Emsisoft Anti-Malware Review 2024: Good Protection for the Tech-Savvy

When it comes to Emsisoft, your ability to use this product will likely boil down to your level of comfort in configuring cybersecurity products on your own. 

Emsisoft provided us with solid malware protection during our testing. We liked the clean design. We also liked how fast it was and that it didn’t slow down our computer. But we weren’t fans of the shoddy browser extension or endless lists of settings and permissions that might throw the average person.

We'll dig into Emsisoft Anti-Malware Home to see where it ranks among the best antivirus programs.

Emsisoft review at a glance

Price	$39.95-$79.95/yr
Free plan	No
# of devices protected	1 - 5
Malware scans	Manual and scheduled
Real-time protection	Yes
EICAR test results	2/3
Firewall	No
Phishing protection	Yes
Compatibility	Windows, Android
Extras	Emergency Kit Maker
24/7 support	No
Learn more	Get Emsisoft Anti-Malware

Our experience

We tested Emsisoft Anti-Malware on our Windows 10 laptop. It was easy to install, and the dashboard was clean and pleasant looking. 

As soon as the download and installation were complete, we ran a scan. The malware scan took a little over a minute, which was impressive as some can take upwards of an hour, depending on the software. The average time is about five to 10 minutes.

We did notice there are a lot of features and configurations that might confuse newer antivirus users. And when we tried to toggle on the content filtering feature, we were told we needed permission from the “protection administrator.”

We were also prompted to install the browser extension, but it just flat-out didn’t work. We threw an EICAR test for phishing at the extension, and it failed. We went into our email inboxes and scoured our junk folders, and there were no notifications or warnings given. In general, we don’t feel the browser extension is worth the bother.

Based on the extensive lists of permissions available throughout the product, we would suggest Emsisoft for someone who is a little more tech-savvy. The settings menu alone offers exclusions, permissions, and an advanced section that could negatively affect your computer or browsing experience if you configured them incorrectly. 

Who is Emsisoft Anti-Malware best for?

• Recommended for digitally proficient users who want malware protection

Emsisoft Anti-Malware has a lot of configuration and permission options that may be outside the scope of capabilities for a lot of users. If you’re a more tech-savvy user who is comfortable with custom permissions, you may find this software very useful. 

If you’re more an antivirus beginner, we would recommend sticking to the scans or using a different product.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware prices and subscriptions

Emsisoft only has one plan for consumers, which ranges from $39.95-$79.95/yr. The only factor contributing to price is how many PCs you need to cover.  

The Home plan allows you to cover one, three, or five Windows computers on a single license. You’ll be paying per computer, so make sure you choose the one that fits your needs.

Since Emsisoft is focused on malware detection and removal, you won't really find features for performance optimization or extras like a virtual private network. This makes the single device plan expensive compared to our top alternatives:

• TotalAV: $29.00/yr (first year only)
• Bitdefender: $29.99/yr (first year only)
• McAfee: $39.99/first 2 yrs
• Emsisoft: $39.95/yr

It does become less expensive per device the more devices you add. It’s possible that splitting your licenses with a few friends could help you snag a cheaper yearly subscription.

	Anti-Malware Home
Starting price	$39.95/yr
# devices supported	1 - 5
Compatible with	Windows
Manual and auto scan
Phishing protection
Firewall
Real-time protection
Ransomware protection
Parental controls
Performance optimization tools
VPN

Emsisoft security features

Emsisoft's anti-malware product itself is pretty robust. We were able to scan our computer and delete suspicious files with ease. 

But some of the other features seemed too technical for the average user to understand, and some things, like the content filtering feature, weren’t even accessible to us. This is definitely a hit-or-miss product.

Malware and antivirus scan

Malware scanning is simple and easy to use. The scanning options are one of the main icons on the home screen of your dashboard, and even though it bills itself as an anti-malware product, it still works as an antivirus product too. 

You can perform a quick scan, malware scan, or custom scan, as well as scheduled scans. If it does find something suspicious, you can ignore, quarantine, or delete the file. 

