Total AV offers a full pack of tools to protect your computer and other devices from harmful viruses & online threats. It gives 360-degree protection to your iOS, Mac, Android and Windows PC. Total AV gives your system a protection against Trojans, Adware, Malware, phishing websites and more.
More than 25 million users trust Total AV to protect their devices worldwide. It’s definitely one of the solid options that can provide decent protection. Keep reading to find out if it’s the best option for you in 2021.
Product Overview
The Total AV antivirus keeps you away from malware, protects your confidential data from breaches, and VPN accessibility to browse any website without any restrictions. It has a free version for Windows-based and Mac computers as well, which is a plus. Of course, the free version offers a limited functionality and if you’re looking for the best protection you can get, we definitely recommend going with a paid version.
What we also like, is that Total AV has a spotless reputation in a sense that its customers’ data is safe. It hasn’t been spotted selling data or caught up in any other scetchy activities.
Even though you can buy a full version for $19, many users complain that the price won’t stay the same upon renewal. It goes up to $99/year, which is pretty expensive. For reference, Bitdefender and Kaspersky ask around $60 per year.
Let’s take a deep dive into Total AV’s features to see what kind of protection you can expect from them.
Total AV’s Security Features
Malware Protection
Total AV’s free version lacks a real-time protection feature, meaning that your antivirus will only detect viruses when you’re running a scan. A paid version has it. Let’s see lab test results to understand how good Total AV is at detecting various threats.
According to AV-Comparatives latest Real-World Protection Report, Total AV was able to indicate 726 out of 736 versatile malware samples hand-picked by cybersecurity experts.
Real-World Protection Test February-May 2021 by AV-Comparatives
It’s not the best results, but remember that this report basically compares best of the best antivirus products and outside of this report it’s a decent result.
Another lab whose test results we’ve been watching closely for years is AV-TEST.
Their Protection Test has shown that TotalAV isn’t the very best in terms of real-time protection as well. However, Total AV has shown a great result in detecting widespread malware. Overall, they gave it a score of 4.5 out of 6 possible.
AV-TEST Protection Score May-June 2021
What Ransomware Protection Features Does TotalAV Offer?
Ransomware is an advanced cyberthreat used by hackers to encrypt important personal data on your device. After such software penetrated your computer, the only way to get your data back is to pay a ransom. There are any many ways how ransomware gets into your computer. For instance, you can click on a threatening link you received in your mail, on social media. Or, you might download a file that looks like a legitimate one, but in all actuality is a ransomware piece.
TotalAV claims to give the utmost reliable ransomware protection. They claim to cover most of the trending ransomware viruses that include WannaCry, VxLock, Havoc, Cerber and more.
In fact, the only tool they offer to fight ransomware is Safe Shield. It’s a browser extension that automatically blocks harmful websites known to spread malicious software. It’s not bad, but again, new threats are being created as you read this and real-time protection is critical. It’d also be nice to have some backup features to be able to restore your files if ransomware has managed to intefere with your data.
Is TotalAV good enough to protect you from viruses and malware?
Yes, it is! Because Total AV is engineered with several layers of security protection. It keeps your devices out of danger from Trojan, malware, and other viruses. This antivirus has effective web security features, and a wide range of privacy safeguards tools. However, some of the Total AV’s competitors provide better real-time protection against newly detected threats.
Protection Against Phishing
Phishing is dangerous because it’s not a virus per se. It only exists because hackers have learned how to manipulate our psychology. And if you think that you’re not that guy who’s going to click on ‘you won $1,000,000, you have a next thing coming. Yes, maybe, you’d easily pass on ridiculously hard-to-believe offers, but now phishing has reached a whole new level. For example, you might receive a message from the bank you’re using or your favorite clothing store and you’ll feel very safe clicking on their offers or logging in to their website.
It’s harder to evaluate TotalAV’s phishing protection because reputable labs didn’t conduct deep anti-phishing testing of this product.
However, from our personal experience with the product, TotalAV was able to block around 75% of phishing websites, which isn’t that impressive considering that some of the competitors block up to 100% of those threats.
Can it protect you Against Privacy Interference?
Two major things provided by Total AV to keep your private data safe: a password protection tool and VPN.
