VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware is now released

That doesn't mean a lot.

 

There were a couple of minor bugs at the time of testing the beta program, and updates seemed larger than expected, but I wouldn't doubt its detection rates.

Friend's system was infected from a USB program which carried a high-level trojan. Scanned his system with a few leading AVs which alerted the file was there, but couldn't remove. VIPRE removed the file so I was impressed.

It's a new program, so give it a few more months and it should only improve and get better.

 

@DarkButterfly

Well, that's not particularly good and certainly not the type of behavior I'd like to see. Are you still experiencing this with the release version? If so, contact me directly (alexe(at)sunbeltsoftware.com) and I'd like to get more info.

Ouch, that hurt a bit. Keep in mind, however, that you were beta testing before we implemented incremental updates. Those are going in very shortly.

Exactly and I would expect it to be that way. Without definitions, Active Protection simply can't figure out what to block or allow. The product ships without any definitions to insure people get the latest defs (and to reduce the initial download size). That's why you have to download the defs before first using the product.

That's in the beta forum, but on the product pages itself, we are certainly quite clear that this is a 15-day trial. I assume this is a minor oversight by Eric, who runs the beta forum.

We'll take one more look at Comodo to make sure we're not causing any issues with it -- thanks for that info.

Yes, it does. Right click on a file.

Alex Eckelberry
CEO, Sunbelt Software
Alexe(at)sunbeltsoftware.com

 

It just shipped, and we're getting it over to Virus Bulletin as soon as their next test comes out.

However, the product is certified for 100% detection of all malware in the wildlist by WestCoast Labs. This is the same basis for VB100 detection.

Incidentally, VirusBulletin did write a pre-review on the product:

http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/documents/vipre-virus-bulletin-review-july-2008.pdf

Also, you can ALWAYS email me directly and I get right back to you. We're very open, and we want to hear your impressions, both good and bad. So keep it coming.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO
Sunbelt Software
Alexe(at)sunbeltsoftware.com

 

Would you give them time to be certified? They released the product this week

Edit:

Sorry Alex, just saw your post

 

how about a version to include sunbelt firewall ??

 

Mike seems to think the detection is pretty good already, so, take is word for it.

even though i dont like the tests these days, id like to see Vipre enter just one once just to see how it manages.

~Off topic comment removed. - Ron~

 

Good evening,

There is a word about it in the pre-review of virusbulletin (look at the link given by alex).

ren-

 

I used it with sunbelt firewall is pretty soft & on my machine didn't have any FP, unlike some other bigger named ones do. I have one game that AV's love to say a couple of it's files plus all of the patches are trojans, Vipre said they were fine, I was pleased. The only thing was holding up my wireless connection for a minute on boot. It seems to want to do a brief scan before it releases the av to the sys tray & than I connect. Other than that I like it...

 

No file scanning ? Isn't that the hallmark of an antivirus ?
Even the Spy Sweeper (I use the 5.5.7 without antivirus version) has a file system shield, which scans files.

 

According to Alex's post, VIPRE has a file-scanning feature.

 

First of all, I would like to thank Alexeck for chiming in here and giving us the in depth information. Not a whole lot of CEOs do this personally. Secondly, this is a new anti-malware which was just released from beta. It's not going to be perfect this quick. Inspector Closeau mentioned long time ago that AV is like the car when it comes to development, inspection, and certification. As long as you keep this in mind, there should be no surprises here and there.

Sunbelt spent so much money, time, and manpower to develop Vipre and they are still working on it. Give them a time break.

My impression with this new release is better than expected. It runs very light and the detection I don't worry too much as there are couple of experts behind the product and they sure know what's going in the malware industry.

And finally the pricing, this is probably the first AV product with 1,2,3,4 or more computers in a fair and decent pricing:

http://shop.sunbelt-software.com/licensing.cfm?product=VIPRE

Edit: spelling

 

Also, I have been in contact as of late with the support department in regards to the upgrade from CS to Vipre and at this time(should be soon though) the 9.95 price is not available online but you will be refunded ($)20 when you contact them.

BTW, Support is very good (Special kudos to Laura in Online Sales for all her work with me )
**Since Alex is posting thought I may put in a good word.

