FamilyKeeper Review 2024: Is It Worth Getting?

FamilyKeeper is a good lightweight parental control app. It comes with industry-standard features like filtering harmful content, blocking apps you don’t want your kids to use, setting time limits, and tracking their location. It also includes keyword tracking for social media apps like WhatsApp.

While it’s good, it lacks some advanced features seen in top parental control apps — you can only monitor Android and iOS devices (and there’s no cross monitoring), and it’s available in just 10+ countries.

I honestly think that Qustodio is a better option. It offers a lot of extras like YouTube monitoring and call and SMS tracking, and it can monitor Windows and macOS devices, as well as Chromebooks, and Kindle.

FamilyKeeper offers a monthly plan and a yearly plan, and each comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

FamilyKeeper Full Review — Decent but Basic Parental Controls (No Unique Extras)

FamilyKeeper is a pretty good parental control app. After testing FamilyKeeper for over a week, I can confirm all of its features work great, even if it lacks some of the bells and whistles you might see from the top parental control apps.

That said, there are drawbacks. FamilyKeeper doesn’t have any extra features, like YouTube monitoring, and it also lacks convenience features for your kid — for example, there’s no way for your child to request more screen time or to unblock a website, and you can only install the parent app on 1 device.

Overall, it’s not the best option on the market, but it’s not a terrible pick if you need a simple parental control app.

FamilyKeeper Plans & Pricing — Monthly & Yearly Options With the Same Features

FamilyKeeper offers 2 plans. The best value plan is the Yearly plan, which you can get for $59.99 / year. The Monthly plan costs $19.99 / month.

Both plans include all of FamilyKeeper’s features, so you won’t miss out on anything.

Here’s an overview of FamilyKeeper’s plans:

FamilyKeeper Features — A Decent Range of Tools to Protect Your Kid Online

FamilyKeeper comes with a fair amount of features for controlling your kid’s internet activity, including web and app filtering, keyword tracking, time limits and schedules, and location tracking.

The app allows you to filter 5 content categories, including adult content, dating sites, gaming platforms, piracy websites, and gambling content. You can also block your kid from accessing any specific sites and whitelist URLs you want them to be able to always access, which is handy in case the filter accidentally blocks a site they need. In my tests, FamilyKeeper successfully blocked all websites I tried to access that fell into any category I’d blocked.

FamilyKeeper blocks apps, too. It shows you a list of every app your kid has on their phone and lets you block them with 1 tap (on the circular icon). It’s not bad, but I prefer Qustodio, which only shows you a list of the apps your kid uses, so you don’t have to scroll through a long list of system apps.

My favorite feature is FamilyKeeper’s keyword tracking tool on Android, which lets you create a list of words and alerts you every time your kid uses or receives any of those words via WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat. It works great for WhatsApp and Instagram, but it never flagged any offensive words on Snapchat during my tests. I also wish you could see the recipient that your child sent the message to, but that’s my only gripe.

The app shows you a screenshot of the flagged keywords, too, which is handy because context matters. However, I think FamiSafe’s keyword tracking tool is way better — it scans social media apps for 15+ categories and lets you edit them to add or remove words.

FamilyKeeper lets you set daily screen time for your kid’s device in increments of 1 minute, which gives you pretty granular control. I like that you can create a time limit for individual apps, too, as not many top parental control apps offer this option (Qustodio is one of the few that does). I’d also like to see FamilyKeeper allow your kid to request more screen time, like Norton Family.

FamilyKeeper also offers a scheduling feature that comes with a pre-set bedtime schedule that shuts off internet access after 10 pm. That said, you can easily create as many schedules as you want and easily switch back and forth between different schedules for different days and weeks. For example, you can set a schedule that restricts internet access on school nights and then easily switch to a later cutoff time on weekends to allow for family movie nights.

