A parental control service can keep your kids from using their devices excessively or accessing inappropriate sites.
Circle Home Plus can monitor devices at the router level on your home network or via an app on your child's mobile devices.
Circle's joint hardware and software solution is simple to set up and a good solution for parents who want control over all of their children's internet activity at home.
That said, some of Circle's capabilities aren't as extensive as those of its competitors, and a subscription is pricey.
Circle Home Plus Parts and Pricing
There are two components to the Circle parental control experience that work in tandem: a physical hardware device (the Circle Home Plus) and a mobile app (the Circle App).
The Circle Home Plus is a white, plastic cube (no, it's not round) measuring about three-and-a-quarter inches on each side.
Most of its sides are bare, with the exception of the Circle logo on the front.
The power button, charging port, and Ethernet jack on the back of the device are protected by a gray rubber ring.
Annoyingly, the rubber ring does not detach completely, so if you plug in an Ethernet cord (which the setup recommends), the ring awkwardly folds up halfway on the back of the device.
It's similar to the Circle With Disney($64.15 at Amazon) product we previously reviewed.
The Circle App guides you through the account creation and setup of the Circle Home Plus.
With this app, you can both control network devices managed by Circle Home Plus and set restrictions for your kid's devices on which you've installed the companion app.
I discuss the app in more detail later on.
The Circle Home Plus device costs $129 and includes a one-year premium membership.
After the initial trial, a premium plan costs $9.99 per month thereafter.
Effectively then, you will be paying around $120 per year to maintain the service.
If you decide not to renew your subscription, your account will revert to the basic level, in which you only have access to the filters, usage, and history functionality.
In addition to those features, premium members can set time usage limits, establish a bedtime, and block or pause internet access across the board or for a specific device.
Parents can also keep tabs on their child's location and reward them with extra web time.
The Circle Home Plus can monitor an unlimited number of devices.
The Circle Home Plus package is expensive compared to other parental control software.
Kaspersky Safe Kids($14.99 at Kaspersky) only costs $14.99 per year and you can monitor an unlimited number of devices.
Qustodio costs $54.95 per year to manage up to five devices.
Norton Family Premier costs $49.99 per year and does not impose any limitations on monitored devices.
As for mobile parental control apps, Locategy only costs about $20 per year for three device licenses and Boomerang charges $30.99 per year to monitor 10 mobile devices.
Setting Up the Circle Home Plus
To configure the Circle Home Plus, you first need to download the Circle App on either an Android (5.0 and later) or iOS (10.0 and later) device.
You cannot manage the restrictions and profiles via the web; everything happens from the mobile app.
Then, you need to create a Circle account by entering your email, first name, last name, and a password.
You have to confirm your account too, by entering an emailed verification code, before continuing.
The next step depends on how you want to monitor your child's devices.
If your child has a phone or tablet that they use outside of your home network, you need to install the companion child app on that device.
The install process is similar to other parental control options; on both platforms, you need to download and enable a Circle-managed VPN profile for the Circle App to properly monitor outgoing web traffic.
On Android, users can switch accounts or add a guest account to evade detection, but you will get a notification if your child tries to uninstall the Circle App.
There is uninstall protection on both Android and iOS devices.
On Android, your child would need your password to uninstall it.
On iOS, you can prevent your kid from uninstalling the app (and disabling the VPN) through the Settings Content & Privacy Restrictions menu.
From the companion app, a child can see their filter level, remaining internet time, a countdown until bedtime, how much time they've spent using the device, as well as any rewards or unrestricted time they've received that day.
The child will also get a notification if you pause their internet and for other things like a location request.
One missing feature that many other parental control services offer for the child app is a panic button, which could alert a parent or other trusted contacts to a child's location if they are ever in danger.
Qustodio and Family Time Premium both include this feature.
The Circle Home Plus setup is a little more involved, but still easy to manage.
The first thing you need to do is tap the Add Circle Home Plus to scan the QR code on the bottom of the device and register it to your account.
This step activates the premium account features.
After that, plug in the device to an outlet with the included power cord and turn it on.
Then, use the included Ethernet cord to connect the Circle Home to your router.
Circle recommends connecting the device to your Wi-Fi network too as a backup, in case the Ethernet connection is interrupted for whatever reason.
Note that initial account setup steps and the paring process will not work if the mobile device you are using for the setup is connected to a VPN.
Once that's all out of the way, you can choose which devices should be managed by the Circle Home Plus by scanning your home network.
In my experience, Circle successfully detected all the devices on my network and easily allowed me to rename them and set them up with the unmanaged, Home, or a child-specific profile.
I only have three devices connected to my Wi-Fi, so this was an easy task.
However, for full households of devices, I imagine it would be a pain to look up each and every device by its MAC address or manufacturer-given name.
The ability to set a device as unmanaged is useful since presumably, you would not want to subject yourself to the same browsing and time limit restrictions as your child.
You certainly can use the Circle setup to curb addiction to certain sites or the time you spend online, though.
That said, there are free and first-party methods of doing that, from Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
Does the Circle Home Plus's physical form factor introduce some vulnerability? Absolutely.
However, Circle thought of ways to mitigate some of those problems.
For instance, a child who simply unplugs the device will find that the on-board battery can keep the Circle Home Plus running for another hour or two.
That's plenty of time for a parent to get that notification and plug the device back in.
However, if your child turns off the device, you will have to turn it back on manually, since there's no way to remotely restart the device.
Similarly, if a kid decides to destroy or simply remove the Circle Home Plus from the house, you will be stuck without a way to monitor devices that don't have the child profile installed.
