Recommended Antivirus for Win7/Win10 clients / server

[Raf99]

Any recommendations folks?

- I've been in the business my whole life. Looking for middle price and want to stay away from bloatware. More enterprise editions get into outlook plugins and sharepoint scanning, but not really needed here. These are small/med size businesses. Some have a server (2008 / 2012) but they usually shy away from server side AV hosting due to the price.

- Currently using F-Prot. Not bad, but ending July 2021. What ISPs use on their online-AV they sell customers and always worked great. Cheap too, was $168CDN for 30 licenses (1 Year), compatible with any client.

- Symantec / SEP / - Expensive ($800+ /yr) but works great. Usually the first recommendation but that price turns small business owners off each time. Yes, Oh the irony. & now owned by Broadcom. Judging by their migration progress it's not looking good.
https://community.broadcom.com/syman...b=digestviewer
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/exter...yId=TECH235706

- Bit Defender - LOL. OK, I put this 2nd as I just wanted to warn others. This AV is a piece of garbage and does not work. Not for good AV, not for "finding a laptop". Had this once, spent 2 months tracking a laptop with their Indian support team, which showed the laptop in the middle of the highway. They had no answers when it was found in an office drawer. Garbage product.

- Kaspersky - Not bad. Never used it full time.

- AVG - dam no. Use to be great, but now it's so bloated. Selling users on 3rd party VPN, fibbing to make sales, pop-ups for pop-ups.

- ESET (https://www.eset.com/ca/) - I've heard good things. I may try these folks. But to run from a server with 15 licenses it's $1100 a year. / $150 for standalone 10 devices per yr.

- McAfee - Always stayed away from these guys as through the decades they get flagged as spam / spoofing / etc. They use 3rd party installers, which install other crap, bloatware, etc.

- Malwarebytes - #1 in the business IMO. But not sure if I can trust it as an AV as well.

- Avast / Sophos / Avira / etc - no opinion. Never tried them.

[Grumpys93]

Im not a computer buff, I literally use my computer to pay bills, surf the forum and utorrent on occasion. I have used Avast for a couple years and have had no issues. Though I wouldn't know what a virus, malware whatever else is out there would look like on my computer. So take it with a grain of salt. I do the standard virus scan every time I jump on the computer. Which is rare and continue to do my normal stuff.

So for Avast being free Im happy with it, I am smart enough to read the small fine print and see what else I downloaded when I first installed it, so I didn't get all the other browser stuff or free blah blah blah stuff.

Not sure if this helps or not.

[Raf99]

Im not a computer buff, I literally use my computer to pay bills, surf the forum and utorrent on occasion. I have used Avast for a couple years and have had no issues. Though I wouldn't know what a virus, malware whatever else is out there would look like on my computer. So take it with a grain of salt. I do the standard virus scan every time I jump on the computer. Which is rare and continue to do my normal stuff.

So for Avast being free Im happy with it, I am smart enough to read the small fine print and see what else I downloaded when I first installed it, so I didn't get all the other browser stuff or free blah blah blah stuff.

Not sure if this helps or not.

Good to know, thanks for the input

[deev 2.0]

I run Avast. It's intrusive, always popping up "you are at risk, upgrade to premium now!" things... but it has caught a few unwanted things in some of my more questionable downloads.

I also run Malwarebytes and Spybot fairly regularly. Both have premium options, but do a good job at cleaning up potentially scary stuff with their free versions.


If you're going to use free software, I'd definitely use a few different things, even just for the occasional scan. Especially if you torrent anything.
I'm still an avid torrenter, though I generally use torrenting as a "try before I buy" option. I'm getting into recording my own music, and much of the software is pricey... so I've pirated a few before dropping hundreds on things I don't want to use! I definitely had at least one of those files flagged as malware and deleted from my system by one of my antimalware programs.

[Raf99]

Ya, AVG is the same as Avast. Always showing popups for unnecessary items. Looks like I'm going to give kaspersky a try.
Small Business pricing.