LockedIn vs Securly: School Phone Management Comparison (2026)

Securly is one of the largest K-12 web filtering providers in the US, trusted by over 20,000 schools. But if you're searching for Securly phone management capabilities, you'll quickly discover that Securly wasn't built to lock student phones. It excels at filtering web content on school-owned Chromebooks and laptops — but it has no answer for the personal smartphones in students' pockets. Here's how LockedIn compares to Securly for schools going phone-free in 2026.

This comparison is part of our series covering how LockedIn works alongside existing K-12 tools. See also LockedIn vs GoGuardian, LockedIn vs Bark, and LockedIn vs LanSchool.

What Securly Does

Securly provides cloud-based web filtering, student safety monitoring, and device management for school-owned devices. Its product suite includes:

• • Securly Filter — AI-powered web filtering across all school devices, blocking inappropriate content across browsers and enforcing acceptable-use policies district-wide
• • Securly Aware — Student safety monitoring that scans online activity for indicators of self-harm, violence, and bullying on school-managed accounts
• • Securly MDM — Full device management for school-owned Chromebooks, iPads, and laptops, including remote lock, wipe, and app management
• • Securly Home — Extends school web filtering to home networks so CIPA compliance continues after school hours
• • Securly Classroom — Teacher-facing tools for real-time screen viewing and website restriction during class sessions

Securly is effective at controlling what students access on school-owned devices. For CIPA compliance and web filtering, it's industry-leading. But filtering web content on a Chromebook is a completely different challenge from locking a student's personal phone — and that's where Securly's coverage ends.

The Phone Management Gap in Securly

Even schools with robust Securly deployments face a critical blind spot: student-owned phones. Here's what that looks like in practice:

A district IT director has Securly deployed across 3,000 Chromebooks. Web filtering is tight — no student can access inappropriate content on a school laptop. But during third period, half the class is scrolling TikTok on their personal phones under their desks. Securly's dashboard shows 100% filtering compliance on Chromebooks. The phones are invisible.

• • Securly can't lock personal phones — Its MDM manages school-owned devices enrolled through Apple Business Manager or Google Admin. Student-owned iPhones and Androids are outside its scope.
• • Web filtering doesn't equal phone restriction — Filtering what students access online is different from preventing phone use altogether. Students can still text, take photos, play offline games, and use any app on their personal device.
• • Cellular data bypasses network filtering — Securly's network-level filtering only applies to devices on the school Wi-Fi. Students on cellular data or personal hotspots bypass it entirely.
• • No geofencing for personal devices — Securly has no mechanism to detect when students enter or leave campus and trigger phone restrictions.
• • No phone bypass detection — Securly has no view of a second phone or a deleted app on a student's personal device.

This gap is exactly what LockedIn was built to fill. Securly handles the web filtering layer on school-owned devices. LockedIn handles the phone enforcement layer on student-owned devices.

How LockedIn Manages Student Phones

LockedIn is purpose-built for student-owned phones. Instead of filtering content, it locks the phone at the OS level during school hours:

• • Complete phone locking — At Screen Time schools, the apps the school blocks lock automatically on campus and stay locked until the last bell; at Guided Access schools, students lock in with a triple-click (a tap on Android) and the phone stays on the LockedIn screen, and a student who doesn’t lock in is flagged. Students can always call home or 911.
• • Campus geofencing — Automatic lock/unlock based on physical campus location. Phones lock when students arrive, unlock when they leave. Zero daily effort.
• • No MDM required — Students download the app. No Apple Business Manager, no Google Admin enrollment, no device profiles. Setup takes about a day, and schools are live within a week.
• • Workaround flags — Flags a second “decoy” device until an administrator approves it, plus deleted apps, faked or switched-off locations, and use of blocked apps, by student name.
• • Privacy-first — Never reads messages, photos, browsing history, or any personal content. Only tracks lock status and campus presence.
• • Compliance reports — Per-student lock status and flagged workarounds, on record for your board or a state agency (see state phone-free school laws).
• • Emergency campus-wide unlock — One tap turns on Emergency Mode, which unlocks every phone on campus and runs an I’m safe / I need help roll call. Students can always call home or 911.

Securly vs LockedIn: Side-by-Side Comparison

Different Tools for Different Problems

Securly and LockedIn aren't competitors — they solve different halves of the same problem. Securly manages what students access on school-owned devices. LockedIn manages student-owned phones. Most districts need both.

Think of it this way: a district with Securly on every Chromebook and no phone management solution has only solved half the device problem. Students spend as much or more time on their personal phones as on school laptops. Securly handles one device type; LockedIn handles the other.

