Mbam...free or premium?


  1. Posts : 302
    Windows 10
       #1

    Mbam...free or premium?


    I have Malwarebytes Premium v. on my laptop for which I pay $25 per year. I just got a new Lenovo desktop w/the i5, 8G ram and 1T hard drive and wish to protect my new PC with their great product. My question: Is the paid version worth paying for? I had the free v. on my old desktop and it did real time monitoring, etc. What do I get with MBAM premium that I don't get with the free version?
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 382
    Windows 10 Home
       #2

    Paid version has website protection, ransomware protection, anti exploit and updates every hour and realtime protection. Free version does not have those options.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 1,524
    Win10 Pro
       #3

    If you have financial data on your PC then you should think hard about what you identity is worth.
      My Computers


  4. Posts : 13,896
    Win10 Version 22H2 Pro and Home, Win11 Pro and Home
       #4

    As mentioned, the paid version is running in the background while the free version has to be manually started when suspicioning problems or as part of your cleanup routine. Other than that I've seen no difference in what it can clean up, I have paid on some computers and free on others.
      My Computers


  5. Posts : 302
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #5

    prikker said:
    Paid version has website protection, ransomware protection, anti exploit and updates every hour and realtime protection. Free version does not have those options.
    So you would say to go with the paid v.?
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 824
    Win10/64 Pro 1511 (and 2 Win 7/64 Ult & Pro systems)
       #6

    Hi:

    As @Berton mentioned:

    Malwarebytes FREE is only a manual, on-demand scanner to help REMOVE malware that made it past your anti-virus and other defenses onto the system.
    Malwarebytes PREMIUM provides real-time protection to help PREVENT infection.

    As a general principle, prevention is always preferable to after-the-fact clean-up, especially for something like ransomware. By the time one is hit by the infection, clean-up will be too late.

    Whether Malwarebytes Premium is worth the cost is a decision each user must make. I reluctantly say this after many years as a paid user & supporter of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM). The new product, which is called just "Malwarebytes 3.0", has been aggressively marketed and highly touted by the company, despite more than 22 pages of trouble reports at their forum, since its release a few weeks ago re: performance, stability, GUI, and side-by-side compatibility issues, as well as a lack of clarity about its real capabilities and protection gaps. (For example, see this thread and this post.)

    If it were my computer, I would consider buying a Premium license for the 2nd computer.
    But I would for the time being use that license to install and activate MBAM version 2, alongside Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit (MBAE) Free or Premium (separate license needed), until version 3.0 is more stable.
    Having said that, there is at least one excellent, paid alternative (Emsisoft Anti-Malware), and at least one excellent anti-exploit alternative (HitmanPro Alert).

    MM
      My Computer


 

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