You are resting on our website and reading this article today. This means you’re in a dire need of a monitoring app and thinking to go for Qustodio.
Well, let me tell you that you are going on the right track. Hundreds of parental control apps are available in the market but only a few can match the expectations of the customers.
Qustodio is one of those apps when it comes to the monitoring of kids and teens. The app offers limited but extremely helpful features and should surely be given a try.
In this Qustodio review, I will be trying to answer all the important questions that people might have about this spy software. For example, what does Qustodio do? How to install Qustodio on a child’s phone? How much is Qustodio? etc. Overall, after going through this Qustodio review you won’t need to check any other article.
Table Of Contents
- Qustodio Review
- Compatibility
- How To Install Qustodio On Child’s Phone?
- Qustodio Dashboard
- Activity Timeline
- What Can Qustodio See?
- Qustodio iPhone Review
- Qustodio PC Review
- How Much Does Qustodio Cost?
- How Good Is Qustodio Compared To FamiSafe?
- Wrapping Up
- FAQs
Qustodio Review
You can totally rely on my review and make a decision whether you should buy Qustodio for monitoring your kid or not. You can trust me as I have personally tested the Qustodio app for several weeks before writing this review.
Compatibility
Qustodio is easy to go with almost all types of operating systems. An Android device with 4.4 and all the above versions are compatible with the Qustodio app.
Does your kid own an iOS device? No problem, Qustodio will track down all the activities from the target iOS device and deliver it to your screen remotely.
The teen needs to have a device with at least an iOS 11 or later version. Except for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad can be monitored as well.
Similarly, Qustodio can track macOS, Kindle, and Windows devices as well.
How To Install Qustodio On Child’s Phone?
The installation and setup on Qustodio are really easy as compared to the setup on most of the spying apps prevailing in the market.
This is because Qustodio doesn’t throw up the flood of permissions like any other spying app.
Secondly, as soon as the Qustodio app is set up on both the parent and target device, the data can be tracked. Qustodio doesn’t take time to upload and show the target device data to the parents on their device remotely.
NOTE 1: The installation process for the Qustodio app on iOS and Android is almost the same.
NOTE 2: We are making use of an Android cell phone as the kid’s device and a PC as the parent device.
Setup On The Parent Device
1. Go to the official site of Qustodio and click on Sign up to make your new Qustodio account. If you already have a Qustodio account, go for Login instead.
2. Provide the details on the next page that appears. The details include your name, email, and password. Click on CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT after providing the details.
3. You’re half away done in setting up the parent device and now you have to go ahead and CREATE PROFILE of your child.
4. The child’s profile includes the name, age, gender, and avatar of the teen. Click on SAVE AND CONTINUE.
5. Select the type of device that the child uses, i.e Smartphone, desktop, or tablet.
The setup on the parent’s device is done and now it’s time to do some work on the child’s cellphone.
How To Install Qustodio On Android
1. Download the Qustodio app depending on your phone – Qustodio for Android.
2. Launch the app and tap on I have a parent account.
3. Now it’s time to Accept All the terms and conditions of the Qustodio parental control app.
4. Sign in to the Qustodio app on the kid’s device using the same email and password that you used to sign up on the parent device.
5. Choose the Kid’s device from the options available and then give a name for the device.
6. Time to activate the accessibility now by tapping on Activate now.
7. Qustodio will ask you to give certain permissions in order to make the app monitor the child’s smartphone completely. These permissions include access to photos, media, and phone calls.
8. Finally, it’s time to Activate the device administrator by tapping on Activate now.
The child’s device is also ready and you can use the parent device to track the kid’s device now that too from anywhere without having the kid’s cell phone in your hand physically.
Qustodio Summary/Dashboard
The dashboard of Qustodio is a kind of summary that shows various activities of the kid on one screen. Time spent by the kid can be seen. Unfortunately, the screen time shown isn’t accurate. Apart from that, you can set the screen time for the kid as well.
All the apps used by the child are available under the Top activity section and the time spent on each app can be seen with the percentage of total usage.
The summary related to YouTube will be available on the dashboard as well and you see all the videos that have been watched by the child.
