Bitdefender Total Security Reviews

All customers start with Bitdefender Central, the software’s control panel for administrative tasks like activating subscriptions and contacting customer support. It features a security dashboard for a quick look into your devices health, notifying you if they’re at risk.

However, you must install the solution’s main app to really start protecting yourself. Curiously, it has the same name as the package – Total Security. It’s incredibly intuitive and provides comprehensive access to all features, from scanning to file shredding. Its customizable dashboard allows users to create shortcuts for their favorite tools, choose a dark theme, change the language, and enable automatic updates.

Bitdefender Total Security shines with its variety of customizable antivirus scans. Users can dictate scanning patterns, manage exceptions, and choose what actions to take with threats. Plus, it offers free extras for enhancing performance and privacy, such as a VPN, parental controls, webcam protection, and anti-theft tools.

Bitdefender provides various security solutions, and Total Security is one of its most comprehensive plans. It offers broader usage than the Windows-exclusive Bitdefender Internet Security plan. It is only surpassed by the Family Pack (with support for up to 15 devices) or the all-in-one Ultimate and Premium packages (which include valuable features like a password manager and credit monitoring).

Bitdefender Total Security’s quick scan hunts for surface-level threats and took three minutes to scan 7,650 files with low CPU usage. This is unlike its system scan, which delves deep into your system and demands more processing power. It took 25 minutes to scan one million files with considerable CPU usage.

Despite the occasional 100% spikes, it’s possible to run the system scan in the background and continue using your device, as long as you don’t need to do anything requiring serious computing muscle. For a smoother experience, you can also create custom scans, as lowering their priority will make the scan slower and use less CPU.

Bitdefender Total Security includes a rescue environment scan, which protects your device against resilient threats that can’t be erased while the operating system is running. Additionally, its vulnerability scan checks for entry points vulnerable to remote and unauthorized access, data breaches, or malicious exploitation.

Not only does Bitdefender provide real-time active protection, but it also lets users customize the scans, such as setting it to scan only specific applications and network paths or to ignore archives based on size.

Dealing with false positives is also easy since users can indicate which files are scan exceptions and restore quarantined files. Plus, Bitdefender Total Security handily scans CDs, and flash and network drives.

You can get Bitdefender Antivirus free or for a decent price with the desktop version, Antivirus Plus or Antivirus for macOS. However, remember that an antivirus alone may not prevent all threats.

Bitdefender Total Security‘s extra tools are what make this a robust solution. The combination of its comprehensive firewall, online threat prevention, antispam, plus email, ransomware, and crypto mining protection creates an impregnable barrier against all threats.

To maintain the privacy and security of your online footprint, Bitdefender includes a VPN, microphone protection, anti-tracker, and parental controls. Unfortunately, unlike the Premium package, its VPN is limited to 200MB per day per device. With over 4,000 servers in over 50 countries, highly secure encryption, and compatibility across up to ten devices, its bandwidth limit is its only downside.

Bitdefender’s microphone and webcam protection allows you to restrict their use for specific processes, with notifications sent when apps or browsers try to access them. The parental controls, the only tool manageable from the Bitdefender Center app, lets you continuously monitor and filter your child’s online activity. It provides screen time and location information, reports, and notifications. However, setting screen time limits for individual apps is impossible.

Bitdefender Total Security goes a step further and provides handy tools like anti-theft, which lets you locate, block, or even erase data from devices using the software. Its file shredder ensures there aren’t leftovers after deleting files, while its OneClick Optimizer optimizes your device with a disk, registry, and privacy cleanup.

Unfortunately, we could not test Safepay, Bitdefender’s browser designed to protect users during online transactions. Every time we tried to open it, it would immediately close.

All Bitdefender Total Security apps are user-friendly and easy to navigate across all operating systems. The package is compatible with operating systems Windows 7, macOS 10.10, Android 5.0, and iOS 11.2 and onwards. While its mobile app doesn’t include some of the features present in the Windows or macOS versions, it does instead offer mobile-exclusive tools, like the app lock, app anomaly detection, and scam alert.

Bitdefender Total Security offers three payment plans, with options for five or ten devices and different durations. The most economical option is the 1-year subscription for five devices, which the company has reduced to a mere $69.99 per year or $5.83 per month. All features remain the same across plans.

This solution provides many more features than Bitdefender’s Internet Security and Antivirus Plus packages. It’s possible to extend them even further with add-ons. One of the options is Bitdefender’s Digital Identity Protection, which warns you if a data breach exposes your personal information, for only $3.33 per month (billed annually).

Identity Theft Protection is another add-on and costs $6.67 per month, billed annually. It includes identity theft insurance of up to $1 million and credit card monitoring. Unfortunately, it’s only available to U.S. citizens.

Anyone doubting the strength of Bitdefender Total Security can check it out for themselves by signing up for its 30-day free trial without handing over any credit card information. If you feel 30 days is insufficient for getting a sense of the product, you can extend it with Bitdefender’s 30-day money-back guarantee.

Bitdefender accepts credit and debit cards, PayPal, and other payment methods processed via 2checkout.

Whether you need instant help or just some specific features explained, numerous resources are available. Bitdefender has a support center with FAQs, user guides, video tutorials, tips and tricks, and even a large community where you can quickly get answers from experts.

Its live chat is perfect for a quick and more personal approach. Our experience with it couldn’t have been better as we got a helpful reply within two minutes. Its additional customer support channels include an email contact form and a phone number.

We recommend you always use those channels for support instead of its social media accounts, which include Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X.

However, the glitchy Safepay, the lack of a password manager, and, more importantly, the VPN’s limited bandwidth might deter potential customers. Still, the truth is that Bitdefender’s scans are fast and stable, so unless your online activities require high bandwidth usage, it’ll all be smooth sailing.

Combining the 30-day free trial with Bitdefender Total Security’s 30-day money-back guarantee may be enough to convince any commitment-phobes how enticingly comprehensive this internet security suite truly is.