mSpy Review – Phone tracking app

mSpy is one of the best phone tracking app on the market, learn more in our mSpy review.
9.5/10 (Expert Score)
Product is rated as #1 in category Parental Control
9.5Expert Score
Track the location and usage of your child's phone

mSpy is one of the greatest parental control tools available, allowing you to monitor a phone’s exact location, see online browser history, and track telephone calls, among other things.

Customer support
9.2
Value for money
9.4
Ease of use
9.5
Features
9.8
Pros
  • mSpy can monitor all the common social media apps and IM messages
  • Great live location tracking features as well as remote screenshot options
  • Simple to set up, use, and it will not be detected by the targeted device
  • Completely compatible with all the leading iOS phone and Android phone models
Cons
  • The overall features in the Android phones are more extensive compared to the iOS device versions

There are so many parents can do to keep their kids safe. Kids these days experience more risks than many parents think about at school and home.

The days of bullies picking on your children and calling them names in the hallways are no more. Now, bullies use the web and social media platforms to threaten and harass other people.

You may feel helpless and think if there’s anything you can do. Using cell phone spy apps such as mSpy can help you feel a lot better. It’s one of the best parental control software that’s simple for parents to use and enables them to keep an eye on their children when they cannot be nearby.

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Did you know that at least 90% of teenagers use one kind of social media app or site each day?

That, combined with more than 35% of children using smartphone messaging app, means children are online more than ever before. That also indicates they can come across dangerous individuals and common scams and have concerns about learning how to say no.

Fortunately, with mSpy, you can easily see what your children do and help them prevent the dangerous people and scams they will encounter regularly.

No matter how old your children are, you will find that mSpy and our comprehensive and detailed mSpy review helpful.

This review will help you realize if you need to install mSpy apps when monitoring mobile phones.

Click on “open” if you want to see exactly what we will talk about in the rest of this article:

Quick Overview

What is mSpy?

In case you didn’t know yet, mSpy is a mobile phone tracking app created by MTechnology Ltd. The app can monitor all activity on your specific computer, tablet, or smartphone. It’s also right to say that it is one of the best parental control apps out there.

The parental control app comes with an online-based control panel (the mSpy Control Panel) that enables you to see everything on your target phone, like internet browsing history, GPS location, incoming calls, SMS texts, videos and photos, and even some of the most common social media apps. You can access that on the official mSpy website.

mSpy Review – Phone tracking app #ciroapp

Are you considering using the mSpy app to monitor your family member’s Android devices? You don’t need to think about them discovering it as mSpy works extremely discreetly. How amazing is that?

Further, you can easily assess all the content on your target user’s Android phone and scan for any compromising data without their knowledge!

You see, the mSpy app helps parents keep tabs on their kid’s GPS location with real-time GPS tracking. Also, it features call logs, SMS log tracking, and monitoring of other applications. A light version of the mSpy app was released in Google Play in 2016, which contains fewer features.

The complete version of the product, meanwhile, has support for monitoring Viber, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Messenger, and so much more. mSpy also offers support for geofencing, which means it sends alerts to your device once your target phone leaves a pre-defined location.

It’s also worth mentioning that the mSpy app has a family kit, offering tracking on at least three phones for multi-child households.

You can find tons of features baked on this mSpy software, so let us now explore a breakdown of everything included in the app and whether you should install mSpy or not.

mSpy specifications

FeaturesBrowser history / Location tracking / Monitoring
Best suited forIndividuals
Website languagesArabic / Deutsch / English / French / Italian / Korean / Portuguese / Russian / Spanish / Turkish
Website URLVisit official website
Support linkSupport page
Live chatYes
Company addressLondynska 730/59, Vinohrady, 120 00 Praha 2, Czech Republic
Year founded2015

Pricing

mSpy pricing: How much does mSpy cost?

The basic plan begins at $29.99 per month, but you can save a huge amount of money by signing up for a year of service. That would cost you $99.99 per year. Keep in mind that those prices are current at the time of writing, and they could be subject to change.

