Companies that offer antivirus protection for free are taking a bit of a gamble. Getting thousands or millions of non-paying users is only practical if the mindshare and reputation that's created results in sales of higher-end for-pay security solutions. Some vendors go all in, making their free antivirus a showpiece. Avira Free AntiVirus (2014) doesn't quite go that route. The free product lacks some features of the paid edition, and users aren't entitled to any direct help from tech support. That can be a problem if malware cleanup causes system problems, as I discovered in testing.
Every feature that's present in other Avira products, right up to the top-of-the-line "ultimate" suite, is represented on the free product's main window, making it a bit busy. Features that aren't actually available are simply disabled and grayed out. Hovering over grayed out controls gets a tooltip explaining that an upgrade is needed in order to use this component. Of course the real-time protection, system scanning, and update components are ready and available.
Trouble with Installation, Scanning
Ransomware on one of my test systems blocks access to the desktop, so getting antivirus protection installed is always a challenge. With no option for active tech support, I relied on the bootable Avira Rescue System to solve this problem; it did!
Malware on another system actively terminated Avira's installer every time it launched. The Rescue System helped here too. After installing the antivirus I got a message that one of its services wasn't working correctly. A full uninstall and reinstall solved that one.
When Avira detects active malware, it pops up a notification and makes an alert noise using the PC Speaker. In theory it should only pop up once for a given threat, but on one test system it detected the same items over and over, making quite a racket. In addition, the system kept spontaneously rebooting, perhaps due to partially-removed malware. I couldn't complete an update or scan.
The Rescue System partially solved this problem, but it left the test system with no network connectivity. Finally, on one test system Avira never did manage to install, not even after a full scan by the Rescue System.
As noted, there's no tech support for the free edition, so the average user would have needed to seek help elsewhere. Avira does offer an "Experts Market" where users can contact (and pay) experts for help, but of course reaching the market requires an Internet connection. And really, how happy would you be paying for tech support to fix a system problem caused by a free product? That would really be a crummy installation experience.
Mid-level Malware Removal
Avira detected 72 percent of the malware samples infesting my test systems and scored 5.7 points, a hair below the score achieved by avast! Free Antivirus 8 and Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ 10.5. Interestingly, the previous edition of Avira's free antivirus earned almost exactly the same scores when tested with my previous malware collection.
The top scorer among current products is Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (2014), with 89 percent detection and 6.6 points. AVG AntiVirus FREE 2014 did quite well, scoring 6.4 points, and Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (2014) managed 6.2 points.
Tested with my previous malware collection, the free, cleanup-only Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.70 beat all other free and paid programs, with a detection rate of 8.9 percent and a score of 7.1 points. For a detailed explanation of my malware removal testing methodology, please How We Test Malware Removal.
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