Subscription arithmetic: multiply before you subscribe.
Family-safety subscriptions are priced to feel small — a few dollars a month, less than a coffee. The trick isn’t dishonesty; it’s that nobody multiplies. Protection for a family isn’t a one-month purchase. It’s a five-, ten-, fifteen-year purchase, renewed silently on a card you forgot it was on.
So multiply. In Australian dollars, over the horizons a family actually lives on:
| Service | Per year | Over 3 years | Over 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qustodio CompleteLeading parental-control app, Australian pricing | $159.95 | $479.85 | $799.75 |
| Bark PremiumUS parental-control app, billed in USD, converted | from ≈ $150 | from ≈ $450 | from ≈ $750 |
| eero PlusRequired for eero's content filtering and SafeSearch | $159.99 | $480 + hardware (from $199) | $800 + hardware |
| Telstra Device SecurityMcAfee-based add-on, billed $10/mth, up to 10 devices | $120 | $360 | $600 |
| Aura FamilyAll-in-one US family bundle, annual billing, converted | from ≈ $576 | from ≈ $1,728 | from ≈ $2,880 |
| A typical combined stackPremium app + DNS service + one ISP add-on | ≈ $300 | ≈ $900 | ≈ $1,500 |
| Shield Core — bought onceNo subscription, ever | — | $449 founding · $599 standard from unit 61 | $449 — nothing more to pay |
Competitor prices are public list prices, checked July 2026; converted USD figures are approximate. Where a price depends on platform or billing period, the lowest published rate is shown ("from"). Subscription products can change price or plan structure at any time.
The three-year line is the honest one.
Most families keep their protection setup far longer than three years — nobody re-evaluates the parental controls annually once they work. At the three-year mark, the popular subscription products have cost more than owning a Shield Core outright. At five years, some have cost more than the flagship. And the day any of those subscriptions stops — card expires, budget trims, company pivots — the protection stops with it.
That’s the asymmetry the arithmetic hides: renting protection means the spend is permanent but the protection is conditional. Owning it means the spend is once and the protection is permanent. If WOMBATS disappeared tomorrow, your Shield would keep working — no activation server, no cloud login, and the public filter lists it uses keep updating without us.
Buy once. Do the maths once.
Founding Edition: the first 20 numbered Shields are on sale now — from $449, founding price locked in for life (standard from unit 61: $599). GST included, free AU/NZ dispatch, 30-day home trial.
Common questions.
Aren’t subscriptions cheaper because I can cancel anytime?
You can cancel — and the protection stops the same day. That’s the structural difference: a subscription rents an outcome, so the meter and the protection are the same switch. Owned hardware separates them; the protection keeps running whether or not you ever spend again.
Does WOMBATS Shield really have no ongoing costs?
No subscription, no account, no activation. Filter lists update over the internet at no charge — they’re public lists that keep updating even if WOMBATS the company disappeared. The only ongoing cost is a few dollars a year of household electricity, which the arithmetic above ignores for every product equally.
What about the apps’ extra features, like location tracking?
Real difference, worth naming: phone apps can do off-network things a home appliance deliberately doesn’t, like GPS location. If you need those, an app may earn its fee alongside network protection. Shield’s territory is the home network — every device, no per-device installs, plus the storage half no app offers.
Are these competitor prices current?
They’re public list prices, rechecked periodically (the date is printed under the table), with USD conversions marked as approximate. Subscription products can change price or plan structure at any time — which is rather the point of the page.