Mobicip is positioned as one of the best parental control app for busy parents who want to restrict the impact of big tech companies on their children’s lives, and it’s got Family Voice and Mom’s Choice Awards to back up its claims about protecting kids.

Mobicip also claims that “more than 2 million parents” love its app, and that it can protect kids from social media, apps, websites and excessive screen time.

It can be a little pricey, though, and faces strong competition, so should you consider Mobicip if you want to protect your children?

Plans and pricing

That pricing, for instance, can ramp up if you want the maximum level of protection available from this service.

Mobicip’s Premium package costs $7.99/£6.26 per month if you pay annually, and that tier includes protection for 20 devices and every feature that Mobicip offers.

Qustodio, meanwhile, costs $7.44/£5.83 per month if billed annually and that includes support for unlimited devices, and Norton Family is even cheaper. Bark is more expensive, though, but does go further than almost anything else when it comes to social media monitoring.

If you’d rather not shell out for Mobicip’s premium package, the Standard tool supports ten devices and costs $4.99/£3.91 per month if purchased annually. You don’t get social media monitoring or app timers with that tier, though – and those are two of the biggest draws of any parental control tool. Similarly, the Lite package is affordable at $2.99/£2.34 per month, but it omits those features and only supports five devices.

Mobicip is one of the pricier parental control apps on the market, but that Premium package is still the best value by some way thanks to its features. And, pleasingly, there’s a seven-day free trial and thirty-day money-back guarantee.

Final verdict

Mobicip setup is easy and the ability to filter content by keyword gives you more control over web blocking. It's missing some common features, though - can't set an overall device usage time, for instance, just a schedule - and dated app lists and poorly chosen default settings mean you'll need to pay extra attention when setting up.

Features

Mobicip’s screen time scheduling is immediately impressive. Parents can create specific schedules for homework, sleeping or school time.

Daily screen time limits are available and, in an innovative twist on screen time features, parents can call for “family time” by locking all managed devices instantly – perfect for grabbing people’s attention.

You can create an unlimited number of custom filters, build schedules with five-minute increments, and allow or restrict apps or websites based on categories, too. There’s also a Vacation Mode feature that parents can deploy to allow more leniency.

This is comfortably one of the best scheduling tools on the market thanks to its great set of features – the only thing missing is the ability to set time limits for individual apps.

If you want to ensure that phones don’t capture attention, Mobicip allows parents to limit time spent on apps that hit certain categories, like social media or games, and particular apps can also be blocked entirely – while others can be put on a safe list.

Mobicip’s web filtering comes with 20 different categories of inappropriate content alongside the ability to block adult content, block specific words and block specific websites. Parents can also use a “whitelist-only” mode that allows children to only browse a list of pre-approved sites.

GPS functionality extends to a family locator tool, location sharing and geofencing – an ideal slate of location-specific options, even if Mobicip doesn’t have the innovative driving abilities found in some rival tools. Its geofencing includes a 1,000m radius, which is more generous than many other apps – even if Norton is wider still.

When it comes to reporting, parents can access a slick dashboard that provides browsing histories, location histories, your children’s access requests and a graphical representation of screen time usage displaying the categories of content your kids use the most – like social media apps, games or browsers.

Children also have access to a dashboard where they can request more screen time or ask to access blocked apps.

And if you want multiple people to be able to manage the app, parents can add trusted guardians or contacts using a straightforward and secure invitation system.

Elsewhere, Mobicip monitors Facebook and Snapchat for harmful content, but that’s it for social media monitoring – a poor showing compared to most rivals and, notably, Bark.

You can’t set time limits for individual apps on Mobicip, only categories of apps, and Mobicip doesn’t monitor text messages or calls.

Interface and in-use

It’s very easy to get started with Mobicip: download the app, allow permissions, and off you go. And, impressively, Mobicip works across loads of platforms, from Android and iOS to Windows, macOS, Chromebook and even Kindle.

In-depth guides make setup and configuration even easier, and parents can duplicate settings across multiple child devices – ideal for families with more than one child.

Mobicip’s web interfaces and apps are clean, intuitive and easy to use, too: for kids, it’s easy to check their screen time allowances and schedules. For parents, it’s simple to find every setting required and to access activity reports and analytics.

Support

This is another area where Mobicip goes above and beyond many rivals. As well as submitting a support ticket, parents can schedule a call with Mobicip’s customer service teams – ideal if you want to speak to a human.

An AI-powered chatbot provides answers to simpler questions, and there are loads of guides with useful imagery on Mobicip’s website.

It’s a good support option, with callbacks available alongside more conventional email support and loads of comprehensive articles.

The competition

Mobicip is a strong contender when it comes to parental control, but it still has rivals that are better in some areas.

Bark, for instance, is a much better option for social media monitoring – which is one of Mobicip’s weaker departments. MMGuardian, meanwhile, is better for checking calls and messages.

Qustodio and Norton Family are both cheaper than Mobicip, with the former supporting an unlimited number of devices and offering more robust social media and message monitoring too.

Final verdict

Social media and messaging are the two areas where Mobicip could be better, then, and if these are important to you, then we recommend you look elsewhere.

That said, Mobicip impresses in loads of other departments. Its filtering is effective, and its screen time and scheduling options are among the best you’ll find anywhere. Its location-tracking features are strong, too, and this app is attractive and easy to use for parents and children.

Customer support is excellent, its activity reporting is comprehensive, and it does some innovative things with scheduling and screen time that some rivals simply don’t offer – like its Vacation Mode or Family Time settings.

Mobicip is a little pricier than some tools, and it’s not ideal if you want to monitor social media. But if you need filtering, screen time controls and GPS-based functionality, Mobicip is one of the best parental control apps around.

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It’s impossible to avoid Microsoft if you’ve got a family full of tech - with laptops, PCs, smartphones and games consoles full of Redmond’s software, they’re everywhere.

But while that might sound all-encompassing, it might not be a bad idea if you need a parental control app. With features that smoothly integrate with your existing tech and a free price, Microsoft Family Safety could be the parental control app that your family needs.

• Interested in Microsoft Family Safety? Check out the website here

Plans and pricing

There’s not much to say here, because Microsoft Family Safety is free - so you don’t have to fork out any cash, you don’t need to investigate different product tiers and their varying features, and you don’t have to mess around hunting for deals or registering for free trials.

Microsoft Family Safety is also included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions and Windows 11 operating systems.

Features

Family Safety runs on Windows, Xbox, Android, and Apple devices, and parents can also use Mac OS computers to access the web dashboard and monitor their children. Bear in mind, though, that you can’t install Family Safety on Mac OS devices used by your children - on Apple’s desktop and laptop OS, it’s a one-way street.

It’s easy to get started with Family Safety - more on that later - and once you’re up and running, the app has a decent set of core parental control features, at least on paper.

Take web filtering, for instance: while this is a core component of any good parental control app and rivals like Qustodio do a tremendous job, on Microsoft Family Safety you’re only able to filter the Microsoft Edge browser. That might work for Microsoft, which wants to keep people using its own software, but that’s not practical in families where people want to use Chrome, Safari or other browsers.

