PC Matic Review 2024: Better Than Other Antiviruses?

PC Matic is different from most antivirus programs I’ve ever tested. Instead of using a blacklist of known malware like most antiviruses, PC Matic’s antivirus scanner has a whitelist of all known legitimate programs. In the default settings, it will block anything that isn’t on this list. I wanted to see if this unconventional approach actually works. To find out, I tested it against a wide range of malware, including viruses, trojans, and ransomware. I also assessed its additional features, ease of use, and overall value.

During my tests, PC Matic’s malware detection rate was 100% — which is impressive. Depending on which plan you get, you’ll also get extras like a VPN and a comprehensive identity theft protection service. All of these work well and bring a fair amount of value to the table. Despite some bugs, PC Matic offers effective protection. It’s basically a plug-in-and-forget security tool.

Unfortunately, PC Matic has some serious issues. While its scanner has perfect malware detection rates, it also blocked a lot of completely legitimate programs. You can make it so PC Matic takes a more traditional blacklisting approach, but this kind of subverts PC Matic’s main selling point. In any case, it’s missing extras like parental controls, webcam and microphone protection. There are some optimization tools, but they’re somewhat limited. Even basic features like defenses against dangerous websites are totally absent.

I don’t think PC Matic can compete with the best antivirus programs in 2024. But while it may not be the superhero of antivirus programs, it’s a decent, easy-to-use antivirus that provides good protection against malware. I really like PC Matic’s Personal plan. It comes with all features, coverage for all personal devices, and costs $100.00 / year. All plans are backed by a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee, which gives you plenty of time to try them out.

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PC Matic Full Review

PC Matic is a basic antivirus that works out of the box. By default, it uses whitelisting to block malware, which works well, but it often blocks legitimate programs. If you turn this off, PC Matic will work like most other antiviruses, i.e. by relying on a blacklist.

PC Matic’s Windows and Mac apps are good, but the iOS and Android apps are very basic (check out the best antiviruses for Android and iOS if you’re after a mobile antivirus).

PC Matic doesn’t have all the advanced features of top antiviruses like Norton and McAfee. It also has a major blind spot when it comes to dangerous websites. That said, it offers strong protection against malware and is well-suited for non-techy users looking for a thorough defense system. It’s available in English, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese.

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PC Matic Security Features

Anti-Malware Engine

PC Matic uses whitelisting to block malicious programs. Its real-time protection feature, SuperShield, uses a database of known “good” or legitimate programs and blocks everything that isn’t in that database. If a program is detected that isn’t on PC Matic’s list, it’s automatically sent to the company’s testing team. If it proves to be safe, it ends up on the whitelist. According to PC Matic, this process takes about 24 hours, but you can manually whitelist a program if you don’t want to wait until PC Matic’s team tests it. I like that programs are automatically sent for testing, but I wish there was a way to turn this off for privacy-oriented users.

PC Matic argues that this whitelisting strategy is superior. For some, this is probably true. But I have to object to PC Matic’s suggestion that other antiviruses rely entirely on blacklisting. In addition to malware databases (blacklists), premium antiviruses like Norton and Bitdefender use artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify and block emerging and advanced threats, and it works really well.

False positives are inevitable with any antivirus, but they’re far more common with PC Matic. This is inherent to its design. It even flagged the official Firefox uninstaller tool, which surprised me. Still, it’s easy to whitelist applications on your own. I could allow programs I trusted that PC Matic didn’t recognize as soon as SuperShield identified them. The dashboard also shows a list of recently blocked programs and there’s an Allow button next to each.

Note that SuperShield mostly acts in the background. There isn’t much of a graphical interface, and it’s actually distinct from the PC Matic app. You may not notice it’s even there. I’m not sure why this is (most antiviruses work fine with only one app), but SuperShield worked great in my tests. To tweak its settings, you need to find the SuperShield app in the system tray. Right-click on it, and you can open up a list of programs you’ve allowed it to block and see all the items you’ve added to your local whitelist.

You also have the option to set SuperShield to Industry Standard mode. With this enabled, PC Matic will rely on a blacklist instead. This reduced false positives in my tests, but it kind of negates the entire appeal of PC Matic. It still detected every threat when I tested Industry Standard mode, but there’s reason to believe this will make PC Matic less secure against newer threats.

PC Matic’s SuperShield is excellent at detecting malware, but the whitelisting approach has its downsides. I’d like to see PC Matic come up with a more effective way to separate safe, unknown programs from dangerous, unknown threats. However, I agree that it’s better for an antivirus program to show more false positives than false negatives. And I can’t say that PC Matic’s approach doesn’t work — after all, it was excellent at blocking all types of malware during my tests.

