Qustodio Parental Control App Reviews

by RootsRockBrent

This is the first time I’ve ever written an app review, but I feel compelled to share our experience with QustodioParentalControlApp . We bought the premium service to be able to track and control our 12 year old son’s app use on his iPhone.

On a daily basis the activity report shows Facebook use, but his phone does not have Facebook downloaded. He is also required to do 20 minutes of French each day using an app called Duolingo. I sometimes time him when he studies French using QustodioParentalControlApp . The amount of time he uses Duolingo is under-reported by more than 50% on a daily basis.

There is no way to contact their customer support by phone or even a chat service that some companies use. Instead, you can only send an email. I have sent an email and never received a reply. I also filled out a questionnaire they emailed me and provided them with information about the issues. I never received a reply.

The service is not reliable or accurate based on its falsely reporting daily use of an app he doesn’t have, substantially under-reporting use of an educational app he uses on a daily basis and no response from the company when I’ve reported these issues.

by El Bogo

Initially it seemed like QustodioParentalControlApp offered a great value and provided control for my son to safely use his phone. We have regular discussions about what is appropriate to search for on his device (s). We assumed that Qustodio would provide a “safer” environment for him to use his phone for school and for fun. It provides updates, though it’s obvious that it isn’t difficult to do simple workarounds for restrictions to get to content that should very obviously be restricted.

I’ve concluded that QustodioParentalControlApp is actually dangerous as it left me to believe that it would provide control or restriction to certain content. I’m giving it another week, but I have now removed all ability to use a search engine, and that doesn’t seem like it helps to provide that control we were looking for. It seems like it may be a case of “you get what you pay for.”

by Mmcguirk

Effectiveness... QustodioParentalControlApp gave us control of screen time for about a week. After that my 9 and 10 year olds figured a work around. Not worth the subscription fees for a week’s worth of effective service.

Subscription...what I really dislike is that the company employs a business model that makes it almost impossible to cancel your service. You have to remove QustodioParentalControlApp from all the kids computers. Then, the shifty business practice really come into play. They claim they cannot cancel it, but google or apple have to do so. The website offers no contact information. They simply hide out and continue to collect fees for a service that little kids can work around.

In addition to be TOTALLY ineffective, it is also annoying to see how the company tries desperately to cling to your wallet.

by AN459

We’ve used the “premium” version for about 3 months to manage game use on PCs and iOS devices and the list of problems is long and significant.
Largely ineffective at managing game time because their approach to monitoring/tracking/blocking is flawed and cumbersome. Needs to take notes from the iOS parental controls which allows grouping apps in a way that is effective and easy to use.
Web monitoring is alright in some areas, but has often and inexplicably blocked sites needed for schoolwork. Reporting function lacks customization so expect to be bombarded with irrelevant emails. Tech support only available by email and been of such limited value I stopped trying to reach them.
Overall, not worth the money for paid version and essentially worthless as a free version.

by SLT000000

Would give zero stars if I could. I have given QustodioParentalControlApp multiple tries. On every single try my observation was that it works for a few days leading to a false sense of security and suddenly nothing gets tracked any more (or) even when it tracks, it just gives you browser names and nothing else ( thus is with no changes to the computer or to the mobile used for tracking ). Restricted times, apps and websites are not honored. Support has one answer for everything ( reinstall ). You will never be connected to a live agent ever. And reinstall doesn’t solve anything. Every reinstall also needs to be done with turning off security apps thus jeopardizing the computer even more. License fee is non refundable so you are stuck for the whole year even as the child is not protected. QustodioParentalControlApp thrives on sheer number of new kids that embark on internet each year. They don’t add value to any existing users. After nearly two years trying this on and off, I feel a responsibility to leave my experience here as a heads up to other parents considering this.

by Sammy H K

I am a 15 year old girl and I do consider my parents to be strict but I do love them. I get that you want to protect your kid and have control over them but I promise this is not the way. Ever since I downloaded QustodioParentalControlApp I always fight with my parents and try to make them understand that I am responsible enough to leave my phone and can handle myself, I just feel preassured all the time because I always have to have an excuse to why I cant answer my friends and why my wifi doesn’t work but I’m so tired of it, I have lost my mind and I love my dad so much but I hate it that I have no privacy anymore and I have told him I hate him and have had the worst arguments over this. All I asked him was to trust me or try and make it work for a week without QustodioParentalControlApp so he could see that I wouldn’t spend that much time on the phone. I have cried so much ever since that app got into the way of our relationship and yes, I do understand but instead of taking your child’s privacy away try talking to them and making sure that they understand that they shouldn’t spend too much time on the phone and making sure they know you love them but I promise this is not the way all it will do is cause fights and since my dad doesn’t want to hear me maybe some parent will and might understand their child for once.