By using VPN, you can hide your information and change the IP address to anonymously browse any website. TotalAV VPN uses 256-bit AES-CBC encryption run on the OpenVPN protocol, which is comparable with major VPN providers. However, they only offer around 40 locations of servers and lack some key features such as Kill Switch that prevents you from connecting to the Internet if you can’t connect to a VPN’s server. That means, that if you’re looking for complete privacy online, you should look for a standalone full-fledged VPN solution.
We have experienced that Total AV gives a limited privacy interference features than other competitive antivirus products that give you 360-degree security in this concern.
TotalAV is designed to offer a user-friendly security package to protect your devices against phishing, malware, Trojan and files that are more hazardous. It gives you the Smart Scan option to quickly search for malicious files that can harm your PC.
Password Manager Vault
TotalAV also gives a password vault to manage all your login credentials with the master password. So, in case you lose your device or your PC goes into another’s hand, no one can access your credentials because it is safe with strong password encryption technology.
Just by installing the TotalAV Password Vault Assistant in your Firefox or Chrome browser, you can log in to your selected websites with a single click. This amazing password manager feature given in the Total AV antivirus keeps you out of the pain to remember all the ID and passwords. Instead, you just need to create a master key to access everything in a second.
WebShield Enabled
When you are accessing the internet, you never know what website is looking to hack your personal files and credentials in the background. Again, TotalAV comes into play and gives you a seamless internet browsing experience by protecting your devices from hackers.
The tool also blocks unauthorised users from injecting any malware or Trojan software into your PC.
Quarantine Files
During the scan process, all the suspicious files TotalAV found, it put in the Quarantine section. From there, you can take manual action for each file whether to remove or restore it. Whereas, a few popular antivirus tools take the automatic decision to delete the quarantined files if you haven’t made any changes in the default action settings.
This feature helps to prevent you from unknowingly deleting some important files or software you have kept on your PC. For instance, if you are a programmer or a white hat hacker, knowingly you may have created several files for your experiment. In that scenario, TotalAV allows you to select the detected malicious files manually and take the required action.
Block Unwanted Ads & Pop-ups
To block unwanted pop-ups and ads that sometimes make our experience unpleasant at best, TotalAV provides AdBlock feature. It’s customizable and gets the job done.
Junk Cleaner
If your system is running out of space or you are facing slow system performance the first suggestion is to delete apps that you no longer use. Fair enough, but did you know that often after deleting those apps you still have tons of leftover files that belonged to the deleted apps? Your computer also has temporary files that occupy your device’s memory. That’s why you can significantly improve your device’s performance by using tools like Junk Cleaner.
TotalAV gives a simple solution to improve your device performance by scanning the unwanted and junk files on your behalf. Once you run the junk scan, you get the list of files filtered from recycle bin, temporary folders, Windows error reporting and more.
Duplicate File Finder
Deleting duplicate files can be dreadful. And there’s a tiny chance that you’d be able to find them all manually. TotalAV will do this for you. It’ll also look at places you didn’t even know existed on your PC.
After finishing the duplicate file scanning process, you can take the required action to make some space on your hard disk.
Application Uninstaller
Even though they say it’s easy to uninstall apps, it’s not necessarily true. There’re sneaky apps that create several copies of their .exe files or won’t go away completely even if you’ve done everything by the book. In this case, they still can ‘steal’ your computing resources without you knowing about it. With TotalAV Uninstaller you can make sure that what’s been deleted – stay deleted.
Startup Manager
When you launch your computer, many apps launch together with your OS. If too many software programs run at the same time, it eats up system resources and slows down your PC.
Total AV Startup Manager helps you to find out all the programs that are enabled to launch as soon as you boot up your PC. Once you run the startup program scanning process, you will get the list of all the applications that are scheduled to run in the background.
After that, you can decide what programs are necessary to keep running when the PC starts. Be careful though, if you’re not sure what an application does, at least google it before removing because some apps are essential for smooth functioning of your device.
Browser Cleanup
When you browse the internet, your system creates the history of all the websites you have visited so far. Also, it creates cookies to save the information to give you faster results on the next visit to a particular website. As a result, you either face a slow internet browsing experience or too many ads and popups while exploring the websites.
Many users clean such unwanted files manually to get a better internet browsing experience. However, most of the users are either unaware of such settings or just don’t have that habit.
TotalAV Browser Cleanup utility allows you to scan the browser history and cookies and then delete all these temporary files in one go.