System Scan

In addition to the SuperShield app, PC Matic includes an on-demand scanner. Even though the description for this scanner tells you that “running a scan is not required to remain protected”, it’s still worth running every now and again. It will look for unknown programs, delete junk files, look for out-of-date apps, and do minor performance tweaks.

The scanner allows you to run quick scans, full scans, and customs scans of specific folders. You can also schedule scans, but this option is hidden away in the Devices tab.

Running a scan will double-check SuperShield’s work, making sure that you don’t have any unapproved apps on your computer. Additionally, it will delete junk files, check for updates for PC Matic itself as well as other installed apps, and initiate minor performance tweaks. The dashboard also shows your device’s performance stats, which is neat. You can even find 4 graphs showing your performance and bandwidth usage over the past week, but half of these didn’t show any data for me. Even when these features work, none of them are as comprehensive as what you get with competitors like Norton.

To be more specific, PC Matic’s scans only look at a tiny subset of files when it looks to remove junk. Don’t expect to free up more than a couple hundred MB of space. In contrast, Avira was able to remove a whopping 26 GB of junk from my computer. This massive difference is because PC Matic is so cautious (it’s clearly the app’s guiding philosophy of cybersecurity). It only goes after temporary Windows files because these are always safe to remove. Many competitors choose a bolder approach, identifying types of files the user probably wants gone.

The app updater worked perfectly in my tests. I manually downgraded Firefox and WinRAR to test it out. PC Matic detected that both programs needed an update and automatically replaced them with the latest versions. Still, PC Matic lacks useful tools like TotalAV’s application uninstaller or something like Avira’s driver updater.

When scans finish successfully, you can see a detailed report. It shows any non-whitelisted files found, the amount of junk cleared, and any apps that were updated.

Beyond that, the scanner has major issues. Sometimes full scans simply never finish. I left my computer on overnight, and it was still stuck at 90% of Part 6 (the scan is segmented into parts for some reason). Other times scans would seemingly finish and provide a brief report on what it did, but the space on the dashboard showing when my last scan was performed was never updated to show the most recent scan.

I also had issues with quick sans. These always completed properly in my tests when I left the app alone, but I discovered that if you switch away from the main Security tab in the app and then return to it, your scan apparently gets aborted with no warning. The same bug is present for full scans.

On the whole, PC Matic’s scanner is a bit of a buggy mess. It performs useful tasks but ultimately doesn’t work very well. As the app itself suggests, this isn’t a big deal because SuperShield does all the legwork when it comes to protecting your device. Still, it includes a scanner front and center on the dashboard so you’d think that it would work flawlessly. I’ve never had issues like this with any of the best antiviruses I’ve tested.

Identity Theft Protection

PC Matic works with IdentityForce to offer identity theft protection (up to $1M in coverage) and dark web monitoring. After purchasing a plan that includes identity theft protection, PC Matic will give you the code you need to sign up and point you to a registration page on IdentityForce’s website. That said, most of its features are only available to US residents, so if you live elsewhere, you’ll probably want to pick up a plan without identity theft protections.

You need to use the IdentityForce website (rather than PC Matic) to access all identity features. Once you’re registered, you can add various details to your account, such as your phone number, email, Social Security number, driver’s license number, and health insurance information. You can also monitor up to 10 credit/debit cards and 10 bank accounts. You’ll get credit monitoring, too, which is essential if your personal details have been leaked.

Identity Force scanned the dark web for details as soon as I registered. Several minutes later, it alerted me to a handful of breaches involving my phone number, email address, and social security number. It provided details about how the breaches occurred and gave me clear and simple advice on what to do to rectify the situation. I was also given the option to open a case with one of IdentityForce’s specialists.

In addition to specialist support and data breach monitoring, IdentityForce provides PC Matic subscribers with a few extras, but they aren’t nearly as useful. There’s a web-based password vault you can use to store sensitive information and an additional 100 MB of file storage, but it pales in comparison to the best password managers. You’ll have to copy and paste your credentials into the websites you use, as there’s no auto-save/auto-fill function. It’s also impossible to import existing passwords, so you need to add them one at a time. 1Password, on the other hand, lets you import passwords and has seamless auto-save/auto-fill alongside extras like password auditing. It even checks to see if any of your saved passwords have been involved in breaches.

These features are only available to Personal or Family plan subscribers. If you subscribe to the lower-tier plan, you won’t get access to it. It can’t quite compete with Norton’s live agent approach to dark web monitoring which is integrated into its antivirus dashboard. Still, it’s certainly a useful addition to PC Matic’s features. Credit monitoring is only available for customers in the US, but unlike with Norton, you can use the dark web monitoring from anywhere.

