Advice Request Switching products

Please provide comments and solutions that are helpful to the author of this topic.

ESET Smart Security 9 or Norton Internet Security 2016

  • Norton Internet Security 2016

    Votes: 19 48.7%
  • ESET Smart Security 9

    Votes: 20 51.3%

  • Total voters
    39
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Frost

Level 2
Thread author
Verified
Jun 11, 2015
65
Hello MT community!

I have a Norton security license and a Eset SS license.


I was wondering if I should stick with Norton or go to ESET. I wanted your opinion.
 

Jrs30

Level 11
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Well-known
Feb 4, 2016
549
My vote was for ESET, since then never used Norton can not say anything about it! Use ESET and I think very good, in short, it is better than I expected!
I believe that Norton is very good, maybe even better than ESET, Norton users can say this with more certainty, because it uses the product. :)
 

Huchim

Level 5
Verified
Well-known
Oct 17, 2015
240
I was in the same question last month too :p. I tried both in clean systems (Windows 10). I have to say in performance both are awesome, However ESET causes random issues in https pages (including MT), also I couldn't use it alongside with adguard for windows (I have a lifetime license) even when I reported to ESET and Adguard, I didn't see changes.

With norton that problems doesn't happens, it has a great web filter and I saw SONAR in action (also I have custom settings). Recently Norton added exploit protection, as far I know it's excellent. Some bugs that I notice is that Norton is not recognized by windows and keeps active windows defender, I solved it desactivating auto-protect and firewall and then reactivating and that's it.

In conclusion my personal choose is Norton, I strongly recomend you to test both, also because there are some features like anti-theft in ESET which is missing in norton and Identy Safe in Norton.
 
A

Alkajak

ESET causes https issues on Microsoft Edge only. With that out of the way, ESET has far better security than Norton, and it is a favourite among this community and many others. Being a community favourite means even more users are hard at work making their favourite security product even better, submitting samples for analysis and making sure databases are updated ASAP to protect you against the newest malware. ESET is a little bit on the bulkier side on your system, but you have peace of mind when it comes to your security. Worth noting that ESET database updates are usually much better than Norton.

I've been exclusively testing the newest malware with Norton for a little while now, and I can say that their detection rate is still very good. Not as good as ESET, but still good. The way it handles malware is a little bit different. It is heavily based on dynamically catching the malware while it is running. That can sometimes prove to be troublesome. Just today (I'm about to post the actual sample results in the Malware Hub very soon), I had Norton catch a malware file through SONAR, but before being removed, the malware was able to run cmd.exe and conhost.exe and successfully access the system. No use in catching the file if the damage is done. All things said, Norton is a very easy-to-use security software that requires no custom tweaking to be a powerful product.

Both are great products, one is better than the other, one is a little bit simpler than the other.
 
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Jrs30

Level 11
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Well-known
Feb 4, 2016
549
I was in the same question last month too :p. I tried both in clean systems (Windows 10). I have to say in performance both are awesome, However ESET causes random issues in https pages (including MT), also I couldn't use it alongside with adguard for windows (I have a lifetime license) even when I reported to ESET and Adguard, I didn't see changes.

With norton that problems doesn't happens, it has a great web filter and I saw SONAR in action (also I have custom settings). Recently Norton added exploit protection, as far I know it's excellent. Some bugs that I notice is that Norton is not recognized by windows and keeps active windows defender, I solved it desactivating auto-protect and firewall and then reactivating and that's it.

In conclusion my personal choose is Norton, I strongly recomend you to test both, also because there are some features like anti-theft in ESET which is missing in norton and Identy Safe in Norton.
I had a single problem with ESET on HTTPS pages, inclisive was in MT.
Using Google Chrome, Firefox had no problems.
I had to configure the ESET to have no problems with the MT.
Uninstalled Chrome to see if it solved the problem, then the problem came back!
So I managed to set up and had no problems but.
 

OokamiCreed

Level 18
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Well-known
May 8, 2015
881
Personally I would stick with Norton not only because I use it and trust it, but they are rolling out exploit prevention. I have high expectations for Norton. As for ESET, it does have protection against exploits (if I recall correctly). It's probably one of the best (if not the best) in botnet detection.

Norton does have very good (and aggressive) anti-adware campaign going on and can kill many types of adware, even adware like OpenCandy despite it not technically be hostile in any way (and apparently making money for devs in what I consider a dirty method). ESET in adware has been well... it's been great for years before many other vendors. During install you can turn it on or off but Norton by default get rid of adware. Both methods allow a novice user to know it exist in some way and feel protection against adware (because both actually do their job).