Many alternative browsers are just blocked by the app instead, and it’s possible for parents to block individual websites - and allow favored ones, too.

Frustratingly, Microsoft Family Safety doesn’t let parents see the categories of content it blocks, and users report frequent issues with unsafe websites not being blocked and not being flagged on the parent dashboard.

Family Safety’s screen time functionality didn’t impress all that much, either. Initially, all seems well: you can set schedules for your children’s devices, save them easily, and customize them for different days. On Android, parents can set limits on a per-app basis, too.

But a deeper dive by intrepid users online suggests that device screen time limits don’t work particularly well on Android - some reports suggest that children could continue using their devices even when contravening their scheduled limits.

Elsewhere, app blocking and whitelisting are supported and parents can allow children app access if kids send a request from their phones.

Family Safety’s location tracking features are basic. These features only work in the parents’ app on Android and iOS devices, not the web dashboard. Geofencing is only supported for Microsoft 365 subscribers - so while Family Safety is free, you’ve got to pay for 365 to get access to that feature.

Delve deeper into Family Safety’s location functionality and you will find one innovation - the Drive Safety mode. If a teen activates the feature, parents can see their route, speed and any abrupt braking. It’s welcome, but apps like Bark provide similar functionality.

What’s missing from Family Safety? Sadly, quite a lot. Outside of its web filtering, there’s no social media, messaging app or text message monitoring, and none of the camera and audio features that you’ll find in some more forward-thinking tools. You also can’t shut down or take control of child devices using Microsoft Family Safety.

Interface and in-use

Family Safety is very easy to use: install the app, grant some basic permissions and build a family group using people’s Outlook addresses, phone numbers or alternative emails and you’re good to go.

In a nod towards transparency, children can see the restrictions they’re under on their app’s dashboard.

On Windows devices, functionality is similar - you just make your children a new account on the device rather than using their phone number.

Once you’re all set up, Family Safety is exceedingly easy to use. The interface is clean and spacious with familiar Microsoft green accents, and everything is laid out well - all of the key options are in obvious places.

Support

Microsoft Family Safety’s website includes setup guides, FAQs and troubleshooting tips that should solve most common issues, and Microsoft’s busy forum is also available for more specific queries.

In-app support and reporting is available on Android and iOS, and the central Microsoft support website is available if you need to get in touch with Microsoft – although that does mean delving into the support functionality of one of the world’s biggest companies, and that means a likely slow response.

The competition

There’s no doubt that Family Safety has impressive rivals. Take Qustodio: it has far better web filtering and monitoring than Microsoft’s tool and it’s excellent for families that have lots of devices.

Bark outpaces Microsoft’s tool for social media and email monitoring, too.

Final verdict

There are certainly some areas where Microsoft Family Safety fights back. It’s free, for starters, and is easier to use for families that already use the Microsoft ecosystem through PCs, laptops or games consoles alongside smartphones.

It’s easy to use, too, and has accessible and moderately effective filtering, location-tracking, app management and screen time features.

That said, there are serious limitations in all of those departments, the iOS app is more limited than the Android version, and its rivals – while not free – are far more capable in every key area.

If you want basic parental control without spending any money, Microsoft Family Safety is easy to use and already available for loads of families. But if you’re at all serious about parental control, look elsewhere.

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If your family uses Android devices and you don’t want to pay extra for one of the best parental control apps, then it can be tempting to turn to Google Family Link – Android’s own parental control suite.

Unsurprisingly, this tool works well with Google’s own apps, like Search, Chrome and YouTube, and it can save you money because you’re not investing elsewhere.

But a deeper dive into its features reveals some missing capabilities when compared to other apps – so let’s find out if it’s a false economy.

• Want to try Google Family Link? Check out the website here

Features

We’ve skipped our usual “Plans and pricing” section because there’s nothing to say beyond the fact that this app is free.

Before you get started, it’s worth checking Family Link’s device compatibility, too. For kids, Family Link is compatible with Android devices running version 7.0 or higher. However, only certain settings will function on devices using Android 5.0 or 6.0. There’s no kids app for iOS.

For parents, the control app runs on Android devices running Android 5.0 or higher or iOS devices running iOS 11 or higher.

That last point is a boon because it means you can use Family Link on children’s devices even if you’re a parent on iOS.

Family Link allows users to set screen time controls, including downtime and app-specific time limits. Parents can also manage app, website, and extension permissions and downloads through the control software.

You can always see your child’s location thanks to Google’s mapping prowess, too.

Delve into many of these features, though, and you’ll discover that they’re relatively basic.

You can set device usage limits and restricted times for your children, with support for 15-minute increments, so they won’t be browsing their phones during school hours or bedtime, for instance.

Device locking is supported, and you can also give your children always-on access to certain apps. But when compared to other tools, like Bark or Qustodio, Google’s Family Link is pretty basic here.

The filtering is relatively rudimentary, too. While there’s no doubt that Google’s SafeSearch filtering works very well by blocking or blurring unsuitable text and images, other apps offer dozens of categories to choose from if you want to block specific topics, and you can’t go any further than SafeSearch here. You can block certain sites and allow others, but you’ll have more control elsewhere. And while Family Link filters YouTube, too, the options here are still fairly basic.

More impressive is Family Link’s app capability. You can see exactly which apps your children have installed and either block or limit their usage individually.

Content restrictions are available for Google Play, and you can prevent your children from making purchases as well – handy if you want them to stop spending a lot of money on addictive games. You can also prevent app installation from unknown sources and stop your children from adding or removing users from their devices or delving into the Developer options.

Unsurprisingly, Google’s location tracking is very accurate, and you can set up geofenced locations with decent radius limits – although other apps are even wider here.

You’ll get notified if children leave the area. One smart addition is the ability to view your child’s battery status, allowing you to spot if they’re about to run out of charge, too.

One notable omission here, though, is location history – it’s simply not available.

Elsewhere, Family Link doesn’t include text or call monitoring, and across basically every part of the app you don’t get the granular control you’ll find on other tools. Other apps also offer more comprehensive activity monitoring, including email and social media monitoring. And when your kids are 13, they can opt out of the monitoring if they wish.

Interface and in-use

As you’d expect from a Google app, Family Link is a sleek and minimalist piece of software that looks clean and uncluttered. It’s easy for parents and kids to navigate most of the settings available, which means setup is quick.

That’s great if you want an app that doesn’t overwhelm you with information, but it also means that some crucial bits of info can be hard to find.

You’ll need to use different screens to check children’s app and YouTube usage, for instance, and you'll also have to delve into various menus to view their web history. Many competitors make it easier to access this information, offering more centralized access to reports, alerts, and details.

Setup is easy, at least: because this is an official Google product, you don’t have to deal with the sideloading that's sometimes required elsewhere.

Support

Unsurprisingly, from a computing behemoth like Google, Family Link’s support is a little sporadic and impersonal.