Ad Blocker

PC Matic’s ad blocker is powered by uBlock Origin, and it works really well. I tested it by visiting multiple ad-heavy websites, and PC Matic consistently blocked every ad on those sites.

That said, the ad blocker doesn’t add any extra features to uBlock Origin — so I don’t know why you’d download it over uBlock Origin (especially when both are available for free). In fact, when I clicked support pages in the Ad Blocker’s settings, I was redirected to uBlock Origin’s support articles! I’d really like to see PC Matic include its own ad blocker built from the ground up like competitors such as TotalAV do.

Unfortunately, for some users (including myself), the Firefox and Chrome store pages for the extension include a warning that the extension may soon be removed. This is also the case with the vanilla uBlock Origin extension. As a result, affected users won’t be able to find PC Matic’s ad blocker by searching through those browser’s extension libraries. If this is you, you’ll need to find the direct link on PC Matic’s website. The ad blocker is supposed to be automatically installed with the antivirus, but this isn’t the case since the extensions have been flagged. That said, it was automatically installed on my Brave and Edge browsers.

PC Matic is currently working on a fix for this. In the future, there should be an effective ad blocker that complies with all major browsers’s standards. For the moment, the ad blocker still works flawlessly. But there’s no telling when Chrome and Firefox might take it down and whether PC Matic will have a replacement ready when that happens.

Nonetheless, PC Matic’s ad blocker does successfully block ads on every website. So if you’re in the market for a simple ad blocker that works well and want to stick with PC Matic products, then it’s a good addition to PC Matic’s features.

VPN

PC Matic’s pricier plans come with a virtual private network (VPN). It can protect your online privacy by hiding your IP address, and it offers standard VPN features such as unbreakable 256-bit AES encryption and a no-logs policy. It accommodates up to 5 simultaneous connections and is compatible with Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices.

I like how you can connect to the best available location with one click. In my tests, I was easily able to connect to my local VPN server. I also appreciate how the VPN lists the server loads, enabling you to choose less populated servers that will give you better speeds. Overall, it has good speeds, lets you choose between 3 VPN protocols, supports torrenting, and works with most streaming services.

In addition to the standard security features, the VPN comes with some useful extras. The split-tunneling tool, for example, lets you route some apps through the VPN while others use your normal connection. This worked well in my tests and was very easy to use.

It also has a kill switch which will immediately turn off your internet if the VPN connection drops. This is essential if you don’t want anyone to see your real IP address. I thought it was strange that this feature was disabled by default, but then I discovered why — if you turn it on, your connection will be blocked even if the VPN is inactive. None of the best standalone VPNs suffer from this design issue.

The VPN is available on PC Matic’s Personal and Family plans. You can also get it as a standalone product, priced at $80.00 / year. I find this quite pricey considering that more feature-rich premium VPNs like ExpressVPN can be purchased for a similar cost.

PC Matic Plans & Pricing

PC Matic offers 3 different plans for home users. While they’re pretty basic when compared to top brands like Norton or TotalAV, they’re a decent option if you don’t need a lot of extra internet security features and are interested in PC Matic’s whitelisting approach. All plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee and you can choose between a 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year subscription.

Here’s an overview of PC Matic’s plans:

PC Matic — Basic Plan

PC Matic’s basic plan includes all of PC Matic’s basic security features. It’s missing a couple of features that you get with the pricier plans, but it can block all dangerous software thanks to the anti-malware engine that only allows whitelisted files to run. It uses the same app as the other plans, so running scans will also delete junk files and update installed programs. You can protect up to 5 devices. You can tack on the VPN, identity theft protections, and phone support at checkout, but it’s cheaper to just opt for a different plan if these interest you.

Priced at $50.00 / year, PC Matic is cheaper than many other antivirus programs, but it doesn’t include many of the features premium competitors offer. For example, Norton 360 comes with a VPN, a password manager, cloud storage, and more — this is a much better value.

PC Matic Personal — Best Value Plan

In addition to the features you get with the basic PC Matic plan, PC Matic Personal comes with:

• VPN (5 active connections).
• $1 million in identity theft insurance.
• Dark web monitoring.
• Phone support (limited hours).
• 25 GB of secure cloud storage.
• Coverage for all personal devices.