Pricing rangeFrom $29 per month to $99 per year
Pricing typesAnnual subscription / Monthly subscription
Free planNo
Free trialYes, 7 days
Money back guaranteeNo
Pricing page linkSee plans

mSpy pricing plans

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One of the main deciding factors for employers and parents about whether they like to use GPS tracking app or not would be the cost. 

What will you get with the basic plan? You can monitor the target device incoming calls, instant messages and direct messages, emails, calendars, target keywords, GPS location, browsing history, and contacts. You can also get free support and updates and are notified when a SIM has been changed.

Are you eager to pay more? You can also enjoy the premium package of this monitoring app. That offers you all the same features from the basic package, but you will get geofencing alerting you when the target device leaves designated regions or enters designated no-go areas. 

You can also block websites and incoming calls. That enables you to wipe or lock the target device remotely, offering you higher parental control.

Further, you get access to Snapchat and monitor all activities there on the target device. It’s considered the most robust package accessible from other monitoring apps and one you must consider for any mobile phone where the target device is active and may require more extensive monitoring of their activities.

How to install it?

mSpy Installation, Login, and Setup process

Let’s see how to install mSpy on the target mobile phone on both iOS and Android. 

Installing mSpy on Android device

Here are the requirements and how to install mSpy on Android devices:

Requirements

  • Physical access to the device
  • Active internet connection
  • Active mSpy subscription

Installation process

  • Step 1: Browse the mSpy’s website, click on the “Try Now” button, enter your email address, and pick a subscription plan as per your choice.
  • Step 2: Go to your email inbox, get the login credentials and use it to login to mSpy. From the dashboard, select Android as the target device and input the kid’s name, age, and android device model. Copy the download link for future use.
  • Step 3: Now go to the targeted android device, open the Google Play Store app. Now go to the Play Protect option, go to the Settings, disable the “Scan apps with Play Protect” option and disable the “Improve harmful app detection”.
  • Step 4: Now open a browser on your targeted Android device and paste the copied download link on the address bar and press enter.
  • Step 5: Now complete the captcha verification and download the mSpy APK file.
  • Step 6: Now open the APK file to install. Enable “Install from unknown sources” if required.
  • Step 7: Open the mSpy app. Tap on the button of “Enable mSpy monitoring”. Allow necessary permissions when the app asks. Now turn on the necessary tracking options.
  • Step 8: Once everything is done accordingly, check the “Don’t show again” option and tap on the “Start Now” button.
  • Step 9: Tap “Allow background data usage” option. It will take you to the Battery optimization page. Tap on the “Update service”, and choose “Don’t optimize”.
  • Step 10: Return back to the setup wizard of the app. Now tap on “Make the app undetectable” and turn off the notification of “Update Service”. Then tick on the “Hide the app icon” box.
  • Step 11: Now input the registration code from the dashboard of the website. Then tap on the “Complete Installation” and then tap on Ok from the notification window.
  • Now you can monitor the targeted Android device.

Installing mSpy on iPhone

Here are the requirements and how to install mSpy on iPhone:

Requirements

  • Access to the target iPhone
  • iCloud credentials

Installation process

  • Step 1: Browse the mSpy’s website, click on the “Try Now” button, enter your email address, and pick a subscription plan as per your choice.
  • Step 2: Go to your email inbox, get the login credentials and use it to login to mSpy.
  • Step 3: Now go to the target iPhone, go to Settings, then go to the “iCloud” option and then go to the “Storage & Backup” option. Enable “iCloud backup” if disabled.
  • Step 4: Now go to the settings page again and disable the two-factor authentication if enabled.
  • Now come to the dashboard again, select the apple icon and then input the kid’s name, and age. Now input the iCloud credentials of the targeted iPhone device and click “Proceed”. Then select the targeted iphone device from the list.
  • Now you can monitor the targeted iPhone device.

Features

mSpy features: What can you do with it?

