Qustodio Reviews

Qustodio: Digital Wellbeing Solution

In today’s multi-device environment, a parental control solution that only runs on your family PC is nearly useless. Web content filtering, powerful app banning, and a detailed activity log are just a few of the features offered by Qustodio, an amazing parental control software. All settings and monitoring are handled through Qustodio’s web dashboard or the parental mode of its mobile apps, allowing you to create rules and watch your child’s activity from anywhere.

Despite its high price and absence of robust social media tracking tools, Qustodio earns an Editors’ Choice award for parental control software due to its extensive feature set and exceptional customizability.

For more than a decade, Qustodio has been in the parental-control game, and it continues to expand its feature set and platform support. As a result, it is only rivaled by Net Nanny in terms of overall platform coverage, with compatibility for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Kindle Fire tablets, and, most recently, Chrome OS.

With a few notable exceptions for iOS users, Qustodio is also one of the most feature-rich alternatives available. Qustodio’s one distinguishing feature is call and text tracking, which practically all other parental-control apps have discontinued in recent years. If this is a must-have feature for you, the fact that Qustodio still supports Android may make it your first choice.

What can Qustodio be used for?

You have a lot of control with Qustodio. You can establish daily screen time limits and plan periods when gadgets are not allowed to be used. It’s crucial to remember that you decide what happens when the limit is reached. We discovered that it just restricted online surfing and internet access by default, allowing my kid to continue gaming after the time limit had expired. You can also choose to lock the device fully or only receive a warning that they’ve reached their limit.

When the time limit is reached, your child will get a message alerting them it’s time to go, and they won’t be able to use the device until the next day if you want to lock it. I recommend using the alert instead of the block because it would interrupt them in the middle of whatever they were doing, which can be annoying if they were speaking with a buddy or playing a game.

What is the process used by Qustodio?

It can do so because it uses Qustodio VPN servers. The servers accept unfiltered internet traffic and distribute it to your children’s devices. Isn’t it cool?

However, you probably aren’t aware that the Qustodio Family App isn’t their sole offering. They have a Qustodio for school as well. This tool essentially aids students in staying focused on their studies and ensuring that they only utilize school computers for educational purposes. Additionally, Qustodio is a business-oriented platform. This is commonly used in corporate workplaces to keep staff focused on work rather than wasting time on other websites.

You can set specific daily time limitations for certain applications or games in the games and apps area, but you can only do so after your child has used the app or game for the first time after installing Qustodio. A dedicated YouTube monitoring tab is also available. Qustodio allows you to see all of your child’s YouTube searches as well as the videos they watch.

On Android phones, the Calls & SMS tab displays a call record, and you can even have it display your child’s SMS messages, but this option is not available on iPhones. A social media tracking option is available; however, it covers Facebook.

If your child’s phone is turned on and connected to the internet, the location page displays their last known location for Android or iPhones. It appears to be very accurate when they’ve been somewhere for a long time, but it’s not uncommon for it to be off by up to 100 feet, depending on the location and how rapidly they’re traveling.

The summary tab for your child shows you how they spend their time each day and identifies any suspicious activities. It’s simple to read at a glance and contains all of the necessary information. You receive a daily email report with the same information. If you want to go even further, there’s an activity timeline that tracks everything you do, including time spent in apps or games, web searches, and web browsing.

Getting Started with Qustodio

Our preference is to set up these services through their websites whenever possible, but the Qustodio apps for Android and iOS make it easy if you prefer to stay on your smartphone.

The first step is to create your account. The application will then ask you to create child profiles. You need to enter a name, then select a birth year, gender, and avatar from a set of six options. The avatars are a little weird, and you can’t upload a photo of your child. The next step is to add a device for the baby. You can go to the Qustodio download page or download “Kids App Qustodio” from its app store.

Like several other parental control services, Qustodio uses separate apps for parents and kids because kids give their apps terrible ratings. First, you will accept your account on the child’s device. Then, the application follows the process of granting the necessary authorizations, including installing a profile that allows the management of their devices. On iOS, it requires the device passcode.

Qustodio Detailed Features

Qustodio is certainly one of the most feature-rich parental control suites we’ve examined to date, especially for the price. The following features are standard with a yearly premium subscription (with any device count):

Now let us discuss these features in detail.

App administration is one function on the Android side that is superior to that on the iOS side. It works with any Android app and displays a custom screen explaining what’s happening when a youngster tries to open a prohibited or time-expired app. Admittedly, this is more limited for iOS users; however, it is better than previously. According to Qustodio, around 6,000 iOS apps work with the app-management functions.

Instead of explaining, the functionality issued a network error when the youngster attempted to use a blocked or time-expired app. However, Qustodio’s recent decision to monitor child traffic via an on-device proxy service rather than a distant VPN may have improved the situation.