The Personal plan costs $100.00 / year and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

PC Matic Family — Most Comprehensive Plan

PC Matic’s Family subscription is a great value — it only costs $199.00 / year and provides unlimited access to all PC Matic’s features listed above, plus 24/7 phone support, and coverage for all devices within your household, The default limit is 15, but you can contact support to get more licenses without paying extra. If you’re interested, you can try PC Matic risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

PC Matic Ease of Use & Setup

PCMatic’s SuperShield works without user input, but the PC Matic app is rather buggy. The scanner is very finicky, and I had some issues getting the software set up, with passwords and security codes never showing up in my email inbox (I had to contact customer support to get it working).

However, if you’re just using SuperShield, PC Matic does all the work for you. You don’t have to deal with complicated settings to be protected against malware. Because of this, PC Matic is a particularly good choice for beginners and non-tech-savvy users looking for a minimalistic, install-and-forget antivirus.

Installing and setting up PC Matic is simple. After I purchased PC Matic, I was redirected to the Getting Started page on the official website. There, I could go through tutorials, how-to-videos, and FAQs before installing the software.

Once I clicked on the Install PC Matic button, I was asked to choose my operating system. Even though “PC” is in the name, PC Matic works on Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS.

After choosing Windows, all I had to do was click on the Download button, confirm I had removed all other antivirus software from my system, and follow the installation instructions. And that was it — installation complete!

The main PC Matic app has a very clean layout. You can run scans, whitelist apps, and use the VPN with just a few clicks. Everything is properly labeled and easy to read. The main display also shows basic stats about your computer’s performance, which is a nice touch. However a significant amount of space is taken up by ads that tried to sell me on other PC Matic products. Considering I paid for the most expensive plan, this was annoying.

As I said above, the scans can be very buggy. They would stop randomly and never finish. I also discovered that when I closed the app and opened it again, the information displayed was totally different. I discovered by accident that you can run 2 instances of the PC Matic app. This shouldn’t even be possible and revealed some odd bugs. Each version displayed different information, which was confusing and a real design oversight.

Despite being very simple, PC Matic can actually be a bit tricky to use. The scanner app is very buggy, but SuperShield, which does most of the work when it comes to protecting you, works very smoothly without any user input. Crucially, whitelisting programs is very easy.

PC Matic Mobile App

PC Matic has 2 mobile security apps: one for Android and one for iOS. There are also separate PC Matic VPN mobile apps for iOS and Android, both of which performed just as well as the desktop version in my tests.

Installing the mobile security apps was simple — all I had to do was download them (from the Google Play Store for my Android device and Apple App Store for my iPhone) and log into my PC Matic account.

The apps are pretty basic — with the Android app you can either scan apps or scan files. I tested both options, and both scans were finished in under 5 minutes. The report only showed how many applications and files were scanned and how many infections were detected.

I then accessed the app’s menu, located in the upper right-hand corner. From the menu, I could access the app’s settings, scan history, web portal, and files that couldn’t be removed.

In the app’s settings, I could choose to view my whitelisted apps and schedule a scan. I could also choose to update the software only when I’m connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Unfortunately, it missed a malicious app and some sketchy files I downloaded to test it out. It does a pretty good job but I think there are many better options, including Norton. That said, I found it really easy to access and understand all of PC Matic’s mobile features, and performing and scheduling scans was very simple.

The iPhone app bills itself as a content blocker (iOS apps don’t scan for malware because of Apple’s restrictions). It’s very easy to install, with the app itself telling you exactly what you need to do to get it set up.

Once installed, you can use the app to filter certain kinds of content while you browse on Safari. There are 4 options for blocking content: an ad filter, a social media blocker, a privacy filter to block trackers and analytics, and a security filter to protect you from malicious sites. These were all pretty effective in my tests.

The iPhone app also offers the option to monitor all devices you’ve covered with PC Matic. You can check notifications and protection status for each of your devices — this is a handy extra that the Android app doesn’t have.

Overall, PC Matic’s mobile apps are decent, but they’re nothing special. Competitors like Norton and Bitdefender have far more feature-rich and customizable mobile offerings.

PC Matic Customer Support

PC Matic offers excellent, US-based support. There’s a decent knowledge base with tutorials and email support that all customers can use. If you get either the Personal or Family plans you’ll also get access to phone and chat support.

For complex questions, you need to send an email to PC Matic’s technical support team. I submitted a question using the email request form on the official website and received an automated email assuring me they’d respond as soon as possible. I received a response in 11 hours, which is relatively fast for email support.

Support Unlimited comes with Family plans and is also available as an add-on. For some reason, it comes in the form of another app you need to download. This is the only way to contact live chat support. The support I got was pretty good, but I find it odd that I needed to use an app rather than the website. I opened up multiple chats, and in one case the agent immediately wanted me to share my screen. My questions were general, so I felt this was unnecessary.

