Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark 2024 (2024)

In today’s world, kids and pre-teens get access to phones much earlier than ever. A study performed by Stanford Medicine found that by age 12, nearly 75% of adolescents already had access to a smartphone.[1] Cyberthreats are ever present for kids, from gaming platforms to social media and messaging apps. Parental control software allows parents to teach healthy cyber habits and monitor their child’s usage by setting up filters and restrictions and even blocking entire websites.

Aura offers plans that include parental controls, identity theft protection, and other top-notch services. Better yet, we like that Bark offers a set of extensive monitoring capabilities and location services — two essential features of parental control apps. In this review, we will dive into the specifics of pricing, monitoring and alert features, usability, and more. And if neither Aura Parental Controls nor Bark offers the coverage your family needs, we also recommend more of the best parental control apps.

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark review at a glance

At first glance, these two parental control services are similar. Both offer the ability to block and filter websites and apps, managing what your child can and can’t see on the internet. Additionally, they both offer screen time limits. On closer inspection, we found that these parental control software services have some notable differences, namely their monitoring capabilities.

While Aura offers alerts for cyberbullying and online predator threats through gaming platforms, it doesn’t offer any monitoring for social media, text messages, or emails. Conversely, Bark offers extensive monitoring for social media, text messages, and emails, as well as videos and images. Additionally, Aura doesn’t offer location tracking, while Bark services include location tracking and geo-fencing.

• Aura: Best for bundled cybersecurity
• Bark: Best overall parental control app

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark compared

Aura Parental Controls pros and cons

Bark pros and cons

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark: prices

Aura Parental Controls plans

Aura has two plans: Aura Parental Controls and Aura Ultimate Family. Aura Parental Controls covers one adult and unlimited children. Its best for those who are solely seeking parental controls.

AuraUltimate Family plan covers five adults and unlimited children. It's best for families who want comprehensive coverage, including identity theft protection, credit monitoring, and parental controls.

• Aura Parental Controls:This plan includes website filters and blocks, screen time management, and online predator alerts while gaming. It also comes with cybersecurity tools like antivirus, VPN, a password manager, and a sensitive files vault.
• Aura Ultimate Family: This plancomes with everything in Parental Controls plus child SSN monitoring and three-bureau credit freeze for your child. It also provides identity monitoring features, financial fraud protection, and identity theft insurance for adults on the plan.

Aura offers a free 14-day trial that requires payment information upfront, as well as a 60-day money-back guarantee on annual plans.

Bark plans

Bark offers four plans for families to choose from. Bark plans are all designed to help parents work cooperatively with their children to monitor content, set screen time limits, and overall, protect kids online. Bark Jr. is their most basic plan, perfect for younger kids. The Bark phone is a product designed to keep your child safe online.

• Bark Jr: Includes features like manage screen time, filter websites, and location check-ins.
• Bark Home: Includes the ability to block apps and websites, set screen time limits, filter content, and pause the internet.
• Bark Premium: Offers text and app surveillance, alerts for concerning content, website and app blocking, screen time limits, location tracking, and the ability to pause the internet.
• Bark Phone: Bark’s highest level of protection offers built-in social media monitoring, text and app monitoring, alerts for concerning content, website and app blocking, screen time limits, location tracking, approve/deny contacts, and the ability to pause or disable the internet.

Bark offers a free seven-day trial but requires payment information upfront.

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark: monitoring and alerts

When you break it down, Aura’s parental control offering is really identity theft protection, with some parental control features built in. The most glaring discrepancy is Aura’s lack of monitoring. While Aura does offer website and app blocking, as well as cyberbullying alerts from online gaming, there really is no way for parents to monitor what’s being sent via email or text message. Plus, Aura doesn’t offer typical parental control location services, like location tracking or geo-fencing. This isn’t a total deal breaker, as these features are important components of keeping kids safe offline, while Aura really specializes in online cybersecurity. So if you’re more interested in bundled online protection, the Aura Ultimate Family plan will comprehensively cover you.

