F-Secure, founded in 1988 is a security company with a vast array of products, which cover home, business, servers and even broadband. The software is available from over 6000 resellers and 200 operators in more than 40 countries and claim to be supporting tens of millions of users all over the world. In June 2015 they were certified by AV Test for antivirus software and received the following scores - 6.0/6.0 in protection, 5.5/6.0 in performance and 5.5/6.0 in usability. But can F-Secure maintain these scores in 2016?
Features
F-Secure’s antivirus product page doesn’t really display any features as such, just a lift of benefits. Some of those benefits are as follows; Protection against viruses, spyware and other malware, advanced malware removal tech, stop harmful attacks, keep your security always up-to-date with auto updates etc. It sounds like this program has very limited and basic functions.
On the other end of the spectrum you have F-Secure SAFE. This product boasts about their key features, which automatically tells you it’s going to include more than just one or two functions. The features available range from network protection, browsing and banking protection to family protection and finder functionality along with the obvious virus protection.
For a product that costs as much as this one, we feel the features have been neglected when compared to other suites that are cheaper than F-Secure. Is this suite under performing or are other companies loading their software with pointless tools that aren’t going to be used?
Security
This is one of the very few times we’ve done this but to start we want to give credit to F-Secure for their quality website - it’s fully responsive and looks gorgeous on mobile too. The website design is reflected through to the software which is awesome. The modern interface is very easy to navigate around and it’s obvious that the brand is well established throughout the website and all software they produce. We feel we could easily identify F-Secure’s software just from their theme and design.
In terms of performance, they scored 91.6% in the AV Test which is pretty damn good and boast a load more awards too.
Support
F-Secure’s support section is very well designed. As usual you get the choice of topics, knowledge base, community and a search function before the company pushing you towards live chat and telephone support, this is a good way to filter out the people that can manage to sort their problem out themselves, reducing the live chat/phone support traffic and as a result, waiting times too. The form required to enter live chat is much smaller than we’ve seen in other companies so that’s another good thing and they also make 17 dedicated phone numbers for 17 countries available and another for any other county support, along with displaying clear opening times. We managed to find this is under 20 seconds of clicking on support.
Affordability
F-Secure Antivirus is the entry level product that F-Secure offer and comes in at $39.99 per year for up to 3 PCs ($13.33 per PC per year - this suite doesn’t support mac). It isn’t the cheapest suite around but when taking it supports 3 devices into consideration it works out pretty good value for money.
The next product up is F-Secure Internet Security, which again only supports PC. It includes much more features but comes in at $49.99 per year for 1 PC.
The top level protection product is called F-Secure SAFE, which supports ‘All devices’. What this means is that you can have up to 5 PC, Mac or smartphone devices protected at once and also supports a lot of extra features. Now knowing you this you’d expect a serious bump in price and you’d be right in thinking this. $69.99 is the price you’ll have to pay for a 12 month license for up to 3 devices and to add another 2 devices for the same term length you’ll have to part with almost another 30% more cash. Nethertheless, all things considered; such as the features you get and the devices supported, it should definitely be contemplated as your security solution.
