Should I upgrade to pay version for a Mac laptop?

[spitshine]

Is it worth it to get the Premium version for Mac users? I was about to buy an annual subscription but here are a few strikes against Malware Bytes for Mac:

- There's no direct support (just forum). Not even product purchase support.  There's no phone or direct email or chat support.  I would prefer to ask my questions to a company rep. 

- It seems a lot of the features MalWare Bytes offers are not valid on the Mac OS (for example there's no website protection for Mac users - just android and windows). There are a lot of features not available for Mac. Since I already have the free version, what do I gain by paying for the premium??

FYI i have a Macbook Pro which is running Sierra 10.12.6   

Thanks

[alvarnell]

1 hour ago, spitshine said:

- There's no direct support (just forum). Not even product purchase support.  There's no phone or direct email or chat support.  I would prefer to ask my questions to a company rep. 

Check "Still Need Help" at the bottom of this page: https://support.malwarebytes.com/community/mac.

Direct customer support for sales and technical issues is available at: https://support.malwarebytes.com/community/contactsupport/pages/home-support.

Chat support is available Mon-Fri from 1am to 5pm pacific / 8am to 11pm UTC.

Company staff members do drop in here when needed at different times on business days, depending on their world-wide location and other duties.

Quote

- It seems a lot of the features MalWare Bytes offers are not valid on the Mac OS (for example there's no website protection for Mac users - just android and windows). There are a lot of features not available for Mac. Since I already have the free version, what do I gain by paying for the premium??

Website protection for Google Chrome and Firefox users can be obtained using browser extensions. Safari protection is under development, but a much harder issue due to Apple restrictions and no timeline has been announced.

At this time, Real-Time Protection is the only premium feature available and it is available free for the first 30-days to allow you to experience it first hand. We have been promised that additional features will be added in the future as development continues.

Some of the android and windows features aren't required on iOS and macOS and others are difficult or not possible to implement, again due to Apple restrictions.

Edited January 31, 2019 by alvarnell

[Massimiliano]

I would add that the premium version also has the scheduled scan, also wanting every hour.

[spitshine]

Alvarnel and MaxBar1 - thanks for the responses.  I do have the free version and as of today it reads "No Threats Found" when I scan my files. So basically the only advantage of Premium is that the program will auto-scan at timed intervals? Is that the same thing as Real-TIme Protection, or is that an additional feature?  As Mac users yourselves, do you guys have Premium? 

The only reason I'm interested in Malware is because I've been getting a bogus Flash Download webpage appear when I leave my computer unattended for long periods. I know it's SPAM but it shouldn't launch it's own web-page in Safari. I thought maybe I had malware. Nothing detected by Malware Bytes. 

thanks again

[Massimiliano]

Real time and scheduled scan are two different functions.

Personally in my house we have Malwarebytes Premium on Windows, MacOS and Android and I am a beta testers and future premium version just available in Italy on iOS.

[alvarnell]

Real-Time Protection scans anything you download to your Mac immediately, to see if it's infected. That should keep you from installing any additional malware that you accidentally run across.

Yes, I have Premium for my Mac, iPhone & iPad and also beta test.

[spitshine]

much appreciated. Seems you could also just do a manual scan any time you download something. $40 for 1 device seems a bit pricy. Is this the #1 malware protection choice for Mac users? i only used the free one b/c it was recommended to me by 1 tech support guy I was talking to.

[alvarnell]

51 minutes ago, spitshine said:

Seems you could also just do a manual scan any time you download something.

I'm not positive that a manual scan would be able to catch everything that RTProtection does, so the staff will have to respond to that one. It would certainly take a lot longer to run a manual scan of everything on your drive than it takes to scan one downloaded file. You would also need to make sure that you don't allow your browser to Open "safe" files after downloading, which is standard advise these days since your browser isn't very good when judging what is "Safe".

56 minutes ago, spitshine said:

$40 for 1 device seems a bit pricy.

If you have more than one device, then you can lower that price with Malwarebytes Premium for Home.

58 minutes ago, spitshine said:

Is this the #1 malware protection choice for Mac users?

I'm not aware of any independent testing that would be able to determine such things as most of their testing methods aren't realistic enough to give Malwarebytes a fair evaluation, so all you will get from folks here and other sources is personal opinions based either on their own experience or in helping others. It's also somewhat dynamic in that new capabilities are being introduced for many such products quite often, so what may be true today could be quite different a year from now.

Since I have had a long-time personal association with several anti-malware developers, I refrain from making such pronouncements or recommendations, but if you don't feel comfortable with the tech support recommendation you got, then you'll probably need to try some other products and decide for yourself what works best for you. Most of the traditional scanners that scan every file on a drive require a lot of resources (RAM and CPU) and take much longer to scan your computer, so you may find that they don't fit well with your computer habits.

[spitshine]

Alvarnell, 

thanks so much for taking the time to address all of these questions.  You definitely made some good arguments for paying for the application.  It would be nice to get a bundled plan but I only have 1 laptop that I use. My phone is an android so I'd have to buy a separate one for that and I don't really save important data on my phone anyway. 

Steve

[Massimiliano]

being your phone an Android you can buy the license for two devices directly bundled by Malwarebytes, with a fairly important discount for the second device, and insert the product key also on Android which you could not do if you had an iphone as the purchase would only be possible from the AppStore. (this restriction the playstore does not have it). Ask for technical support but for me, 1 year ago it worked.

[treed]

13 hours ago, alvarnell said:

I'm not positive that a manual scan would be able to catch everything that RTProtection does

Currently, a manual scan and RTP detections are equivalent. The big difference is when you catch the threat... at the time it's trying to get installed, or after it's been installed for a while.

However, this will be changing soon, in the next upcoming release, as there will be an additional RTP feature that will not have an equivalent in manual or scheduled scans.

[treed]

12 hours ago, spitshine said:

My phone is an android so I'd have to buy a separate one for that

As MAXBAR1 mentioned, that's not actually accurate. There are two ways you can purchase for Android.

One is to purchase a home bundle license from our website for enough devices to include your Android devices. Then you can activate that number of Mac, Windows, or Android devices, in any combination, using that license key. So, for example, a 5-device license could be used to protect a Mac, a Windows PC, a Chromebook, an Android phone, and an Android tablet... or any other combination of 5 such devices.

The other is to purchase a subscription for the Android app separately, through Google Play. This has the advantage of being cheaper for many devices, because one subscription covers all the devices associated with your Google Play account. However, if you only have one Android device, it's actually cheaper to add it to a home bundle, and then you get the added benefit of having everything on the same subscription, without the hassle of renewing them separately.

[spitshine]

Thomas, thanks. 

You mentioned: 

2 hours ago, treed said:

.... However, if you only have one Android device, it's actually cheaper to add it to a home bundle, and then you get the added benefit of having everything on the same subscription, without the hassle of renewing them separately.

So are you saying that if I bought a Mac app from your site ($40) and then bought an android app from the playstore, it would be cheaper than  a bundle license from your website for 2 devices ( $50 )? I only have 2 devices to protect right now.

Thanks,  Steve

[treed]

No, that's the opposite of what I said.

Each device on a home bundle subscription after the $40 first one costs $10/year. Buying a subscription from Google Play costs $12/year. You're better off buying a home bundle from our website for 2 devices than buying a home bundle plus a separate Android subscription.

[spitshine]

thanks for clarifying