money, boosts productivity, and helps keep employees happy.
Creating and editing shifts on Connecteam become just a matter of dragging, dropping, and labeling. Entire schedules can be copied week after week, cutting back on time needed for planning and drafting. They can also be collaborative when admins allow employees to set their availability and share the responsibility of coverage. Scheduling conflicts such as double bookings and scheduling the wrong employee are flagged with alerts, which help in making sure that everything is in order before deployment. Best of all, shifts can be instantly communicated, accepted, rejected, or swapped in-app, reducing the time spent on back-and-forth so employees can focus on actual work.
In addition, Connecteam makes task management easy with task automation which comes with detailed descriptions, file attachments, due dates, subtasks, and more. Push reminders nudge teams to send real-time progress updates and pursue completion. Dedicated and task-specific communication channels ensure that all information and updates regarding the task are received by concerned parties. Recurring tasks can be set up and managed in a breeze. And best of all, admins can have full oversight of tasks in the very palm of their hand with smartphones, so work can happen even when they’re on the go.
I just wish the developers would address the bugs plaguing the scheduling system, because they detract from the experience and the thoughtfulness of this feature’s design.
Selected Positive User Feedback:
- “Team communication and training materials are easily accessed and created without a large learning curve. Customer service is very responsive and works tirelessly to fix software issues that arise.” – Audrey H. (Source Capterra)
- “It has a lot of features that are useful and automated like auto reports and end-of-shift reports.” – Hussaina D. (Source G2)
- “The many modules available from HR to timekeeping, to scheduling, to communications, to location tracking (if needed). This program has it all!” – Rani P. (Source G2)
- “The main thing that caught my attention was how customizable and user-friendly it was. It has MANY features and allows you to create the workspace needed for your business.” – Noam M. (Source G2)
- “The features that won me were the messaging capabilities, the training portals, and the quiz features. In our industry, we change sales often. I love having a quiz feature to publish the sale and make sure my team is updated on all of the ins and outs.” – Sierra (Source Software Advice)
- “Helps me be very organized and makes my life easier when it comes to time sheets“ – Michelle D. (Source GetApp)
- “We like how easy it is for our guys to clock in and out (that all we need). And we can see where are they are when doing it because they are in different cities that the main office.” – Rebecca H. (Source Capterra)
- “It does the job of scheduling and tracking hours perfectly and the customer support is excellent.” – Daniel Creedon (Source Google Play Store)
- “Suitable cost for a very small team. Most of what we need is available an efficient to use in one place.” – Narelle H. (Source G2)
- “The communication between our team has never been easier. Love the calendar too! Easy to move around and adjust things.” – Russell J. (Source G2)
Selected Negative User Feedback:
- “Lack of offline availability for bad signal areas” – Peter C. (Source Capterra)
- “There is a bit of a learning curve for people who are not used to using an app for scheduling ( I still have officers calling me to make changes on the schedule they have permission to do).” – Mark O. (Source Capterra)
- “The documents and knowledge base area is a little tricky to set-up“ – Charyl T. (Source Capterra)
- “There is occasional lag even though having a high-specs device.” – Robbie A. (Source Capterra)
- “Not mobile friendly, have technical glitches, logs out of the account without any reaadon” – Pallvi R. (Source Capterra)
- “This app began crashing […] Don’t know why. And there’s apparently no way to delete messages that are sent to you in the app. “– Brian Scott (Source Google Play Store)
- “Clunky, slow. Often cannot find my location“ – Ricardo Mercado (Source Google Play Store)
- “It keeps crashing, when it remains open in the background” – Adelina Gales (Source Google Play Store)
- “It freezes constantly and has to be closed down. Im unable to post a contact picture and none of my co workers can seem to figure out why.” – Memories P.G.B Ltd (Source Google Play Store)
- “Slow takes to long to clock in and out and cause me to have problems with my boss and Secretary” – Paul Pyeatt (Source Google Play Store)
- “No desktop app for Windows or Mac available.” – Scott W. (Source Capterra)
- “Every new feature you need requires an upgrade to a higher package to make us pay more.” – Hussaina D. (Source G2)
- “Some great features are only for the higher tier subscriptions which as a smaller company is a bit costly.” – Jose (Source Software Advice)
What are Connecteam's Review Ratings from Review Sites?
(As of March 2024)
- Capterra: 4.8/5
- G2: 4.7/5
- TrustRadius: 8.4/10
- App Store: 4.8/5
- Google Play Store: 4.8/5
What's My Final Verdict on Connecteam?
Connecteam is a brilliant solution for businesses that wish to improve productivity and team connectivity. It saves a lot of time with intelligently designed features that automate almost all aspects of work, from clocking in and monitoring to scheduling and task management.
Its auto-reporting function is something that I’m truly a fan of because it allows users to get the information that they need, and when they need it. The attendance, overtime, and break management tools are brilliant and very intuitive, taking away the hassle traditionally associated with those processes. And the scheduling and task management tools are the crowning glory, making the agonizing process of scheduling and supervising tasks relatively painless with automation and a dedicated communication channel.
Connecteam has all the bells and whistles, and while having a literal army of features can be great, it can also be a software’s downfall. Setup has a very steep learning curve and users are bogged down by unwieldy navigation in certain features such as the superfluous processes of the Workflow feature. They could have some of the time spent on adding unnecessary stuff to ensure that integrations, especially with Google Calendar, work well instead.
The app, both on the web and mobile could use some work too. There’s no offline mode and the glitches and slow loading times can really put a hamper on the overall user experience. Some users have even reported the app crashing out of nowhere. Doesn’t paint a good picture of Connecteam as a reliable work management software.
In conclusion, Connecteam is a very promising solution for businesses who want to boost productivity with an all-in-one tool jam-packed with features and built with flexibility and customizability in mind. However, be prepared for a protracted setup as admins and employees may take time to familiarize themselves with the software — expect a few slip-ups and be patient. If you’re willing to gloss over the bugs, steep learning curve, and complex pricing structure, I’d say go get it. But if you can’t risk that for your business, you better look elsewhere.
