Customer Ratings & Reviews

I got the Circle as soon as it was available at Best Buy, rather than online. It set up easily. It takes a while to figure out some of the IP addresses for devises, finding the right time limit settings and filters, but overall we (the parents) love it! The kids do NOT like it one bit, since the Circle is doing exactly what it's supposed to do- block apps and turn them off after they hit the time limit.

Circle has simplified managing the time our kids spend online. It's simple enough to configure that my non-techie wife finds it easy to regulate, limit, filter, and pause our kid's Internet access. It's simple log shows who is accessing the Internet and when. Easy setup and no special connections. (We just set it up high on a shelf so the kids can't see it.).

This item meets and exceeds my expectation of protecting children from accessing undesired material on electronic devices.

The circle does what it says it does. The only complaint is that sometimes it seems to loose connection.

This is working fairly well so far. It is basically setting up filtering based on the MAC address of each device that touches your network. As a result, this filters or restricts per device not per person. Therefore, I cannot set up settings for my iPad for my 8 year old daughter that are different from my 4 year old son since they share the device. I can only set up restrictions for the device as a whole. This made me reconsider the settings for many of my devices, especially my shared devices. As another example, I can keep the internet from being accessible on my Apple TV to prevent the kids form turning on Netflix at 6am. However, if I turn off the internet at night too early, then my wife and I cannot watch Netflix. I also cannot restrict Netflix content on the Apple TV through the Circle b/c I will be restricted as well. Another surprise was that I have a lot more MAC Addresses touching my network then I thought. Many of them are cryptic and I have no idea what they are. I'll figure it out eventually. In short, this is going to set up restrictions on DEVICES, not people. It does this very well in an easy to use interface and I recommend it.

I set this up for my 9 year old son. It was very simple to do. It works well for filtering most things. The alerts also work as advertised. Only negative so far is that the time calculations can be misleading. If the phone updates apps or does other Things in the background, it counts this as time that he was online.

This device takes a lot of the Wi-fI and content protections you can laboriously put together using your ISP's router settings, and adds to it. It is fairly simple to set up, and does not require any additional monthly fees (unless you set up the protections on your kids cellphones). It helps block content with different setting levels, blocks specific websites, and can help monitor time usage. You can pair this with the Mothershp app to create a Chore to Reward system.

For context, I'm the parent of a 13-yr-old with a cell phone and a 9-yr-old without. We purchased the Circle based on reviews after trying to reign in our kids' internet access through software, router, and ISP solutions. None offered the flexibility, access, and reporting we were looking for. The Circle comes the closest to our idea of a perfect solution, and it is priced below other less-featured solutions. The major features that attracted us to the Circle were the ease of access using the iOS app, the kid-proof-ness of the design, the fact that it works with the router we already bought to do this (for 3x the Circle price), and the ability to set up multiple groups with multiple on/off times each day. Being able to put each kid's personal devices into their own group allows us to switch off the younger child's access for an earlier bedtime without affecting the older one. We also have separate groups for family-wide devices like the primary homework computer - these get different schedules for accessing entertainment vs educational websites. The ability to also exclude devices like our security cameras and thermostat from the user pool is helpful for when anarchy breaks out and we have to lock everything else down until the tantrums end (you other parents know what I'm talking about). While it's not perfect (the interface can be clunky at times, and you can't undo a reward given to a child, for example) the overall experience is leaps and bounds above anything else we've tried. Improvements are always coming, and connections to multiple additional apps have been promised. It's great as-is, and hopefully it will just get better. Note: We have not yet tried the paid service that controls devices on a mobile network, but it is supposedly an extension of the included home wifi service.

The circle was easy to setup and easy for both my wife and I to use. the only adaptation we had to make from the standard was that we have some devices that are shared. In those instances we just created a profile for the device instead of assigning the device to a person. Otherwise, it was very easy to setup and get going. We even created a couple of exceptions for things like "fitbit" to sync even when the internet is blocked. Those were all easy to setup. The initial setup took less than 15 minutes.