Parents can also keep an eye on the searches made on YouTube.
The Questionable activity section will show everything that is not good for the teen somehow. Be that the searches on YouTube, browsers, or any questionable activity on Facebook.
But it didn’t work as we expected it to work and we were not able to see any updates under the Questionable activity section.
Similar is the case if we talk about Calls and SMS as no updates were seen in that section too.
Activity Timeline
All the activities tracked on the target cellphone by Qustodio will be shown here. These activities include the location update, searches made on YouTube and web browsers, and the apps used by the child.
To make your search specific, make use of the drop-down icon and select the desired option.
What Can Qustodio See?
1. Daily Time Limits
Cellphone addiction is a poison for children and they consume it every day without even thinking of its future consequences.
Too much attachment to the cellphone can cause several types of physical and mental problems to the kid’s health.
But you can safeguard your kids before they have the poison of cellphone addiction in their hand and they drink it. And you can take the help of the Qustodio app for this purpose.
The Daily Time Limit feature lets you set a timer for which the child can use the cellphone. Right after the time elapses, the kid won’t be able to access any app installed on the device.
The minimum limit for the timer has to be 15 minutes and Qustodio makes it possible to set the same time for other days as well.
If the time set is more than what the child should spend on the phone, just click on Reset and set the time again.
Have your kid already used the smartphone for a long time? Simply click on Block and make the phone unusable for the kid for as long as you want.
In my testing, this feature lived up to my expectations as it didn’t take any time to block apps on the device once the set time was over.
2. Restricted Times
This feature is also given so that parents can restrict their kids from spending too much time on their smartphones.
Unlike Daily Time Limit, here you can set the time for the block for different times in the day. You can set the time for different days as well.
The time you have chosen will block the apps from opening/working on the kid’s device.
This feature is a helping hand when you don’t want anything to come between your child’s study, sleeping, or eating time.
You can modify the restriction settings by clicking on the settings icon at the top right.
3. Web Filtering
There’s absolutely no use of having a parental control app that doesn’t block the adult content from appearing on the kid’s smartphone.
But thankfully, Qustodio doesn’t fall in that category and filters the search made by the kid on the internet.
The adult content can be anything related to gambling, porn, alcohol, drugs, weapon, etc. And you don’t have to think twice before saying that all of this content is harmful to the teens and students to watch.
Under Web Filtering, you can see that Qustodio has already selected some categories that are not fit for the children to see.
Whenever the child tries to access a website that falls in the selected category, Qustodio automatically blocks them.
I won’t say that Qustodio completely blocks the adult content if any such browsing has been done by the kid. But the app removes the unhealthy content to a good extent.
If you have some particular sites that you want to block personally and don’t want your kid to access them, well that’s possible too. Just head to the Add Exception section and add those sites to the list and click SAVE.
4. YouTube Monitoring
YouTube is more addictive than alcohol for most teens and tweens and it becomes the duty of the parents to set a limited time for the kids that they can spend on YouTube.
Qustodio makes it possible by setting a timer for the use of YouTube. YouTube Monitoring feature works just like Daily Time Limits and you can set the same timer for the use of YouTube on different days.
If the use of YouTube is already too much use the Block option to block the YouTube app instantly.
To get the information about the videos that the kid watched on YouTube, simply click on the here option.
One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that YouTube Monitoring only blocks the YouTube app from opening. The kid will still be able to access YouTube using the browser feature.
So it’s better that, for the time you don’t want the kid to access YouTube, make sure to add YouTube’s website link to the Web Filtering Exceptions.
5. Games And Apps
Blocking some app(s) becomes necessary when the kid gets addicted to them and their daily schedule seems to crash.
What choice parents are left with is, blocking those apps permanently or for a short period of time.
Qustodio makes it happen with its Games And Apps feature. Simply toggle off the button in front of the app that you want to block on the kid’s phone.
With this, immediate action will be taken by Qustodio and the app will get blocked right away.
Want to set the timer for the use of that app? Qustodio makes it easy to do that as well by clicking on the down arrow icon attached to the app and setting the time.
6. Calls And SMS
Knowing the people with whom the teen talks and have long conversations over the phone is really important.
