I ditched my eero router for UniFi, and the best feature didn't cost me a dime

While UniFi used to be seen as an SMB or enterprise-only networking option, it has increasingly become a more consumer-friendly networking platform. Here are four features that make UniFi a real alternative to Amazon's eero platform.

Wi-Fi blackout scheduler

The perfect eero profile scheduler replacement

One feature many people love about eero is being able to schedule certain devices to not have internet access during specific times. This is great if you already have groups set up and you keep up with adding new devices to groups, but it's not the best choice if people are constantly getting new devices.

UniFi takes that a step further, letting you choose to turn off internet access for a group of devices or for an entire network all at once. All UniFi systems are capable of broadcasting multiple SSIDs (Wi-Fi network names), and the Wi-Fi blackout scheduler lets you choose which Wi-Fi networks turn off when.

So, let's say you have three Wi-Fi networks at home: Parents, kids, smart devices. You could schedule the kids Wi-Fi to turn off at 9PM and back on at 7AM, while the parents and smart devices stay live the entire time. Or, if you don't want your smart devices to be able to access the network during the night, you could kill just that network.

The great part here is that you can have up to eight SSIDs per Wi-Fi node in your home, and each node can run different SSIDs. Setting that up is definitely more advanced, but it's doable, whereas eero can only do up to two SSIDs in residential installations.

So, if you break your network down, then you can easily control who can access the internet at what time using the Wi-Fi blackout scheduler.

Simpler content filtering

You shouldn't have to pay a subscription to block content on your network

One of the biggest features of eero that I've seen people talk about (and that I used when I had my eero system) is the built-in ad blocking and content filtering. The problem with eero is that you have to pay $10 per month to get eero Plus in order to use any form of content or ad blocking.

Sure, there are third-party systems like Pi-hole or AdGuard Home that you can run, but eero offers these things natively. The great part is, UniFi now offers network-wide ad blocking and content filtering for free.

There's no subscription required to use ad blocking or content filtering on UniFi. It's just part of the core operating system.

The best part is UniFi doesn't stop at ad blocking. You can also choose to force SafeSearch on a specific network, put filtering on that network, or set allow/deny lists.

This level of filtering means you can have the same separate types of networks described above—parents, kids, smart devices—and control what each network is able to access. So, you can apply SafeSearch to the kid network, and not the adult network. Or, you could make it so the kid network can only reach certain websites, and block all others.

Plus, since all of this is free, you don't have to worry about incurring a never-ending subscription fee just to control what content is accessible on your home's network.

Device groups

Set a group of devices to follow a specific set of rules

While you can definitely segregate devices based on the network they connect to, that's not always the easiest to set up. So, UniFi allows you to group devices in multiple ways.

If your network looks like the average network with just one SSID (Wi-Fi name) that everyone connects to, you can simply select the devices you want to be part of a group and name that group.

So, you can select your kid's laptops, tablets, and phones, and put that in one group. Or, you can put your teenagers in a different group than your younger kids. The streaming media players and game consoles can also be in their own group, as can the smart devices around your home.

Once you have device groups defined, you can then begin to apply different rules to the various groups. The content filtering mentioned above can be applied to these groups, as can blackout times and many other things.

So, if you don't want to set up multiple VLANs and deal with more advanced networking things, then just simply set up device groups. It's simple and gets the job done.

Per-device website or app blocking

Parental controls on a whole new level

While you could block specific websites, like facebook.com or instagram.com, sometimes you want to block entire categories of apps or websites. UniFi has that functionality built-in, as well—no subscription required.

This is part of the protection side of UniFi's CyberSecure suite, which has app and category blocking built-in for free. It works just as you'd think. You can either select specific applications, like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, or you can select entire categories, like instant messengers, online games, or social networks, and block them.

This blocking is done on a per-device basis. So, you could block social media just from one child's tablet, or you could make the block network-wide.

You're also able to schedule when these blocks happen. So, if your kids stay up too late playing video games or scrolling social media, then you can set up the block to start at 9PM and end at 6AM, for example.

There are many ways to use this per-device website or app blocking functionality, but it's definitely a very nice feature to have, especially for free.

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UniFi started out as an SMB platform, but is quickly becoming beginner-friendly

I won't say that UniFi's operating system is anywhere near as simple to use as eero—it's simply not. However, UniFi used to be a lot more complicated to use than it is now.

These days, UniFi is much simpler to set up and configure. There are search bars when you can't find something that you're looking for, and many tutorials exist to walk you through if you get stuck.

So, if you're tired of paying for eero Plus and want to upgrade your Wi-Fi network to the platform I recommend to everyone now , give UniFi a try.