TotalAV: Other Features
Smart Scan
Antivirus products are notorious for taking forever to complete a scanning process and slowing down users computers. To stay on top, cybersecurity companies put a lot of effort to speed up their products’ performance and become more efficient.
On top of TotalAV signature performance-improving tools, it offers a smart scan feature. That’s essentially a fast scan that quickly goes through essential system files and vulnerable areas of your device to find if the device has been infected. The whole process only takes several minutes.
Though there is no custom scan option in Total AV, still it provides one of the quickest smart scans. Using the dashboard, you can run the utility that scans for Anti-malware, Internet security, possible System tune-up and disk clean-up files.
However, it’d be nice to have a Custom Scan for more advanced users.
Real-Time Protection
Total AV keeps running in the background to protect your device from threats as long as your system is awakened. In addition, it prevents the hackers from displaying any disturbing notifications for modifying or downloading any files.
In my experiment, I played with some knowingly downloaded malware files from cloud storage. It successfully downloaded but when I tried to open it, the antivirus prevented me from taking action. Suddenly it showed me a warning that the file may harm your computer.
A step ahead, whenever I tried to run the ransomware or malware file after managing from some third-party sources, the antivirus recognized the encryption sign and prevented it from executing before it could lock up my PC.
We tested TotalAV’s Functionality
The clean and easy navigation panel featured with limited but easy options make Total AV, a diverse antivirus tool. As per our testing, quick access to Smart Scan to filter several types of infected and junk files at once is one of the best functions provided by this software.
It offers a robust malware scanner along with superb WebShield security and ad blocked utilities. I personally liked the combo of app uninstallation, browser history and junk file cleaning function. To do these regular tasks, I don’t need to navigate several settings on my PC. All I can access from only the Total AV dashboard.
Does it have enough security to stand out from the crowd?
Yes! Total AV has some of the stand-out security features that keep them out of the crowd. Other popular antiviruses probably won’t give you a complete package to protect your system from online and offline threats, but TotalAV does.
Let’s see a few notable security features that make Total AV, a unique antivirus program.
- It is featured with the three most useful functionalities at a place; PC tuning, VPN and Application uninstaller.
- You can store several credentials with the Total AV Password Manager utility.
- Secure TotalAV Virtual Private Network (VPN) for uninterrupted internet browsing experience.
- Prevent you from accessing threatening links and suspected phishing websites.
- Total AV Smart Scan, a fast and automated scanning feature.
- Protect your computer from popular ransomware attacks.
- Prevent you from Trojan and other harmful viruses.
How much does the service cost?
Currently, there are three security packages provided by Total AV.
Total AV Antivirus Pro
The plan starts with $29 per year after a discount where you can secure up to 3 devices including mobile and tablets. It includes all the common features that I have listed below.
When I took a try to test all the functionalities provided inside the package, I found them reasonable and good for regular system protection.
TotalAV Pro can be a good option to protect your iOS and Android phones but the package allows you to install the setup only on three devices. If you want to protect more, you need to look for other Total AV plans.
Total AV Internet Security
The discounted price of the Total AV Internet Security plan starts with $39 for a year where you can secure up to 5 devices. The additional feature with this plan is you will get VPN access for Safe internet browsing worth $39.
The package may ask you to include the Antivirus eBook worth $12 that will give you a complete guide for getting the utmost benefits of Total AV. But I think it won’t be required, as here, we have given all the information in detail about Total AV antivirus.
Total AV Total Security
To secure up to 6 devices, you can go with the Total Security package that will cost you $59 per year after a discount. Apart from Total AV Antivirus Pro, you will get three additional features i.e. VPN worth $39, Secure Password Vault worth $9 and Ad Blocker worth $24.
This is the most advanced plan provided by Total AV to protect your several devices. But this plan doesn’t seem more attractive because it asks you to pay a large amount just for giving the additional function of password manager and ad blocker.
Common Features in All Total Av Antivirus Paid Plans
- Protection from Trojans, Malware and Viruses
- Ransomware Protection
- Real-time scan
- Cloud Scanning
- Phishing and scams protection
- Protection from Spyware & Adware
- Delete unwanted files with Junk cleaners
- Optimization Tool to tune up your device
- Clean browsing history and cookies
- Online WebShield protection
- Around the clock customer support
- 30 days Money back guarantee
Apart from the paid plans, Total AV antivirus also offers you access to their basic features in the free version without any time limitation. Yes, you heard it right! Before going to any premium Total AV plans, you can download the setup and explore the features to get practical ideas about this antivirus application.
