Sophos Home is one of the established Antivirus agents on the market, serving more than 100 million users worldwide. The software’s competitive features, value for money, decent level of protection and compatibility led many users to trust it with their data. Avast, on the other hand, has more than 400 million worldwide users and has established itself against some of the world’s top antivirus agents, such as Kaspersky and Bitdefender.

Our Sophos Home vs Avast comparison will put the two antivirus agents head-to-head to compare their features, installation processes and more, to see which software will rise victorious at the end. We need to say the results were close and almost resulted in a tie at the end. It came down to little differences between the two agents.

What is Sophos Home?

Sophos Home is the cybersecurity protective solution of Sophos, a computer software corporation based in the UK. This package of Sophos Antivirus, Sophos Home, is specifically designed for your household and comes in a free and single paid package. The software promises to protect your household from malware and ransomware, better blocks viruses, anti-phishing and hacking features, web protection and, most importantly, parental control settings.

What is Avast?

Avast Antivirus is a world-renowned cybersecurity solution from the Romanian cybersecurity company Avast. The software’s features are among some of the most competitive in the field of cybersecurity protection. It offers great protection against malware, solid antivirus, anti-spam, anti-phishing, email protection, a password manager, a SecureLine VPN and a powerful firewall. There is a free Avast Antivirus available and several paid plans where the level of protection and price increases.

Sophos Home vs Avast: Putting Each Protective Agent to the Test

Despite the similarities between our two contenders, we managed to find several differences that we think might help us choose a winner at the end. Let the battle begin!

Features

An antivirus agent’s features are its most important aspect and the main reason users prefer one agent over the other. Both our contenders share a variety of features, and each of them has more distinctive ones.

Sophos Home

Sophos Home nearly matches the protective features of its contender. The antivirus software provides comprehensive real-time protection, protection against ransomware, anti-phishing protection, webcam protection and a full system scan. Moreover, the software offers protection against adware, protects your browser, a password manager and protection for your banking operations. Even though the software offers good parental control settings, it doesn’t offer a VPN like Avast.

Avast

Avast offers a wide range of features, like its contender, but the range of these features depends on whether you’re using the free or paid package and which paid package you choose. Avast gives you a perfect real-time detection rate, protection against malware viruses, six types of scans, security updates and a powerful firewall which regularly monitors and detects any threats on your network. The paid packages offer detailed Wi-Fi security alerts, which alert you if a vulnerability arises on the network, a shield against ransomware and the SecureLine VPN for secure online browsing.

• Winner

Both contenders offer highly competitive features; it’s a clear tie.

Installation

Generally, installation processes aren’t complex and don’t take much time to finish. What can be annoying is too many customisation options at the beginning of the installation process, which can put some users off. More experienced or specialised users prefer detailed customisation options because they prefer to better control their device.

Sophos Home

Installing Sophos Home doesn’t take much time. You either choose the free package or the paid package and proceed to the download page. You needn’t customise many of the software’s features as you can choose the default settings.

Avast

The installation page appears after you choose your preferred plan, whether the free one or one of the paid plans and proceeded to payment. You download the installation file and run it on your device. Avast doesn’t display a list of unnecessary customisations. You only customise the main settings you need and then the installation process finishes in a few minutes.

• Winner

A tie!

User-friendly Interface

The dashboard is the first aspect your customer deals with after installing your antivirus product. While a complex dashboard doesn’t necessarily mean lower protection, it can cause discomfort for some users when they can’t find the settings they’re looking for right away.

Sophos Home

Sophos Home’s interface boasts shades of blue and green on a white background. In the centre of the dashboard, you will find the green checkmark indicating the protection of your device. Below it, you will find the main aspects of your device’s protection, such as malware protection and web protection. At the bottom, you will find useful tips that change according to the software’s assessment of your device. On the left-hand side, you will find all the customisation settings you need in six categories: My Activity and Add Device.

Avast

The blue shades of Avast Antivirus are easy on the eyes, and its dashboard is intuitive to navigate through. The centre green check in the dashboard is your protection indicator, which means everything is protected. If you’re using the free antivirus version, below the check mark in the centre screen, you will find a constant ad to incentivise you to buy a premium plan. The dashboard’s left-hand side has all the navigation options you need from Privacy and Performance to settings.

• Winner

The winner here depends on personal preference, we call this round a draw for the simplicity of both user interfaces.

Protection

The protective features of an antivirus agent are its main job, and the diversity and effectiveness of these features are what make or break this software. A proper antivirus agent will provide solid real-time protection and powerful online protection.

Sophos Home

Sophos Home offers decent real-time protection, but it uses behavioural patterns to identify threats; it identifies threats when you access the infected files, unlike Avast. The software’s AI threat detection works on identifying both known and developed malware variations. Sophos Home scored a Certified score in the Av-Tests, and in the Av-Comparatives tests, it scored an Approved score.

