Parental control apps have become increasingly popular among parents who want to keep an eye on their kids’ online activities.
With dangers like cyberbullying, explicit content, and predators lurking on the internet, it’s understandable that parents want to protect their children.
Two of the most popular monitoring apps on the market are Clevguard and mSpy. But which one should you choose for your family?
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll compare the key features, pricing, and capabilities of Clevguard and mSpy to help you decide which app is better suited for your needs in 2023.
A Brief Comparison Table
| Feature | Clevguard | mSpy |
| Call Logging | Yes | Yes |
| Text Message Monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Location Tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Geofencing | Yes | Yes |
| Social Media Monitoring | Limited | Yes |
| Web Monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Time Limits | Yes | Yes |
| Alert Word Detection | No | Yes |
| Remote Device Controls | No | Yes |
| Keylogger | No | Yes |
| Pricing | $15/month | $30-$165/month |
| Customer Support | Mixed reviews | Generally positive reviews |
| Ease of Use | Easy setup but tech issues reported | Slight learning curve but reliable |
An Overview of Clevguard And mSpy
Clevguard and mSpy allow parents to monitor their children’s texts, calls, locations, app usage, and more – but they go about it in slightly different ways.
Clevguard markets itself as an app to “keep children safe”. It’s designed to be installed on the child’s device to track their SMS, phone calls, GPS location, installed apps, website history, and more. Parents can view activity logs through Clevguard’s online dashboard or mobile app.
mSpy positions itself as a tool for employers to track company phones and parents to monitor kids. It can be installed on iOS and Android devices to monitor texts, calls, GPS, apps, web browsing and more.
mSpy requires physical access to the device to install the app, but then runs hidden in the background gathering data. Parents can view monitoring insights on mSpy’s online dashboard.
So in a nutshell:
- Clevguard installs right on the child’s phone and markets towards parents
- mSpy runs in stealth mode and has usage scenarios beyond just parental control
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Key Differences Between Clevguard And Mspy
Next, let’s take a deeper look at how these two apps compare across key features.
- Phone Call and Text Message Monitoring
Both Clevguard and mSpy enable you to spy on phone calls and text messages on your child’s device.
Clevguard allows you to view incoming/outgoing calls with timestamps, duration, and full names. You can also read the contents of SMS messages, see timestamps, as well as who messaged who.
mSpy provides similar capabilities. It logs calls with phone numbers, durations, timestamps and you can even intercept live calls. For texts, you can read message contents, see timestamps, and sender/receiver details.
When it comes to call and text monitoring, Clevguard and mSpy are pretty evenly matched. But mSpy does have a slight upper hand with the call interception feature.
- Location Tracking
Pinpointing your child’s location is a key benefit of both Clevguard and mSpy.
Clevguard offers real-time GPS tracking that pinpoints your kid’s location on a map. It also logs locations visited with timestamps.
You can set up geofences to get alerts when your child enters or leaves a specified area. However, background location tracking is limited on iOS.
mSpy also provides real-time GPS tracking and location history with timestamps. Geofencing is supported for both Android and iOS devices.
A unique feature is the ability to track a phone even when the GPS is off via wi-fi networks and cell tower triangulation.
For location tracking, mSpy seems superior especially on iOS devices. The wi-fi and cell tower tracking give it an edge over Clevguard.
- Social Media and App Monitoring
Kids today have access to a myriad of apps and social media platforms. Both Clevguard and mSpy allow parents to monitor activity across popular social media, messaging, and entertainment apps.
Clevguard offers monitoring for apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, and YouTube. You can see usage time, content shared, messages, and more. Compatibility does vary across iOS and Android.
mSpy also monitors popular social apps like Snapchat, Facebook, WhatsApp, and TikTok. For Android devices, you can view shared media, messages, and posts within the mSpy interface. On iOS, app monitoring is limited but still useful.
mSpy seems to have an advantage here, especially on Android devices where you get more app usage context like messages. Clevguard provides more high level monitoring.
- Web Monitoring
Kids can access inappropriate or explicit websites easily on their phones unless parents are watching over their shoulder.
Clevguard allows you to monitor all web browsing activity on your child’s device. You can see their search history, site visits, bookmarks and web searches. Site blocking is also supported.
mSpy also tracks web browsing history across Chrome, Safari and other browsers. The sites visited, searches, and bookmarks are all visible. You can block websites directly from the mSpy dashboard as well.
For web monitoring, both Clevguard and mSpy offer robust capabilities with site blocking support. It’s pretty much a toss up between the two apps.
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- Time Limit Restrictions
Good parental control apps allow you to restrict phone usage with time limits and schedules.
Clevguard enables time restrictions for your child’s device. You can set daily usage limits, bedtime allowances, and app time limits if needed. Scheduled device “downtime” is also configurable.
mSpy provides similar capabilities to control when and how long your kid can use their phone. You can set restrictions for app categories, limit daily or weekly usage, and set device downtime or bedtime allowances.
The time restriction capabilities are quite similar between Clevguard and mSpy. Both provide the necessary controls for parents.
Watch the installation video:
- Other Features
Some other notable features of these two apps include:
- Media downloads: Clevguard shows you media downloaded by your child like photos, videos and audio files. mSpy doesn’t offer this capability.
- Alert word detection: mSpy can alert you when specific keywords are detected in your child’s texts and emails. Clevguard lacks this feature.
- Keylogger: Only mSpy offers a keylogger to capture everything typed on your child’s device including messages, searches and websites.
- Remote control: mSpy allows you to remotely lock or wipe your child’s device if it gets lost or stolen. Clevguard does not provide remote controls.
