An ideal parental monitoring app will help you know whether your child spends too much time staring at the screen, visiting age-inappropriate websites, or interacting with the wrong people. Also, it will help you know the content and people your kid interacts with via social media, text messages, and calls. Although many parental control apps are available, some are better than others. This article lists the best apps for monitoring kids’ activity on cell phones and tablets based on users’ reviews.
How to Choose the Best Parental Monitoring App
Parents should consider several things when choosing parental monitoring apps. Here are some of the critical factors:
- Features: The application should have all the features you need to monitor your child’s online activity. Some must-have features include text monitoring and call logging, web filtering, social media monitoring, location tracking, and app blocking.
- Ease of Use: The monitoring application should be easy to install and use without jailbreaking or rooting the kid’s device. The user interface should be straightforward, and the app should clearly label the features.
- Compatibility: The app should be compatible with the devices you want to monitor. For instance, look for the best app for Android, iPhone, or Windows devices.
- Pricing: The app should be affordable. Some apps offer a free trial, while others have a monthly or annual subscription fee.
Each parent has unique reasons to monitor their kid. Therefore, the best parental phone monitoring app enables users to achieve their goals seamlessly.
Best Parental Monitoring Apps
No single parental monitoring app is perfect. However, some apps have the functionalities most parents look for, including app management, SMS tracking, location monitoring, and web filtering on iPhone and Android devices. Thus, you can use these apps to monitor most of the things your child does on their tablet, iPad, iPod touch, or any other smart device. Here are the top parental monitoring apps based on their features and effectiveness.
Kaspersky Safe Kids – The Best Parental Phone Monitoring App for 2022
Kaspersky Safe Kids lets parents track and control their kids’ activities on smartphones, Macs, and PCs. The app has a 7-day free trial and a $15 annual package for unlimited child device monitoring. The free plan allows you to filter websites, manage apps, and set screen-time limits for your kids. The paid package provides location tracking, geofencing, and social network monitoring for Android and iOS devices.
Additionally, this app allows for device scheduling and web monitoring. However, iOS devices have limited app management to block apps with age restrictions. Also, it has a feature for blocking specific YouTube searches while allowing you to review your kid’s YouTube searches.
This app is compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows devices. However, the design for mobile apps is clumsy, and its web portal is sometimes slow. Also, web filters might not work with some browsers. Nevertheless, Kaspersky Safe Kids is worth considering because it lets you monitor most activities your kid can perform on their mobile device.
uMobix – The Best Parental Monitoring App for iPhone and Android
Many users rate uMobix highly due to its features that facilitate seamless parental monitoring and control. This feature-rich app allows for social media and text monitoring, location tracking, app management, and call logging. This app lets you view your child’s outgoing and incoming calls, duration, and timestamps. Also, you can pull videos and photos from your child’s device remotely.
Some of the key features making uMobix stand out include:
- Keylogger
- Social media monitoring
- Call log monitoring
- GPS location tracking
- Remote downloading of media files
uMobix allows you to track your child’s device in real-time using the geo-locating feature. But monitoring social media applications makes this app shine. For instance, you can use it as a Facebook, Instagram, Viber, or Snapchat tracker. The app can monitor more than 30 social media apps without your child knowing. uMobix comes with a 7-day free trial and three pricing plans ranging from $11.66 per month for 12 months to $48.99 per month.
Norton Family
Norton Family has features and power that make it suitable for households where kids use Android or Windows devices. This parental monitoring app is also ideal for families with several kids. The app’s time scheduling, web filtering, and location tracking capabilities work on Android and iOS devices. However, its time allowances are for Android and Windows software only. Also, app management is unavailable in iOS.
This app has excellent web filters; parents can use it to monitor YouTube and Hulu. The School Time feature enhances kids’ focus during remote-learning sessions. Here are the top reasons to consider the Norton Family app.
- Excellent web monitoring and filters
- Unlimited devices and children
- It works on Windows devices
Some of the drawbacks of this app include:
- It’s unavailable on Macs
- The mobile app needs improvement
Norton Family is free for those with the provider’s expensive antivirus. However, users can pay $50 annually for Antivirus protection and the Norton Family app.
Qustodio – Parental Control App with Text Monitoring
Qustodio eliminates the guesswork in parenting choices. It provides weekly or daily activity reports with detailed data and stats, helping you decide which apps to block, how to limit your child’s screen time, or talk to them about cyberbullying.
Its in-depth cloud-based dashboard makes Qustodio one of the best parental cell phone monitoring apps because it lets you know what your child types on search engines and YouTube. Also, it can automatically flag concerning activities so that you can review them later.
This app lets you see the websites and apps your child interacts with, who they call, and the content they text and receive. Here’s why Qustodio features among the best parental phone monitoring apps.
- Web filter
- Excellent cloud-based dashboard
- Location history
- Social media tracking
- Panic button
While this app also allows you to restrict or set rules for your kid remotely, it has some drawbacks.
These include:
- Short trial period of three days
- Expensive plans starting from $54.95 per year
- No email tracking
Qustodio is an ideal parental control app with text monitoring capability, and it’s compatible with Android, Windows, iOS, Kindle, Mac, and Chromebook.
Net Nanny – Android and iOS Parental Monitoring App
Net Nanny is an iPhone and Android parental monitoring app that allows parents to decide whether to block, permit or receive alerts when the target child browses sites with potentially dangerous or inappropriate content. This app has an intuitive, modern design and innovative web-filtering technology.
Also, this app can track the child’s location, schedule and set time allowances, and display location history. Its iOS version allows you to block over 100 apps, while Android lets you block any application on your child’s device. Additionally, Net Nanny has an in-built app advisor that heads up on new apps to watch out for and decide whether to allow or block.
The content screening feature makes Net Nanny the best parental cell phone monitoring app because it works with all social media networks, including YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Pros of Net Nanny
- Consistent and intuitive design
- Unparalleled web filters
- Reliable time management and geolocation
Cons of Net Nanny
- Some features are unavailable on iOS
- Only an annual subscription is available
Net Nanny pricing starts at $50 per year to $129 per year.
Conclusion
While there are many parental monitoring apps, not all of them are made equal. Therefore, parents should pay attention to features, compatibility, and pricing when looking for the best parental monitoring app for iOS, Android, Windows, or any other operating system. And even when searching for the best iPhone parental monitoring app, a parent should consider the unique or distinguishing features to get the maximum value for their money.
FAQ
What is the best parental monitoring app for iPhone?
If your child has an iPhone, you might have found this web page after searching for the question, what is the best parental monitoring app for iPhone? Well, the answer depends on your mobile device monitoring needs. Therefore, consider the apps in this article to determine whether their features make them ideal for parental monitoring and control needs.
How much do parental monitoring apps cost?
The prices of parental monitoring applications vary. The cost mostly depends on the app’s services and the devices you can monitor. Some apps have free versions with limited features and capabilities. Nevertheless, the price ranges from $5 to $50 per month. Annual subscriptions are more affordable for most applications.
Are there any free parental monitoring apps?
You can find a free parental monitoring app online. However, some of these apps are not genuine. Criminals can use them to collect information about users and their target persons or kids. Therefore, experts recommend using paid parental control apps. Paid apps have more features and facilitate better parental tracking and control than free options.
This article was written by Cheryl Bourassa
