cost should be considered.(My opinion only) 20 dollars for a year would be my maximum for Emsisoft ,you can get great deals for less on Kaspersky total security, or Eset Premium @ E-Bay and Windows defender competes with all for free.
1-You can't compare the needs of a small company with bigger ones, they have bigger user base so much more incomes which allow them to reduce prices unlike smaller companies. Emsisoft can't underprice their products, I saw many small vendors cheap-selling or permanently offering giveaways, most are almost dead, best example: Zemana...
Not saying if you are really tight on your budget, you can still bargain a deal with Emsisoft sales team.
When i was their Community Manager, there was a member here always complainimg about Emsi prices, saying it is too expensive when you want buy several licenses for a big family. I managed to get him a very good deal but guess what? he never followed through...
2- Emsisoft is about quality (no bloat and other crap) and privacy, they don't make money with your datas and before implementing any features, it us heavily discussed for pro and cons. Best example, the decision to ditch any builtin firewall even if it meant to lose some customers.
Tell me another vendor doing it, none, better add half-baked/buggy feature and get more cash...
If I was average joe, I rather pay double for Emsisoft knowing my datas are safe, and I have an almost immediate response from the support in case of issues.
And with Emsisoft, your license won't end in the dark market, no cracks or keygen, they are blacklisted/fixed as soon as discovered, even crackers told me they are annoyed by Emsi...
As I always say, quality has a price.