Qustodio bans all access to websites that fit any of eleven undesirable categories, including Drugs, Gambling, Pornography, Proxies/Loopholes, and Violence, by default. Parents who want to fine-tune web content screening can choose from further 19 categories, including Social Network and File Sharing. Allow, Alert Me, and Block are your options for each category.

Even secure (HTTPS) websites are blocked from restricted categories by Qustodio’s content filtering, which works on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Amazon Silk, and Edge. Unfortunately, it is incompatible with Brave, Opera, and Tor browsers, and it automatically disables unsupported browsers. You can also restrict access to specific websites.

Qustodio’s time-restriction technologies are divided into several categories. Daily Time Limits lets you set a limit on how much time you spend on your device for each day of the week. You can also completely disable device access for that day. When the time limit expires, Qustodio gives you the option of what to do. You can either disable navigation or disable the device entirely. If a youngster approaches that limit, Qustodio can give you a notification.

The Lock Navigation and Lock Device options accomplish different things depending on the platform. For example, on Windows and Macs, locking navigation restricts internet access and web browsers, but the lock device option prevents your children from signing into the device.

With Qustodio’s location tracking, you can see your child’s current position as well as their location history. This happens automatically on both Android and iOS once the feature is activated, albeit the frequency of location checks is slightly lower on iOS, pinging every five minutes.

Qustodio now features a geofencing feature that allows you to specify an address and then build a circle that is 350 to 650 feet in diameter centered on that place. Then, when one of your children enters or quits that circle, you will be notified.

Location monitoring can provide you peace of mind by instantly confirming that your child arrived home or at school for the day. Unlike the home screen, notification bar, and recent app lists, locking navigation on Android disables most apps. While the device is locked, children can only make outgoing emergency calls. The lock navigation toggle is greyed out on iOS devices. All apps on the device are hidden while the device is locked.

Restricted Times in Qustodio allows you to limit when your child can use their gadget during the day. You may block off vast periods by clicking on the hour of each day on Qustodio, which splits the day into Morning, Afternoon, and Night. When the timer runs out, you can choose to disable navigation and lock the device, which prevents your child from circumnavigating the block by changing the device’s system time.

Sorry, iOS users—this one is only for Android users. People must first enable the Panic Button in the parental portal or app before accessing an SOS button at the bottom of the child’s app. Next, the youngster must press that SOS button, followed by a circular SOS button on the next screen to activate it. This will send an emergency message to all of the trusted contacts you’ve added to the app, along with the child’s current location. This message can be texted or emailed.

It is just those trustworthy contacts who are contacted, not emergency services. Although Qustodio makes this obvious in the app, it is worth emphasizing.

 This is a new function, and it’s a welcome feature because there’s plenty of inappropriate content on YouTube for youngsters. You can restrict access to YouTube on the web, and you can monitor a child’s activities in the YouTube app, such as what they search for and which videos they watch.

While the monitoring worked fine on both Android and iOS, we couldn’t get YouTube.com to restrict the web on iOS. However, visits to YouTube.com on iOS were still recorded in the activity timeline, along with a list of any videos viewed, so this works if monitoring is all you need.

Qustodio Cost

In recent years, Qustodio’s pricing has stayed fairly consistent, with a basic free tier that includes web blocking, web and social media monitoring, time limitations, and an online monitoring dashboard for a single device. Then, depending on the number of devices you need to secure, you can choose from one of three premium plans to access all of the premium features.

Qustodio’s price for Business needs is the same for schools. It does, however, differ in terms of features designed specifically for effective staff monitoring. These are the following:

• Superior Filtering
• Time Management
• Application Monitoring
• Intelligent Reporting tools
• Advanced Geolocation features

Alternatives to Qustodio 

The top alternatives that are available in the market to Qustodio are listed down below:

What’s the difference between Qustodio and Net Nanny?

Many of the features of Net Nanny and Qustodio are similar, such as web blocking, time limitations, and activity monitoring, but there are a few variances. Although Net Nanny lacks a panic button, Qustodio lacks the language and picture censorship that Net Nanny does. Net Nanny is also slightly less priced than Qustodio. 

Qustodio Review Conclusions

Qustodio is still the greatest parental control software we’ve used, despite its quirkiness and missing functionality. It has been a lot more reliable in the last year than in previous years, yet it still restricts access when it shouldn’t. That usually happens when the device doesn’t have an internet connection (or one that isn’t very strong), and any modifications you make in the parent app or on the online dashboard have to be sent to the child’s device.

However, app time limitations are strictly enforced, and the child is given a helpful warning that they only have a few minutes before the app is blocked. Nevertheless, web filtration is useful, and it’s excellent that Chromebooks are now supported.

Finally, we’d like to propose it as an excellent way to manage children’s screen time across many devices while also protecting them – whether they’re browsing the web or using social media. Get started with Qustodio today!