MMGuardian Review 2024: Will It Keep Your Kids Safe?

MMGuardian is a parental control app that offers a few critical features for keeping kids safe online, namely blocking messages, tracking location, screen time limits, and more. But is it the best parental control app on the market? That depends on what you’re looking for.

MMGuardian is a good parental control app with much to offer, but in our opinion, it isn’t the best.

MMGuardian review at a glance

Price	$4.17-$8.33/mo
Free trial	Yes — 14 days
Number of kids supported	Up to 5
Content filtering	Yes
Conversation monitoring	Yes — SMS, WhatsApp, Kik, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, Tinder
Screen time management	Yes
Location tracking	Yes
Activity reports	Yes
Remote lock	Yes
Supported devices	iPads and iPhones, Android phones, Samsung tablets, Chrome, FireFox, Opera
Learn more	Get MMGuardian

Our experience

While MMGuardian provides easy-to-follow instructions for its setup process, we did experience a few glitches during installation. We had multiple errors when trying to sync devices, and once we synced, the initial backup took almost 3 hours.

After downloading MMGuardian on both the parent and child devices, we set up our account and logged into the parent app. MMGuardian makes it incredibly simple to set up profiles on your children’s devices. It walks you through creating a child profile, adjusting settings, and connecting apps to monitor.

During the initial installation, we chose the age range for our child, which automatically sets up content filtering based on how old they are. We tested this by trying to navigate to blocked and restricted websites. We were immediately notified of an attempt, and from there we could accept the website or deny access.

We were able to set custom time limits and schedules. We created a “School Time” schedule and an “Overnight” schedule, where access to apps is blocked during those specified times. We also tested MMGuardian’s claim to monitor for selfies and received an alert for an adult image.

We were impressed by the speed at which we received alerts. With some other parental control apps, the alerts can be slightly delayed, but with MMGuardian, we had alerts within seconds. We received a notification of a new alert, and once in the parent app, we could view the alert in its entirety.

When we tried to track the location of the child’s device, however, we received an error multiple times.

We were impressed by how intuitive and straightforward MMGuardian was, from setup to the app interface. Alerts were timely, and we could make changes to the child’s device immediately.

We also like that MMGuardian comes with both anti-tamper and uninstall protection. This will prevent children from bypassing or uninstalling the app. Since parental control services are only effective when they can monitor what they need to, this is a great feature for parents of tech-savvy kids.

The downside to MMGuardian is that capabilities are limited on iOS devices, which makes monitoring across various social media platforms impossible. For Android users, MMGuardian is definitely a contender, but if you’re an iOS user, you may want to consider other options or set up iOS parental controls.

Who is MMGuardian best for?

• Recommended for Android users with a few devices to monitor

Compared to other parental control software services, MMGuardian is a little pricey and limits monitoring to five devices. For families with more than five devices, this doesn’t seem like a feasible option. Additionally, families that use iOS devices may find the monitoring lacking, since MMGuardian supports only a few social media apps on iOS.

MMGuardian prices and subscriptions

MMGuardian is loaded with parental control features that help give parents and guardians peace of mind, including website filtering, social media monitoring, SMS monitoring, internet search monitoring, predator alerts, and more.

Features	Single Phone	Family Plan
Price	$4.99/mo	$9.99/mo
Number of devices	1	Up to 5
Website filtering
Social media monitoring
Text message monitoring
Email monitoring
Internet search monitoring
Screen time management
Cyberbullying and online predator alerts
Remote lock
Location tracking

MMGuardian’s plans are extremely straightforward. The only difference between the two plans is how many devices can be monitored. MMGuardian offers a single phone plan for families to monitor only one device, which provides all the monitoring features listed above at a low monthly cost. On the Family plan, which is just a few extra dollars per month, up to 5 devices can be monitored.

MMGuardian also offers their own Android phones for families, designed to keep kids safe online and prevent them from uninstalling parental controls. With all of the features of the MMGuardian parental control software, this may be an appealing option for some families, but it can also be pricey. The MMGuardian phones start at $229, and require an additional monthly service plan from a provider of your choice.