by Laf1110

I’m So bummed I spent so much money on this. The time limit works on my kids phone but the iPad doesn’t work even though I added it as a device. Navigating the controls is too simple and doesn’t easily allow you to understand which app is being controlled or has the time limit. I have no idea how to add a time limit to her iPad in addition to her phone. Since I’ve added QustodioParentalControlApp she is unable to use her phone data even though she has available time. It essentially makes her free internet data useless which stinks because I’m paying for that. There’s no way to specify what things she can access and not access on a particular app. If I want to allow her to see videos in Instagram, I can’t do that. The biggest, fattest, dumbest issue is that THERES NO CUSTOMER SERVICE!! No “contact us” in QustodioParentalControlApp . Like, you buy it, they laugh and take your money and run.

Creators: make QustodioParentalControlApp more user friendly to navigate and integrate other devices. Also, add some dang customer service!! 😠

by Rmax06

I’ve been using QustodioParentalControlApp since late June and overall have been pleased with the features. Easy to use and set up. Time limits and app restrictions have worked well until now. 5 months in and QustodioParentalControlApp is glitching to the point of being worthless. Although the Qustodio app settings on my phone and my daughter’s phone says a specific app is blocked, she has been able to use it freely. All the time limit settings are no longer functioning. I’ve deleted QustodioParentalControlApp , restarted her phone and re-downloaded hoping that a clean slate would solve the problem. Nope. Other aspects of her phone have been effected as well. She can’t connect to QustodioParentalControlApp Store. A few of the games on her phone will no longer load. Her phone is 5 months old as well.
She has an iPhone 11 so I know an outdated phone is not the issue. Very frustrating to pay for a year and only get 5 months of usable service. I’m currently shopping for a new parental control app.

by Disappointed In Every Way

I have never written a review before, but I can’t let other people deal with this company if I can help it. After months of fighting with QustodioParentalControlApp on my child’s computer and phone, I cancelled the service. I had dealt with their tech support and most of the time the answer was “uninstall and reinstall” which is not the best answer when I’m away on business and my child needs the computer to work without having to give him my password, or he needs to call either me or my wife, but his phone is locked when it shouldn’t be.
Again, I cancelled the service a few months ago- it must have registered on some level at the company since after I cancelled, my user name and password no longer worked on the site, so imagine my surprise when I get an invoice and pending charge to my credit card today. The second that charge posts, I’m issuing a chargeback.

by Chicago-jay

If you want to spend hours of your time uninstalling and reinstalling this on your many devices go ahead and buy it. My many issues:

1. There’s no phone support.
2. Every answer to every question is uninstall and reinstall. My kid has 4 devices. That’s well over an hour every time I’ve done this and I’ve done it at least a half dozen times in a vain effort to get it to work.
3. There was not a single day in 6 months that every device was reporting things.
4. Time limits ALSO apply to you when you get in the device to try to “fix” it so have fun trying to do anything at 11pm when you finally have time to work on this when your kid has already exhausted their time on the device.
5. Takes forever for QustodioParentalControlApp to realize you’ve changed policies which makes #4 even worse.
6. You have to turn off all of the controls or completely remove your child’s profile to try to fix things. Have fun setting everything up over and over again.
7. No way to see activity per device. You have to setup separate profiles with just that device and recreate all the rules you want to apply to that child on the new device.

