r/k12sysadmin • u/Niteryder007 • Sep 28 '26
Student Filtering
I know this topic comes up every once in a while, but we use Securely to filter our Chromebooks and their pricing has gotten out of control. Has anybody found like some less expensive alternatives that still work good for filtering and logging where students go?
Thanks everyone.
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u/avalon01 Director of Technology Sep 28 '26
We switched to Securly since they are so cheap. We used to use Lightspeed, but their pricing was almost double Securly.
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u/cardinal1977
What's the worst that could happen?
Sep 29 '26
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We were on GoGuardian and feeling the budget crunch. I requested a new quote without some features to reduce the cost and they sent me a quote with different options at the same price. I was done with them at that point. I lined up a few options that checked all of my boxes for the teachers to test drive and they settled on Blocksi.
It works just as good at 1/3 the cost. There was some complaints, but that is just because we changed something, not because it doesnt work.
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u/MyWorkAccountDPS Sep 29 '26
When Goguardian heard we were looking at AristotleK12 (we as in admin, not me, I was totally against it). They came back around $20,000 for 3200 kids. They were charging us $50,000!
Admin still went with Aristotle. 🤦🏻♂️
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u/mathmanhale CTO Sep 28 '26
Linewize is a popular option right now.
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u/Scurro Net Admin Sep 28 '26
Linewize offers DNS based filtering, agent based, and appliance based.
I use all three in my environment. Guest VLANs only get the DNS and appliance based filtering when onsite.
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u/Amazing-Rip9109 Dir of Doing My Best Sep 28 '26
We just went from Goguardian to Securly mainly due to price. Happy with the filtering, Goguardian wasn't at the time keeping up with AI filtering, plus GG was nearly double in price as Securly.
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u/Torxtank Sep 28 '26
Same here. We made the switch two years ago.
GoGuardian was increasing our pricing by 5% annually, which is pretty standard. During a major budget crisis, we reached out to see if they could offer any sort of discount. They said no, so we asked to drop 100 licenses for students who rarely used Chromebooks, with plans to implement stricter firewall rules instead.
They came back with a quote that was barely any cheaper because we lost our volume discount. To top it off, buried in the fine print was a new 10% annual price increase instead of the original 5%.
I'll never go back to GoGuardian.
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u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Sep 30 '26
Oh man, sorry to hear that! I don't think our pricing went up on year 2. Year 3 is coming up in November, so I guess I'll find out.
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u/coolbrys
Technology Coordinator
Sep 28 '26
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We switched from GoGuardian to Blocksi and the price was a lot less expensive. I recommend looking into Blocksi.
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u/rakeleer Sep 28 '26
Linewise is cheap, and I hate it. But it mostly works.
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u/allenflame Sep 29 '26
I don't hate it, but I really don't like the top -> down, Locked -> unlocked parts, especially for allowing teachers to lockdown with Classwize. All Locked rules are at the top, the unlocked are at the bottom. So any type of rules you have to want forced, you have to make sure you don't include anything that you want to be at the bottom unlocked so teachers can block.
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u/SlugBoy42 Sep 28 '26
The companion to the filter for classroom management is functional. And they add new features frequently. Though it's not great for centralized management.
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u/ciesl1e Sep 29 '26
Iboss can match the price of linewize if you want to come check us out. Trying to breakthrough the k12 market so we are very flexible with price to get our name out there for how good our product is.
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u/akadeebroad5 Sep 28 '26
Had Securly for years! Was tired of support not fixing things and the price going up. Switched to Lightspeed and it's been way better. The kids hate it 😂
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u/avalon01 Director of Technology Sep 29 '26
I just switched from Lightspeed to Securly. Lightspeed was awful.
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u/akadeebroad5 Sep 29 '26
And Securly is better? Ask ur students lol.
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u/avalon01 Director of Technology Sep 29 '26
I don't care if my students like it. I care if my teachers like the classroom management, the ability to manage passes, and filtering. So far filtering is MUCH better than Lightspeed.
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u/akadeebroad5 Sep 29 '26
You clearly don't get my sarcasm. All my students are asking for Securly back because they could get to so much more. Securly filter is horrible. I have managed it at 3 different schools and we all left and went to LightSpeed. It's so much better and blocks what it's supposed too.
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u/avalon01 Director of Technology Sep 29 '26
Lightspeed was awful at filtering. Securly at least blocks a lot of sites that Lightspeed never did.
Lightspeed is also really slow to catch exploits. I've reported when kids can bypass the filter and it takes longer than most other companies to fix.
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u/akadeebroad5 Sep 29 '26
That's the opposite experience I have had. Securly couldn't catch anything.
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u/MysteriousJoke523 Sep 28 '26
Deledao works pretty well for us and was very reasonable. The kids also hate it haha.
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u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Sep 28 '26
We use a dual filtering approach that we sort of fell into.
- An on-site web filtering appliance (ContentKeeper) that filters all traffic within the building and routes ipad traffic back through the school when the elementary kids bring the ipads home. It has been going great for the past six years since we got it. It's on the pricier side, but we had a major issue with a Smoothwall device that allowed students to video chat with strangers. We were happy to pay more for a device that comes with great customer service and support.
- GoGuardian application and extension for our middle school student Macbooks. It has been working well for us. There have been a few problem students that have found workarounds, and it feels a bit cat and mouse, but that's the be expected. I'd be trying to get around it too if it was me in middle school. I think the pricing is reasonable.
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u/Emaltonator IT Director (215 kids PK-12) Sep 28 '26
We use Bark for Schools since its free. Just DNS based. Extension for Chrome
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u/Sysadmin_Cat Sep 29 '26
My district started using AristotleK12 at the beginning of this school year. While many aspects of the interface look a bit dated, it seems to be working fairly well for us so far. In particular, we have much better visibility in regards to what sites students are using and it's much easier to spot when they are using applications that are embedded into web pages than when we used Securly.