Its free edition gives you anti-phishing and on-demand scanning protection. Also, you can scan and remove malware from your device. In the free version, you can also get the benefits of WebShield protection and pc tune up features.
Total AV free version could be a good option if you refuse to pay for getting security services. In addition, it is adequate to give protection against malware.
What payment methods does TotalAV support?
Currently, you can buy the Total AV premium plans only through PayPal, where you don’t need to pay any processing fee. The only payment method that is PayPal, can be inconvenient for many users as the other antivirus service providers adopted to give hassle-free payment options to the customers.
Will running TotalAV Antivirus affect your PC’s performance?
Before installing the setup, it was an assumption that Total AV may slow down my computer. But the reality was different, though it takes a bit longer to download the essential files in the background to finish the installation process, literally it didn’t affect my system performance.
Even when I accessed its features to scan several malicious files, it never affected my system performance. Therefore, in terms of speed and PC performance, Total AV gets big thumbs up.
Is it compatible with Mac?
Yes, the Total AV supports Mac and other devices for giving utmost security from internet threats and offline protection.
Mac devices are engineered with advanced technology to give the best security from several cyber-attacks and malicious data protection. Nevertheless, nowadays, smart cybercriminals are inventing new ways to steal data and personal information from a user’s device and Mac isn’t behind in the race from getting affected.
So, to give additional security layers to Mac, you must install the best quality of antivirus in your system, and TotalAV isn’t a bad option to consider.
What do users say about TotalAV’s mobile apps?
Mobile is one of the most and frequently used devices around the globe. We used to access several websites regularly to download gaming apps or other needful applications. Let you know that gaming platforms are known as one of the most hazardous sites where you probably can’t be untouched by malicious virus attacks.
To protect smartphones from these suspicious activities, many users have downloaded the TotalAV mobile app from the Google play store and Apple store. After giving it a try or using the Total AV app for a bit longer duration, most of the users are happy with their services.
However, other segments of unhappy users claim that neither they are getting proper customer support, nor they can see the premium subscription status even after paying the amount twice. A few users also claim that it is conflicting with other applications and as a result, they are unable to access the app or sometimes, they can’t even access the internet.
Total AV features given for mobiles users
- With the Data Breach utility, you can check whether your e-mail is affected.
- Use an embedded Device Locator to find your misplaced or stolen phone.
- Receive iOS updates from System Security.
- Use Secure Search Browser to explore the internet without getting annoying popups and ads.
- WebShield filters phishing and unsafe websites
- A private VPN connection encrypts your browsing.
TotalAV’s Key Customer Support
Mainly, there are two segments where you can expect customer support from TotalAV; billing & technical support. To get the help, either you can email them or fill their contact form provided on the official website. After receiving your request, they can revert you within a day or two.
In my case, I was looking for the steps to set up the ad blocker in my browser. So instead of contacting them directly, I tried to explore their FAQ section where I found the proper documentation along with the steps given in a video form. That was really helpful for me without wasting time or waiting for their reply.
I would say, they are working hard to provide you with the best customer support through email and phone along with their already published step-by-step guide on the website.
Main Fors and Againsts of TotalAV Antivirus
Pros
- Excellent protection against all kinds of internet threats.
- Real-time protection always keeps your device secure.
- Eligible to handle ransomware, malware and Trojan viruses.
- Junk cleaning, browsing history & cookies clean up are additional advantages.
- Easy to get customer support service.
- Great antivirus application for the desktop.
- Limited basic features in a free version with no expiry.
- 30 days money-back guarantee.
Cons
- It’s significantly more expensive upon renewal
- Pro plans can protect a maximum of six devices only.
- Anti-Phishing Protection is weaker than top-performers
- Independent Test results are only satisfactory
Bottom Line
Total AV is a decent antivirus that has all the trendy features and allows you to improve your device’s performance. On the flip side, it is seriously overpriced upon renewal and considering that there are several competitors performed way better in independent tests, it makes you wonder if Total AV worth it. If it was up to me, I would rather go with a more reliable alternative, e.g., Webroot, McAfee or Panda.
What other antivirus products should I consider?
