One of the most common questions that arise whenever business owners think about introducing new tools to their companies is how much will they cost. And it’s normal to think about this, even if you have an enormous budget. There’s no point in spending all the money on one software, you have to be smart about it and choose the option that pays off the most.
That doesn’t mean that you should go with the cheapest option just because it will save you money, or that you should choose the most expensive one because you think price equals quality. Instead, you should focus on what this tool is offering, and calculate at least the approximate return on investment.
Having said that, more and more businesses are starting to use employees monitoring software to track their workers’ daily activities and ensure data security at work, and if you’re new to this field, you certainly have questions about the cost of such software. So, today we’ll break down what are the factors that influence this software’s price, as well as which pricing schemes you can expect to see.
Which Factors Affect the Price?
Features
The first pricing factor is the features. The more features a software has, the more expensive it will usually be. In some cases, you can even buy add ons to get additional features from the software.
A basic employee monitoring software, with simple tracking and categorization capabilities, will definitely set you back less than software which is heavily security-oriented. The basic software can track which apps and websites employees are using, and it usually has automatic screenshots. On the other hand, more sophisticated software can record employees’ screens, recognize different URLs, and allows you to set up different behavioral alerts. Therefore, it makes sense why such software will cost you more than the simple one.
Number of Employees
As you’ll see later in this article, most software options are subscription-based, and the price depends on the number of employees you have. Usually, you pay a certain fee for every computer you’re tracking. The more employees you have, the higher the price. However, if you have over 50, or 100 employees you can definitely get a custom price, so you should ask for a discount.
Deployment
Where you’d like to store the data the employees monitoring software collects will also influence the price. All software manufacturers give you an option to store the data in the cloud, however, some of them let you store the data on your own servers as well.
On-premise deployment is more expensive, and in most cases, you must have at least 100 employees in order to get it. While storing data on your own servers seems like a more secure option, it is more expensive, and the clouds companies are using are secure as well.
What Are the Pricing Schemes?
Subscription-Based Pricing
Most software pricing schemes are subscription-based. So you pay per employee, for a certain period of time. Usually, you can select if you’re going to pay on a monthly basis, or annually. If you only want to use the software for a few months, it’s best to go with the monthly subscription. However, if you’re looking for a longer commitment, you should opt-in for an annual subscription since this is a more affordable option. Most manufacturers give about a 20% discount for annual payments.
One-Time Payment
One-time payments are very rare when it comes to employee monitoring software. In this case, you would also need to pay per employee, but you can use the software as long as you want.
Keep in mind that this option usually doesn’t include software updates, so you might need to pay extra for those at some point.
Freemium
In the end, there are freemium monitoring software options. What this means is that you can use the software for a limited number of employees forever. It’s great if you have a small team and don’t intend to grow at any point. However, if your team is expanding, you’ll need to pay for the licenses. So you should really make sure you’re using the freemium version of the software you would want to pay for, since this way you won’t waste more time finding a paid version of the tool.
Additionally, you should think about the features freemium software includes, as they are limited compared to the paid options.
Wrap Up
Now that you’re aware of how the cost and pricing of employees monitoring software works, you can go ahead and start researching your options. Good luck!