Securly review

Securly sells a set of student safety and classroom tools to schools. Securly Filter is a cloud web filter, Securly Classroom lets teachers watch and control student screens during lessons, Aware watches student online activity for signs that a student may be at risk, and On-Call adds Securly staff who review those alerts. There is also Pass for digital hall passes, MDM for Apple devices, AI Transparency for tracking student use of AI tools, and Securly Home, a family app for parents. Most customers are US districts, and Securly has UK sales and support lines too.

Who it’s for

Securly suits a school or district that wants a filter, classroom monitoring and hall passes from one vendor, sharing one roster. It works well where the IT team also wants Lost Mode for tracking missing Chromebooks. A secondary school that already uses Securly Filter will find Classroom an easy add, because sites a teacher pushes to students are allowed for the rest of that class even if the filter would normally block them.

If your goal is only to keep a lesson on track on a projector, this is far more than you need. Compare the options in our classroom management rankings.

What it does well

Securly Classroom covers the standard set of controls. You can see student screens, open a page on every device, close tabs and Windows apps, lock screens, share your own screen and lock students to a set of sites. Students can raise a hand digitally, and you can chat one to one with them, with the chats logged. There is a browsing history for the lesson, an email summary after class, and student groups so you can send different links to different tables.

Some details help on a normal school day. A substitute teacher can be scheduled into a class with limited permissions. Teachers can share block lists with each other, so the history department builds one list of distracting sites and everyone uses it. On Windows devices Classroom shows the whole desktop and can close apps, not only browser tabs, which matters in a computer lab running desktop software.

The Pass integration is unusual. Teachers can issue and track hall passes from the same screen they use to watch the class, which saves switching apps when a student asks to leave.

Securly Classroom imports classes from Google Classroom and Canvas and can push assignments from them to students. It also supports OneRoster, ClassLink and Schoology for rostering.

Where it falls short

Securly’s suite collects a lot of data. The filter logs browsing, Aware reads student activity for warning signs, and Lost Mode can show a device’s location and take screenshots. Each of those has a reason, but a school needs to decide who can see which data and for how long. In July 2023 two California parents filed a proposed class action claiming Securly collected students’ location data and video-viewing history without consent and shared it with third parties. Securly called the claims “baseless and uninformed” and said it has never sold student data or used it to target ads. Ask about the status of that case and any similar ones before you sign or renew.

Live monitoring also only works while the Securly extension or agent runs on a school device. Students on personal phones are outside it.

The product list is long and keeps growing. A district can end up licensing Filter, Classroom, Aware, On-Call, Pass and Home separately, each with its own settings and training. Run a proper pilot, using our guide on how to run an edtech pilot, and make sure teachers test Classroom on the devices they actually use.

Pricing

Securly doesn’t publish prices. Pricing is quoted per school or district, usually per student, and depends on which products you bundle. Get each product priced separately so you can compare Classroom with a standalone monitoring tool such as GoGuardian or Hapara.

Privacy and data

Securly says it does not sell, rent or trade student data and does not use it for targeted advertising, and that it keeps logged data as directed by schools. It says it is certified by iKeepSafe for FERPA, COPPA and California student privacy law, holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification, and has passed 1EdTech’s TrustEd Apps data privacy vetting. It says data at rest is encrypted with AES-256 and that it runs a bug bounty program.

On AI, Securly says student AI usage data is never used to train AI models. It says images flagged for nudity are analysed by AI rather than people, quarantined, and visible only to authorised school staff, not Securly employees.

Verdict

Securly is a capable choice for a district that wants filtering, classroom monitoring and hall passes under one contract, especially with mixed Chromebook and Windows fleets. Its data collection is broad and has drawn a lawsuit, so set clear rules on retention and access before rollout. Schools that only need help running a lesson, or that want a lighter footprint, should pick a smaller tool.

See the best Securly alternatives