I only tried using this on Windows and iOS.

by Jruizmat

I have Qustodio on my laptop and most say that it is a nightmare. When I was working virtually throughout the School
Year, my computer was constantly blacking out because of Qustodio and blocking school approved websites. When time is up for the day, the next day the time is still up. I also hate that when time is up it straight up shuts down your computer. On my brother’s iPad, I heard that it was blocking him from doing simple features like texting or sending dog pictures. It lets you download apps but then when you try to use QustodioParentalControlApp , no movies / TV shows show up (Disney +, Netflix). I am usually very tech savvy and I know that QustodioParentalControlApp is good for kids, but needs to be fixed a lot. It’s broken on our household devices and always tries to charge my mom and dad 50 USD when they paid yesterday. SCAM

by Eliciayr

I don’t feel like this has been worth the large sum of money I spent. I liked it as a free tool for one teen but having paid as much as I did you would think it would be more reliable and have more convenience. You can’t specify different time limits for different apps. It was useless for the first 5 months while my kids were in school on their devices because It was all or nothing. I’m regularly having to give my kids extra time because Qustodio says they used all their time but they swear they haven’t used any. I look at their activity to show them and Qustodio shows no activity for the day, as does Screentime, so then I have to just give them more time in all fairness. How does it say they used up all their time but on nothing?! I find it inconvenient when I’d like to encourage them to spend time on educational apps by allowing separate time on that. I find it a huge hassle that if there’s a random odd day where I want to allow them online after our usual rule I have to change the rule completely then set it again instead a simple button to extend their time.

It shows me what their search activity is and blocks certain websites I wouldn’t want them on which is good but is that worth 100 something dollars? Not really.

by Kev350

With the caveat that we’ve only had this a few days, I’ve seen some significant gaps in Qustodio’s functioning.
First, the idea that this can be an “invisible” installation on a computer is patently false. Yes, it won’t show up on the desktop, but it shows up in a simple search or scrolling the “uninstall apps” list. My kid found it within 30 seconds of the first time he got on his computer and immediately uninstalled it.
Secondly, the parents app has limited functionality compared to what you get by logging in on the desktop. For example, you can’t adjust the off times from QustodioParentalControlApp , if your kid needs to stay on late to finish homework, for example.
Third, and this is my pet peeve with most of these type of apps: there’s no “kill switch.” I want a big button that lets me immediately lock out access to the monitored device, without having to go through menus, adjust time limits or off times, or whatever. Just immediately (and temporarily) lock it out and eventually re-enable it without having to change settings back. Is that so hard?
Given that a year of this costs $50, I’ll give it some more time to see if it gets better, but otherwise I’m looking elsewhere...

by IGoodnessGracious

It is unfortunate that the recommended Kids App did not function properly on my daughter’s phone. It somehow deleted her apps after randomly giving us a lost iPhone screen. We had to delete QustodioParentalControlApp to get her apps back. Screen time works way better for iPhones.

With regard to monitoring her Windows activity, it has been good. However the Parents App is buggy just as the Kids App. When trying to make changes to her restrictions, the lag is so terrible. The iPad app worked well, the iPhone version, nada. So we’re paying for a software that only works well on her Windows laptop and our iPad. I hop this company can get it together and make things more convenient for their customers. I like them because their features are better than the other parental control apps. But we pay too much for it to only work on Windows and erase phones and what not. Looking for another parental control app for our child’s phone, but in the meantime, the Screen Time functionality that comes with iOS seems to be doing the better job.

by Don't Be Too Too Restrictive

OK so QustodioParentalControlApp doesn’t seem that bad butWell the front menu thing you can see apps you know you can see on the tab labeled Disney+ it says 20 minutes now I’m not a professional but are you kidding me itSeems to me that the kid couldn’t even watch a movie let aloneA show episodeCan you seriously enable it so you notified ifYou search up something like chat I feel very sad for that child so in conclusionMaybe let some children have the piece of chat and a movie on Disney+ alsoI made this entire review on word typeAnd I’m not going to waste my precious time reading a review that’s about a paragraph to 2 paragraphs long but I will make one so if you are a parent and reading this maybe don’t like it that you have Disney+ let them watch entire movie and let them have search is like chat and some stuff relatively close left alone also who searches of gambling y’all have a good day

by @montREALady

Been using this for a while on my 14yr old son’s PC. Did the trial that ran out and the free version was fine for what we needed it for. Recently he’s been on his phone a lot during class. iPhone’s Screen Time apparently didn’t work so before spending money I swapped the Qustodio protection to his iPhone to block use during school hours starting yesterday, 8:20-2:40. First issue is the time intervals, hour blocks don’t work for most schedules. I had to pick 9-3pm because he’s still commuting at 8am and I want him to have access to his stuff and didn’t want to end it at 2pm because he’s still in class. At the very least there should be 1/2 hr blocks if not 10mins! Another immediate issue when he got to school, when he was in class he needed to take a pic with his phone (Film class) then upload to Google Classroom…except it was blocked on his phone because it’s all or nothing. There’s no way to “always allow” particular apps! Not limits, which are of no use when the phone is on lock down. I asked why he didn’t use his school Chromebook and he said because he took the pic from his phone. Fair enough. I had to take off the block to let him do that then put it back on. Decided to pay for the small package thinking I was limited because I was using the free version and nope. Same thing. There’s really nothing more I need with the paid version that I didn’t already have, like location tracking and app limits. Messaging and call tracking don’t work on iPhone anyway.