 

I have been trying out VIPRE and have so far found the following disappointments. First the following email problem which I posted on the VIPRE beta forum, but have gotten no response:

"I have Win XP home and use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client. When I have Vipre's email protection enabled, my email will not download (in fact I'm not even sure that Thunderbird is connecting to the pop server). When I disable Vipre email protection, all is normal. I have a suspicion as to what the problem is and was wondering if anyone has any experience in t he area.

My ISP, ATT, uses SSL connections for its email servers. It requires all users to use these connections. Therefore, as instructed, I set my POP port to be 995 and my SMTP port to be 465 in Thunderbird. I made the same changes in the email settings in Vipre. I am aware that the virtually all AV programs cannot scan emails coming via an SSL connection (I believe Kaspersky Antivirus may be the sole exception to this rule). I wonder if this has something to do with my problem."

Second, there seems to be no way to integrate VIPRE with a download manager, such as Free Download Manager or Internet Download Manager. VIPRE's Active Protection does not seem to issue an alert when I am downloading some of the Eicar test files, so it doesn't seem to be a suitable substitute for an ability to integrate with a download manager. In fact, Active Protection didn't alert me when I attempted to open Eicar.zip with my compression program (Powerarchiver)

Third, the slowness of updates, which Alex has said is being addressed.

In spite of the above complaints, I still hold out great hopes for VIPRE.

 

Never do this, will breaks email with virtually all AV solutions out there. They are not able to scan SSL/TLS traffic, do not set them to check traffic on these encrypted ports.

 

@alexeck

I still haven't tried the final release. I was going to, but at the moment I still haven't gotten much time and the updates still take too long. I will test it, maybe Sunday, for I have time.

Only future will tell that.

Its common to sense to update any security tool (the ones that need updates) as soon as it gets first installed. If people don't do that, they hardly will everytime is needed. Personally, I have my apps to update when I want, not when the app wants. It is a matter of good practice. If people don't have it, they deserve what comes next.

I don't see any reference either for 15 or 30 day trial on product page.

I adressed this issue on the forum and the answer I got was and I quote:

"No one has been able to repro this issue on any system."

As I mentioned before I still havent tried the release candidate version, but I will next Sunday. I do remember that to scan a single or a few files, I had to place them on a folder.

Best regards

 

Yeah, but how much to renew your subscription? Full price. No discounts.

 

First off, we just got our first review of the release, in PC Mag:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2326526,00.asp?kc=PCRSS02129TX1K0000530

The product did well. However, there were some things it missed and we are working on them. It is my every intention to get Editor's Choice the next time... ;-)

Some responses:

@Fly:

Yes, our real-time protection (which we call Active Protection) is a full on-access scanner. There's a video on VIPRE which includes details as to how the real-time protection works here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRjdGRp60bY


@likuidkewl -- Thanks for your patience, we will have the $9.95 program on the web soon!

@profhsg ---

I'm sorry you didn't get a response -- was this recent? The beta forum is basically only lightly monitored as we've now moved to release. However, you can always go to this forum:

http://getsatisfaction.com/sunbeltsoftware

Or email support(at)sunbeltsoftware.com for help (or call us toll-free at 877-673-1153).

Almost certainly a problem with SSL, which VIPRE does not support. However, the on-access protection (Active Protection) does stop a virus from hitting the disk.

That being said, we haven't given up on SSL support in VIPRE as an ongoing research item.

Good suggestion, we'll look into that.

First, Active Protection should block the file when it actually hits the disk -- if the zip file is just being opened, it won't have anything to actually see. However, we will look into this just to make sure. Obviously, we should immediately detect EICAR.

@Malcontent

I'm open to ideas. We are being pretty aggressive price-wise with the Home Site License but I'm always listening.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO
Sunbelt Software
Alexe(at)sunbeltsoftware.com

 

The initial cost of a single user license for Vipre is competitive at $29.95. A few of your competitors offer renewal discounts anywhere from 20%-30%
off the original license fee. If a customer is loyal enough to want to renew their license for another year or more, their loyalty should be rewarded. A discount would be an incentive to REMAIN a paying customer.
Just my opinion. I make a point of not buy software that doesn't have a renewal discount. Not when there is competing software that does.

