6 Best Website Blocking Software in 2024 [Out of the 11 We Tested]
The internet has transformed the world into a global village with instant access to information. Educational institutions have promoted digital education to provide students with awareness and advanced knowledge. The business has been able to grow on a global scale using the internet. Apart from these incredible benefits, the internet has dangerous aspects too. Kids may be trapped in wrong activities if they have unlimited access to websites online.
Internet use on official devices can result in serious risks of cyber-attacks and breaches of privacy that can harm the company's reputation. Consequently, website blocking software is important for parents, educational institutions, and businesses to ensure the internet is used effectively.
- 1 : Website Blocking Software - What Are Your Demands?
- 2 : Why Website Blocking Software Can Be Beneficial?
- 3 : 3 Best Website Blocking Software for Businesses
- 4 : 3 Best Website Blocking Software for Individuals
- 5 : Main Techniques of Software for Blocking Websites
- 6 : How Does Website Blocker Software Work?
1. Website Blocking Software - What Are Your Demands?
1Focus & block distractions
Businesses can block irrelevant website access on the company’s devices to keep the workers focused on their jobs and avoid all distractions.
Website-blocking software helps students and individuals avoid distractions and focus on their studies during study hours. Students can block all irrelevant websites, like social media websites, to block notifications that distract them from their studies.
Parents are always conscious of student activities on the internet. They can use website-blocking software to block unnecessary websites when their children study alone. It relaxes parents that their children are only engaged in studies.
2Block Inappropriate Content Online
Businesses can block all inappropriate websites that are unauthorized and have the risk of malicious content.
Learners can block all inappropriate content and keep engaged with the study material. Many students have a craze for gaming and watching videos. After blocking access, they can manage their time for studies very well.
Internet is the need of every child to grow, but parents are worried about saving their children from inappropriate online content. With website blocking software, they can block all such websites on their child’s device.
3Stay Productive
Businesses can block websites to enable staff to keep focused on their work, thus improving work productivity.
By blocking all useless websites, students can focus better on their studies and learn more things to perform in exams and in practical life.
Similarly, parents can eliminate the distractions on children's devices to keep them tuned in their studies and help them learn new things.
4Security
Businesses are mostly exposed to cyber-attacks. By blocking malicious websites, enterprises can provide a safe browsing environment within a company.
There are a lot of cybercrimes on the internet that can harm the identity of a person and can lead to financial loss. Individuals and parents are conscious of cyber threats. So, they block websites that need to be certified.
2. Why Website Blocking Software Can Be Beneficial?
Website blocking can benefit every industry, especially educational institutes involving digital devices with internet access. It will help them ensure safe browsing, relevant research and perfect outputs.
2.1How do research papers & business surveys show?
We can better analyze the importance of website blocker software using various stats from surveys and research.
Business
- Statista reveals that about 47% of employees working from home face difficulty managing their work efficiently due to distractions.
- Approximately 23 minutes and 15 seconds are required to cover back focus after distraction. Approximately 75% of staff verify that they are more productive at work without distractions.
- Employees spend around 56 minutes per day using the internet during work hours; it leads to a loss of productivity wasting 5 hours per week.
Drivers
- Approximately 587 pedestrians lost their life in 2020 just because of the lack of focus of drivers.
- Distracted driving costs around nine lives per day in the United States.
2.2How website blocking software can help?
Reporting and Monitoring
Standard website-blocking software possesses the capability to provide details of device usage. Parents and office admins can remotely monitor the devices to ensure the productivity of device usage.
Website filter
Website filter is a wonderful feature of website blocking software that helps individuals and businesses to define categories of websites users can access on devices. For example, parents can use web filters to block access to gaming websites on their children’s devices.
Whitelisting and blacklisting
Whitelisting enables you to add some specific websites or categories of websites to browse on the concerned device, while in blacklisting, you add specific URLs that the browser will not allow to run on a specific device.
Time-Based Restrictions
Such restrictions are temporary operations during specific hours of the day to make work effective. Parents use this feature to limit access to gaming and social media websites on children's devices during study hours. In offices, management uses time-based restrictions to limit access during working hours.
3. 3 Best Website Blocking Software for Businesses
Here are the three best software for businesses to streamline working with high-security features that will also influence the overall productivity of businesses. You can select any blocking website software depending on the Operating system and features they support.
3.1AirDroid Business
AirDroid Business MDM is a robust solution to manage all enterprise-owned Android devices for applying various security policies and remotely controlling all devices to monitor activities. It allows user to set kiosk browser to block unwanted links and other security options.
Kiosk Browser Features that User Can Turn on/off
- Build a list of websites to access through your browser
- Display URL bar option
- Allow multiple tabs to open
- Allow Printing
- Allow Desktop website
- Allow page adjustment
- Always use incognito mode
- Auto-clear cache
- Disable back button
With AirDroid Business, you can enjoy:
- Kiosk Mode
Set devices in kiosk mode to run one or more than one applications on the devices.