by Art And Gelato

Context: Our kid is 11. He has casual access to our phones. He is obsessed with Minecraft. I got Qustodio to help manage his use of Minecraft on his laptop. Experience: The first week was ok. But quickly he figured out how to adjust his time limits. Maybe that’s a parenting issue. But isn’t QustodioParentalControlApp supposed to help with that? And QustodioParentalControlApp ’s default for any given app control is 24 hour access. That’s silly. Furthermore, any app you want to co trip you have to make limit changes by app, by day. And the UI looks easy and simple, but if you want to set. 30-45 minute limit for Minecraft then the slider and time listed gets obstructed by your finger. This may seem small. But I end up dealing with this every day. Plus, Minecraft turns out to be 2-4 apps running in a bundle. Qustodio sees each separately. So I have to edit each one. I’ve been in touch with their customer service and their support is friendly but seem to mostly be focused on smiling. Not helping resolve issues in any substantive way. That’s customer service 2022 anyways

by Trishykae

I like what QustodioParentalControlApp does so far. However I would like if there was an option to set a specific profile that will be available at a certain time. For example: School time-it would be so much easier to have an option/profile dedicated to set the time that this should occur and the apps that are allowed AND also for it to come on automatically when the time comes instead of having to go through and disable apps each time that period arises and then have to enable them again when that period ends. Its time consuming and annoying!

by DaniK2015

I love QustodioParentalControlApp for its ability for me to limit apps on my daughter’s phone. I can track her location and hold her accountable for her screen time. However, it seems that since the last update on QustodioParentalControlApp, my daughter can’t view TikTok properly. I have updated the TikTok app and there was no improvement with the live feed or uploaded content. Instagram and other social media apps work just fine. I think there may be a bug for how QustodioParentalControlApp throttles the bandwidth for TikTok. Also, I set 24 hour limits for the weekend, days off school and she hasn’t reached her limit for the day. I work in the IT field, so I’ve done all the troubleshooting I can possibly think of. I would hate to uninstall again, only for her to add ridiculous apps again and try to find another monitoring app to sink more money into.

by Ivvvvvy Wiiiinters

I know QustodioParentalControlApp is intended for children but my fiancé has been struggling with a porn addiction for years now and this is the first app we have found that actually makes a difference in our lives.
I would give it five stars but we have been experiencing some connectivity issues the past week - the vpn is not staying connected (even though we have it set up to automatically connect and we have checked all settings both on QustodioParentalControlApp and phone to make sure there is no interference) when that happens he is unable to use the internet and it has become more of an inconvenience than a helpful tool.

We are thinking of trying a new monitoring program but I am worried I won’t find one with this much efficiency or one that is less secure.
As it stands now we have been using QustodioParentalControlApp for months with no issues but as I said the past few weeks we have been having connectivity issues that we have been unable to resolve so we’ll probably be going else where.

I want to stress though that when QustodioParentalControlApp functions properly - it is amazing.

by Schleifnet

You’re better off just using the out of the box Apple device management give the limitation of what this is able to do on iOS. No sms tracking, makes it extremely difficult to update the os for the devices because the con blocks access to the iOS update server, doesn’t do anything for Mac OS and is unable to understand that webpage ads are not the kid accessing a site. I see pings to Facebook regularly for kids who don’t actually use Facebook but this tracker doesn’t under stand that and seems to lie in the daily stats

Much more trouble than it’s worth

Also paid for via Apple subscriptions so you need to know where to go to kill it before it reups

by Ram Balasubramanian

It is a great application, but not allowing parents to be able to have a pin to open QustodioParentalControlApp just makes it frustrating. Kids often may have our phones for various reasons and can get into QustodioParentalControlApp and make changes. For me, only way to prevent this is by logging out and logging in every time which makes it cumbersome.