Compared to other parental control apps, MMGuardian is more expensive, especially considering what it offers. Some parental control apps offer similar features for unlimited devices for the same price. It also doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee, only a 14-day free trial.

MMGuardian features

We look for a few must-haves in a parental control app, and MMGuardian checks all the boxes, including content monitoring, message monitoring, screen time limits, the ability to block apps, and screen time management.

Content monitoring

A key feature to keeping your kids safe online is monitoring the type of content they see, from websites to social media platforms and everything in between. MMGuardian monitors a number of categories, including suicide, violence, cyberbullying, drugs, online predators, explicit language, and depression.

Social media and phone apps

iOS apps

• WhatsApp, KiK, Tinder

Android apps

• WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, Tinder

Unrestricted access to social media can be detrimental to anyone, especially young kids. Social media can be dangerous for kids, because of cyberbullying, inappropriate content, privacy concerns, viruses and malware, and more. In our social media survey, nearly half of parents felt that technology and social media force kids to grow up too quickly.

Parental control software apps like MMGuardian help kids experience the benefits of social media while also providing safeguards. MMGuardian allows parents to read full messages in their entirety (a major benefit, in our opinion), though that sometimes isn’t feasible or necessary. In those cases, parents can enable Safety Alerts, which will notify parents of potentially harmful situations based on the content of their child’s monitored messages.

Parents can choose the keywords to be monitored, and MMGuardian uses artificial intelligence to scan all messages and images to detect potential issues. If a keyword is detected, an alert is sent in MMGuardian’s parent app, notifying parents of the message content and the platform from which the message came. Parents can choose keyword categories like bullying, drugs, suicide, and online predators or grooming.

It’s worth noting that content monitoring is much more robust for Android users, including popular platforms like TikTok and Discord. For iOS users, monitoring is limited to WhatsApp, KiK, and Tinder.

Text messages

MMGuardian monitors SMS messages the same way it monitors messages from social platforms and messaging apps — by scanning for troublesome keywords. However, unlike some parental control software apps, MMGuardian allows parents to read entire SMS messages, both sent from and received by your child’s phone.

MMGuardian’s monitoring doesn’t just stop at written messages and content, either. With the proliferation of selfies and sending picture images, children online are more at risk for seeing inappropriate content than ever before. To combat this, MMGuardian offers Inappropriate Image Detection. This AI tool scans MMS messages and images saved on your child’s phone. If any photos or selfies are found to contain adults, an alert is sent to the parent app for parents to review.

Email

Unfortunately, MMGuardian doesn’t currently offer email monitoring, which is a major miss in our book.

Content filtering

The MMGuardian parental control app offers two ways to filter content. During account setup, you can choose an age range that automatically blocks content based on MMGuardian’s age recommendations. For example, we set our child's age range at 6-10, which automatically blocks content about dating, alcohol, drugs, gambling, school cheating, and a lot more. In the parent app, you can adjust the settings to allow or block specific categories of content.

MMGuardian has a web filter to block children from accessing inappropriate content. MMGuardian automatically sorts all websites into at least one category, and parents can select an age range that will block some categories. However, parents can also customize what specific categories to block or allow.

Additionally, MMGuardian also enables parents to blacklist or whitelist specific URLs. For example, parents could block Instagram but allow other social media sites. When our child tried to access a questionable URL, we were immediately alerted and were able to block or approve the website in question.

The parent app shows web browsing details, like your child’s browsing history, the length of browsing, and what times they were browsing the internet. On Android, web filtering is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

Screen time management

MMGuardian offers a few different options to help parents manage their children’s screen time — daily limits and block schedules. Daily limits are exactly as they sound – once the daily limit is reached through cumulative usage of apps in a group, the apps are blocked. Alternatively, you can block apps in a group to specific days and times. For example, you could block all social media apps during school times to help minimize distractions.

