10-second breakdown:
Designed around families with more than a few devices and small businesses who want to keep their data safe, McAfee AntiVirus Plus is a solid choice that scores very well on independent tests.
The good:
Purchase a license to McAfee and it can be used for an unlimited number of devices. If you have a house full of family members and want to pay one price for everything that can connect to the internet, this may be the best option for your bank account.
This software has a remote management feature to ensure the safety of all devices from a single place even while your away from home. A great way for a business owner or parent to keep the devices clean while you’re away from home/work.
The firewall that comes with McAfee isn’t too shabby, and again, it keeps all your devices safer from a malicious internet.
The bad:
This antivirus is known for being hard on your computing resources, so hardcore computer users will want to take that into consideration.
It’s not a great option for either Mac or iOS. While it is covered, there are far better options.
How it works:
There’s a running theme with antivirus programs, the more devices you need to protect the more expensive the packages get. What if you have a large or extended family though? For all other entries, you would have to pay an arm and a leg but McAfee is different. Instead of the typical one or three device license, all of their packages offer unlimited devices including PC, Mac, iOS and Android.
Unlimited devices is a great perk but that’s meaningless if it doesn’t actually protect you, right? Luckily McAfee offers great protection too so you can have peace of mind. McAfee AntiVirus Plus regularly scores among the top points for malware detection and removal. On very rare occasion it detects a false positive which brings down it’s score very slightly but its still a top tier contender.
McAfee can also protect you while you surf the web. A few private labs take real world malicious websites and run them against the live protection offered by antivirus suites. McAfee consistently ranks among the best, if it spots a bad site it’ll divert you before hackers can install a hostile program.
The same goes for phishing sites – fake sites meant to look like legitimate logins. If McAfee spots one it’ll warn you and ask you to steer clear. The cool part is that McAfee doesn’t just rely on a list of known phishing sites, it can detect signs in real time as well. This means that a site might be loading and then a few seconds later McAfee will pop up telling you it’s a potentially harmful site.
Windows now comes with a basic firewall built in so some of the cheaper antivirus programs dropped firewalls out of their offerings. The problem is that the basic Windows firewall is lackluster. McAfee knows it, and beefed up their built-in firewall protection included in all packages. Not only does it deflect potential attacks but also switches all of your internet ports to a stealth mode so that you’re invisible to potential attackers.
While yes, McAfee does technically support most operating systems under the sun, there’s very little support or features for the Mac when compared to PCs. The argument could be made that Macs don’t require the same amount of protection as PCs, but it’s just something to keep in mind. If your unlimited devices are mostly Macs and you want the very best protection, you might want to shop around a little more.
Pricing works a little bit differently for McAfee since you can protect all of your devices. There are three main consumer-focused plans and they differ only in features. Only the most expensive tier, LiveSafe, offers a free trial. Keep in mind that you won’t have all the bells and whistles once the trial ends if you go with a cheaper plan. Its also a little difficult to locate, if you do want to try it out for free your best bet is to google it, the free trial should be the first result.
The first package offered is the basic ‘McAfee Antivirus Plus’ bundle. It’s $59.99 a year and you get everything you would expect from an antivirus program like live protection, virus scans, 24/7 support and website blocking if it detects malware.
The second package is dubbed ‘McAfee Internet Security’ and will set you back $79.99 a year. It comes with everything the basic package does but throws in a few interesting features. Internet Security packs in lots of parental controls to keep your kids safe, and similar to competitors offers a password manager to keep your usernames and passwords safe. One interesting feature this and the more expensive package include that competitors don’t is an anti-spam email filter. Many hackers try to reel you in by sending emails from important sounding parties like banks, but McAfee can detect these and automatically delete them.
For $10 a year more, you can get ‘McAfee LiveSafe.’ Just like the others, it comes with unlimited users and all of the other features we mentioned. The one additional feature they throw in is cloud storage. You can securely store sensitive documents in their cloud with authentication that includes your voice and face. It can also be used for photo and regular documents if you want to show off just how beautiful that cruise was to your coworkers.
While the buy-in is higher for McAfee than the competition, you’re rewarded with an unprecedented unlimited number of devices you can protect. If you have more than 3 or 5 devices, it might end up being even cheaper than the competition to boot which is why it gets our third place recommendation.
For complete rankings of all antivirus software, go here.
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