Since the anti-malware portion of the product is the company’s main marketing focus, we weren’t surprised to find this to be the most robust tool in the dashboard.

Phishing protection

Emsisoft comes with a browser extension, known as Emsisoft Browser Security, that’s supposed to protect you against malware and phishing attacks on the web. 

The only problem is that it didn’t work, at least not for us. It failed the EICAR test instantly. When we tried to test the extension on our email’s spam folder, it didn’t catch anything. We weren’t super impressed with this feature.

Firewall

Emsisoft has a firewall toggle on the main page of its dashboard, but it actually doesn't have its own firewall. When we tried to toggle the firewall off, we received a pop-up from Emsisoft asking us to use the firewall's own settings.

Customer support confirmed that Emsissoft Anti-Malware Home doesn't include a standalone firewall. However, it does work alongside Windows' built-in firewall.

Real-time protection

The real-time protection is always active. This was apparent when we were running EICAR tests, and the real-time alerts were flagging the files trying to execute. 

There’s also a browser extension that’s supposed to flag spam, phishing, and suspicious files, but we didn’t have luck with it when we installed it on our Chrome browser.

Ransomware protection

Since Emsisoft is billing itself as a next-generation security product that’s anti-malware, it really focuses on protection against all forms of malware, including ransomware protection. It found old EICAR tests on our device that were remnants from other antivirus programs we’d tested; we were pretty impressed with that.

The anti-ransomware protections are bundled into the Behavior blocker tool.

Anti-fraud protection

The anti-fraud protection presents itself as content filtering. On installation, we were prompted to let Emsisoft be our administrator and advised that was best if we weren’t advanced users. 

When we tried to toggle on the content filtering, we were informed by a pop-up that we’d need to contact our “protection administrator” to change the setting, which we set as Emsisoft.

We were less than thrilled, especially considering there was no communication about that when we were setting up the product.

Bonus features

When Emsisoft says it's focused on malware detection and protection, it's not kidding; there's little in the way of features beyond this. 

We were compelled by the Emergency Kit Maker. You can create your own package to scan and clean third-party computers for your friends and family. 

Emsisoft test results

With antivirus programs, we focus on three categories of testing: scan speeds, in-house EICAR testing, and third-party test results. Emsisoft was speedy with its scans. It passed the malware EICAR tests, but failed the phishing test.

However, Emsisoft hasn’t submitted itself for third-party testing in several years. Third-party testing does cost the provider, in this case Emsisoft, a fee for submitting itself. This is likely the reason, but since the pricing structure is similar to other cybersecurity software, we’re not sure why this product would purposefully omit itself.

Scan speed

• Result: Fast

Emsisoft presents three types of scans straight from the main dashboard: quick scans, malware scans, and custom scans. There was no option for full device scans.

Scan type	Time spent
Quick scan	15 seconds
Malware scan	1 minute, 10 seconds

Emsisoft completed the quick scan and malware scan quickly and with no impact on our device perfromance. After the quick scan, Emsisoft detected a potentially unwanted program (PUP) and sent it to quarantine. 

EICAR test results

• Result: 2/3

The European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR) offers tools to help evaluate the effectiveness of cybersecurity products. It tests for various cyberthreats, like malware and phishing attempts. The samples provided mimic each of these to really give your cybersecurity product a run for its money. 

This is a great way to get additional information about the effectiveness of your software when there isn’t independent third-party testing information available.

Test	Emsisoft Anti-Malware Home score
Malware detection	Pass
Drive-by malware downloads	Pass
Phishing detection	Fail

Emsisoft passed all of its EICAR tests except the anti-phishing test. The browser extension was installed and active, but Emsisoft still didn’t catch the phishing test. We weren’t surprised as we also accessed our email with the browser extension active, and nothing in our spam folder was flagged. 

Overall, we likely wouldn’t use the browser extension, but everything else passed the tests.

AV-TEST results

• Result: Emsisoft's Windows results are solid, but several years old. 

AV-TEST is one of the most-trusted third-party testing sites online. If you’re looking for an antivirus review on any major product, either will tell you about the ease of use, false positives, and functionality of all the major security software suites available.