If you need help you’ll need to go through Google’s official channels, and you’ll probably not get a fast response.

Thankfully, there are plenty of good knowledge base articles in the help center, but that’s it. If you want more extensive or faster support, a dedicated app will be far better.

The competition

Norton Family, for instance, has much better support, with live chat, and Qustodio has phone support available for people in certain tiers.

There’s also no denying that those apps are more extensive in terms of features, even if competitors fall short in certain areas: Norton doesn’t do well with text and call monitoring either, and Qustodio can be pricey.

Final verdict

Google Family Link’s free price is one of its biggest selling points, then, and elsewhere its key strength comes from its granular, powerful app controls and its decent screen time and scheduling options.

Go beyond this, though, and Google Family Link is lacking. You may have to pay for rivals, but they have far more extensive filtering and location tracking and work on a broader array of devices.

Google Family Link is ideal if you want to use it alongside one of those apps, perhaps to control Google Play usage or double up on filtering to have an extra safety net. But it’s just not powerful enough to function as your primary parental control tool.

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There are few more prominent names in cybersecurity than Norton. Norton Family tries to leverage that recognition and trust into one of the best parental control apps that protects your children when they’re using the internet.

With a wide feature set that includes screen time controls, inappropriate content filters, app restrictions, and location checkers, it’s clear that Norton Family provides many of the options that busy families with digitally savvy children need.

Some of the features have more depth than you’ll find on other parental control apps, too, but there are questions about how effective Norton Family is on Apple’s iOS platform – so let’s find out if Norton’s product is the right option for protecting your children.

Plans and pricing

Norton Family gets off to an impressive start: it costs just $49.99/£29.99 per year. That stellar price undercuts many rivals – top tools like Qustodio and Bark cost $89.36/£69.95 and $99 for a year of access to their upper-tier products. Mobicip’s pricing also sits in the same category as Qustodio and Bark.

Because Norton offers so many consumer cybersecurity products, it’s easy to get Norton Family included in other products.

Norton 360 Deluxe, for instance, includes Norton’s parental control features alongside a secure VPN, dark web monitoring, and scam protection. It costs $49.99/£29.99 for the first year, with a renewal price of $119.99/£89.99.

And if you want to add even more features, Norton 360 Premium or Select Plus costs $99.99/£99.99.

Those prices may look high, but remember that they’re for broader security products that happen to include Norton Family features, so they still represent excellent value.

If you’re still unsure if Norton Family is right for you, there’s a thirty-day free trial – a generous offer that’s longer than many other free trials. Bear in mind, though, that there’s no free version of Norton Family.

Features

Web filtering is one of Norton Family’s strongest areas. Parents can block websites using 45 pre-defined categories of inappropriate content – more than many rivals.

Norton tries to give children some trust with its web filtering too: parents can choose to warn children about sites and let them decide whether to proceed. Kids will also be able to see why particular sites have been blocked.

Differing access levels are also allowed depending on age groups, with specific categories of content permitted for older children, and there is the usual option to allow or block specific sites.

Norton also monitors how your children use search engines, and has an option to always enable safe searching across various browsers on Android – but on iOS, this only works using Norton’s own browser. Also note that Norton Family doesn’t work on child Mac OS devices at all.

Reports for parents show your child’s web history, including which blocked sites they’ve tried to access, their search histories and their YouTube history. Norton’s web filtering works across Android and iOS, with browser extension options for desktop and laptop browsers. It’s a comprehensive, effective system.

The impressive filtering extends to apps, too. Parents are presented with a list of apps installed on child devices, blocking is simple, and each app has an activity report for parents to see when the app was installed and how much it’s used. Newly-installed apps are even given a special highlight on Android devices.

The only thing missing here is the ability to set app time limits – a feature you’ll find on many rivals, including Qustodio.

Norton’s screen time schedules can be built in thirty-minute increments – that’s fine, but apps like Mobicip allow more granular control. Parents can set screen time limits on different days or just restrict devices at night, and it also has a selection of effective pre-defined schedules for children of different ages. There’s also a specific module for setting more restrictive limits during school hours – that education option includes additional web filtering to further restrict the content children can access.

Kids can request more screen time – a feature you’ll find in Mobicip but not in Qustodio – and screen time reports are displayed easily, with clear graphs showing usage.

Norton Family includes the usual array of location-based features. There’s real-time tracking, and the geofencing tool includes a generous radius of 3,200m (2 miles) – the largest we’ve seen on any parental control app.

Parents can set up alerts to find out where kids are located at particular times of day. Norton’s emphasis on trusting children also extends to an option where kids can perform check-ins and choose to share their location – rather than parents automatically viewing the location.

Elsewhere, Norton allows parents to instantly lock child devices and prevent app uninstallation with additional security features, but Norton Family does not monitor text messages or calls – or what your children are posting and messaging on social media apps. If you do need that feature, Bark is your best option.

Interface and in-use

Norton’s parental control apps are available on Android, iOS and the Edge, Chrome and Firefox browsers, while child apps can be installed on Android, Windows and iOS devices.

No matter what platform you’re using, Norton Family is very easy to set up with a familiar process that requires account registration and allowing the typical range of app permissions on child devices.

That ease-of-use continues to using Norton Family. The kids apps allow children to browse the web using the Norton Family Browser and it’s easy for children to find the option to send a check-in to parents, see the rules they’ve been set, or ask for a time extension.

Parent apps are similarly well designed, with clean design and options in sensible places. Altering settings is simple, and the app's web version is just as straightforward to use.

Support

Norton Family’s entry-level support module includes loads of helpful, well-produced guides and a busy forum for asking questions. If you need to contact Norton support, there are phone and live chat options that are open 24/7 – the benefit of dealing with a large business like Norton rather than a smaller organization that can’t provide that level of access.

If you’d like more support, including faster access to experts, then you can also pay for Norton Ultimate Help Desk. This provides quicker and more comprehensive support, but it costs $99.99/£99.99 annually.

Also note that Norton’s array of support options doesn’t always mean you’ll get a good answer.

The sheer size of Norton means that some users report that some of Norton’s customer support representatives are not particularly helpful with queries about Norton Family features – if you’ve got a specific query then you’ll need to get lucky and land a knowledgeable support representative if you don’t want to get generic and vague answers.

The competition

Still, those support options are excellent, and align with what you get with Qustodio’s Care Plus package. Bark’s support is reasonable, but it still can’t compete.

Elsewhere, Norton competes reasonably well on value thanks to its great pricing, but its biggest competitors offer more features: Qustodio is stronger on call and SMS monitoring, and Bark is better with social media.

MMGuardian is worth considering if you want improved web filtering, and Mobicip has great scheduling and screen time functionality, even if it fails on social media and messaging in the same way as Norton.

Final verdict

Norton Family, then, sits in a tricky spot. It’s an effective, competent parental control product that offers great value and a good range of features – and it’s very easy to use, too.

However, it falls behind on social media, call and text message monitoring, and it could perform better on iOS, too. And, importantly, rivals go better in all of these areas, with more power and innovation.