Norton firewall in general seems much for refined and polished. Setting it on aggressive settings I can say that it does not block any good connections. Norton firewall is much easier to add/delete rules from along with much better zero day prevention via things like Sonar (behavioral). ESET HIPS to be truly effective against new malware can not be left on default or Smart mode. Neither of them will catch much.

ESET has far superior web protection than Norton. It's Norton's fall back of having other strengths I guess. Norton web blocking is about average to above average while ESET is far above average. As stated by @Huchim ESET can cause problems with HTTPS. Adguard has to be able to scan HTTPS web sites via its own certificate otherwise, no adblocking on HTTPS. ESET also wants to scan HTTPS sites via its certificate as well. This kind of creates a conflict (this also happens on AV like Kaspersky). ESET web scanning is probably better due to scanning of encrypted websites. I never put any thought or effort into thinking/trying to see if Norton scans HTTPS sites. I'd imagine not. Regardless, on ESET (and Kaspersky, etc) you can disable scanning of HTTPS websites to be rid of this conflict.

Norton feel lighter on the system in general (performance, RAM usage, CPU, etc). ESET (at least on my computer) does not slow anything down. Not even boot. RAM is higher yes, but RAM is faster (and in this case - works to ESET's advantage as also shown in several malware tests, including my own) ESET scans complete faster. Norton does have offline protection. It does the job as it can block new malware due to offline rules.

All in all, both are great. I also want to mention that ESET has some of the best and most responsive support I've ever seen. I've never had Norton return an email when I submit samples. Very frustrating. Protection wise (all in all) I believe Norton to be much better. Both protect the system especially if you use your brain (common sense).
 

Exterminator

Community Manager
Verified
Staff Member
Well-known
Oct 23, 2012
12,527
Well the only way to know for sure is to try them both.Since you already have Norton and it is serving you well I would stay with Norton.
Since you have a key for both you can always give ESS a try since your in a good position to give it more than a 30 day trial.
 

Jrs30

Level 11
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Well-known
Feb 4, 2016
549
Non know if this should be taken into account! But anyway is a positive ... One thing that made me stay at ESET's technical suport, I really was surprised, they serve very well, help you with any problem, I impresionado with this, it is difficult to find a technical support to give you so much attention ... I had trouble activating ESET on the computer of my sister, so I got in contact with the technical support and quickly sent me another activation key, I think it important, because we really want to know if the comsumidor this liking the product.
 

Morvotron

Level 7
Verified
Mar 24, 2015
307
If i had to add some arguments, i'd like to say that my experience with ESET was not as i expected it to be. The software it self had a great quantity of false positives and kept detecting almost every file that wanted to modify the registry as malware. In addition, real malware files kept getting missed. Disclaimer: tested in 2012, may have been improved. On the other hand, it was really light on my 1GB RAM Windows XP.

Norton talking, back when i tested it was really, really clever. And the SONAR system was the edge of glory. Anyways, back then system resources usage was disgusting. Heard that is fixed now.

In my opinion, and if i were you, i'd go with Norton and give it a try. It's a really strong, solid security. ESET is improving but it has never been at the level of Norton, Kaspersky, BitDefender, and similar. Now, ESET can offer a really good protection if you know how to use it and how to browse the web.

PS: If you wanna migrate to a paid good reliable software, there are alternative options to ESET. Mostly the two i've mentioned above.
 

Huchim

Level 5
Verified
Well-known
Oct 17, 2015
240
My opinion is strongly based on my recent expierence with both products for 1 month. Since I joined in this forum and I learned a lot about cybersecurity my choice in AV's now is based in three mainly things: Performance, bugs and conflicts with other softs,(I remember a poll with this) yes maybe there is a solution for https sites (not only MT) with ESET but that kind of bugs and some others like conflicts with adguard, you said good detection of malwares but ESET has failed me all USB malware that I found. Until now, I don't have troubles with Norton that harms my internet browsing, my softs and games.

Another reason is because Norton is cheaper than ESET :)
 

Razor555

Level 5
Verified
Sep 15, 2014
246
I have used norton a couple of years ago and it was not bad until it failed me on some virus detection and never used it again...

Currently I use eset and is doing well...
 
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D

Deleted Member 333v73x

Norton all the way, absolutely amazing the best AV I have ever used (and I have used a few)!

P.S: On the poll it isn't Norton Internet Security 2016 it's one package all together - Norton Security 2016.
 
H

hjlbx

Hello MT community!

I have a Norton security license and a Eset SS license.


I was wondering if I should stick with Norton or go to ESET. I wanted your opinion.

Either one is pretty good.

ESS9 is still buggy\problematic on some systems.
 
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