Did Avast kind of, shoot themselves in the foot

First, I think we would now, all agree that version 5 is very good and a heck of a product. From the suite down to the free. Free

My thought is the free turned out maybe to good. Is it so good that they now find themselves in a situation where the incentive to pay, is diminished by the free version. No fault of theirs, but reality. I can pretty much bet you that ANYTHING added after this point will only go the paid versions.

 

The free is the Flagship product right? That's what they say anyway so they may have planned it this way, but you raise a question that every developer has to ask themselves; "where do we make our money?" You can make it everywhere from the paid version of the product to selling security certificates. Btw, I've heard nothing but horrid test results from the AIS suite (presumably firewall trouble).

 

I agree. Some AV vendors need to learn to stay out of the suite side of things. Do what you do best and enhance it. Dont sacrifice quality by adding on crap most dont want. I still say that a AV vendor adding a Sandbox and nothing else is a winner combo in sells.

Firewalls,antispam and parental controls are over rated. Most just plain dont work.

 

Unfortunately, marketing departments don't agree & they see $ signs especially when the products are aimed at the 98% of people we were talking about in another thread.

 

There are already enough good firewalls out there. AV's are "sexy", users like to try 'em, talk about 'em (complain), and then try another. Therefore there is much more room for AV's. Firewalls, on the other hand, are "boring", users normally either use windows FW or choose a 3rd party FW and stick with it. The FW's that are already here (OA, Comodo, Outpost, ZA etc.) pretty much have the market cornered. Just my opinion.

 

i agree, the free version of Avast. is a full blown av just with out script protection and a sandbox. well as for the script protection the BB in avast will help on that.


i have install Avast 5 on my grandparent computers because it does all the work for them on removing viruses. while keeping them 100% safe.

 

They might be having some money coming even by giving FREE products that is the reason why they are making the product.
So it is not that vendors don't get anything by giving their FREE products

 

I think Avast! knows what they're doing, or else they wouldn't have released it. Personally I'd buy the pro version if I wasn't strapped for money at this current situation. And I agree, Suites are over-rated, I don't like them.

 

I don't think suites are necessarily the problem, just bad ones. AIS AV is great but the FW? These companies just jump in over their heads. Who knows, maybe it'll end up as a great product, but they have a long way to go.

 

Says who, Matousec?

FWIW PCMag gave the aIS FW 4.5/5 stars. Sure it's PCMag, but at least they're focused on packet filtering and such as opposed to HIPS.

 

No, they really don't. Geeks like us? WE like to change out our AVs and try new things. The general public uses whatever suite their ISP gives them, or whatever Best Buy recommended, or whatever came on their Dell (most of the time without a valid subscription).

They're still using Norton's 2006 and paying for subscriptions, meanwhile they ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ about how slow their computer got.

They use no-name "system cleaners" that "defrag their ram" and "demagnetize their pixels" because it looks like that's what they should be running, or their neighbor's nephew's cousin works in Best Buy, so "he's an expert".

The average user BELIEVES ransomware, and will gladly whip out their credit card.

And the worst one I've seen, which was 3 times this week alone: The average user doesn't REMEMBER their passwords, they check the box so their browser remembers it. I found this out when I logged my uncle out of Gmail so I could check mine, and I had to reset his password. I then logged back into my gmail 45 MINUTES LATER, and had to reset his password again. Apparently, his idea of password creation is face-rolling the keyboard and clicking "remember me".

 

I too agree that Avast! Free is a great product. Got to compliment them for continuing to offer such a nice product without crippling it or having a large popup advert after every update. That doesn't consider the hard work that went into 4.8 and 5.0, which were some good upgrades.

My second point is that I also agree that Avast! seems like they know what they are doing. I went close to 10 years where I pretty much ran Linux exclusively on my personal machines. Most of that software was free, but I still made a point of purchasing stuff (Ximian desktop add-on), SUSE or Redhat CD's and manuals or donations to Ubuntu and a few others.

Avast!'s free product certainly gets the word out. Even though there is not much difference between their free and paid versions, I found myself recently almost buying a few 2 year 3 computer licenses, perhaps partially just to contribute to the cause.

 

Full fledged free, highly competent, no nag serious multi feautured AV, what more can one ask for, this is how good will and reputation spreads and Avast surely has earned it well today.

 

I'm not certain, but I know others make more in business/enterprise editions, that's why providing such a useful free edition, it bumps up detection rates (users submit files etc), user issues are resolved, and so on. Free edition makes their whole product line better.

 

I agree with the original poster. The free product, in version 5 (after the rapidly released small fixes), is one of the most full featured and silk-smooth anti-malwares out there. This is one product I felt trumped the free version of Avira in terms of detection and resource usage. Ease of use is the area in which Avira was not stellar to begin with.
Why not just merge the Free and Pro versions and make the customer support paid?

 

I would not pay a single koruna for their support. You get only automated answers for your submitted tickets. Very very bad customer experience. I paid for avast once, never again!

 

I didn't know I'd been singled out for special treatment.
On both occasions that I've asked for help I've got a reply within 24 hours from a person with a Czech-sounding name. Last time it was Jakub. Maybe he's a robot.

 

I haven't heard a single Avast user (advanced user) say anything but negative things about AIS, much like Comodo users were about the CAV in V3. AFW doesn't have HIPS am I right?

 

You have a point, but even advanced users don't change their FW NEARLY as much as they change AV's or try out new antimalware products.

"Apparently, his idea of password creation is face-rolling the keyboard and clicking "remember me"

LOL That was funny.

 

not at all my experience. they were VERY helpful and sorted out my lic issue ASAP. i am very happy with them. though i own a number of lic's and i use the full internet security on these machines. but overall the person i dealt with was great the person who helped me was martin kafka. thank you for all the help martin!!

 

i use the suite and i love it. especially for my family who dont want to touch anything. i came from nortons and even though i still support norton in their 2010 line i personally like avast better. the firewall is due to get some very nice updates soon from what i was told from the tech i dealt with. now if i had a issue they didnt fix or help me on if go back to nis2010 is a second i did really like the suite from them and the nis2010 firewall in advanced mode has imo everything someone could need..

the only one area i see lacking with avast is the web scanner slowing some people down. it does for me on one of my laptops but all the other systems i dont see a big hit. that one notebook though it get almost 50% less speed

 

I agree that Avast free is a fantastic av.
I'm not so sure that they have shot themselves in the foot though.
Maybe they get a lot of corporate/enterprise sales and the brand recognition may bring in more of those customers.

 

I tried out the Avast! firewall during beta and thought it was a very quiet and intuitive approach. And noted that it had a BB and IDS with heuristics instead of a HIPS, but didn't see any test results. But it is out of beta so now back to testing OA beta for the 64 bit upgrade. Maybe most would stipulate that Matousec shows that Comodo has a better conventional HIPS than Avast! if you will stipulate that PC Magazine shows that Avast! has a better suite and firewall than Comodo. Seems only fair.

 

i dont think they have, i see no difference in terms of the differences from free>pro compared to past Avast versions.

infact, at least now.... the paid versions get a little more than they used to. (sandbox and firewall)

 

Say what? I am very pleased with it...