- Block explicit content: Both apps allow blocking inappropriate websites, but only mSpy has keyword alerts for sexting, cyberbullying etc.
mSpy certainly offers more advanced monitoring and restriction capabilities compared to Clevguard. Power users will appreciate features like the keylogger, remote controls and keyword flagging.
- Pricing and Plans
When it comes to pricing, Clevguard and mSpy take slightly different approaches.
Clevguard offers a single package for $15/month covering one child’s device. All features are included like app monitoring, geofencing, time restrictions, etc. Multi-device family plans are not available.
mSpy offers two main packages:
- Basic ($30/month): Phone call logs, text messages, location tracking and basic app/web monitoring.
- Premium ($165/month): Everything in Basic plus social media monitoring, keyword alerts, remote controls, keylogger, etc.
mSpy also offers multi-device family plans at discounted pricing:
- 2 devices: $199/3 months
- 5 devices: $349/3 months
So in summary, Clevguard is cheaper for monitoring a single device. But mSpy offers more pricing flexibility with multi-device plans. The premium mSpy plan provides greater capabilities, albeit at a higher price.
- Ease of Use
When it comes to setup and interface, both Clevguard and mSpy aim to provide an intuitive experience for parents.
Clevguard installation takes just a few minutes. On Android devices, the app prompts for accessibility permissions and runs in the background after a reboot. For iPhones, you need to verify device iCloud credentials. Usage is straightforward with actionable dashboards and filtering.
mSpy is also relatively easy to set up. It walks you through the device rooting (Android) or jailbreaking process (iOS). No coding or technical expertise is required. The dashboards provide at-a-glance insights for texts, GPS, app usage and more. Advanced features do take more learning to master.
Ultimately, both Clevguard and mSpy have the end user experience in mind. Setup is quick, and core monitoring functions work right out of the box. mSpy offers more advanced options that parents can grow into as needed.
- Reliability and Customer Support
Choosing a trustworthy parental control app means considering factors like reliability, customer service and responsiveness to issues.
Clevguard reviews suggest the app works well initially, but technical issues can appear over longer term use. Uninstalls and reinstalls are sometimes required. Customer support response is mixed with some users reporting timely help and others left hanging.
mSpy has a more established track record with generally positive feedback on reliability. It’s been around longer than Clevguard. Support response is above average and responsive according to reviews. mSpy users compliment the customer service team for resolving issues promptly.
Reliability and support is a win for mSpy over Clevguard based on user reviews. When choosing a monitoring app, you want responsive assistance for troubleshooting.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
No app is definitively “better” than mSpy as there are pros and cons to every parental monitoring program. However, some top competitors that offer comparable features include Spyic, FamilyTime, Qustodio, and Bark. Each has strengths like cross-platform support, social media integration, web filtering, etc. Ultimately mSpy is a top choice for comprehensive call, text, location and app monitoring across devices. But other apps have benefits to consider as well based on your priorities.
mSpy and FlexiSPY are two of the most full-featured phone monitoring apps available. Key differences:
FlexiSPY offers more advanced monitoring like ambient recording, camera image capture, and has slightly wider device support. mSpy has better user experience and customer support. The dashboards and set up process are more user-friendly. FlexiSPY starts at $68/month for premium features compared to $40/month for mSpy. Overall, FlexiSPY has stronger surveillance capabilities, especially on rooted Android devices. But mSpy strikes a better balance between advanced monitoring and ease of use for the average consumer.
mSpy and Xnspy have similar capabilities when it comes to monitoring messages, calls, GPS location, apps, and web activity. However, a few key differences:
mSpy has more advanced features like keylogger, remote data wipe, and alerts. Xnspy generally gets better marks for customer support and responsiveness. mSpy starts at $40 per month and Xnspy at $35, so pricing is comparable. For most use cases, mSpy and Xnspy deliver strong core monitoring features. Xnspy is slightly more affordable and offers better support. But mSpy has a slight edge in advanced capabilities. Overall they both meet the needs of most parents.
Yes, overall mSpy delivers on its promise to provide comprehensive monitoring and visibility into your child’s device activity and whereabouts. Some key points:
Installation is relatively smooth and the app works in stealth mode once set up. You get access to a full activity history including texts, GPS locations, web browsing, social media and more. Advanced capabilities like keylogger, keyword alerts and remote controls are genuinely useful. The dashboard provides detailed yet easy to understand activity reports and location mapping. One downside is that on iOS devices, real-time monitoring is limited compared to Android due to Apple restrictions. Despite that, mSpy still captures a wealth of historical data iOS and provides a powerful set of parental control tools. Just don’t expect full real-time monitoring on an iPhone.
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Final Verdict
Our detailed comparison finds mSpy is the superior parental control app compared to Clevguard, especially for power users. The key advantages of mSpy include:
- More advanced features like keylogging, alerts and remote device controls
- Social media monitoring provides more context on Android devices
- Generally positive feedback on reliability and customer support
- Multi-device family plans available
- Longer track record and history in the market
Clevguard does offer strong basic monitoring like location tracking, app usage, call logs and text messages. It’s a cheaper solution for less than $15 per month. However, mSpy simply provides more robust capabilities, flexibility and user support if you want in-depth monitoring and restrictions.
Hopefully this breakdown has helped you see the key differences between Clevguard and mSpy in 2023. As a parent, investing in a parental control app is well worth protecting your child from digital dangers that lurk online.
With education and tools like mSpy, you can keep kids safe while allowing them to learn and explore the digital world.