Consider locking the Circle Home Plus in a cabinet if this is a concern.
If you configured the Wi-Fi backup option, it won't matter if your child unplugs the Ethernet cord.
A child can disable the protections by unplugging the router itself, but none of the dependent devices will be able to connect to the internet without a router, unless they are LTE-enabled.
The profiles installed on their mobile devices work without Wi-Fi too, so switching to a cellular connection won't evade the rules set.
Privacy and Implementation
As with any device that can monitor or capture your network data activity, you should be concerned about what data said device keeps and who has access to it.
This is especially the case for Circle Home Plus, since you cannot use it in conjunction with a VPN.
You can read Circle's full privacy policy on its website.
One part of the policy reads, "If you are on the Circle Network, whether you are a registered user or unregistered user, we collect certain information about you and your device associated and connected to the Network," including "without limitation, Navigational Information, network preferences, Personal Data, and sensitive data collected by Circle from users." Circle gets points for defining all of the broad terms it references in the various sections.
Circle Home Plus works using a method called ARP Spoofing, which, in a nutshell, allows it to serve as a gateway to internet traffic and enforce rules at that level.
This method is frequently associated with malicious attacks, but you can read about how Circle uses it in full detail on its site.
It works similarly to the previous Circle with Disney device in that respect, although profile and account settings are now managed in the cloud.
Get Started
As mentioned, I would have liked to be able to control settings from a desktop, such as via a web interface, as well as the option to potentially export data.
From the app, you can configure a host of restrictions and rules for the device user.
The app's home screen shows every profile (including a broad one for those connected to the Circle Home Plus) arranged in a circular fashion (hence the name).
From the hidden left-hand menu, you can add a new profile, view all the monitored devices, access web resources, or launch the Circle Home Plus setup.
Account settings are limited to toggling notifications and setting up a passcode for accessing the app (helpful if you sometimes hand off your device to your child).
From the home screen, you can also pause internet access to all connected devices via the large pause button at the bottom of the screen.
There's also a shortcut to view and manage all connected devices in the upper left.
Tap on an individual profile to dig into the settings.
At the top of a profile screen, you get the option to pause internet access or reward your child with more time online, a later bedtime, or extended Off Times (a feature I discuss later).
I like the rewards system since parental control services with some flexibility seem less draconian.
You can also add a profile picture for each child to personalize the experience a bit.
Circle's full list of capabilities span the Location, Devices, Usage, Filter, Bedtime, Time Limits, Off Time, and History categories.
As with the hardware component, I'll discuss some workarounds that apply to each of these implementations.
Location and Device Management
The Location tab is straightforward and a bit basic in its implementation.
Simply hit the Tap to Locate button and the device will appear on a map if location services are turned on for your child's device.
There are legitimate reasons why you may not be able to locate your child.
For instance, the device may simply be off, not connected to the internet, or the app may have been removed.
Alternatively, a child can just disable location services, unless you lock that setting down.
The Circle app does not, unfortunately, report location history or include geofencing capabilities, which many other parental control services do, including Kaspersky Safe Kids, Boomerang, and Locategy.
Geofencing is a tool parents can use to keep track of when their child arrives to or leaves a predefined geographic area.
For example, a parent might feel better knowing that their child arrived at school on time, stayed there for the duration of the day, and went straight home afterward.
From the Devices area, you can view all the devices managed by the profile and the status of the installed VPN.
You can also rename each device to make it more recognizable or remove the device completely from the service.
Pausing Internet access is easy; just hit the large pause button on the bottom of the screen to block internet access on the device.
While you can't link Circle profiles to individual accounts on a device, Circle recommends a few workarounds, the most plausible of which is to create a specific profile for each child for that device and switch which profile manages the device depending on who is using it.
Web Browsing and Filters
The Usage tab lets you explore how much time your child has spent online on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
You can drill down into individual categories such as Chat & Forums, News, and Search & Reference.
If you see a website you don't want your kid to access, you can tap on it to visit the URL, set it as unmanaged (no limitations or monitoring), or as not allowed.
For apps, you can set a time limit and designate it as unmanaged or as not allowed.
The History function is different; it lists all the sites your child accessed, dividing them into filtered and allowed entries.
These sections aren't quite as helpful as they could be, since they only report the top-level domain, even including some numeric IP addresses.
The Filter section lets you choose between the Kid, Teen, Adult, and None presets for each profile.
Each filter displays a list of platforms and content categories appropriate to each age group, going as far as to automatically block and hide the inappropriate categories in the settings for those younger audiences.
The Teen preset, for instance, filters 18+ sites by default and doesn't show the Dating, Explicit, Gambling, or Mature categories in the settings.
Note that if you select the None option, you cannot use the Filtering, Time Limits, and Usage features.
The Kid profile, for example, lists supported platforms, such as Amazon, Cartoon Network, Club Penguin Island (though the game is no longer available to play online), Disney, Hulu, Nickelodeon, PBS, Tik Tok, and YouTube, with the option to allow those platforms, block them, or set them as unmanaged.
Circle doesn't show all the platforms it recognizes by default; if the monitored device visits one of those other platforms, it will probably pop up in the list to be managed.
If not, tap the icon in the upper right-hand corner to add a custom URL filter.
Below the Platforms section, you can manage which broader categories (apps and websites) a child can access, such as App Stores & Downloads, Chat & Forums, Music, News, Online Games, Social Media, and VPNs & Proxies.
The last options in this section let you enable safe search for Google and Bing (Yahoo is blocked, but DuckDuckGo works unimpeded) and...
