SkieCan we choose our own DNS filter provider?
Yes, within a list. Skie's owner curates the filters that are available, and organisation admins choose from that list. An organisation or a group can use its own choice, and it overrides the default. Organisations without a choice use CleanBrowsing Family, with a fallback host.
The filter is a policy setting. Out of the box, an organisation that has not picked one uses CleanBrowsing Family as the default. If you want something different, an admin selects it from the curated list, at organisation level or for a single group, and the more specific choice wins.
The list is curated rather than open. Skie's owner decides which providers are offered, so every option has been checked to work with the way Skie locks the device's DNS. That is a limit, and it is deliberate: a free-text field would let an unreviewed server into the one setting the whole filter depends on.
When you compare providers, check three things. What does the category list block and can it be tuned? Where does the provider operate and what does its privacy policy say about lookup logs? And does it behave well on your network? Skie has a network check wizard that tests the school network, so you can see how the filter behaves before you roll out.
Different groups can use different filters. A senior group studying cybersecurity might need a lighter profile than a primary group, and the policy hierarchy allows that without changing everyone else.
A practical tip: change the filter for one pilot group first, run it for a week on your real Wi-Fi, and collect the sites teachers say were wrongly blocked. Then widen it. If a provider you need is not on the list, ask the Skie team about adding it.