There’s still a place for Norton Family, though: it’s a good, well-rounded parental control app, it’s affordable, and it’s very easy to use. It helps that it’s included with many other Norton apps too.

If you want a straightforward, effective tool that’s easy to use – and trust Norton’s brand and other products – then this is worth its good-value prices. But if you need social media or messaging monitoring, or want more power, then shop around.

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If you’ve spent any time researching the best parental control apps, then you will have heard of Qustodio – it’s one of the most prominent names in the sector. It’s been around for over a decade, it’s been trusted by over seven million parents, and the app’s systems have averted over three billion threats.

That’s an impressive resume and, on paper, it’s backed by an impressive slate of features, too. But can Qustodio earn your vote ahead of big rivals like Bark, Norton Family or MMGuardian?

Plans and Pricing

The Qustodio experience starts with a refreshingly straightforward look at pricing, with two paid tiers available.

The Basic package offers core functionality and costs $43.37/£33.95 a year – the equivalent of just $4.25/£3.33 per month.

With the Basic package, you get daily time limits, web filtering, location monitoring, game and app blocking and the ability to pause internet access for your children’s phones. It’s a solid core product with a more generous offer than the basic package you’ll find elsewhere.

The Complete product, at $89.36/£69.95 annually, adds AI-powered alerts, social media monitoring, custom routines, app time limits and additional monitoring, and allows parents to add unlimited devices to the account.

It’s a decent offer, especially when many premium products restrict how many devices you can monitor.

Bark and MMGuardian are both pricier than Qustodio, but Norton Family is even cheaper.

There’s a free version of Qustodio, too, that offers web filtering, daily time limits, 7-day activity reports and the ability to pause the internet, but it only protects one device, so it’s understandably limited.

Features

Qustodio offers good value, then, and it also serves up a good range of features.

It’s possible to filter out inappropriate apps, games and websites easily, and pick categories for whitelisting, alerting or total blocking. Parents can access alternative recommendations to apps that kids aren’t allowed to access, and even deploy conversation starters, approved by child psychologists, to start conversations about web browsing and internet use.

With Qustodio you can block unknown websites, automatically enable safe searches in common browsers, and receive alerts if your child searches for inappropriate content.

Qustodio offers more than 25 web filtering categories, but there’s no option within the app for kids to request access to particular websites – a feature you’ll find on Norton Family.

Qustodio allows parents to set screen time allowances for every day of the week, and also set time limits for individual apps – and use the in-built app monitoring and detection to automatically sort over 25,000 apps into categories for easier blocking or accessing.

It’s easy to create different routines and switch between them and, if you need to step in quickly, there’s an option to pause internet access on child devices or block the device completely.

And if parents want to reward their children or be a little more lenient, it’s easy to add screen time and see a new limit once that extra time has been granted.

Different rules can be used to govern screen time use between browsers and apps, there are varying “modes” that alter access for bedtime, leisure time and study time, and custom schedules are very easy to build.

A straightforward map allows parents to spot child locations, geofencing is supported – albeit with a tiny 200m radius – and you can see location histories.

Call and SMS tracking and reading are supported on both Android and iOS, with full message details available, and parents can block phone numbers on child devices. You’ll get alerts for suspect content.

When it comes to reporting on all of this, Qustodio is similarly comprehensive. A real-time dashboard provides easy access to each child's digital activity, including an activity timeline, screen time and browsing history, and parents can access more detailed daily or weekly reports.

Qustodio is also forging ahead with some AI-based content, too, with AI-powered alerts that notify parents of any worrying searches, conversations or social media activity based on chosen topics or categories. That’s great, but it’s worth noting that Qustodio is a little weak on social media monitoring – it monitors messages on WhatsApp, Instagram and LINE, but that’s it.

In terms of other features, Qustodio allows parents to limit social media use, get app-based insights, and add additional parents or guardians to the software.

The app is also comprehensive when it comes to device support. As well as working on Android and iOS, which is a given for parental control apps these days, it works on Windows and Mac OS tech, Chromebooks, and Kindles. Additionally, parents can monitor child devices using Qustodio’s web interface.

As usual, though, be prepared that not every feature works on every platform. You don’t get WhatsApp alerts on iOS, for instance, and there’s no location, call or SMS monitoring on Mac OS or Windows. Android is the only platform that features a panic button.

Interface and in use

Qustodio has one of the best interfaces we’ve seen on any parental control app. As well as having a straightforward layout that places everything where you’d expect, Qustodio packs its apps and web interfaces with helpful tips and explanations about features and how they work.

A selection of Quick Actions provides fast access to common tasks, and the activity summary does a fantastic job of presenting key data in an attractive and intuitive format.

Child apps are simple enough for even the youngest children to understand what’s going on, and if you’re a parent who wants to dive deeper into the settings, you won’t get lost – the effective UI continues here.

It’s typically easy to get started, too: download the app, register an account, set up child profiles and tick all of the permissions, and you’re ready to start building schedules, monitoring devices and protecting your kids.

Customer Support

Qustodio makes a big deal about ensuring that its service is easy to use for busy parents who may not have a deep understanding of technology, and this attitude extends to its support functionality.

There are loads of helpful articles in the FAQ section, many of which have screenshots, and the guides that illustrate how to set up the app, use basic features and manage your account are particularly good.

If you need support and you use the Basic package, it’s managed through a contact form – sadly there’s no phone support, chatbot or live chat available here, but users report that they always receive helpful, polite form responses within 24 hours.

If you’re a Complete user, you get access to Care Plus. This adds phone support, personalized guidance and ongoing check-ins for parents who want more from their parental control app. And, impressively, Care Plus has an average resolution rate of 97% and an average resolution time of 15 minutes.

While it’s included for free with the Complete package, it costs $10.21/£7.99 to add it to the Basic product.

The Competition

As a big name in the parental control space, Qustodio has some big rivals – but it does a brilliant job of competing.

Norton Family, for instance, is more affordable than Qustodio but not as good at call or SMS monitoring. And MMGuardian isn’t as easy to use as Qustodio and is a bit more expensive, too.

Bark is probably Qustodio’s best competitor. It’s far better with social media, but is more limited on iOS and doesn’t provide a full web history, and it’s also a little more expensive.

Final Verdict

Those factors leave Qustodio looking like a particularly strong parental control option. It has superb filtering, scheduling and screen time options, AI-based additions, solid location features and excellent design, reporting and platform support.

Its customer support is great if you have the Complete product, the apps are all easy to use, and the pricing is fair, too – either competing or undercutting many rivals. The only downside is weak social media monitoring and a relatively small geofencing zone.

That social media monitoring drawback could be a dealbreaker for many families but, in almost every other area, Qustodio is a winner – it’s one of the best parental control apps on the market.

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As its name suggests, AdGuard is best known for its ad-blocker services. However, the organization has also expanded into other security and privacy services, including VPN and DNS services.

Its latest offer, still in beta at the time of writing, is AdGuard Mail, which provides security by offering email aliases and temporary email addresses – so you can keep your mail email addresses and services protected.

