xicor Posted February 6 Posted February 6 Anyone here uses either Securly or Smoothwall cloud filter ? I had a recent demo with securly and will have one with smoothwall next.
Simcfc73 Posted February 7 Posted February 7 We use Cloud filter. It's fine, it syncs with our on premises box and does pretty much wwhat that does. I moved away from Smoothwall at my last place as the reporting was abysmal and it's not changed much. Seems to filter fine although its just a browser plugin on the client.
SamBrooker Posted February 10 Posted February 10 (edited) We have used Smoothwall since October 2025 and its been amazing. We went through so many different types of safeguarding software as they were cheaper, but with Smoothwall you definitely get what you pay for with the slightly higher price. The setup is slightly more complicated than others, but once it's setup it just works. The category based blocking is very useful, reports are good, policy management for different students etc is great, and the the DSL have their own dashboard for everything safeguarding related (which they really like as we have Smoothwall filter and monitor), so nothing ever crosses over or gets confusing. Edited February 10 by SamBrooker 1
StephenPink Posted February 10 Posted February 10 On 06/02/2026 at 21:23, xicor said: Anyone here uses either Securly or Smoothwall cloud filter ? I had a recent demo with securly and will have one with smoothwall next. Yes we are Securly across Trust now. Previously had Smoothwall at one site. 40 minutes ago, alordcharlie said: Anyone using Securly with iPads? How is it? Yes - have been at the 1:1 iPad site for years now. It's okay - works well enough. Easy to deploy to managed devices, or have force login for the DNS fallback for any BYOD. Pros - no specific app/browser requirement. Cons - same as all of them, doesn't deal with certificate pinning, so some apps either break for everyone or you have to allow for everyone (staff directed to use web versions of some social media for example). Happy to answer specific questions privately.
Joeloman Posted February 10 Posted February 10 I can only say that in Sweden it is quite common for students with a foreign background to try to get past the filter by searching and going to other countries' pages to avoid being blocked. Just like England, we have quite a few immigrants, e.g. Ukraine. Smoothwall has good support for other languages (at least for those you want to block in a school environment) https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/12780179073052-Languages-that-Smoothwall-filters Securly probably only supported English and Spanish, but that may have changed the last year.. Smoothwall has chosen to have its own browser for the iPad, which actually works quite well.
tom_newton Posted February 10 Posted February 10 On 07/02/2026 at 22:36, Simcfc73 said: We use Cloud filter. It's fine, it syncs with our on premises box and does pretty much wwhat that does. I moved away from Smoothwall at my last place as the reporting was abysmal and it's not changed much. Seems to filter fine although its just a browser plugin on the client. I take it you arent using the cloud reporting options then? This is a big change from what on-prem used to offer
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