As a father of seven (yes SEVEN) children and a technology professional, I've worked hard to protect my family from the junk that is out there on the internet. I've had from transparent proxies, custom firewalls, and DNS servers; but I've never been able to share it with my friends and family because it took too much expertise to manage it and keep it up to date. Enter Circle with Disney. This is the device I've been wanting for years. I retired the other devices. I still use OpenDNS as a first layer of defense, and of course malware protection, but Circle adds the time limits, targeted filtering, and everything else in a really easy to use application. The application, by the way (on Android) is improved and more stable than when I first got it (otherwise I would have only given four stars). They still could do more... like integrating controls with shared devices that have logins (like my kids homework desktop computer), but overall I'm thrilled.

We already use parental controls provided by our cellular carrier to limit use of text and calling after 10pm for our teen. However, we were also looking for something with a consumer-friendly interface that would allow us to automatically shut off the wifi in the evening to selected devices. Circle does that and much more. We can also restrict the sites our teen can visit, restrict the apps she uses, or limit their use to appropriate content. There are more features than I can list here. We love it. It was very easy to set up. So far our only disappointment is that the product cannot limit Apple-to-Apple i-messaging, because that does not use wifi. All-in-all though we have been very happy with the product and their curtomer service.

My wife and I struggled with a tween who we wanted to give the freedom of exploring the Internet and connectivity, but needing to make sure she was staying safe. Behold the Circle with Disney! It is very easy to set up, monitor and restrict certain sites and content. We both rest a little easier knowing that our kids won't be seeing anything they shouldn't. Best part is there are no continuing costs, unless you sign up for mobile data monitoring. That only costs $5/month/device.

Great tool for monitoring internet usage for a teen or anyone else in the household. The only drawback is the fact that you cannot access the interface via the web but rather through your mobile phone only.

After looking at all the other possible options out there, I decided to give Circle a go because if offered the biggest bang for my buck. I'm very happy with my decision. Circle is super easy to setup, and very easy to manage, but the best part is that none of my kids have complained about it! This is huge because every time I have attempted to put filters and/or software in place it has been met with much resistance (the filtering being WAY too aggressive). Circle has managed to find a great balance, to the point I've only had to white list about two websites in total. It also seems Circle is great at listening, so many of the features asked for by the community do actually see the light of day.

It's a good product in the fact that it's easy to set up and use. It's not really good at accurately showing the browsing history of a smart phone as it seems to log all data/internet traffic on the device to include apps accessing the internet (such as news apps). The device has flagged "explicit content" despite that type of content never having been shown or visited on my device. It also showed Snapchat use and I don't even have the app on my phone (I don't even know how to use snapchat). This makes the accuracy of the internet monitoring questionable, especially if it's being used by someone as an accountability tool. I haven't used it to control access times or anything like that so I can't speak to its effectiveness in those areas. All I can say is the internet history portion of it is questionable. However, it DOES filter/block unwanted explicit content which is awesome. I have yet to run into any trouble with it mistakenly blocking non-explicit content that I need to access. The major plus is that its relatively cheap and the monitoring is only $5/month which is awesome! Just wish they would refine the way it flags content in the history/alert sections and by all means figure out why its flagging snapchat use when I don't even have the app.

We use this tool to fine tune our awareness of how much time we spend on various devices. It was easy to set up and the reporting options are useful. We like that you can set time limits and they can be adjusted as needed quite easily. It can be a real eye opener to see where you spend your time!

This is a great product. We have 2 kids, we put each of their tablets and laptops in. Set up is fairly straightforward. We set time limits in the tablet and adjusted the laptop to be limited only by website type so they can use them unlimited for school work but not games and YouTube.

I purchased this to help monitor our kids and try to limit some of their time on iPad's. It is not perfect, but does help and works great. It is easy to setup and configure. It was easy to create accounts for the kids and add their devices. Setting daily time limits and bedtime does work. The only thing is of course all it can do is cut off their internet access. It does have a lot of additional filters and controls to prevent them from viewing certain types of websites and even some apps if you want. They can still play games that don't require internet access. I like that it notifies you if a new device joins your network. If they have friends over you can filter some of the things they can do to. Like prevent them from using apps like snapchat. I think this is a great product for parents.

Easy to set up and use, this is a great tool to help parents set limits, monitor use and establish safeguards. Best to talk to kids first about acceptable use and limits before employing them and alienating the kids, though. Highly recommend it.

This was easy to install and great for monitoring internet usage in my home. The only feature not available is when multiple family members use a single device. Highly recommend this as a easy first step to control internet in your home.