FamilyKeeper tracks your child’s location, as well, and has a geofencing feature that lets you create zones between 100 ft and 1,000 ft in radius (which is up to around 300 meters). The app alerts you every time your kid leaves the area you marked on the map, and in my tests, it was pretty accurate, and I received all alerts promptly. I’d like to see a check-in feature, as well, like Bark’s, which lets you ask your kid to share their location and is less invasive.

A minor extra feature is that you can see your kid’s current battery level, so you know if their phone is about to die or if they’re overusing it.

Finally, FamilyKeeper conveniently provides activity reports — if you tap a feature on your dashboard, you can see reports related to that feature. For example, if you tap Screen Time, you get a breakdown of how long they spent on each app. The reports update in real-time, too.

FamilyKeeper Installation & Setup — Extremely Simple

Setting up FamilyKepper is super easy — all you need is about 10 minutes of your time to install the app on yours and your kid’s devices and set restrictions.

Download the parent app on your phone and the kids app on your child’s phone. Both apps are available on Android and iOS app stores, but your kid’s phone has to be the same OS as yours.

Then, follow the on-screen instructions and grant the app permission to monitor your child’s phone.

You can sync yours and your kid’s devices via a QR or a numerical 6-digit code.

FamilyKeeper Ease of Use — Straightforward & Intuitive

FamilyKeeper’s apps are pretty straightforward to use. The features are neatly divided and if you want to set or edit restrictions, all you have to do is tap the feature in question to access the settings.

The kids app doesn’t come with any options, so there’s no learning curve even if your kid is very young. If you want a kids app that shows your child how much time they have left or includes options like a Panic Button, check out Qustodio.

Overall, FamilyKeeper offers an intuitive user interface, accessible features, and a simple customization system.

FamilyKeeper Customer Support — Pretty Average & Not That Responsive

FamilyKeeper doesn’t have much in the way of customer support. It has a blog section, but this is more of a news/general cybersecurity blog and won’t help with specific questions about FamilyKeeper. There’s also an FAQ section, but it’s very sparse.

To be fair, FamilyKeeper offers email support for current and potential customers. I sent support an email and got a detailed response back, but it took more than 3 business days for an agent to contact me back, and when I sent follow-up questions, it took even longer to get a response.

Overall, it’s not the most dynamic customer support I’ve seen from a parental control app, but it’s serviceable. That said, I’d like to see more information added to the FAQ and a live chat support, which Norton Family offers.

Is FamilyKeeper Worth Getting?

FamilyKeeper is a good parental control app. It includes all the essentials, like web and app filtering, time limits, and location tracking. It even has a keyword tracking feature for social media apps like Instagram.

However, it’s missing some advanced features like YouTube monitoring that you’d see in apps like Qustodio and other convenient tools like your kid being able to ask to visit a banned site. I also don’t like that you can’t have the parent app installed on more than 1 device and the service is only available in 10+ countries.

Overall, though, it’s a reliable parental control app with basic features that’s great for beginners.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why don’t I see FamilyKeeper on the Play Store?

This probably means FamilyKeeper isn’t available in your region. FamilyKeeper is available in the US and a few other countries. If you can’t find it in your phone’s app store, you can check out the top Android and iOS parental control apps.

Does FamilyKeeper monitor YouTube videos?

No, FamilyKeeper doesn’t monitor YouTube. It allows you to block the YouTube site, but it won’t show you your kid’s searches on YouTube or the videos they’ve watched. For that, I recommend Qustodio.

Is FamilyKeeper good for teens?

FamilyKeeper is better suited for younger children than teenagers since it doesn’t give kids much leeway — they can’t ask for extra time, request access to a blocked app or site, and they’ve got no information available in the kids app. For teenagers, I recommend Bark, which monitors 30+ social media apps, and FamiSafe, which has a unique feature that monitors your kid’s driving.

Does FamilyKeeper work on PC?

No, FamilyKeeper doesn’t work on PC — you can’t monitor your kid’s PC with FamilyKeeper, and there’s no parental app for PC either. it’s only available on Android and iOS devices for parents and can only monitor Android and iOS devices for children (and the parent and child must be using the same OS).