MMGuardian also offers parents a lock option, which allows you to manually lock/unlock your child’s phone on demand for a set period of time, perfect for locking your child’s phone during school hours or overnight.

Location tracking and geo-fencing

In the parent app, you can check your child’s location on demand and see their location history. So you can easily see if they’re at school like they’re supposed to be, and if they made any stops along the way. You can also utilize the Track function, which allows you to create a schedule with set days and times for your child’s location to be automatically retrieved.

It’s worth noting, however, that during our testing, we weren’t able to track location successfully. We tried multiple times and received an error every time.

MMGuardian doesn’t offer geo-fencing, which is similar to location tracking. Geo-fencing sets a boundary around a location, triggering an alert when your child leaves the specified boundary. We prefer location tracking to geo-fencing, so this doesn’t feel like a miss for us.

Activity reports

The MMGuardian parental control app provides daily activity reports, detailing your child’s SMS text messages, direct messages from social media or messaging apps, app usage, call activity, and web history. Daily reports are automatic, but you can request reports multiple times per day. Here’s what each report provides:

• Message review: See all SMS texts sent to and from your child’s phone, as well as social media messages. You can determine if you want a detailed view, which includes the entire text message, or simply see who they’re texting and how often.
• App usage: Monitor what apps were used, when, and for how long.
• Call history: See who your child is communicating with via phone and when the phone calls occurred.
• Web browsing: Here you can see all your child’s browsing history, including which sites they visited, the duration of the visit, and when they were browsing.

It may seem like overkill, but these surveillance measures play an important role in teaching kids how to stay safe online. Having parental access to your child’s activities can be a great starting point for conversations surrounding online safety and privacy.

MMGuardian customer support

Support type	MMGuardian
Email or live chat	Yes — support@mmguardian.com
Phone
Online guides or forums

MMGuardian’s customer support could be better. Their online forums regurgitated a lot of information that is already found on the website. We emailed the customer support email with a few generic questions, and the customer care representative responded in a timely manner and thoroughly answered our questions.

The website claims most issues can be resolved through email but also states they’re available to talk in person if there’s a need. However, the website doesn’t list a customer care phone number.

Top alternatives

MMGuardian is a good parental control app, but it isn’t perfect. For iOS users, the monitoring is severely limited, and the lack of email monitoring is a little worrisome. If MMGuardian doesn’t check all of the boxes for you, there are other parental control apps you can consider.

• Bark: Bark offers a complete set of parental control features at a reasonable price. All plans include location alerts, screen time management, and website filtering. Premium plans include text, app, and social media monitoring. Bark offers a more robust monitoring feature, scanning over 30 social media apps for potentially problematic content. Bark also offers unlimited devices, a major win in our book.

  Read Bark Review

• Norton: Norton is an option for families looking for parental control paired with antivirus software. It’s pricier than most parental control apps, and it doesn’t offer many of the features typically found in parental control apps, like social media, text, and email message monitoring. But if you’re primarily looking for website filtering and antivirus protection, Norton is a possible option.

  Read Norton Review

• Aura: This is a good option for parents who need unlimited device monitoring and want the additional security of identity theft protection. With website filtering, screen time management, and cyberbullying alerts, Aura offers some of the benefits of a parental control app, but it lacks location tracking, which may be a deal breaker for some families.

  Read Aura Parental Controls Review

MMGuardian FAQs

Bottom line: Is MMGuardian good?

The MMGuardian parental control app is good for families looking to monitor what their kids are seeing online.

It includes all industry-standard parental control features we like to see in a monitoring app, including web filtering, screen time management, scheduling, tracking location, web and app activity, and text and call history. The downside to MMGaurdian is the number of devices monitored, the lack of monitoring for iOS devices, and the absence of email monitoring.

If you’re an Android user and are looking to monitor your kid’s online activities, MMGuardian could be a good option. If you’re part of an iOS household, we recommend taking a look at our guide to the best parental control apps to find one that is more compatible with iOS devices.