Avast

Avast antivirus has a 100% real-time detection rate, which is higher than the market average of 98%. With near-perfect scores in the Av-Tests and Av-Comparatives independent lab tests, Avast puts its AI technology to the best use to identify and block threats. The software utilises its Sandbox feature to test suspicious applications without causing damage to your device.

• Winner

Avast wins for its thorough protection.

Impact on System Performance

An antivirus agent’s impact on system performance is a direct reflection of the agent’s real-time protection. Since this means the software has to be running in the background, this might cause some lagging in your system and affect the system processes you’re attempting. Here’s how each of our contenders affects your system performance.

Sophos Home

Sophos Home has a massive impact on system performance. The software doesn’t offer quick scans so the only results we have are those of the full scans. Even though its full scan takes five minutes, it maximises CPU usage to 99% while its memory usage amounted to 48%.

Avast

Avast is generally characterised by its average impact on your device’s system performance. With a 30% CPU utilisation and 49% memory utilisation, these numbers are among the lowest on the market. Avast’s full scan takes about 60 minutes and scans over 1.8 million files, while its quick scan finishes in nearly 3 minutes and utilises 42% of CPU resources.

• Winner

Sophos Home was on the heavier side on the system resources, but Avast was lighter, with its average score wins this round.

Scanning

There isn’t much focus on the different types of scans an antivirus agent offers, which is unfortunate. The different types of scans serve different purposes and are designed to target varied files and locations on your device. We don’t take the diversity of scan types lightly and would prefer to have effective and diverse types of scans.

Sophos Home

Sophos Home is the only software agent we’ve encountered that offers one type of scan only: full system scans. The surprises continue that the scans finish in five minutes. This might be fast but we doubt it’s effective. Moreover, the software doesn’t show the detailed results of the scan at the end, so even if it stated the software found threats, you can’t know where they were found. Sophos Home doesn’t give you a detailed report of the number of items it scanned, which adds to the frustration.

Avast

Another one of Avast’s top-notch features is its diverse scanning options. In addition to the usual full scan, custom scan and quick scan, Avast offers a Smart Scan, a Boot-Time Scan which scans your device as it starts to detect any possible hidden malware. There’s a Targeted Scan which you can use to scan a specific location on your device.

• Winner

Avast wins this round; it provides more scan types and detailed results of each scan.

Pricing

Luckily, powerful antivirus agents don’t have to break the bank. Consumers indeed would want the best protection they can get for their data and work, but they would be most grateful if this protection didn’t cost them sweat, blood and tears. An ideal antivirus agent will provide good value for money, where you will multiple powerful protective features in exchange for the money you pay.

Sophos Home

Sophos Home comes in two main packages: a free one and a paid one. The paid package begins at $44.99 for a one-year subscription, and the price increases for two- and three-years subscriptions.

Avast

Besides its free antivirus version, Avast offers two paid antivirus packages. The two packages, the Premium and the Ultimate plans, the former begins at $59.28 and the latter begins at $119.99. You can protect from one to ten devices with each plan, but as you increase the number of devices, the price will increase as well.

• Winner

Avast might provide more paid packages’ than its contender, but we call this round a tie since Sophos Home offers good value for money.

Compatible Operating Systems

You’re likely use numerous devices at home that have different operating systems, and logically, you’d want an antivirus agent that would cover all these devices with their different operating systems. This is why compatibility with different operating systems is crucial.

Sophos Home

If you have multiple devices at home that use different operating systems, you needn’t worry; Sophos Home has all them covered. The software is compatible with the Windows and macOS operating systems and Android and iOS systems for smartphones.

Avast

Avast Antivirus and cybersecurity products are compatible with the Windows operating system, macOS, iOS and Android. This means Avast is compatible with the main operating systems for desktops and smartphones on the market. It’s worth mentioning that the desktop and smartphone versions are equally easy to install and use.

• Winner

Both our contenders support the same desktop and smartphone operating systems, this one is a clear tie.

Customer Support

You can’t build a proper antivirus software without providing it with swift and comprehensive customer support methods. These methods will help your customers in today’s fast-paced world to quickly solve their grievances to avoid any data damage. Which of our contenders offers the best customer support methods?

Sophos Home

If you’re using the free version from this software, you can use the company’s online forums and knowledge base to look for your problem, or you can try contacting them via their social media platforms. If you’ve purchased the paid package, you will get email support and live chat. This software doesn’t offer phone support or remote assistant support methods.

Avast

In addition to its rich and extensive online database, Avast offers its customers email and phone support, live chat and the company’s social media platforms. If you’re using Avast free antivirus, then the available customer support methods will be less by two methods than the paid versions.

• Winner

Avast offers more customer support methods for its users, so it wins the round.

To show you the shorter version of the comparison between our two contenders, here’s this table:

Avast won another battle against a well-established antivirus agent on the market, but we applaud Sophos Home for being a worthy contender.

The post Sophos Home vs Avast: A Fierce Battle of Antivirus Agents first appeared on Internet Safety Statistics.