How We Test

All the members of our team are hard-working security experts, who tested almost all antivirus solutions in the world. It is necessary for creating a comprehensive knowledge base where each user will find an answer to antivirus-related and cybersecurity-related questions.

How Do We Test Antivirus Products?

To test an antivirus product, we take several steps: 

1. Buying the product. We want to test the product on behalf of the user, so we don’t accept some free versions the companies could propose to get a promotion or to contribute to their marketing strategy. It helps us to keep our reviews unbiased for you because honesty is the priority of our team.
2. Installing the product on our computers. We use about 20 computers with various operating systems for our tests. It helps us to identify the objective results considering reliability, security, and performance.
3. Testing the products. We run our tests, checking all the aspects and features a good antivirus should possess. We pay much attention to antimalware and anti-phishing elements, in particular.
4. Re-running the tests. Every 2-3 months, we update the licenses and rerun our test to understand whether the product is still sufficient.
5. Refunding. Our team checks the refund process as well, to make sure the user will get money in case they are not satisfied with the solution. Almost all antiviruses provide a 30-day money-back guarantee, and we are always ready to check it together with customer support service.

What Do We Check in an Antivirus Software?

The testing methods we use focuses primarily on safety and security issues. The aspects we consider while testing is:

• Real-time protection. Each antivirus aims to detect threats before they get into the core of the operating system. Real-time protection is the most important layer of defense, so we pay much attention to it.
• Zero-day protection. A prominent feature of each good antivirus is the ability to detect threats that aren’t present in the databases at the moment. In most cases, cloud-based is the best security tool for such types of threats.
• Anti-phishing. If you visit a suspicious website or follow an infected URL, the criminals may get sensitive information about you. A good antivirus solution should also block such threats.
• Spam protection. Spam emails may include infected URLs and attachments, so anti-spam is a necessary feature to check.
• Web-protection. To make sure the user is on a safe side, we check how any antivirus deals with malicious URLs – it should warn you about the danger before you visit a suspicious website.
• Parental control. It is quite effective as an additional level of protection that keeps your children away from the explicit content.
• System resources. We check how much system resources a particular antivirus consumes and how it can influence the performance.
• Password Manager. It is quite useful as an additional security level that will protect you from keyloggers and keep your passwords safe.

Lab Tests We Use

To make all our reviews reliable and relevant, we update our articles regularly by re-running the tests. Besides, we consider the results of credible third-party testing labs. They are as follows:

• AV-Comparatives – a reliable resource that is extremely helpful in reviewing antivirus solutions for Windows OS;
• AV-Test – this lab is indispensable when it comes to antivirus and antimalware solutions;
• BBB – the service that is popular among the United States, Canada, and Mexico consumers – we use it to identify whether the brand or business is reliable and worth reviewing;
• MRG-Effitas – top-notch security testing lab in the world of IT;
• SElabs – helpful for assessing products and services which were created to guarantee online security.

Based on the results we get from all these sources, we conclude on an average mark for each antivirus solution.