Aliases and temporary email addresses can be helpful in a wide variety of scenarios. You might want to sign up for a service or trial to acquire a discount code without signing up for spam, or you could just want to avoid subjecting your mail email address to the risk of phishing attacks or data breaches.

You may need temporary addresses for testing during software development, accessing a webinar or accessing services you don’t fully trust.

AdGuard Mail: Plans and pricing 

At the moment, AdGuard Mail is completely free – which instantly places this product ahead of many competitors.

Bear in mind that AdGuard says that Mail is free “for now”. Given that users have to pay for AdGuard’s other products, we’d expect AdGuard Mail to become a paid product once it leaves beta testing. Indeed, AdGuard’s FAQ says they plan to add paid features and customization options in the future.

Happily, AdGuard’s other products offer competitive pricing, so we’re not concerned about AdGuard Mail having extortionate pricing once it does leave beta.

For instance, the central AdGuard ad-blocking product costs $2.51/£1.99 per month if you pay annually, the VPN’s monthly costs are similar if you stick to an annual deal, and the DNS service has a basic free service.

AdGuard Mail: Features

AdGuard’s concentration on aliases and temporary email addresses gives users several privacy and security benefits.

By using an alias instead of your personal email address, you can avoid using anything identifiable if you want to send or receive messages. Instead, any emails sent to your aliases are then forwarded to their linked mailboxes, providing a layer of protection between you and the sender.

If you use temporary email addresses instead, you can avoid sharing your details and subscribing to any unwanted spam or services.

Ultimately, AdGuard’s aliases are ideal for ongoing communication without using your real addresses, and temporary emails are better for short-term activities.

This helps you avoid spam, phishing attacks, data breaches and privacy issues because you won’t have to use your own email address.

This approach differs from many other secure email providers, which give users their own, permanent email address, but AdGuard still promises robust security.

AdGuard cannot access your messages when using AdGuard Mail, and AdGuard uses secure SMTP connections whenever possible to protect your emails from unauthorized access.

The firm inspects email and website content before they’re loaded to check for any threats – and does so without retaining any information about the content. AdGuard’s thorough filtering protects you from fraudulent websites and websites that are known to distribute malware, and the firm’s filters are updated regularly – so you’re protected from the latest threats.

AdGuard’s reliance on aliases and temporary addresses protects your personal addresses, and that’s not the only area where AdGuard Mail impresses.

Once created, any emails forwarded from your alias are marked in your email client with a special header, so you can easily see AdGuard’s emails. Multiple aliases can be used for single email addresses, and multiple recipients can receive emails from single aliases.

Attachments are also supported for aliases, although temporary email addresses do not currently support attachments. Also consider that you can’t reply to emails forwarded by your aliases – to send replies, you will need to reveal your email address.

Ultimately, AdGuard’s method is simple and effective: use aliases to add a layer of protection so you can enjoy ongoing communication without compromising your email address – and use temporary emails to enjoy the same protection in short-term scenarios.

Of course, it must be noted that AdGuard Mail is markedly different from other secure email providers. This is a secure forwarding service rather than an actual email client, where you can create your own address and access a new, fully featured inbox.

That’s not necessarily bad, though, especially if you want to keep using your primary email address while adding extra protection. And if you combine AdGuard Mail with AdGuard’s other services, like its ad-blocking, VPN, or DNS, you can build a robust and versatile security package.

AdGuard Mail: Interface and in-use

AdGuard Mail excels thanks to its simplicity and versatility. It’s available as a desktop app for Windows and Mac, as an Android and iOS app, and it can also be accessed using a web interface.

If you want to create a temporary email address for one-time use, you can also just use AdGuard’s website to make and then copy a new address. Once you’ve used it to register for a service or input into a registration form, the reply will actually appear in a temporary inbox that’s right there on the same website. It’s a very clever service.

No matter what platform you use, AdGuard Mail is straightforward. Open the app for the first time, and it’ll guide you through the main features and launch a simple Wizard dialog that will help you create your first alias.

To create more, it’s just a matter of opening a panel, picking a random address and choosing its forwarding address. You can tag your aliases to make organization more manageable and add a description so you don’t forget its intended use.

The app includes an option for adding more recipients, a basic inbox for accessing emails sent to your temporary addresses, and a settings menu where you can choose Light or Dark modes, block senders and customize how the app functions on your system.

AdGuard Mail: Support

Right now, the support options for AdGuard are basic – no surprise given its beta status. Most support queries can be answered by browsing the FAQ section, and users can email AdGuard’s support address to access help.

There’s also a web form where users can give feedback about AdGuard Mail, with options for suggesting features and reporting bugs.

AdGuard also maintains active Telegram, Reddit and GitHub communities if you’d like to talk to other service users or troubleshoot using these methods.

AdGuard Mail: The competition

AdGuard Mail has no shortage of competition when it comes to email aliases. Many secure email providers offer this as part of their broader service, like Mailbox.org, Soverin and several others.

Those are paid providers, though, and, at the moment, AdGuard Mail is free – and judging by AdGuard’s pricing elsewhere, it’ll still be a very affordable product in the future, too.

One of the only secure mail rivals that offers aliasing using a free account is Proton, which includes ten aliases in its free product alongside a new email address and 5GB of cloud storage. So, while you do have to maintain a whole new email account, it’s arguably a better deal.

If you just want email aliasing, consider Apple’s Hide My Email feature, Firefox Relay, or even DuckDuckGo Email Protection.

AdGuard Mail: Final verdict

There are plenty of other services beyond AdGuard Mail that offer email aliasing and temporary email addresses.

That said, AdGuard is currently free, it works very well for both aliasing and temporary emails, and it’s certainly worth using – even more if you’re already a keen user of other AdGuard products.

Lots of the best secure email providers use their own platforms and clients, but Virtru is an enterprise-level product designed to integrate with your existing workflows – which means that, in theory, Virtru should seamlessly start protecting sensitive data in your organization.

Indeed, Virtru’s secure collaboration and email product is deeply integrated with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft SharePoint, and its Secure Share module integrates with Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, Zendesk, and Confluence.

Elsewhere, Virtru works with SaaS products from Salesforce, ServiceNow, Kustomer and more. Virtru’s own Data Security Platform delivers secure collaboration and sharing beyond those apps thanks to an agnostic platform.

In short, then, Virtru works with loads of apps and systems. And, as you may have guessed, this is an enterprise-level product that’s not suitable for individuals who need secure email.

Virtru: Plans and pricing 

Despite the service's complexity, Virtru’s products are divided into four tiers, which makes pricing a bit easier to understand.

The Starter package is ideal for smaller businesses that need email protection. It costs $119/£94 per month for a five-user package. With that offering, you get secure email for Gmail and Outlook, Virtru’s full slate of email and file protection abilities, administrator controls, and integration with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Basic support is also included.