Tracking of Calls and SMS is an essential part of monitoring the kids and the monitoring will always remain incomplete without getting access to them. You need to head to the Calls And SMS section for that.
But unfortunately, when I was using this app the feature failed as I was not able to track the names and numbers of the people contacting the target cellphone.
Moreover, we were not able to block the incoming and outgoing calls with Qustodio as well.
Specific phone numbers can be included under the Call Exceptions heading. You can select that either the kid will only receive the calls from those numbers or you can block the selected numbers. But unfortunately, this feature was not taking any action as well.
This feature didn’t work for me but it might just work for you. So you can go for the 3-day free trial with premium features of Qustodio and see if it works or not.
7. Location
The location tracking feature is a boon for parents with school-going kids. Nothing can panic the parents more than the situation when the kids haven’t returned home and the time is more than usual.
But continuously getting updates about the child’s location can be a relief and Qustodio is here to provide you with that relief.
You can check the current location of your kid in the Activity timeline area anytime you feel like it because the only option you’ll find in the Location heading is to turn the location tracking on or off.
But it’s not possible to personally check the location of the kid whenever you feel like it. Qustodio will send you the location every few minutes.
Another thing that I didn’t personally like about Qustodio is that the app doesn’t provide the geofencing feature which I think is very important to keep the kids safe.
8. Social Monitoring
Facebook is like food for the students and youngsters, they can’t live without it. But only the parents know what consequences they might have to face if the wrong use of Facebook is done.
This makes it necessary for the parents to personally keep a track of the Facebook activity of the kids.
Qustodio offers Facebook tracking to its users under the Social Monitoring heading, but the feature has some big limitations.
You need to know the Facebook credentials of the child and personally accept that Qustodio will track the Facebook activity of the kids like new friends, what they share on their wall, status updates, etc.
Or you have to make your child log into their account and accept that Qustodio will track their activities.
If you think clearly, this doesn’t make any sense because if you actually know the Facebook credentials of the kid they why you need Qustodio to do that work for you.
It would have been better if Qustodio somehow got access to the Facebook activity of the child’s account even when you’re not aware of the account details.
9. Panic Button
Parents never want their child to ever stick in an emergency situation or where the kid has to face some trouble.
But life is not always like the petals of the rose, the thorns attached to it also need to be faced.
The parents need to make their kids prepared for any emergency situation and what they need to do to get out of it.
One such step is turning on the SOS button given by the Qustodio app on the kid’s cellphone device.
For setting the Panic Button, first, you need to Enable Panic Button from your device and Invite Trusted Contacts. You can add yourself to the trusted contacts list, your neighbors, or anyone you trust.
Now they have to accept your invitation as the trusted contact. Once that’s done they’ll be added to the trusted contact list kid.
Right after toggling on the Enable Panic Button, an SOS button will appear on the child’s Qustodio app.
Whenever the kid presses that button and sends the generated message, all the trusted contacts will receive a message that the child is in danger and receive the live location of the kid along with the message.
Qustodio iPhone Review
How To Install Qustodio On iPhone?
Once you have set up the parent’s device and purchased the Qustodio app all you have to do is go to the App Store on the kid’s iPhone. There you need to search for Qustodio Kids App. After finding the app you need to install the app on the kid’s device and follow the onscreen prompts to install Qustodio on the child’s iPhone. For more help, you can refer to this installation guide.
Can Qustodio See iPhone Text Messages?
With the premium version of Qustodio, you can monitor your kid’s iPhone text messages and iMessages. However, if you are using the free version of the app then you can’t see their messages on Qustodio.
How Does Qustodio Work On iPhone?
Qustodio works on iPhone in a similar fashion as it does on an Android phone. That means it tracks all the activities of your child on their iPhone. You get the following features on Qustodio for iPhone.
- Restrict screen time
- Location tracking
- Web content monitoring and blocking
- YouTube monitoring
- Messages tracking
Qustodio PC Review
Apart from Android and iPhone, Qustodio is also available for Windows and Mac. This means not just their cell phones but you can actually monitor their activities on their computer as well.
How To Install Qustodio On Windows 10 & Mac?
