Update - Avast for Business Basic Antivirus and (Premium) Endpoint Protection

Avast Business
1

Dear Customers,

In the world of cybersecurity and malware, what was cutting-edge yesterday is old hat tomorrow, which is why we never rest. We’re focused on staying ahead of the bad guys. We issue updates, upgrades, and patches regularly to keep you fully protected by the best there is. Our latest update in business security is a major one — we are phasing out Avast for Business Basic Antivirus and Endpoint Protection/Premium products.

As of October 15, 2018, Avast will no longer provide license renewals, sales support, product development, technical support, or virus signature updates for these products. Our Basic Antivirus users will need to upgrade to one of the following Avast Business products to continue to receive ongoing security updates beyond that date: Avast Business Antivirus, Avast Business Antivirus Pro, or Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus.

Our loyal Avast for Business customers are eligible for a substantial savings on their upgrade, some up to 50% off and some even free of charge.

You can find more at our official blog announcement.

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on this thread.

Regards,

Sean

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So… what happened with the Free Forever promise?

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Good Question: what happened with the Free Forever promise?

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Hi, in IT “lifetime” is usually related to the product (not your lifetime).
As AFB Basic was/is offered for free until its EOL, I’d say promise kept.

5

EOL in 2 years? You are joking right? NON of Avast products live 2 years only.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1471749-3-reasons-to-use-avast-for-business-at-your-business.

Anyways, this feels like a nice and straight forward stab in the back.

Besides this free account, I also have a paid account which I’ll move elsewhere.

Avast, once my favorite, just made it to bottom of my list.

6

The broke the promise, maybe is time we broke the relationship as well

7

Free forever? Apparently it was just a bunch of useless marketing Hooey.

I’m migrating my Business users to another product. Not Avast.

You’ve damaged your reputation with this move. How can you be trusted after this?

8

I have it on a lot of computers too. It will be removed and something else purchased in its place. I refuse to be tricked and forced into a program.

9

This is terrible business practice - hook loads of people in on false promises and then start charging.

When we did our business proposal to toll out Avast for Business Basic, we recorded the following:

Data taken from the following URL 22-Nov-2016: https://www.avast.com/lp-afb-spiceworks

• [b]Avast for Business is free to use for as long as you want[/b] and for an unlimited number of admins and devices
• A price that you can afford. It’s free! No seat limits. [b]No time-limited licenses[/b]. No worries!
• Pay as you go. With no contract or commitment, you can turn Premium on and off and add and remove devices as you like, at no extra cost.

News Articles about the launch of the Free business version:

http://www.channelbuzz.ca/2015/02/avast-seeking-msps-sell-new-freemium-avast-business-offering-12111/
https://smallbiztrends.com/2015/02/avast-for-business-security.html
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/malware/how-much-does-business-av-cost-try-free.html

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Our firm wholeheartedly agrees with the past six replies, this was advertised as “free to use for as long as you want”. Well, WE WANT to use it for longer than just 2 years.

This is a HUGE inconvenience because our firm has installed endpoints on nearly 100 PCs and now we are forced to contact all users to move them to another solution that’s not Avast since we feel that this is rather scammy-like, hook-and-grab scheme.

As a note, we didn’t charge a DIME for the service as we believe in FREE. Apparently AVAST no longer believes in that now, sad.

11

Totally agree with the above - have been shopping for alternatives since this notice came through - second thing in a row to erode confidence in your products. Goodbye.

12

Thanks for the lie, will be finding something else as well, besides AVAST has gone down hill in the last few years. Have not been happy with some of the addations / changes.

13

Not just Avast scammed us in installing “Free Forever” product, as of today, their new premium and paid web shield blocking some computers from internet access all together.
What a disaster
Thankfully I have found a replacement. But its pain redoing almost 400 endpoints.