There are more than 10 Total AV antivirus competitors providing seamless protection to the devices. A few of them are cheaper than Total AV and a few are loaded with other most useful features. All antivirus software providers have their advantages and disadvantages, but comparing with Total AV, mentioning a few names below that you can consider as other options.
- Webroot
- Avast
- Malwarebytes
- Norton
- Panda
- Kaspersky
- AVG
Other Readers Ask:
Why do you need antivirus protection?
Viruses are some harmful files or applications that can damage the data you have stored in your computer or mobile. There are mainly two sources to get your devices infected by the virus; the First sources are peripheral devices like pen drive, CD, floppy disk, data transfer cable etc and another source is through the internet.
If you don’t use it to transfer data from one device to another, also you don’t access the internet but use your device for some offline activities like watching the movie, playing games, etc, you don’t need to be worried about viruses. As there aren’t any connecting sources, so your devices are safe from malicious activities.
On the other hand, if you used to browse several websites and download a variety of applications, there are higher chances to get viruses through the channel. In that case, it is highly recommended that you install a trusted antivirus on your smartphone, PC, or both.
How can you remove TotalAV from your PC?
The Total AV uninstallation process is very simple in Windows as well as macOS.
Methods to remove Total AV from Windows PC
Press Win+R keys together and enter “Control” or “Control Panel” in the box. A new window will be opened with a list of options, here; you need to go with “Uninstall a Program”. Now select TotalAV from the list and click on the Uninstall button. Confirm the action and wait for a few minutes to complete the task.
Methods to remove Total AV from MacOS
Open Finder and navigate to the left side column. There, you need to click on the Applications option and then find Total AV in the panel. Once you get it, just select Total AV setup and drag it to the Trash folder.
What exactly was TotalAV doing during all of those scans?
During the scans, the TotalAV antivirus detects the harmful files and applications that may contain malware, trojan, spyware or other harmful viruses. After detecting the infected files, it provides you with a list where you can take manual action to delete or keep the files. In some cases, the Total AV deletes the most harmful files without giving you any notifications.
When you browse the internet, it matches the website URLs with their existing database and shows you a green or red flag whereas the green symbol means the site is safe to access. And the Red symbol means, it has already been caught as a phishing website, so you shouldn’t visit there.
Total AV usually detects the security features at the time of scanning to keep your computer safe from malware, ransomware or other attacks.
Are TotalAV products scam or legitimate?
Protected.net is the official company name that provides Total AV, Total WebShield, Total Adblock and other security services. The company was established recently in 2016 and operating from Hampshire.
In this short time, the Total AV has earned the trust of people around the globe for giving fine excellent protection against suspicious activities done by hackers. For proof, you can see on the google play store that more than 30 thousand people have given their positive feedback after using the Total AV mobile app. You can also read the positive feedback given by the users on the Apple store.
These are the symbols that Total AV isn’t a scam but a legitimate antivirus existing in the market. You can install its free or paid version on your devices to use without any hesitation.
Is there a free plan for TotalAV?
Yes, you can use the free plan without any expiry date. TotalAV’s free version is the best to scan the malware files. You can also have the access to uninstall the application and delete unnecessary files from your computer in a free plan.
To access more features like VPN, password manager and more, you need to buy their premium plans.
Why do we need it for Android?
Android is the most used device worldwide where people spend most of their time every day. Unlike the computer, the cases for viruses attacks on mobile devices are less but still, we need to prevent any data loss and unwanted activities.
In Android phones, malicious files are installed that come along with the application you download from unknown sources. Further, in the background, it keeps tracking your activities of text messages, calling, internet browsing behavior and more. In this way, the hackers steal your personal information and copy it into their database.
To protect your Android from such unusual behavior and data breaches, it is recommended to install a trustworthy antivirus application.
Do you need TotalAV Antivirus on your Mac?
In 2019, there were more than 6 million phishing attacks done only on macOS and the most targeted country was India, Brazil and France. Thereafter the counting increased and affected too many Mac devices through several viruses that include Trojan and malware.
It gives the signal to all the Mac users to get alert and protect your MackBook, iPhone and other Apple devices from such suspicious activities. Though Apple itself provides the best technology in the world to secure your devices, still hackers keep trying to threaten you with advanced techniques. So definitely installing Total AV or another similar antivirus will protect you from data stolen and vulnerable viruses.
