Home Antivirus Avast vs Totalav. TotalAV; Compare Avast! Updated for November 2018. 3 Year Protection, 1 PC. 3 Year Protection, 10 PC. Windows XP, Windows 2000, MAC OS x, iOS, Android. Detection / Removal Rates. Free trial, Money back guarantee. Pricing Features. Money back guarantee. Home Antivirus Avast vs Totalav. TotalAV; Compare Avast! Updated for November 2018. 3 Year Protection, 1 PC. 3 Year Protection, 10 PC. Windows XP, Windows 2000, MAC OS x, iOS, Android. Detection / Removal Rates. Free trial, Money back guarantee. Pricing Features. Money back guarantee.
- Pros
Decent phishing protection. Includes tune-up, disk cleanup. Well-designed user interface. Speedy scan.
- Cons
Poor scores in our malware protection test and malicious URL blocking test. No results from test labs we follow. Marked many dangerous downloads as safe. Expensive.
- Bottom Line
TotalAV Essential Antivirus includes the real-time protection component missing from its free edition, but even with that feature restored it doesn't score well in testing.
There's no doubt that antivirus protection is essential to the security of your devices and data. But if antivirus is all you have, some bonus security features start to seem essential as well. With TotalAV Essential Antivirus, you get a collection of tune-up features, along with extra-cost options to add VPN protection, identity monitoring, ad blocking, and password management. Unfortunately, even the presence of real-time antivirus protection isn't enough to make this product a really good choice.
- $39.99
- $59.99
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- $60.00
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- $0.00
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With a list price of $99.95 for one license, TotalAV looks quite expensive. Apple antivirus. More than a dozen popular antivirus utilities, among them ZoneAlarm and ESET NOD32 Antivirus, go for just under $40 per year. Yes, on TotalAV's pricing page it says you pay just $19.95, but the footnote explains that's a new-customer promotional price. If you keep using it after the initial year, the $99.95 price takes effect.
TotalAV's dark-themed main window features a phalanx of four button panels dedicated to Antivirus, System Boost, Disk Cleaner, and Web Security. A simple menu down the left side of TotalAV's dark main window lets you choose those same four feature areas, or return to the status dashboard. Selecting one of feature areas both opens its subitems within the menu and puts them foursquare in the area occupied by the original four button panels. The design hangs together; I had no trouble navigating this utility's collection of features.
Version Confusion
At the start of this review, my company contact remotely upgraded the installation of the free product to TotalAV Essential Antivirus. Or so I thought. When I looked closely, the installation proved to be TotalAV Pro Antivirus. Checking the company's pricing page, I found that the Pro edition comes with three licenses and costs $119.95 per year, discounted to $39.95 for the first year. According to the feature comparison on that page, the Pro edition adds password management, and something described as 'Antivirus eBook.' Given those minor differences I chose to review the Essential Antivirus; my contact fixed the license to cover that product.
In the course of the review, I noticed a few odd things. Avast for mac?. The first time I rebooted, TotalAV displayed a tour of new features, listing Safe Browsing VPN, Identity Protection, Password Vault, and Ad Block Pro. Indeed, I found all of these except Identity Protection available. Going back and forth with my company contact (residing in another time zone) I determined that the test subscription they supplied included components that don't come with the basic installation. After nearly a week, I managed to get an installation of TotalAV Essential Antivirus, as it comes out of the box.
With this installation, trying to use any of the four new features brought up a screen asking for an additional payment. My company contact noted that 'On the stripped back, very basic essential version (costing only $19.95) VPN and AdBlock are not included.' That description contradicts the pricing page, which states that the $19.95 price is a promotional price 'available to new customers for the initial term only.'
If the product did better in our testing, cutting through the version confusion would be more important. As you'll see below, it's not a product you'd likely want for your antivirus protection, so the presence or absence of bonus features is less relevant.
Shared With the Free Edition
Many antivirus companies pack full protection into their free product, relying on added features or a personal-use-only clause to drive sales of the paid version. In a very unusual move, TotalAV strips essential real-time protection from the free TotalAV Free Essential Antivirus. As you can see from my review, I'm not impressed with that move.
Lab Test Results Chart
Phishing Protection Results Chart
Free or paid, TotalAV doesn't show up in the test results from AV-Test, AV-Comparatives, MRG-Effitas, or SE Labs, the four labs whose regular reports I follow. That's rough, because these labs can devote significantly more resources than I can to torture-testing antivirus products. When a product takes near-perfect results from all the labs, the way Kaspersky and Bitdefender do, you know that it's effective. With no lab results, I can only rely on my own hands-on tests.
As mentioned, the paid TotalAV includes real-time protection not found in the free edition. However, protection against phishing sites comes from the separate TotalAV Safe Site browser extension, available for Chrome and Edge. Phishing sites try to steal your login credentials by mimicking bank sites or other secure sites; when you log in to the fraudulent page, you've given away your account to the malefactors. Since that protection is the same, free or paid, I didn't have to run my lengthy antiphishing test over again.