State Phone Ban Compliance: Why Web Filtering Isn't Enough

With 43 states and D.C. now requiring schools to restrict student phones or adopt a phone policy, districts are under pressure to demonstrate enforcement. Here's the problem:

State phone ban laws require schools to restrict student phone use during instructional time. Securly can demonstrate that school-owned Chromebooks have web filtering in place — but when the board asks "how are you restricting student phones during school hours?" Securly has no answer. LockedIn enforces the phone policy on campus and keeps per-student records the school can show its board.

• • What Securly can report: Web filtering compliance on school-owned devices, safety alerts generated, content categories blocked
• • What LockedIn can report: Per-student lock status, violations, flagged workarounds, and compliance over time

Better Together: The Securly + LockedIn Tech Stack

The best K-12 technology strategy covers both school-owned devices and student-owned phones. A dual-layer approach looks like this:

• • Securly handles content filtering, safety monitoring, and MDM on school-owned Chromebooks, iPads, and laptops
• • LockedIn handles phone locking, geofencing, bypass detection, and phone ban compliance on student-owned personal phones

There are no conflicts between the two systems — they operate on completely different device types. Securly keeps school laptops safe and filtered. LockedIn keeps personal phones locked during school hours. Together, every device in the building is covered.

Deployment: Securly vs LockedIn

Understanding the deployment differences helps IT directors plan their rollout:

• • Securly deployment — Requires MDM enrollment for full features, Google Admin or Apple Business Manager integration, DNS configuration or agent installation on managed devices. Typical rollout takes 1-3 weeks with dedicated IT staff.
• • LockedIn deployment — Students download an app. School configures campus geofences and schedules through the admin dashboard. No MDM, no device enrollment, no DNS changes. Setup takes about a day, schools are live within a week, and it doesn't require dedicated IT staff.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Securly lock student phones?

No. Securly provides web filtering, content monitoring, and device management for school-owned devices like Chromebooks and iPads. It does not lock student-owned personal phones. Schools searching for "Securly phone management" or "Securly phone lock" will find that Securly's capabilities don't extend to personal device enforcement. LockedIn is purpose-built for locking student-owned phones at the OS level.

Can Securly filter web content on student phones?

Securly DNS can filter web traffic on devices connected to the school's Wi-Fi network, including personal phones. However, this only works while the student is on school Wi-Fi — switching to cellular data bypasses it entirely. It also only filters web browsing, not app usage, texting, camera access, or other phone features. LockedIn works on the phone itself rather than the network, so it holds on cellular data too: at Screen Time schools the apps the school blocks stay locked on campus, and at Guided Access schools the phone stays on the LockedIn screen.

Is Securly enough for state phone ban compliance?

No. Most state phone laws require schools to adopt a policy that restricts student phone use, and web filtering on school-owned laptops doesn't touch the phones students bring. Securly can demonstrate web filtering compliance for CIPA purposes, but it cannot show that student phones were restricted during school hours. LockedIn keeps per-student records of phone lock status that you can share with your board.

Can I use Securly and LockedIn at the same time?

Yes, and this is the recommended approach. Securly manages school-owned Chromebooks and laptops (web filtering, content monitoring, MDM). LockedIn manages student-owned personal phones (OS-level locking, geofencing, bypass detection). They operate on different device types with zero conflict. Together, they provide complete device coverage for your campus.

How does LockedIn compare to Securly MDM?

Securly MDM manages school-owned devices enrolled through Apple Business Manager or Google Admin Console. LockedIn manages student-owned personal phones without requiring MDM enrollment. They serve fundamentally different device types. A school uses Securly MDM to manage the Chromebooks it distributes; it uses LockedIn to manage the iPhones and Androids students bring from home.

Administrator summary: Securly vs LockedIn (CIPA laptops vs BYOD phones)

Securly’s strength is the managed endpoint story: Filter, Aware, Classroom, and MDM workflows on district-owned Chromebooks and iPads. CIPA and acceptable-use reporting map naturally to those devices. None of that removes the BYOD smartphone from the instructional environment, which is why searches for Securly phone management land in a dead zone — the category mismatch is real, not a knock on Securly’s product quality.

LockedIn is the complementary layer: OS-level phone lock, geofenced school day schedules, bypass flags for decoy phones, deleted apps, and faked locations, and per-student lock records and flags you can export to CSV for your board or state. Together, Securly plus LockedIn reads as a complete answer to “what are we doing about devices?” in board packets.

• • DNS vs handset — DNS filtering loses relevance the moment a student toggles cellular; handset lock does not.
• • Procurement — Two line items, two vendors, one coherent story for the board: managed laptops filtered, personal phones locked.