Test type	Windows 8.1 score	macOS Monterey score	Android 11 score
Protection	5.5/6	N/A	N/A
Performance	4.5/6	N/A	N/A
Usability	5/6	N/A	N/A
Total	15/18	N/A	N/A
Date	December 2016	N/A	N/A
Link to test	Link	N/A	N/A

Emsisoft had above satisfactory results based on AV-TEST's criteria. It was docked points for all three categories, protection, performance and usability. 

For protection, Emsisoft received a 98.7% against zero-day malware attacks, while the industry average was 98.8% (a minor markdown). For performance, Emsisoft slowed computer speeds significantly more than the industry average during launch of standard software applications, installation of frequently-used applications, and copying of files. And for usability, Emsisoft detected false positives in several categories while the industry average was usually 0.

Emsisoft only has AV-TEST results with its Windows program. The results are from almost a decade ago, hence the testing being completed for Windows 8.1.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware Home would benefit from submitting itself for regular testing.

AV-Comparatives test results

• Result: Emsisoft struggled with its real-world protection and performance impact tests, but received top marks for malware protection.

AV-Comparatives is another independent organization we reference when reviewing antivirus programs. We review the results for real-world protection, malware protection, and performance impact tests.

Test type	Mobile security	Real-world protection	Malware protection	Performance impact (Lower is better)
Score	N/A	98.5%	99.95%	13
Platform	N/A	Windows	Windows	Windows
Date	N/A	July - November 2018	September 2018	October 2018
Link	N/A	Link	Link	Link

Emsisoft hasn't submitted itself to AV-Comparatives since 2018, so the results are several years out of date and should be taken with a grain of salt. It's also never submitted its Android app for mobile security testing.

Emsisoft fell to the bottom of the list on real-world protection, coming in 16th out of 18. The top antivirus programs, which were Bitdefender, F-Secure, and Trend Micro, all had a 99.9% protection rate.

Emsisoft also came in 16th out of 17 due to its performance rate. ESET had the lowest impact score, with a rate of only 1.7 compared to Emsisoft's 13.0. 

However. Emsisoft had a solid malware protection rate, only 0.05% behind the 100% protection rate received by Avast, AVG, McAfee, Symantec, and Tencent.  

Emsisoft compatibility

Emsisoft currently supports the following:

• Windows 10 (64 bit)
• Windows 11 (64 bit)
• Android 5.0+

Emsisoft Browser Security is available for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

If you’re a macOS or iOS user, you won’t be able to use this product. We suggest using Mac-specific security like CleanMyMac if you’re looking for anti-malware support for your Apple device.

Emsisoft customer support

Emsisoft offers email and live chat support. The support page is extremely user-friendly, with the chat and email options presented at the top of the page. We love it when software doesn’t make us play detective to find the support options.

We reached out to customer support to confirm whether Emsisoft has a stand-alone firewall. The agent was friendly and quick to respond. 

Emsisoft also has an entire help site that offers self-serve troubleshooting. We suggest performing a search or clicking on a topic. If you can’t find what you need, definitely reach out. We love a good chatbox, and we’re glad to see it offered.

Top alternatives

Not all software is made the same. Great products can be right for some people while they don’t meet the needs of others. 

If you’re finding Emsisoft isn’t checking your boxes, try one of these other tried and tested antivirus programs. These all guarantee protection from viruses, malware, and other nasties floating around the web.

FAQs

Bottom line: Is Emsisoft good?

Emsisoft is good in the sense that it protects you from malware but it's not the most user-friendly or robust beyond anti-malware protection. 

We gauge that based on how much time we’d have to spend on the phone with our mom if we encouraged her to use the product. Since there are so many permissions and customizations available that the average person might not be familiar with, we guess we’d spend a very frustrating day trying to explain them all.

Overall, this is a good product for protection against malware, but you’d need to be fairly tech-savvy to get all of the usefulness you’re paying for from the software. 

If you’re looking for something less technical, check out our alternative selections, which are some of the best antivirus programs around.