BullGuard Review

Company Background

Bullguard was founded in 2002 in Copenhagen by Morten Lund and Theis Sondergaard. They are currently headquartered in London and have around 100 employees in offices throughout Europe.

In November 2018 Bullguard announced a partnership with NordVPN, one of the most trusted VPN services worldwide. The purpose of this partnership is to create an all-encompassing cybersecurity solution for today’s consumer market. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be plans to integrate that into their existing Internet Security package. It sells as a stand-alone.

Awards & Prizes

Bullguard consistently wins prizes from independent industry authorities for their antivirus packages. Month after month AV-TEST has granted the Internet Security package with a Top Product Award. AV Comparatives gave Advanced certificates for malware performance, malware removal and performance multiple times in 2018, with the performance award being an Advanced+ award. They’ve also brought home the Best Security Software Award from Tech for Techs.

The Premium Protection package from Bullguard is award worthy as well. It won multiple awards in 2018 from AV-Comparatives, including their prestigious Gold Award for malware protection.

Security Features

If you’re looking for a well-rounded security suite, you really don’t need to look further than Bullguard. Even the entry version is a solid program, offering anti-malware, anti-ransomware, safe browsing, and Game Booster. Bullguard’s vulnerably scanner, which is also included in the entry package, has racked up some excellent test scores in lab tests.

Looking at the Internet Security package, which includes the firewall missing in the entry package, you get a full-featured program, still at a reasonable price.

As a whole, Bullguard continues to receive top marks for protection, performance and usability in tests done by AV-Test.

Additional features

The entry version includes Game Booster. As the name suggests, this is something gamers might find attractive. And Bullguard is the only antivirus that has such a feature. It provides gamers with malware protection by working with your computer’s core processors, rearranging open applications to other cores, leaving your game free from spikes and drops in speed.

Other notable features in the Internet Security package include parental controls and a cloud integrated backup.

Ease of use & Performance

AV-Tests have given Bullguard great marks on performance and usability, two factors that impact the speed of your system. You can be sure Bullguard won’t slow you down whatever you’re doing. It’s running efficiently in the background, keeping you safe.

If you’re a serious gamer, there’s really no other choice, since Bullguard has built services for this specific market segment into its core, no matter which package you use. Gamers are very sensitive to performance issues and anything that may impact that performance. And often times programs like antivirus can be resource hogs. Not so with Bullguard. It’s built with gamers in mind.

Number of licenses & Package details

Bullguard has 3 different protection packages, starting with the entry level Antivirus, the mid-level Internet Security package, and finally the Premium Protection package.

Customer Support

Depending on the language you speak, Bullguard offers email support 24/7. But that is limited to English and Romanian support help. And again, it’s only email. For those speaking French, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, German or Swedish, your email option is limited to 9 am to 5 pm CET.

They do have extensive Product Guides available as well as a searchable Help Center with quite a few FAQs.

Lastly, Bullguard also manages a fairly busy user forum called the Bullguard Zone. General customers or gamers can post questions or concerns and get answers from their peers or Bullguard support staff.

Bottom Line

I’m not going to tell you this is the best antivirus on the market, because it isn’t. Frankly, I would say there’s no such thing as the best antivirus, because every user and every household will have differing and specific needs.

As pointed out above, if you’re a gamer, then this is clearly the best choice. If not, and you’re looking for a relatively inexpensive antivirus (in comparison to some of its competitors), I wouldn’t hold back from recommending Bullguard. Having said that, I would probably move up to the mid or Premium tier packages because the relatively small increase in price does add a bunch of useful features.