The Business package, again for five users, costs $219/£174 per month. It includes everything in the Starter package and Virtru Secure Share, bulk decryption, integration with Google Workspace CSE and Google Vault, SSO compatibility, an audit log APU and custom branding for your business. You also get a 99.9% guaranteed uptime SLA.

If you're willing to pay extra, you can also add optional virtual private key stores and integrations with other third-party tools.

The next tier costs $399/£317 per month, again for five users. It includes everything in the Business package, as well as features designed for organizations that do business with US federal agencies.

It’s built to help ensure compliance with CMMC, DFARS 7012, and ITAR. It also includes FIPS 140-2 validated encryption.

It includes moderate FedRAMP ATO and a Virtru shared responsibility matrix for CMMC documentation. It also allows your organization to host private encryption keys. You also get deployment support, phone support and a dedicated customer success team. Premium support is also available as an optional extra.

The top package, Enterprise, uses custom pricing. It includes everything from the previous products alongside integration with Zendesk, Salesforce, and more SaaS systems. You can also add optional integrations with more systems and premium support.

It goes without saying that when you want to expand a package that includes support for five users, the price will rise accordingly.

Virtru: Features

Virtru is a far-reaching, complex product, but underneath it all you’ll find robust security credentials. Virtru’s systems use Trusted Data Format, or TDF, which is an open-source end-to-end encryption standard that protects your data at every stage of its lifecycle.

Underneath all of that, you’ll find AES 256-bit encryption, and it’s worth bearing in mind that encryption keys are not stored on Virtru’s servers – so you can control who has access to those, too.

This decentralized approach means you and your organization can maintain complete control over your data and its protection, and this zero-trust model ensures extra layers of security. Additionally, Virtru’s reliance on TDF means that you can embed policies and encryption directly into individual apps and objects across your organization’s workflows, which means you benefit from flexibility and full control.

Beyond the excellent underlying format, you can deploy attribute-based access control to enforce who can access your content dynamically.

Virtru’s underlying security prioritizes protection, control, and flexibility, and this ethos is evident in other features of its software suite.

Opt for its Google or Microsoft-integrated products, and you can secure your email and cloud storage data, encrypt meetings, safeguard documents, protect presentations and ensure data privacy.

Choose file-sharing integrations, and you can meet advanced compliance requirements, monitor and audit your data, give collaborators an effortless experience and, again, keep your data protected.

Virtru’s Data Protection Gateway protects emails and files before they leave your domain with inbound and outbound end-to-end encryption to ensure total protection for sensitive information, no matter the services involved.

Virtru’s Data Security Platform uses a zero-trust architecture and granular controls to ensure that your business has complete control over its data and who can access it.

Virtru: Interface and in-use

Virtru’s interface is a little different from many other secure email products – because this is a necessarily complex service that takes a different approach.

Instead of signing in to a web client, for instance, Virtru largely integrates with your existing software, with management handled by Virtru’s Control Center. In this regard, Virtru is excellent: its interfaces and management apps are attractive, well-designed and easy to navigate as long as you’ve got the requisite experience dealing with complex administrative tools.

Given Virtru’s high-end abilities, your organization should already have people who are well-versed in those apps.

Virtru: Support

Varying levels of support are available with different Virtru products: at the lower levels, you get online help, and if you pay for the higher-end products, you can add phone support, a dedicated success team, premium options and deployment help to the package.

Those latter options are precisely the kind of support features we’d expect from a high-end enterprise product like Virtru.

In addition, Virtru’s website has an extensive knowledge base and basic live chat functionality.

Virtru: The competition

Virtru’s status as a high-end, enterprise-grade secure email and data product means it competes with similar products, such as Zoho’s suite of business apps. Indeed, Virtru even competes with Google and Microsoft, albeit with a greater focus on security and encryption.

In many ways, though, Virtru stands alone. Zoho is more focused on productivity across a wider variety of apps, and Google and Microsoft are designed to act as the underlying tools beneath Virtru. There isn’t much out there that offers the broad concentration on enterprise-level security and protection like Virtru.

Virtru: Final verdict

That leaves Virtru in a good position, especially with larger organizations – and that’s no surprise, because there’s lots to like about this product.

It’s packed with features and has excellent security credentials. The overall design of the Data Security Platform means that Virtru’s tools should integrate smoothly with virtually all of your systems.

Virtru can undoubtedly become expensive, but you get what you pay for – and if you’re a large business that wants to take data protection seriously, you should be considering Virtru.

Lots of the best secure email providers function by providing a web client or mobile app for you to use, but PreVeil is a bit different: as well as using PreVeil’s web client or Android and iOS apps, you can also send using your existing Outlook, Gmail or Apple Mail clients.

That immediately adds a huge amount of versatility to this app. If you move beyond that, you’ll find a secure email provider trusted by defense contractors, education institutions and legal organizations – so there’s some pedigree here.

PreVeil: Plans and pricing 

That sort of customer base and feature set makes it all the more amazing that PreVeil actually starts its offering with a free product.

PreVeil’s free account gives you 5GB of encrypted data storage, end-to-end email and file encryption, integration with Outlook, Gmail and File Explorer and mobile device access, so it’s a well-rounded offering if you need secure email and cloud storage.

The Individual plan costs $25/£20 per month, which is immediately more expensive than most of the other individual plans you’ll find on the market – but, in PreVeil’s defense, that package comes with a mammoth 5TB of data storage. That’s more than you’ll find anywhere else. You can also provide free accounts to third parties using this product.

The Business product costs $30/£24 per user per month but the feature set accelerates. The Business tier meets compliance requirements for HIPAA, FERPA, SOC 2, GLB, FTC and IRS standards, and you can use an admin console, system logs, admin protection and data loss prevention.

Each user in the business product gets a massive 10TB of storage, too, and you get priority support and a dedicated customer success team.

If you work for a government organization or in the defense industry, PreVeil has a product that meets compliance requirements for DFARS 7012, CMMC, and ITAR and is FIPS 140-2 validated.

In this final tier, you get FedRAMP Moderate Equivalent, all data is stored in the AWS GovCloud, and you enjoy a Compliance Accelerator with pre-filled forms – and access to compliance experts.

If you’d like to access that final tier, you’ll need to contact PreVeil for a quote. SMEs can also use PreVeil Pass, a CMMC compliance solution that costs $415 per month for three users and includes encrypted email, pre-filled CMMC documentation, and specialist support.

PreVeil: Features

PreVeil operates using Zero Knowledge encryption with end-to-end ability, which means that all information associated with your emails is only encrypted and decrypted on user devices – so PreVeil can never see or access the contents of your messages. Underneath it all, you’ll find robust AES-256 used for symmetric encryption and elliptic curve P-256 used for asymmetric keys.

Passwords aren’t used with PreVeil, either. Instead, account access is managed by secret encryption keys that are only stored on user devices. Levels of encryption are used to “wrap” those keys to prevent unauthorized access. Your key remains stored on your device, so login is simple and secure.

To encrypt your emails and files, PreVeil deploys a symmetric system with varying keys used with Public Key Infrastructure technology. PreVeil doesn’t use any PGP system, though, which may be worth bearing in mind if you want to work with people who use PGP-based encryption.

