Computer monitoring software can vary quite a lot, so comparing products purely by the number of features can be misleading.

If I were choosing one, these are the things I’d want to check first:

1. What exactly can it monitor?
Activity logs, websites, applications, screenshots, and other forms of usage data can provide very different levels of visibility.

2. What can actually be controlled?
Monitoring is only part of the equation. Website filtering, application restrictions, and scheduled access can be more useful depending on the situation.

3. How does it handle privacy?
More visibility also means more responsibility. I’d want to understand what information is collected, who can access it, and how users are informed about monitoring.

4. Does it work on the devices you actually need to manage?
Feature availability can differ between operating systems, so general compatibility isn’t enough. I’d check whether the specific features I need work on my devices.

5. How does the pricing work?
Device limits and licensing models can make a product that looks inexpensive initially much more expensive when managing multiple devices.

I’ve been looking at a few products in this category, and SentryPC is one example that combines several monitoring and device-management features.

For anyone comparing SentryPC with other options, this detailed SentryPC feature and pricing breakdown may also be useful.

I’m more interested in what people who have actually used this type of software consider essential.

What is the one feature you would check before anything else?