TotalAV detected 89 percent of the verified phishing sites, which is pretty good. It outperformed the phishing protection built into Chrome and Internet Explorer (but not Firefox). However, competing products have done much, much better. Both Kaspersky Anti-Virus and McAfee foiled 100 percent of the fraudulent sites, and Bitdefender managed 99 percent. After that, it's a traffic jam, with four products scoring 98 percent. Among those four were Avast Free Antivirus and AVG AntiVirus Free.
Malware Protection Somewhat Improved
I start my own hands-on malware protection test by opening a folder full of samples that I have collected and analyzed myself. For many products, the tiny file access that occurs when Windows Explorer gets each file's name and size is enough to trigger a real-time scan. Others wait until just before the sample executes to activate a real-time scan.
Lacking any real-time protection, the free TotalAV antivirus did neither of those. I gave it credit for removing 54 percent of the samples during its required install-time scan, but that was the end of it. With real-time protection in place, the commercial TotalAV Essential did quite a lot better, detecting 89 percent of the samples one way or another. That matches the detection rate of Avast Free Antivirus, AVG, and Avira, among others.
However, TotalAV didn't completely prevent installation of some samples that it detected. One of them even got a process up and running. As a result, TotalAV scored 8.3 of 10 possible points, which is lower than most. Cylance, F-Secure, McAfee AntiVirus Plus, and Norton tied for best score in this round of testing, with 9.3 points.
I last tested Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus with my previous set of samples, so the results aren't directly comparable. However, the fact that it earned a perfect 10 points is certainly impressive.
The current and previous sample sets that I mentioned are real-world malicious programs I collect and painstakingly analyze myself, a process that takes quite a while. As a result, I use the same samples for months. To get a feel for how each product handles the very latest malware, I use a feed of recently discovered malware-hosting URLs supplied by testing lab MRG-Effitas. I give the defending product equal credit for blocking access to the URL and for eliminating the malware download.
With no real-time protection to analyze those downloads, the free version of TotalAV had to rely entirely on Safe Site's ability to deflect the browser from dangerous pages. It didn't do very well, blocking just 12 percent—nearly the lowest score in this test. Only Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus, which includes real-time antivirus but no web-based protection component, scored lower.
I repeated the test using the latest reported malware-hosting URLs and giving TotalAV Essential's real-time protection a chance to help. Avast securty for mac. With both malicious URL detection and real-time elimination of malware downloads, the paid edition naturally earned a better score. Out of about 100 malware-hosting URLs, TotalAV blocked access to 8 percent at the browser level and wiped out another 68 percent of the malware downloads, for a total of 76 percent. That's an improvement, but it's still in the bottom third of scores in this test.
Norton and Bitdefender Antivirus Plus hold the top spot, with 99 percent protection. McAfee isn't far behind, earning 97 percent protection. TotalAV's 76 percent doesn't look so good by comparison.
I did observe that, like Norton, TotalAV reports on every download, quarantining malicious ones and actively reporting that others are safe. And it reported a lot of safe files, enough that I decided to dig deeper. For this test I always run the identifiers of missed samples through Virus Total as a sanity check. If 10 or fewer products identify the sample as malicious, I discard it. What I found this time was a dozen samples that 25 or more competing products identified as malware, but that TotalAV deemed safe. That's alarming.
System Boost
Years ago, security programs got a well-deserved reputation for hogging system resources and putting a drag on system performance. Security companies got smart and switched to designing security products from the get-go to minimize performance impact. Some, including TotalAV, take a step beyond, adding components designed to actively boost performance. TotalAV's System Boost page includes three elements, Startup Programs, Uninstall Applications, and Browser Manager.
When programs launch at startup and keep running in the background, they can eat up system resources. The Startup Programs scan lists the apps that launch at startup and lets you reversibly disable them. You can always launch such programs manually if you need to. Note, though, that it doesn't include the ability to launch programs after a delay, the way Symantec Norton AntiVirus Basicand a few others do. In fact, you could accomplish everything this component does by using the Startup page in Task Manager.
Every application installed on your system takes up space on disk and, if it's running, uses CPU and memory resources. TotalAV lists installed programs and offers to uninstall any you don't use. However, you can get the same effect by launching Programs and Features from Control Panel, and the Control Panel applet shows you the installed size of each app and its date of installation, useful information not present in TotalAV's list.
As you surf the web, your browser accumulates cookies and history entries. Advertisers can use the cookies to track you, and a snoop might review your history to learn too much about your habits. TotalAV's Browser Manager checks your browsers and offers a one-click option to clear cookies and history from them all. Do note that clearing cookies can force you to re-enter data on some sites. Also, pressing Ctrl+Shift+Del in any modern browser brings up a dialog that gives you finer control over just how you clear your browser data.
