A company out of Eastern Europe says its client side anti-spam and anti-virus package is both cheaper and offers more features than the competition.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 22, 2004]

Bucharest, Romania-based BitDefender has long provided client-side anti-virus to end users. Now, the company is expanding its portfolio of services to include anti-spam. Although primarily focused on enterprise and residential users, the company is able to work with ISPs to sell its product.

The Professional Plus version provides:

• Anti-virus
• Anti-spam through a Bayesian filter
• Whitelist feature enabling whitelisting of a domain or e-mail
• Automatic compatibility with almost all e-mail clients
• A firewall
• Protection against auto-dialup
• Script control
• Cookie control

The company's new version 8 adds anti-spyware features, unclidng registry protection. It also strengthens the anti-spam component by adding URL and charset filters so that e-mails with unreadable characters are blocked.

More for less
The company's key selling point is that it provides more features than its competitors but at a lower price. "We're generally 66 percent of the price of our competitors, and we're flexible on pricing scheme," say Guy Eisdorfer, BitDefender CTO. Renewal fees are 50 percent of the purchase price, annually, but anti-virus and anti-spam profile updates are free.

A free version of BitDefender offers anti-virus scanning only, and a Standard version offers full anti-virus features but no anti-spam or firewall.

The BitDefender Enterprise manager product (pricing not available) enables the administrator to push updates and to implement file server protection. It is compatible with Microsoft and Linux OS but not UNIX or Solaris.

The company received some unusual publicity earlier this year when a google ad for McAfee said it could remove the "BitDefender virus."

ISPs have long complained about the price of anti-virus service. Many are reduced to recommending free services such as TrendMicro HouseCall or AVG. BitDefender, which offers a free scanner and an upsell opportunity, may be attractive to ISPs looking for a way to make some money from some subscribers while offering others a free, upgradeable, software package.

Pricing and availability
The product is available now. BitDefender Free Edition is, of course, free. The Standard edition retails for $29.95 and the Professional Plus edition retails for $44.95.

BitDefender is willing to work with large ISPs on resale and revenue share agreements. The company's U.S. offices in Boca Raton, Fla. opened in June of this year. Companies like BitDefender that have good market share elsewhere (i.e., Europe) but are new to the U.S. sometimes offer U.S. ISPs a good deal as part of their move to break into the U.S. market.

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