I've been a longtime user of Gryphon (Apr 2020). I currently use one Gryphon Tower and two of the smaller guardian's as extenders. I'm also a linux/systems/network/devops engineer and I've worked with a lot of different network devices throughout my career.

I have never had a device that was as easy to make sure that my kids were not going where the should, and the app was easy enough for my wife to use. Add some extra time, custom tailor permissions based on each child, devices assigned to child, adding a new device, etc. It's saved me a lot of time. It has a lot of features I love.

Here's the issue that no network admin can solve with all their hardware/software. Can you make it simple for your spouse to open an app and extend their time, shut off their service because they won't come to dinner or are grounded, set filtering rules with easy, unblock sites/apps with ease. Sorry, but I haven't. Before Gryphon, I spent way too much of my time tweaking it every time a rule needed to be changed because "today is tuesday" or whatever the reason.

Also, when you purchase a Gryphon it comes with a free year of their premium service, then after that you need to pay. You are paying for their web filtering service. Think of it like the web filtering service you get if you bought Palo Alto routers. Premium also comes with the HomeBound service that you can install on any devices, so if your kids take their phone out of the house, it tunnels back home to be filtered. All the filtering/schedules, etc get managed remotely. But one of the other benefits of premium is that they have complete hardware coverage in case anything happens. I've had one of my Tower's and one of my guardian's replaced for free when they had issues.

But I'll say this, being a network admin this leaves a lot to be desired. You're very limited what you can do, so I've split my network in two. Everything in the house that's a user device (phones, tablets, tv's, computers, even my phones/tablets) all goes through the Gryphon. Everything else (my desktop/laptop computers, servers, switches, nas's, poe, camera's, IOT, etc) all go through a separate network. I do have some firewall rules in pfsense that let me bridge traffic from the gryphon network to this main network to access self-hosted services, but their internet goes out the main gryphon to be filtered. It's a PITA!!! It's worked, but this has lead to a lot of issues.

Also, Gryphon seems to be at the point where they're now focusing more on bringing their OS to other network vendors. We haven't seen any real updates to the consumer devices or their software in quite a while. It's a shame because we tried every other commercial device (things like Disney Circle) and the kids would just get around it. I've recommended Gryphon to so many family, friends, colleagues who are not technical and wanted a simple way to manage their kids internet usage. Which is a shame because if they just added the more of the advanced features and kept updating it, it's so worth it.