Bitdefender GravityZone is a SysAdmin's Dream Come True
August 22, 2018
Bitdefender GravityZone is a SysAdmin's Dream Come True
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Bitdefender GravityZone
We use Bitdefender on all workstations and servers. It solves our need to protect our systems from malware and from malware-infected sites. It scans any device connected to the computer when inserted, so that USB drives, DVD drives, and other external sources can't contaminate the computer. Bitdefender is an easy-to-install, easy to maintain, and easy to update anti-malware solution--no matter how large or how small your system footprint is. The GravityZone product is cloud-based, which means that I can get a handle on installations, infections, and settings no matter where I am or what time of day it is. The cloud-based solution is somewhat different than the on-premise version, but for budget-minded companies, the cloud version (GravityZone) works very well.
- Bitdefender automatically updates without any user intervention. Updates happen in the background and a reboot is not required--at least in two years it hasn't been.
- I schedule Bitdefender to perform full scans on systems every Friday. I've never had a user complain about a system that is slow because of the full scan.
- I like that we can manage Bitdefender actions and features from the website. For example, I can place systems in different groups or profiles to enable or disable different features.
- I also like that Bitdefender has its own built-in firewall. It's very restrictive and logs every action against it.
- I wish we could access logs from the cloud-based product. Not just in a viewable sense but from a download so that we can scrape them for interesting strings.
- Bitdefender needs to make it easier to export data from the web interface. As it stands now, it's a time-consuming copy and paste activity.
- I would like for there to a notification service when someone encounters malware. For example, an email to our IT team when someone's Bitdefender quarantines a file.
- The ROI for Bitdefender is hard to quantify except that it requires very little maintenance time from our staff.
- We've spent no time troubleshooting user complaints or issues from users, so it has been a big time-saver over our previously used anti-malware software.
- Bitdefender's customer service is usually pretty good and also very responsive, so I don't have to wait by the phone or to keep checking email to resolve a problem--although our issues have been mostly informational and not a problem with functionality.
I have experience with AVG, McAfee, and Avast products. All are good, but Bitdefender is better. Bitdefender has caused no user downtime or user complaints in two years. Not so with the others. With AVG, there were issues with users not understanding what was happening with their systems for updates and if a virus was detected. McAfee caused a lot of BSODs and was maintenance-heavy. Avast was good but the systems were almost unusable during a scan and updates almost always required a reboot. AVG updates also frequently required reboots.
Bitdefender GravityZone Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
No - I'm not sure there is premium support. I haven't checked into a pay for better support model. We send an email to the support desk and usually get an answer back within a few minutes, so there's no need. There has only been one incident that a problem was not resolved and the result was that the product did not support exporting online data to Excel.
I had an issue, described elsewhere in this review that I couldn't export reports from GravityZone to an Excel spreadsheet. The very persistent support person would not stop helping me until the problem was resolved. I couldn't export to Excel but I could use another method of copy/paste to get the info I needed into Excel. The feature just doesn't exist, but she helped me figure out a solution. Few, if any, support people would do that. She wouldn't give up on it and figured out a way for me to get what I needed. Exceptional.