To save a significant amount of time and make this review more informative, let’s collect all features without a long history of their development and list them to find out what this app can do. Here is the list of all the features you can get from the mSpy app:

Browser history

Browser history feature

Did you know that mSpy enables you to see the browser history of your target iPhone user? That also applies to deleted browser history as well.

There is not a lot to see under the browser history section aside from the URL and date the website was accessed. Nonetheless, that information could still help you get valuable insights.

For example, mSpy can still detect Facebook URLs while using the app. It can also show how frequently your target phone user visited the sites.

Wifi monitoring and blocking

Would you like to learn the exact Wi-Fi networks your kid connects to? Now, you can start with the mSpy app, and the app’s Wi-Fi monitoring feature is the perfect tool for that. 

You can easily access that feature by either clicking on “Block Wi-Fi” or “Wi-Fi Networks” on the left sidebar menu. 

From there, the app will present you details such as: 

  • GPS coordinates of the Wi-Fi access point
  • Connection time
  • BSSID and Wi-Fi SSID

Furthermore, you can switch to the map view if you like to see everything at a glance. However, it is only from the list view that you can block access to a specific internet connection. 

The feature is quite convenient, but it goes down as one of the features you must use with extra care. That’s because the mSpy app depends on an internet connection to deliver collected data on your way. 

Apps blocking

Apps blocking

One of the excellent features of the mSpy app is its app locking feature. That enables you to block access to which apps can or can’t be used on the target phone.

You see, mSpy already has a comprehensive list of all installed apps on the target phone. That only means you can practically block anything. All you must do is click the “Block” button to get that started.

mSpy app also shows a black screen every time the target tries to open the blocked app. But keep in mind that that didn’t always work as planned.

In one case, it was still possible for the target phone user to access a blocked app. As such, we would recommend that you use that feature only when needed. It could blow your cover easily.

Social media monitoring

Social media monitoring

You can find many things you can do with the app’s social media monitoring feature. The best part here is that they are not only limited to common apps such as Messenger and WhatsApp. You see, the mSpy apps enable you to track activities from apps such as Viber, Tinder, iMessage, Telegram, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Furthermore, it offers the same simple-to-use and clean conversation view that you see in the SMS section. That means you can practically see everything at a glance. How amazing is that?

For apps such as WhatsApp, the mSpy app even has an area that presents incoming calls and outgoing calls. That truly adds to the unique abilities of mSpy.

But there’s a catch you need to keep in mind. Social media monitoring is only possible on rooted or jailbroken devices.

Location tracking

Track GPS location

Monitoring your target device and their mobile phone is made really simple with this spy app. Each location that your target user visited is logged and updated on the control panel.

From there, you’ll be able to see things such as the accurate GPS coordinates, the time and date the record was taken, and the overall accuracy of the point in meters.

The app also provides a map view if you would like to see the points visually. From that, you can see all the movements of your target device.

But wait, there’s more! If you think location tracking was awesome, the geofencing feature of this spy app is way cooler!

That’s because you get to have much control over what must be tracked. Basically, geofencing enables you to set up virtual zones on the app.

When the mobile devices of your target enter or leave a specific zone, you will get alerted so you can take the necessary action.

Setting up the virtual zone is relatively simple too, but you need to specify information like the radius, the zone’s name, and whether or not you need email alerts.

Overall, that’s a much simpler way of monitoring movements of your target phone without always logging in to the mSpy’s control panel dashboard.

mSpy Keylogger

Phone Keylogger app

It could be well one of the best mSpy features. That is because most other features depend on the keylogger. With that feature, you receive all the raw keystrokes from the target device.

The app would record even the slightest inputs, and that could offer you a sense of the target device’s thought process while typing. Have we already mentioned that mSpy shows the app where the keystrokes were recorded?

Further, concealed under the keylogger, this spy app has an excellent keyword tracker and keyword alerts, which could take parental monitoring to a higher level. You can instruct the app to alert you every time it detects a set of keywords the target device types.

To achieve that, you need to make a rule by specifying the target keyword, the app or place it must be monitored from, and whether or not to get keyword alerts when a keyword is detected.

That can be very useful in many cases, particularly if you like to know something specific about your target device.