Approval Groups cryptographically distribute trust to predetermined groups of users to avoid individuals compromising entire networks, and Trusted Communities allow organizations to safelist domains and email addresses.

We’ve got no qualms about PreVeil’s security, and the service remains impressive elsewhere. Its ability to work with email clients and free Android and iOS apps means that you can access your encrypted emails from anywhere – a boon when using PreVeil’s services in mission-critical business and government scenarios.

It’s not just about email, either, because PreVeil includes secure cloud storage that deploys the same level of encryption as email.

Administrators can manage users, devices and approved groups of users, define rules across their organizations and record the actions of users with tamper-proof logging.

PreVeil: Interface and in-use

If you use PreVeil’s web browser or mobile apps, you’ll benefit from a straightforward, simple, and well-designed experience. Navigation is down the left, and your inbox is right in the middle.

A pop-up window makes composing emails easy, although there’s no option here to switch to a three-pane email management interface. Indeed, many other products offer a wider range of configuration settings in general. PreVeil is easy to use but not overwhelmed with tweaks and options.

If you want to use PreVeil with your existing email client, you’ll need to go through a cryptographic setup process. Once that’s done, PreVeil adds a Secure Messages folder to your email app or interface, and a toggle at the bottom of your composition window allows you to activate or remove PreVeil encryption from your messages.

So, while PreVeil may not have as many settings as some rivals, it’s easy to use, whether you use the web client or your existing email app.

PreVeil: Support

Support tickets with PreVeil are filed over email, and there’s a huge knowledge base with loads of information on configuring and using the product.

The support ticket itself is comprehensive. You can provide a phone number to give PreVeil another option for contacting you, and they also have the facility to launch Zoom meetings to provide live assistance.

Certain customers at upper tiers also get priority support, phone support, and onboarding sessions, and PreVeil can provide webinars and training sessions.

PreVeil: The competition

PreVeil’s status as a certified provider for defense, government, and enterprise ensures that the service competes with some major players.

Hushmail, for instance, offers plans designed around the compliances required by legal and medical firms, so both services are worth investigating if you work in those industries. Zoho, too, offers HIPAA compliance. PreVeil goes further than both with military and government accreditations, though.

If you need to explore those accreditations and compare PreVeil to a key rival, check out Virtru. Both aim at the defense industries alongside healthcare and education, and they share many of the same accreditations.

PreVeil: Final verdict

PreVeil might not be the only secure email provider to deliver such a high level of security, compliance and encryption – we’re looking at you, Virtru – but it’s undoubtedly one of the best.

PreVeil's encryption and security are rock solid, and despite the level of power offered, they are very easy to use and, in most cases, very easy to set up.

PreVeil’s ability to work with existing email clients alongside its own interfaces and apps adds versatility.

It might be a little pricier than some secure email providers, but PreVeil justifies the cost with excellent design and security, especially for sensitive data in mission-critical scenarios.

Most of the best secure email providers offer users a new email address, client, and service to start from scratch, but most can be daunting, too, with loads of technical language that non-experts may not understand - and a wealth of tricky, intimidating options to select while setting up and configuring the client.

That’s not the case with Soverin. This secure email provider still aims to provide robust encryption but with a more accessible and straightforward approach than many rivals.

That makes it a potential winner for anyone who wants secure email without delving too much into the technical side of security.

Soverin: Plans and pricing 

Soverin’s pricing structure isn’t divided into rigid tiers. Instead, this product uses a more personalized system that enables you to build a package based on your needs.

The minimum cost of €39/$40/£32 per year immediately undercuts many other secure email providers. For that money, you get one mailbox that uses your existing domain and 25GB of space, which is a generous amount of capacity – lots of other services only provide 5GB or 10GB.

If you want to buy a new domain to set up a new, secure address, that costs extra, with .NL and .EU domains costing €13/$13/£11, .COM and .NET sitting at €18/$19/£15, and .ORG topping the list at €23/$24/£19.

Additional mailboxes cost €10/$10/£ each, and if you want to add an extra 25GB block of storage, it’ll cost you €29/$30/£24 every time.

There’s a thirty-day money-back guarantee, and the service doesn’t need personal information when you sign up – although you can’t pay with cryptocurrencies or cash, as you can with other secure email providers.

Soverin: Features

Soverin offers full encryption to emails sent and received through their servers, which is an excellent start for any secure email service. Soverin strips IP addresses from emails – something that not every secure email provider actually does – and supports two-factor authentication through its own web client.

Outbound SMTP servers check and honor TLSA records, and inbound servers benefit from published TLSA records.

Soverin uses DKIM/DMARC by default and, deploys SRS and ARC for email forwarding, and is fully compliant with a broad range of laws and standards, like GDPR, AVG, SPF, SSL, DANE and more.

Third-party services independently verify Soverin’s encryption: it scores a 100% confidence rating on CheckTLS.com and an A+ from SSL Labs. Soverin also scores 5/5 in the EU’s MESCA email test.

It’s worth noting that while Soverin always uses encrypted connections with OpenPGP used throughout, they don’t control security used outside of the Soverin ecosystem. If you want this level of security, you’ll need to use your own OpenPGP connection using a service like Mailvelope.

There’s no tracking, no advertising, and no chance for Soverin to see the contents of your mailbox.

Elsewhere, lots of features prove Soverin’s versatility. Thanks to IMAP and POP3 support, it works with any mobile or desktop email client, and you can use your own domain. A unified platform with full user control can be built and provided, mail can be imported from external services, and domain management is available, too. The platform also has its own spam filter and 24-hour monitoring and alerting for suspicious activity.

If you’re buying Soverin for an organization you can customize the product with custom colors, menus and your logos, you’ve got complete control over the number of mailboxes and aliases you use alongside custom domains, and the web client has integrated calendar, contact and task functionality.

Soverin’s servers are hosted in three data centers in the Netherlands, where secure infrastructure and disc encryption protect physical hardware. Hosting providers are selected based on Soverin’s strict privacy requirements. No customer information is shared with third-party organizations.

Soverin: Interface and in-use

Because Soverin works by encrypting your existing account, a little setup is required to get things started. You’ve got to verify that you’re the owner of your domain by adding text records to your DNS, MX and SPF settings.

Once that’s done, you can access Soverin’s mailbox. This attractive and straightforward mail client mimics the three-panel design so often seen elsewhere, making it easy to use for anyone familiar with online email.

At the window's top-right are icons that allow you to switch to your calendar, contacts, and to-do list. In the settings menu, you’ll find all of the key options you need for configuration, but it must be said that many other services give you more granular control over functionality – Soverin’s settings menu is not complicated or intimidating, but you will have more options elsewhere.

Soverin: Support

To access Soverin’s support, you can email them – it’s that simple. The company intends to respond to messages quickly and maintains a service status page on its website.

Elsewhere, the Help section includes guides on setting up your service and customizing key functionality. The guides are well-written and have straightforward explanations that should be easy to follow, even for beginners. There’s also a good FAQ section.