- Device Management
Features like remote wipes and factory reset of devices, adding tags to the devices, remote lockdown, and adding devices in groups are included in device management.
- Remote Monitoring and Control
AirDroid Business MDM allows admins to remotely monitor the device screen and history to monitor activities and manage the security of devices accordingly. Admins can remotely control unattended devices to perform various operations.
3.2Freedom.to
Freedom is a website-blocking application compatible with Android, iOS, Mac and Windows. It helps enterprises to keep the staff away from distracted websites like social media, gaming, online shopping and watching movies. You can view, manage and invite team members to join Freedom from a centralized Dashboard. Unlike AirDroid Business, it cannot control, monitor or track its devices in real time.
It gives control over the devices to block websites and applications.
It provides some resources to engage your team in effective working.
Freedom also allows blocks of complete internet access on devices.
Pricing
It offers $8.99 per month, $3.33 per month yearly, and $99.50 for a lifetime package.
3.3Emsisoft Anti-Malware
Emsisoft is a security application to support small and mid-size businesses. This anti-malware is compatible with Windows 10 or higher Versions. Emsisoft saves businesses from cyber-security problems like ransomware, backdoors, banking Trojans, and PUPs. It provides instant scanning because of the effective combination of scanners and is composed of two engines.
It provides an intuitive web console to monitor security on all devices.
It quickly checks the website browsed by the user, blocks the connection if found malicious, and protects the user's privacy.
AI-supported malware detection checks all the downloaded files in the system to identify if the files are safe to open.
Pricing
Its business security plan charges a $1.22 endpoint per month.
4. 3 Best Website Blocking Software for Individuals
4.1RescueTime
RescueTime is interactive software that improves productivity by tracking and utilizing time efficiently. It helps you make your schedule with specific hours for focused working, and at the end, it gives an overview of the whole day so you can realize how to manage the next day more efficiently.
RescueTime provides a Focus session, which, when triggered, blocks everything else and keeps you engaged in working.
It provides you with complete reporting of the time you serve on focused work and when you were distracted.
Pricing
Its plans start at $6.50 per month.
4.2Focus for MacOS
Focus is one of the significant features that run on Mac OS. It helps individuals to block notifications from certain people and applications to avoid distractions and keep them engaged with their work.
Focus helps you to create a routine schedule for balanced routine tasks. It then notifies you when it is time to do a certain task.
It also lets you notify others that you are busy with some work so they can contact you later.
You can customize notification settings for certain people, silent notifications, phone call notifications and repeated calls notifications.
Pricing
It offers a personal package for $17, a professional in $35 and a lifetime package for $80.
4.3Cold Turkey
Cold Turkey lets you create unlimited block lists and add unlimited URLs to block access on the devices. It makes web browsing secure and keeps working limited without distractions. You can also block YouTube channels by adding the channel's name in a specific format.
You can also block keywords using wildcards and the overall internet access to the devices using Cold Turkey software, commonly used for blocking websites.
It enables users to block files and folders on the devices to limit application usage.
With Cold Turkey, you can shut down and lock your computer when required.
Pricing
It charges $39.00 for a lifetime.
5. Main Techniques of Software for Blocking Websites
There are five basic techniques to block websites access on your devices:
Blocking through Website URLs
URL-based web blocking is enabled by adding various websites’ URLs to the blacklist.
Blocking through IP addresses
Web protocols and IP addresses are identified and added to the block list of software to restrict websites.
Blocking through Platforms
You will target a specific platform, like social media networks, to block access to all such websites.
Through Deep packet inspection
Although DPI can raise some privacy concerns, analyzing the data packets is a more precise way to block websites.
Filtering through Domain Name System
DNS-based filtering works when a website is browsed. If blocked DN is searched, the result displayed is an error page.
6. How Does Website Blocker Software Work?
Website blocker software is an incredible achievement for both personal and corporate use. Single software provides several techniques to block website access for safe and focused browsing.
Users and business administrators can block undesirable content and notifications to avoid distractions during working hours. Some software provides kiosk browsers with customizable settings to block access on devices.
Website blacklist and whitelist features are exceptional features to manage web browsing on unlimited devices. Common techniques include DNS filtering, IP address, URL or DN blocking provided by different software to block website access on devices. Some website-blocking software are available as browser extensions to limit web browsing.
Conclusion
The necessity and demand of blocking websites on devices increase as security threats and entertaining websites increase. Students need to spend more time on the internet for research and studies without losing concentration. Parents use website-blocking software to block irrelevant websites on children's devices. Similarly, business administrators use this software to limit web browsing to business needs. As the business devices are more exposed, they need to ensure an MDM solution that can help them remotely monitor and control all the enterprise devices. They must choose software with advanced features to support and customize security settings.
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