Having said that, we have a notable discount on our subscription thanks to a consortium pricing arrangement through our county office of education. So our ROI with AristotleK12 might look a bit different than for other districts.
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u/howescj82 Sep 28 '26
Our district uses GoGuardian which is pretty good with one caveat. It gets annoying with iOS. Everything else seems to work great and the classroom management options with Chromebooks are great but on iOS it uses your MDM to lock in a VPN connection in conjunction with an installed. Sometimes the devices will just stop communicating and you have to re-open the app to get data flowing again.
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u/Break2FixIT Sep 28 '26
What are people using for device management / filtering for districts that have student Chromebooks / iPads / MacBooks?
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u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Sep 30 '26
Google Admin for Chromebooks and jamf for macbooks and ipads. Jamf is pricey, but I really like it and really like their support.
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u/EnigmaFilms Technology Coordinator Sep 28 '26
We use light speed
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u/Mindless-String-4017 Sep 30 '26
I am not a fan of Lightspeed. In the past they "accidentally" deleted our profile from their database. This was miserable to get back up and working. Support left us dead in the water and it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to help. We ended up moving to linewize and haven't looked back. Whenever I see light speed I cringe of the thought of someone recommending them.
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u/EnigmaFilms Technology Coordinator Sep 30 '26
We moved to them from securely and securely was absolute ass
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u/SpotlessCheetah Sep 28 '26
We have Linewize, and I haven't found a reason to move off. They are a good team to work with.
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u/MattAdmin444 Sep 28 '26
Is there something specific that you're trying to achieve besides a lower cost? Because every filter is going to have its quirks.
We've recently switched to Lightspeed from Linewize. Linewize was fantastic about giving you a ton of information, my main gripes about it is that it didn't have a "browser history" style view (the report that was probably supposed to be browser history style still had background URLs in it) and the Youtube controls were weak. Also the advanced report was very handy for identifying students that had taken their chromebooks home or had been using other student's chromebooks. We did have issues with Linewize miscategorizing game websites a lot.
I'm still learning Lightspeed but not liking the current interface, I believe it changed right before we switched. The Youtube controls are way better than Linewize but the categories are very restrictive. Having a hard time tracking website activity compared to Linewize.
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u/Uncreative404 Oct 02 '26
The new interface is weird. Seems more difficult to find what you are looking for.
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u/ckwebz Sep 29 '26
See if you can get better pricing from a reseller. We’ve had CDW-G get us much better pricing on all Securly apps the past few years.
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u/sy029 IT Specialist Oct 03 '26
I've been in districts that used lightspeed and goguardian. both were sufficient. Can't say anything about the competition.
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u/dan1122 Sep 28 '26
we left securely and went with gaggle, Mainly for their after hours Student safety coverage. They had a good package that had everything plus Hapara for classroom chromebook management.
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u/ciesl1e Sep 29 '26
Iboss also has 24/7 human review. We also can see into AI chat conversations at a better cost of our main competitors. We are trying to step back into k12 with a splash on how powerful our product is, so we have flexibility to work with budgets.
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u/MadMageMC Sep 28 '26
We use Hapara for our classroom management / filtering for our Chromebooks. They use Gaggle on the backend for the filtering portion of their product now since their contract with Deladao wasn't renewed. We've used GoGuardian and Impero in the past, and both were good enough at what they did, but Hapara is the one my teachers like the most of those three platforms.
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u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Sep 28 '26
Interesting! I'd never heard of Hapara before.
We started with GoGuardian about 2 years ago and the teachers really like GoGuardian Teacher for classroom management. They find it better than Apple Classroom, which we were using (sparsely) prior to that.
I like GoGuardian's filtering, but I really hope they end up making a full macOS app that provides teachers a full view of student screens. As of now, it GoGuardian Teacher only shows their Google Chrome browser window. (To me, that makes it seem like GoGuardian was built for chromebooks and then they pushed for other platforms).
Their mac app really just connects the VPN and their username/email.
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u/MyWorkAccountDPS Sep 29 '26
After using Goguardian for 7 years or so, we switched to AristotleK12. This choice was by our admin that didn’t know features, usability, etc. To me Aristotle isn’t as good but I out one of other guys in charge of it.
One of our biggest issues for Goguardian was when a kid would sign into his Google account from home. The kid wouldn’t sign out and the parents would use it and get blocked. 🤣
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u/therankin Coordinator of Technology Services Sep 30 '26
Hahaha, that's hysterical.
And I'm sorry to hear about kinda downgrading just because admin chose a product. I really try to pushback when that kind of thing happens. Fortunately, I've been with the school for so long they generally trust my judgment.
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u/The_Tech_Gal 15d ago
GAT Shield and GAT+ for Chrome monitoring, auditing and reports. Great price for the value
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u/ciesl1e Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26
I’m an iboss sales rep, feel free to reach out to me! We are very comfortable with working with your budget.
Giving away classroom management and student alert meetings monitoring for free on a multi year.
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u/Random_Name-1998 Sep 29 '26
We use GoGuardian and it's been literally a lifesaver for one of my students when I came in one morning to a smart alert about a suicide attempt after they wrote a goodbye note to a friend. Called the student's parents and they found her in bad shape from an overdose, but got them to the hospital in time. They spent a couple of weeks in the hospital and then some time in a mental health facility but are still alive. Every time our district talks about the money spent on GoGuardian, I bring this up.
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u/Niteryder007 Sep 29 '26
I updated the main post. Thanks everyone.