That’s it for support, though. There’s no live chat and no phone support here, which is the kind of thing you’ll find from larger organizations, and lots of other email products offer more depth in their online FAQ and help sections, too.

Soverin: The competition

Soverin’s status as an accessible and affordable secure email provider sees it competing with some big names, including Tuta and Posteo.

All three services are similar, with good security functionality and rock-solid core email client experiences.

Soverin offers more storage than Posteo, but Posteo is even cheaper than Soverin – and it’s not like Soverin is particularly expensive. Tuta, meanwhile, has exceptional security and it also has mobile apps, but customer support is not great.

If you’d like more functionality, including Office tools, VPNs and cloud storage, then it’s worth considering products like Proton and Mailbox.org – and even Zoho if you want a complete business solution. But they’re far more complex and potentially much more expensive, too.

Zoho Mail: Final verdict

Soverin is an effective secure email option, with robust security procedures, straightforward design and flexible, affordable pricing – so if you want a no-nonsense secure email product, it’s worth consideration.

That said, products from larger organizations will offer more support functionality, which is essential for businesses, and the lack of in-depth support won’t sate technical users and people who want more control over their emails.

Nova Development produces an impressive array of design and productivity software, including a range of 3D home design tools, the top of the line version being “Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12”.

Having reviewed all the best interior design software, I wanted to see how the latest version compares to the rest. So let’s take a look at it.

• Interested in Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12? Check out the website here

Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12: Pricing & plans

• Purchase the software online, as you’d expect these days, with a price that’s to be expected for the number of available features, but we were very disappointed to learn that no trial version was available

This software is PC-only, compatible with Windows 8, 10 and 11. It requires a 64-bit OS, a minimum of 2GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and 30GB of storage, and it can be yours for $125.

Sadly, Nova Development does not offer a trial version, so there’s no way for you to check out its wares before purchasing the software. However, they do offer a 60-day money back guarantee, so if you buy it and if it turns out not to be your cup of tea, return it, no questions asked.

The easiest way to get this title is by clicking here - although we found the installation to be quite lengthy, even on full fibre, but we got there in the end.

• Score: 3 / 5

Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12: Interface

• The interface feels somewhat antiquated, but its organization is pretty much perfect, allowing you to select the tool you need with ease

The interface feels dated, but the way the information is organised is very clean and easy to understand. The icons at the bottom of the window are used to control your environment.

This is where you get to choose which view to work in (2D or 3D), add cameras to your 3D environment, choose which level of your building to work in, along with general controls when moving objects on your canvas, such as restricting movements to right angles, and making sure objects don’t collide with each other.

You’ll find a series of tabs at the top, which is where all your design tools are stored, organised by clear categories. Further up is the traditional menu bar which contains links to those aforementioned tools, giving you multiple ways to access the same functions, which is something we greatly appreciate: the software allows you to work how you prefer, rather than forcing you to adapt to a developer’s idea of working.

To the right, is the Inspector panel, which changes its content based on the currently selected tool. It’s very clear and simple, although we found the information there to be quite small compared to the other sections.

We also found having to navigate through tiny folders inside a tiny inspector got a little frustrating at times. Thankfully there’s a search field at the top, if you know what you’re looking for.

• Score: 4 / 5

Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12: Building

• Considering the complexity of designing a building, using this software is remarkably simple as the developers have clearly gone out of their way to make the creation process as easy as they could manage it

Designing walls and rooms is very easy: select the wall tool, click on your canvas, click somewhere else, and one wall has been added between those two clicks. There’s even a function (selected by default) to ensure those walls stay straight, and go off from others at a 90 degree angle.

You can add walls by using your mouse or trackpad, or by typing the value you’re after. By default the measurements will be shown in antiquated feet and inches, but you can alter that to the much more precise metric system from the ‘Settings’ section.

There’s a lot of little touches we greatly appreciated, like the software being intelligent enough to know when the latest wall you’re adding will enclose a room, or when you reposition an existing wall, any other wall connected to it will also be resized as you do so, saving you tons of time when redesigning and fine tuning your project.

Adding doors and windows is just a matter of choosing the one you’re after from the Inspector panel, and dragging it until you’re happy with its position. These objects know they’re supposed to be embedded into a wall and will snap to one in your project as you decide where to put it, even if your cursor veers off a little.

Adding a ceiling can be done in a single click if you just want to cover the entire level in one go, but you’ve also got the option of being much more precise, choosing different types of ceilings for each room, say, or even creating partial ceilings. The flexibility and ease of use is impressive. Same goes for when it’s time to add a roof.

You’ll likely primarily be working in the 2D environment, but you can also switch to 3D, and not just to appreciate your design in three dimensions: unlike some competing products, you also have design control in that environment as well, and we had a lot of fun with that.

• Score: 4.5 / 5

Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12: Wizards

• If you need another helping hand, conjure up a wizard to speed up some common design necessities, such as a kitchen, bathroom or deck

Despite all the features created to facilitate the building of complex projects, sometimes you may need things to be speeded up somewhat. That’s where wizards come in. This software has a handful of them, to create the bare bones structure of a house, a kitchen, bathroom, a house’s foundations, or even a deck or shed.

The wizard won’t do it all for you, of course, but through a series of simple choices, you can apply a template to your project, and then customize it further after it’s been inserted.

For instance, the Kitchen Wizard will ask you for the basic shape you’re after (L-Shape, Galley, or U-Shape), its orientation, the generic placement of most units, and the style you’re after. After that, you add it to your plan, resize it to suit, and its job is done. You’re then free to take individual items, such as the sink or fridge, and move it around until you’re happy with its position.

It’s a great way to get the basics done in a few seconds, giving you more time to fine tune and personalize your creation.

• Score: 4.5 / 5

Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12: Indoor and Outdoor Decoration

• The software has a large catalog of objects you can use to furnish your design, and comes with powerful tools to shape the landscape

Adding furniture, both indoor or outdoor, is as easy as selecting a door or window: choose the right category, then scroll down the list in the Inspector until you find the item you’re after.

We were unable to find a way to customize the available objects though (just like we couldn’t resize a chosen door or window), but there are so many options available you’re bound to find the one that matches your needs.

And speaking of outdoor, this software goes beyond your house, and grants you the ability to design the outside, complete with altering the terrain, creating hills, retaining walls, the works, and of course, has a slew of plants and vegetation you can use to bring your design to life.

As you’d expect for a program with such versatility, its minimum specs should be seen as that: minimum, and likely not even worth trying to match. As long as your computer swims in RAM and has a powerful processor, it should easily handle the software.

• Score: 4 / 5

Should I buy Virtual Architect Professional Home Design 12?

Buy it if...

You’re on a PC, and you’re looking for a powerful, versatile, yet easy to use software package to design a project in 2D and 3D.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t need something with so many options, your PC isn’t powerful enough, and the lack of trial software really puts you off.

For more home design tools, we've reviewed the best landscape design software and the best architecture software.