But as far as standalone parental control apps go, we were impressed by Bark’s robust filtering and monitoring features. In addition to text and email, Bark offers social media, photo, and video monitoring. Bark’s content screens span over 18 categories, and the app library reaches over 30 popular apps, like Discord and TikTok, to help keep kids safe on social media apps. We also appreciate Bark’s location services. Bark not only offers location tracking but also a location alert feature. This feature automatically alerts parents when your child arrives at a location you’ve added to their account.

Which is safer, Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark?

When it comes to parental control software, security is a major concern. When we were comparing products, we looked for a minimum of two-factor authentication, such as a verification code. Even though multi-factor authentication, such as a security question or biometric screening, is preferred, most parental control apps don't offer this feature.

Since parental control software services monitor your child’s accounts and profiles, a certain amount of data collection is expected. Registration information, account information for online profiles, location services, and web forms are examples of data we expect these products to collect.

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark data security

At a bare minimum, we expect to see two-factor authentication as a base layer of security. While Bark does provide two-factor authentication, it’s disappointing to see Aura’s lack of additional login security. We appreciate Bark’s transparent privacy policy and appreciate their protection of sensitive, personal information.

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark: compatibility and customer support

In our testing, we found Bark’s interface to be really accessible. Installing the software and setting up our account was easy and intuitive, but adding all the accounts to monitor was a little time-intensive. We were impressed with Bark’s vast array of resources. Bark’s YouTube channel, linked on the Contact Page, has dozens of tutorials on everything from setting up your Bark account to utilizing monitoring features. While Bark doesn’t have a customer support phone number, the online guides and support articles are thorough. We used the chat feature, and the bot eventually answered our question but routed us to several articles first.

Our experience with Aura, however, was not as smooth. We tried to access the portal through Safari, which didn’t work. Then, we couldn’t get the service to accept our credentials when using our iPad. We used the customer service bot, and our question wasn’t sufficiently answered, but it directed us to the customer service phone number. We called during normal business hours and, after a 10-minute hold, talked to a customer service representative who answered our question quickly and thoroughly.

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark FAQs

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark: which is better?

If you’re serious about keeping your kids safe online, it’s worth investing in parental control software. For a standalone parental control app, we recommend Bark.

Bark offers an extensive monitoring suite and a more robust parental control setup. Bark’s software monitors text messages, emails, photos, and videos for over 18 content categories and alerts parents of potentially dangerous conversations or images. Bark also offers location services and geo-fencing so you can rest easy that your child is where they should be.

Conversely, Auraoffers features to protect your child’s identity, like Social Security number monitoring, and safe gaming to offer parents peace of mind while their kids game online. Cyberbullying and online predator threat alerts offer an additional layer of security. However, Aura’s lack of monitoring and location services is a big miss in our book. But if you’re looking for an identity theft protection service for your child that has a few parental control bonuses built in, Aura could be a good option for you.

Aura Parental Controls vs. Bark alternatives

There are many factors to consider when choosing a parental control app for your family, including features and price. If you aren’t sure if Aura or Bark is right for your family, there are more of the best parental control apps that might suit your family’s needs:

• Norton Family: This parental control software supports unlimited devices and offers social media monitoring, text and email monitoring, screen time, and screen time management.

  Get Norton Family | Read Our Norton Family Review

• Kaspersky Safe Kids: Kaspersky Safe Kids allows parents to monitor their child’s online presence by surveying social media posts, texts, web history, and YouTube history. In addition to monitoring, Kaspersky Safe Kids also offers geo-location and notifications if your child leaves the approved area.

  Read Our Kaspersky Safe Kids Review

• Qustodio: Qustodio allows parents to manage their children’s digital activity through screen time limits, website and app filters, location alerts, and YouTube activity monitoring, all for an affordable monthly price.

  Read Our Qustodio Review