Boomerang Parental Control software review

Boomerang is a popular name that comes up when discussing the best parental control apps. This Android-first application offers several features you’d come to expect when looking to monitor your child’s online activities. However, it does one better by offering its proprietary SPIN browser, which automatically filters a lot of harmful content without you having to do the heavy lifting.

Beyond that, this app promises 24/7 location tracking, message monitoring and a more positive approach to app control, although there are vast differences between the experience you get on Android when compared to iOS.

Read on as we dissect Boomerang, exploring its features, pricing, and in-use experience, to help you find out whether it's the right choice for your household.

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Boomerang review: Plans and pricing

Boomerang is, hands down, one of the cheapest parental control applications you can find on the market. Its single-device license costs only $19.99 per year, which boils down to around $1.67 per month. That’s significantly cheaper than Mobicip’s Lite plan, which costs around $3 per month.

If you want to protect more than one child, you can opt for Boomerang’s family plan, which costs only $40 per year and covers up to 10 devices. That's around $0.33 per device per month. It’s safe to say that you won’t find a more affordable parental control application on the market.

To add to this, Boomerang also offers a limited free plan (read: 14-day free trial) that lets you try everything the platform has to offer without any limitations. You get access to all its Android & iOS protection features along with customer support during this trial period.

Another handy feature is that none of the plans auto-renew when the subscription period ends, giving you enough time to review your subscription and decide for yourself whether you want to continue with Boomerang.

Boomerang review: Features

With Boomerang, there’s a lot of disparity between the features available on Android and iOS, with the latter missing out on many of the features Boomerang has to offer.

For instance, when it comes to screen time limits, Android devices allow you to allocate screen time (for example, one hour per day) or schedule screen time, such as from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can also inform the child of how much screen time they have left for the day. However, on iOS, you can only schedule screen time, and none of these additional features are available.

Similarly, app control is much better on Android. Boomerang lets you set per-app schedules, add daily time limits to individual apps, and block apps entirely. However, none of these features are available on iOS, where you can only hide user-installed apps based on age ratings.

In a similar vein, Android offers a lot of call safety features. Parents can view who called, how long the call lasted, and when the conversation took place. They also have the ability to block specific numbers from calling in or out and allow only specific numbers to contact their children’s devices. However, all of these features are missing from the iOS version.

The same goes for text messaging and safety features. While parents can view text message logs and even read their contents on Android, this is simply not possible on iOS devices. Boomerang does a good job of notifying parents about texts from unknown numbers or those containing inappropriate words. You can also add specific words to your family group’s dictionary to detect them in text messages.

However, there are certain features that work equally well on both Android and iOS. For instance, location tracking works across both platforms, you can access location histories and automatic location reporting, and parents can set up impressive geofenced radii on both, too.

And no matter what platform you use, you’ll get access to a family messaging group, one-on-one chatting and activity reporting. On both platforms you’ll get to see your child’s web history and block certain websites you do not approve of. The SPIN safe browser works on both platforms, and you can block specific websites on both, too.

However, Android’s reporting is much stronger thanks to detailed email summaries, daily reports, lists of installed apps, and per-app usage reporting. Android is also the only platform where you can control installed apps and use a “find my device”-style feature on your children’s phones.

You can also pair family devices with your email address, so you don’t have to create new email accounts for your children, and you can block new app installs or allow for parental approval.

Elsewhere, Boomerang monitors YouTube history and searches on Android, and it’s one of the only parental control apps to use Samsung Knox security if you’re using Samsung devices.

The SPIN browser impresses, too: searches in browsers like Bing, Google and Yahoo are automatically filtered and the browser has strict built-in filtering. It doesn’t have a private browsing mode, those content filters can be customized, and its filter watches out for 20 different categories of potentially inappropriate content.

Less impressive is Boomerang’s social media functionality. It doesn’t natively monitor social media apps or emails in the same way as Bark, for instance. The app will pick up certain things by tracking messaging and typing, and you can add social media sites to its web filters – but it’s not as good as Bark or Qustodio here.

At least, because you’ve got control over what apps are installed, you can prevent your children from installing social media tools in the first place.

Boomerang review: Interface and in-use

It’s not unusual for the installation and setup of parental control apps to be a bit fiddly, and that’s certainly the case with Boomerang.

To get call and SMS monitoring, you’ll have to install Android apps on your children’s devices via the Boomerang website, rather than the Google Play Store. You may also have to delve into the settings on the device to allow for non-store installations.

Thankfully, the parent apps can just be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store, and it’s far easier. And when everything is set up, the interface is a mixed bag: the phone app is relatively slick, but the web dashboard is archaic and harder to use when compared to the web interfaces offered by most rivals.

Boomerang review: Support

Boomerang has certainly improved its support over the years. At the time of writing, you'll find a neat help button in the bottom-right corner of the website. At first glance, it looks like a chatbot, but it's actually a search tool that lets you type in your query and returns a list of relevant help articles from Boomerang's extensive online knowledge base.

We tried it with a couple of search queries and found the results to be accurate. You can then click on a search result to open the relevant help article. If that doesn't solve your issue, you can select Contact Us from the same dialog box and submit a support ticket. However, Boomerang doesn't clearly state how long it will take to receive a response.

Boomerang review: The competition

We’ve already established that it is pretty difficult to beat Boomerang when it comes to pricing. With prices as low as $0.33 per month per device on the family plan, Boomerang is definitely one of the cheapest parental control software options you can get.

However, it does have a few competitors that might beat it when it comes to overall value for money and features. Mobicip is one such application, with plans starting at just $2.99 per month and allowing you to manage up to five devices. While it is a tad costlier than Boomerang, it is well known for its robust screen time limits and schedule management.

That said, you cannot set app limits with Mobicip until you upgrade to its premium plan, which costs $7.99 per month.

While Boomerang does offer geofencing and location tracking, these features are still in the experimental stage, and the geofencing radius is not particularly wide. Norton Family, on the other hand, offers a much larger geofencing radius of up to 3,200 meters.

Besides that, applications like Bark and Qustodio offer better features on the iOS platform, whereas Boomerang falls far behind when it comes to iOS functionality.

Boomerang review: Final verdict

Whether you should opt for Boomerang depends entirely on the type of device your child is using. If they are using Android, Boomerang is still one of the more capable parental control software options you can get. It offers a wide range of features on Android, including the ability to set dedicated screen time limits along with per-app daily limits and scheduling.

You also get detailed text message and call safety features, including the ability to allow only specific contacts to call or message your child. The location tracking is fairly decent, showing recent device locations and location history, along with the ability to request your child’s location at any time.

Best of all, this comes at one of the most affordable prices you’ll find on the market, costing just $20 per year for a single child and $40 per year for a family plan, which covers 10 devices.

That said, Boomerang lacks dedicated social media monitoring. Another major drawback is its limited iOS feature set. For instance, there’s no call or text monitoring on iOS, and important features like app controls and screen time management features are also significantly more limited. In that case, you may want to look at other options such as Bark or Qustodio, which offer a broader range of features on iOS.

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