 

The product is very competitive.

You could offer a 20-30 per cent dicount as mentioned, such as $21.95 for renewal (for one licence).

Or you also offer a full price upgrade but with an extra user license which allows more people to use your product.

For example:
29.95 (buy) 1 x license -- renewal (full price) upgrades to 2 x license
34.96 (buy) 2 x license -- renewal (full price) upgrades to 3 x license
and so on...

If someone continues for the third year, the offer would not increase to an additional license, but would continue to provide the (one) extra license for the full price.

This would reward loyal customers who are already impressed with your product and allow them to install VIPRE on say a friend/parent's computer.

 

Hi, it looks so far from what little info I have seen thus far, that you have a very interesting product there. I was tempted fro what I have read so far to possibly give Vipre a try. However while your $29.99 price may be competitive, you may want to consider there are potential customers out there that may really want to give your product a try but have an existing investment in an already established product like Norton, Mcafee, etc.. that may have a considerable license expiration left. Such as in my case I have approx 23 months left on Mcafee suite. So while your price is decent for someone needing to purchase an AV, for others it is hard to make an economic case to replace thier exisiting product with a long expiration date especially in tough times like we are in now.

Anyway you say your open to ideas so I would suggest for the potential customers as I explained, you might want to offer some type of competitive switchover pricing. Offering a substantially reduced or discounted price for anyone wanting to trade up thier long term competitive license for the Vipre product. Something like maybe $14.95 instead of $29.95 for one year or possibly $29.95 for a two year license instead of one year. Anyway something to consider that might just yield you potential customers from a group whom would probably not switch now at the current pricing. Best of luck with Vipre it looks like it is going to be a winner to me.

Atomic_Ed

 

There seems to be an issue with VIPRE and Sunbelt PF on Vista 32. Keep getting HIPS in the firewall blocking code injection from VIPRE. I would have thought that 2 products from the same company would coexist a bit better!!

Technical details about the intrusion attempt:

Injector application: C:\Program Files\Sunbelt Software\VIPRE\SBAMTray.exe
Description: SBAMTray Application
File version: 3.1.2243
Product name: VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware
Product version: 3.1.2243
Created: 2008/7/21, 21:02:46
Modified: 2008/7/21, 21:02:46
Accessed: 2008/7/23, 22:26:39

Target application: C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe
Description: iTunes
File version: 7.7.0.43
Product name: iTunes
Product version: 7.7.0.43
Created: 2008/7/10, 09:51:26
Modified: 2008/7/10, 09:51:26
Accessed: 2008/7/17, 18:54:59

Address of injection: 0x10018061


Do i have to make any changes to SPF?

 

I tried to locate that, but I couldn't.

Can you point to where file-scanning is mentioned ? As in the way a regular antivirus scans files real-time ?

'Viruses' are often packed, in a ZIP or other compression format. Avira is supposed to be very good at dealing with that.

How does VIPRE deal with that ? Real-time and on-demand.

And it seems that one specific thing is still missing, something that indicates whether it's safe to visit a website. Like McAfee's SiteAdvisor, Zonealarm's version of that, the Spy Sweeper's internet communication shield, http scanning. And DNS poisoning protection/prevention.

 

Regarding siteadvisors, isn't google, and say several other companies providing browser type plug-ins that scan sites?

For example:
http://wiki.castlecops.com/Lists_of_freeware_URL_scanners

In my opinion, I think VIPRE should specialise in what they're already developing.

 

I wouldn't be the one taking any PCMag's reviews too seriously.

Please, do not take me wrong. VIPRE has all to become a great antivirus, but still has a long way ahead to reach that stage.

This is what I found great in VIPRE:

- low on resources
- practical UI
- hability to remove threats while system boots

This is what I did not find so great in VIPRE:

- update take too long (I'll see how it behaves in the near future)

- conflicts with Comodo Memory Firewall (somehow)

- when accessing Explorer and opening folders with large files on them, it takes too long to flow again. I will see how the release candidate behaves.

- I did not see no single-file scan option (to scan a specific file I had to create a folder and scan that folder in VIPRE's scanning options)

If this is fixed, then it gets one step closer to become, indeed, a great antivirus+antispyware.

Best regards