TotalAV puts these system tune-up tools at your fingertips, it's true. But in all three cases, you could accomplish what these tools do by using features built into Windows or your browsers.
Disk Cleaner
If you've ever let your computer's main disk drive get close to totally full, you've surely noticed that everything seems to run in slow motion. Obvious file-related actions like opening and saving files take longer, but so do system activities such as copying memory data to cached storage. Freeing space on a jammed-up disk can give you a speed boost. TotalAV's Disk Cleaner tool aims to do that by eliminating redundant duplicate files and by wiping away junk files.
Depending on how you use your PC, it can be easy to wind up with duplicates of pictures, documents, and other data files. When you organized the pics from your vacation into folders, did you move them, or copy them? If the latter, you've created some duplicates. TotalAV's duplicate scan quickly identifies data files whose content is identical, even if the name isn't the same. Check off all but one of each set of dupes and delete the excess to free up space. TotalAV does warn if you mark all instances of a given file for deletion.
Wiping out duplicates isn't a unique feature for TotalAV. Trend Micro Internet Security and Avira Prime both offer something similar. But note that these two are security suites; their related antivirus products don't scan for duplicates.
TotalAV can also find and delete unnecessary files that are pointlessly taking up space. On my test system, it found cached Windows updates, recycle bin contents, temp files, and Windows error reporting files, for a total of almost 2GB saved. This is a very clean test system; on a real-world production system it probably would have found much more to clean up.
Extra-Cost Options
As noted, the Safe Browsing VPN component requires a separate payment; at present, it's $39 per year. If this is a feature you want, it seems more practical to just buy TotalAV Pro Antivirus, which list for $30 more. That also gets you three licenses.
Totalav For Mac Review
TotalAV relies on the network of VPN servers maintained by Windscribe. If you just click Connect, it routes your traffic through the nearest server. You can also choose from any of more than 50 server locations. The collection of server locations includes some unusual ones such as Russia, South Africa, and Turkey, but omits China (though Hong Kong makes an appearance). And once again, VPN protection isn't something you get with the basic product reviewed here.
Adding the password manager component is easier on the wallet. At present, it just costs an extra $9 per year. This, too, comes as part of the Pro edition. Per the description, it imports passwords from Chrome and includes a password strength analysis report. The mention of 'Easy to Use Copy & Paste' suggests that it doesn't automate password capture and replay.
As the name suggests, Ad Block Pro removes advertising from web pages. Do bear in mind that those ads provide financial support to the underlying site; if everyone blocked them, sites would have to resort to paywalls or other methods for financial survival. Willing to take the chance? You can install this component as an extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera. Well, almost. It reported itself not yet ready on Opera. And it costs an extra $24 per year.
Because of the version confusion mentioned above, I had access to Ad Block Pro temporarily. I loaded up CNN in Opera and Chrome side by side. Interestingly, on Chrome the site popped up a notification asking to be whitelisted from the ad blocker. In Opera, I encountered ads for the latest drugs, smartphones, and more. These ads didn't show in Chrome, so the ad blocker clearly did its job.
Antivirus protection keeps Trojans and other malware from stealing personal information that's stored on your PC, and that's a good thing. But your personal data also lives on any number of websites, and a breach on one of those sites could put your identity at risk. TotalAV partners with Experian to monitor the web for possible exposure of your personal data.
The Identity Protection page is elaborate, with pages for Personal Monitoring, Social Media, Child Protection, and Financial Protection. At first glance, I figured it to be like the Identity Scanner Pro feature in Avira Prime, which monitors the visible web and dark web for signs that your personal information has leaked. However, I found that clicking any of the identity components brought up an upsell page with a significant extra charge. The list price for this added protection is $80 per year, discounted to $40.
Not Up to Par
While TotalAV Essential Antivirus includes the real-time protection component lacking in its free edition, it still didn't earn impressive scores in our hands-on tests. In particular, it actively identified a dozen malware downloads as safe when 25 or more competing products flagged them as dangerous. And with no results from the independent labs, our hands-on tests are all we can go on. Yes, the product includes some handy tune-up tools, but they're just not enough to make it a proper choice for antivirus. Other features, including VPN, password management, and identity monitoring, are only available at an extra cost.
With dozens of antivirus products competing for your attention, it's no wonder that we've identified several as our top choices. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and Kaspersky Anti-Virus routinely earn perfect or near-perfect scores from the independent testing labs, and both pack some useful bonus features. Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus aces our own malware protection test, and it has the smallest footprint of any antivirus we've seen. And a single subscription to McAfee AntiVirus Plus lets you protect every device in your household.
Malwarebytes For Mac
TotalAV Essential Antivirus
Bottom Line: TotalAV Essential Antivirus includes the real-time protection component missing from its free edition, but even with that feature restored it doesn't score well in testing.
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