After setting up your parent’s account you need to download the software on the kid’s computer. After that, you need to install the software on their Windows PC or Mac. Next, sign into your account on the software which you have created while setting up the parent’s device.
After that, you need to follow the onscreen prompts and the software will be installed on the target PC. If you want more help on installing Qustodio on Windows 10 & Mac then you can get help from here.
What Does Qustodio Monitor On PC?
In my testing of Qustodio, I noticed that this software can track all the sites your kids visit on their laptop or computer. It lets you add websites that you don’t want your kids to browse and block them. But you don’t have to do it manually all the time because all harmful websites are already blocked by Qustodio.
Moreover, it allows you to set the daily time so that your child can’t use their device for more than the restricted time. This feature works amazingly well because I noticed that it blocks the device instantly as time gets over.
Overall, it does a great job at monitoring the target computer without breaking a sweat.
How Much Does Qustodio Cost?
Talking about its price, Qustodio is quite inexpensive as compared to its competitor apps. Qustodio offers 3 different plans, Small, Medium, and Large based on the number of users.
The Small plan costs $4.58/month with connectivity to 5 devices, the Medium plan costs $8.08/month with connectivity to 10 devices and the Large plan costs $11.50/month with connectivity to 15 devices.
You’ll be happy to know that Qustodio provides a free version as well. The free version doesn’t provide the premium features of the apps like the panic button, location tracking, call monitoring, etc.
What Is The Difference Between Qustodio Free & Premium?
The main difference between Qustodio free and premium is that with the free version you only get basic features. While on the other hand with Qustodio premium you get advanced features like Social media monitoring, location tracking, text message tracking, and much more.
How Good Is Qustodio Compared To FamiSafe?
In the world of parental control apps if there are two apps that are neck and neck competitors then they have to be Qustodio and FamiSafe. Therefore, I thought to compare Qustodio with FamiSafe so that you can make an educated decision.
Feature | FamiSafe | Qustodio | Comments |
Call & Message tracking | No | Yes | In the premium version, Qustodio can track call logs and messages |
Geofencing | Yes | No | Qustodio does not have geofencing but it does have location tracking feature |
Browsing history | Yes | Yes | Both the apps can track browsing history |
Screen Time limit | Yes | Yes | You can restrict screen time on both the apps |
YouTube monitoring | Yes | Yes | Both apps can monitor YouTube activities of your child |
Social media monitoring | No | Yes | Qustodio can track social media sites on the target device if you have the premium plan |
Wrapping Up
If your monitoring is particularly focused on kids, in that case, going for Qustodio is a good option.
This review is presented before you after thorough research and testing of the app. So basically you can totally rely on our article.
Even if you have some doubts and want to clear them after personally testing the app, just go for the 3-day free trial with all premium features.
If the only thing you want for your child is, to monitor web search, filtering the search, monitoring social media, and controlling the time spent on the app, then just go for the free version of the app.
Qustodio FAQs
1. Is Qustodio free?
Qustodio provides a free as well as a paid version. The paid service gives access to some premium features like YouTube monitoring and the panic button.
2. Can Qustodio block YouTube?
Yes, you can block as well as set the timer for the use of YouTube by the kid.
3. Can Qustodio see text messages?
Qustodio app has a feature to see the text messages but this feature failed our test as it wasn’t working at all.
4. Is Qustodio safe to use?
Yes, Qustodio is absolutely safe to use and works under legal norms, that’s the reason the app has made its place in the Play Store and App Store.
5. Does Qustodio work in stealth mode?
No, the app icon appears on the screen and you cannot hide it.
6. Can my child delete Qustodio?
Unfortunately yes. As the app icon clearly appears on the screen, it’s possible for the kids to get rid of the app anytime they feel like it.
Qustodio
Pros
- Device blocking works as it should be
- Restricted Times feature works properly
- Web Filtering feature is able to block all unhealthy sites successfully
- Qustodio is quite inexpensive as compared to its competitors
Cons
- The screen time of the apps shown by Qustodio is not accurate
- The Calls and SMS option didn't work at all in our case
- The Questionable activity didn't work as well