Monitoring phone media

Monitoring multimedia files

There’s no specific feature called “Media Tracking” on the mSpy app. That’s because they bundled up videos and photos together. Both work similarly as photos are populated under “Photos” in the control panel dashboard, and the same is true for videos.

For photo uploads

This tracking software was brutal in monitoring newly taken images and uploading them on the dashboard. It even uploaded screenshots we took during our intense review. That photos were organized based on the dates they were uploaded. 

We found that near as it made it simple to find images by date. In addition, the photos came with their corresponding original file names. That only means you can find out the specific date the image was taken.

For video uploads 

This area had the same feel and looked like the photos section. The only difference is that the app showed a thumbnail of the video clips. 

Take note that the only actions are permitted to do on the videos are other to download or view them. By default, those are uploaded on a Wi-Fi connection. 

Another thing we liked about it is that videos are organized as well based on the date it was taken. Similar to photos, only videos taken after mSpy installation will be uploaded. 

Monitor contacts

Did you know that the contacts monitoring feature of this tracking software does not have much going on around it? After the installation process was done on the target device, it took only a few minutes before all the contacts got uploaded.

On the left pane of the mSpy dashboard, you will have the contacts’ names and their details. All of those get shown on the right section of the control panel. 

If you want to view the phone numbers on the iOS device, you will need to click on the name first. 

Unfortunately, during the test, we noticed that the contacts were not alphabetically sorted. That only means getting a specific contact may take a while. 

However, if there are not many contacts on the target device, you will have a simple time there.

Call logging

Call logging

The call logs feature of this monitoring software is relatively straightforward, but it’s a bit too simple at times. 

It is one of the features you cannot miss when navigating the dashboard of mSpy. It will see you see incoming and outgoing phone calls from the target device. 

Apart from the direction of the phone calls, you can also see the phone numbers called, the caller’s name, the call’s duration, the date the call was made from the target device, both android and iOs devices.

For most users, that’s much all that is needed. You can tell the phone calls that took longer and learn which person your target device is in ongoing contact with. 

Meanwhile, that’s all you get. That means you can’t listen in on the conversations if you wish to. That’s a huge bummer, right?

We also like to highlight that there are no search or filter options on this tracking software. As such, you would have to sort through all records to find a specific one you were searching for. 

SMS monitoring

Track text messages

This is probably one of the best mSpy features and without fail. The text messages or SMS monitoring features are just amazing, and it is not only because it works. 

The first thing you will notice about the text messages monitoring of this monitoring software is that it utilizes a conversation view to display instant messages on your target device. That might seem pretty basic, but not for everybody. 

Numerous spy apps hardly utilize the conversation view to monitor their target device. That only suggests it is much more difficult to navigate to specific instant messages without fumbling. 

Further, all individual text messages show helpful details like the contact’s name, date, and any MMS attachments sent through a text.

Thus, you can easily navigate to text messages than to specific instant messages that were sent in a specific data. Nonetheless, we do highlight that there are no filter options here. Thus, you cannot conduct custom date queries or even look for a specific phrase.

Conclusion

mSpy review: Why you should use it?

Overall, there’s no doubt that you should install mSpy. It is the app for parents who want to make sure their child’s phone is protected from any malicious websites and other things. 

By signing up with a subscription and downloading the app, you can enjoy amazing customer service, regularly updated mSpy phone tracking app, excellent monitoring tools, and many more. 

It’s surely one of the best parental control apps accessible and makes it simple to track phone location precisely and look at web browsing history, track incoming and outgoing calls, among many things. We highly suggest that you install mSpy today!

Further, we don’t think you will find a monitoring software that offers you more options at such a competitive price.

There you have it! We hope you find this review highly informative and educational. So, are you ready to install the mSpy app on a target device?

Alternatives

mSpy Alternatives

Before subscribing to mSpy, it’s always a good idea to check out the competition and find the best parental control software for your needs. You can find the mSpy alternatives here.

Here are some versus to compare mSpy with its competitors:

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