Securly vs LockedIn: CIPA laptops, MDM fleets, and the BYOD phone gap

Securly is a natural first stop for districts modernizing web safety: strong filtering narratives, classroom tools, and MDM stories that fit how technology departments already think about fleets. Those are the right problems for district-owned hardware. The persistent K-12 gap is the phone students buy with birthday money, replace on their own timeline, and keep on a family plan. That phone is where much of the instructional damage happens: not because the web is unfiltered, but because the entire attention economy lives in apps and notifications, not in a single browser session you can categorize.

Network-based controls can help on school Wi‑Fi, but they do not create a phone-free campus by themselves. A student can disable Wi‑Fi, use cellular, tether to a friend, or simply keep social loops running through SMS and camera-native workflows that do not look like “web browsing.” Securly’s world-class laptop story does not magically extend to those realities. LockedIn’s approach is different: lock the phone’s distracting apps during instructional hours (students can always call home or 911), regardless of carrier or network, and regardless of whether the district ever gained MDM authority over that handset.

When compliance teams read new state statutes, they often underline verbs like restrict, prohibit, or limit use during school hours. A filter report that says “inappropriate sites blocked on Chromebooks” does not answer the phone question. A lock report that says “devices were locked on campus between 8:05 and 3:10, student by student” does. That is the kind of sentence superintendents want in their back pocket when a reporter calls. LockedIn is built to produce it, backed by per-student records.

• •Stacked architecture: Securly for managed endpoints, LockedIn for BYOD phones—different agents, different consent stories, one coherent parent message.
• •Audit clarity: separate laptop safety metrics from phone-ban metrics so committees do not confuse web hygiene with handset restriction.
• •Operational load: avoid asking teachers to become network forensic analysts; prefer automatic campus behavior with a principal dashboard.

Districts also underestimate how much “almost phone-free” costs culturally. If Instagram is blocked but Safari is open, students still experience school as a phone-mediated social environment. If messaging is open, drama still travels at the speed of taps. Partial solutions create partial relief, which shows up in teacher surveys as “better, but not actually calm.” LockedIn’s trade is blunt: the phone is not a general-purpose computer during the lock window. The payoff is behavioral: students re-enter face-to-face norms, class transitions quiet down, and office discipline codes tied to devices often move in the right direction within weeks—not because students became morally better, but because the environment changed.

If you are negotiating contracts, ask vendors to separate pricing and data practices by device class. MDM pricing is tied to enrolled assets; phone-ban enforcement should be tied to enrolled students and campus boundaries. LockedIn’s commercial framing matches how principals count heads, not how asset tags count Chromebooks. That alignment matters when you scale from pilot to district rollout because you are not forced to pretend a laptop SKU list is a student roster.

Communications directors should prepare a “two budgets, two outcomes” slide: annual spend and outcomes for laptop filtering, and annual spend and outcomes for phone-ban enforcement. When those outcomes are merged into one slide, boards mis-allocate money and communities misinterpret success. Separation is not bureaucracy; it is clarity.

Federal programs and grants sometimes tempt teams to narrate everything as “digital safety.” Phone bans are adjacent but not identical: they are instructional integrity and campus climate investments. The language you use determines whether finance codes the purchase correctly and whether auditors understand what was purchased. LockedIn fits the phone-ban column cleanly because its outputs are restriction and compliance evidence, not web category lists.

None of this requires you to rip out tools that work. It requires you to stop conflating categories. Securly can continue to be your filter and safety layer on district-owned machines. LockedIn can become the enforcement layer for the pocket device. Together they answer the whole classroom device question instead of half of it. Continue with phone pouches vs phone apps if you are still weighing physical kits versus software.

More LockedIn vs competitor comparisons

Searching for a phone-free school, school phone management, or K-12 phone ban alternative? Each guide below targets the competitor by name so you can compare LockedIn to the product families administrators evaluate alongside district policy.

• → LockedIn vs Bark for Schools — content monitoring vs OS phone lock
• → LockedIn vs Brick — Brick phone / Brick Mode vs district enforcement
• → LockedIn vs CLocked — classroom launcher vs OS phone lock
• → LockedIn vs GoGuardian — Chromebook filters vs student phone lock
• → LockedIn vs LanSchool — classroom management vs campus phone lock
• → LockedIn vs Mobile Guardian — MDM vs BYOD student phones
• → LockedIn vs NutKase Phone Pouches — Velcro pouch vs OS lock
• → LockedIn vs Off The Device — airplane mode nudges vs OS lock
• → LockedIn vs Phone-Free School App — manual School Mode vs geofenced lock
• → LockedIn vs Pinwheel — kid-safe phones vs lock any student phone
• → LockedIn vs Pocket Points — rewards app vs mandatory enforcement
• → LockedIn vs Taplock — geofenced app limits vs OS phone lock
• → LockedIn vs The Commons App — distraction-free app vs OS phone lock
• → LockedIn vs TRUCE Family — MDM app block vs OS lock (no MDM)