Getting a refund is pretty easy. You can call an automated phone line or simply send an email. My initial email request was met with an automatic response asking if I had any technical issues or complaints that I wanted help resolving. It also said that if I just wanted a refund, all I had to do was reply to the email with a specific phrase. I did so and had my money back within a week. I really appreciated the fact that PC Matic isn’t pushy to customers seeking a refund.

PC Matic also has useful resources on its site, including:

• User guides that explain how PC Matic works.
• How-to videos.
• FAQs about all PC Matic products.
• Instructions on how to recognize and prevent tech support scams.

The user manuals and instructional videos are fantastic — they’re incredibly helpful if you require assistance with installing the software and are particularly valuable for those who are new to PC Matic.

Interestingly enough, the PC website says that phone support is free for customers and that anyone asking you to pay for support is a scammer. But when I tried to check out with the Essential Security plan, I was asked if I wanted to pay extra for phone support. Needless to say, this irked me. The upsell was pretty big, so I don’t recommend going for it as email support is very good. Despite these issues, there’s no denying that the quality of support for PC Matic is higher than what you get with most antiviruses.

Overall, PC Matic’s customer support is good. The email support is quick to respond and provides detailed answers. However, I’d like to see 24/7 phone and live chat support extended to all paid customers.

Is PC Matic Any Good?

PC Matic is a decent antivirus program. Its whitelist-based malware scanner performed well in my tests, and its real-time scanner blocked all of the malware I tried to execute.

During my tests, PC Matic blocked a lot of legitimate programs simply because they weren’t in the PC Matic whitelist — but that’s OK. I think it’s better to get a couple of false positives than even one false negative. Whitelisting is arguably safer, but it comes with costs. Whether it’s the right approach for you depends on your needs. At least PC Matic makes it easy for the user to manually whitelist files.

PC Matic also scanned my computer for performance issues and quickly resolved all detected problems. I like that it provides system optimization, but it only looks for a small set of issues.

I found PC Matic’s mobile apps basic but pretty user-friendly — they’re good for people who don’t want to bother with advanced options.

There are plenty of excellent resources on the official PC Matic website, and the customer support team is quick to answer questions. I received a reply to my email in less than a day and the answers were very detailed. However, phone and live chat support is reserved for Personal and Family plan subscribers, which is a shame: antiviruses such as Norton or TotalAV offer all of their customer support channels to all customers.

Overall, PC Matic isn’t the best antivirus program available. While its malware detection rate is really good, it doesn’t use advanced malware detection technology, like AI or machine learning. It also lacks basic web protection and other features included in the best antiviruses with internet security. But it’s still a decent option for users who want an antivirus and system optimization scanner that’s easy to install and use, and it includes all the essential features you need to stay protected against most malware.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use PC Matic on mobile?

PC Matic works on both Android and iOS phones. The Android app is somewhat basic, but it works well. It provides malware protection, but it doesn’t have the useful device optimization tools that are included in the desktop version. Nevertheless, it’s still a good choice for users who are looking for a simple, install-and-forget antivirus for mobile.

The iPhone version is also basic but decent, with some good content blocking options and the ability to monitor your other devices that are protected with PC Matic. That said, there are better options out there — like Norton or TotalAV, to name a few.

Is PC Matic free?

There used to be a free version but it is no longer available (despite the web page for it still being live). You’ll have to get one of the premium plans. These offer very strong protection against malware and are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Is PC Matic secure?

Yes — PC Matic is a very secure antivirus program that uses whitelisting to detect malware. It performed really well in my malware tests, even though it doesn’t use the same technology as some of the top antiviruses on the market.

Instead of the traditional blacklisting used by most antiviruses, PC Matic has a list of “good” programs and blocks the execution of files that aren’t on this whitelist, including various kinds of malware. While this unique approach does work, PC Matic frequently blocks legitimate programs, too.

I think regularly getting false positives is pretty frustrating. Also, I don’t like that PC Matic doesn’t have many of the online security protections included in the best internet security suites like Norton 360.

Does PC Matic slow down your computer?

Yes and no. From my tests, running a scan with PC Matic will slow down your device. However, PC Matic is designed to optimize your computer’s performance rather than hinder it. By providing routine maintenance such as cleaning out junk files, it keeps your computer running smoothly. So if you experience a slowdown during the scanning or optimization processes, it’s honestly outweighed by the benefits of keeping your system clean and optimized. However, if you’re looking for an antivirus with the lowest possible system impact you could try Bitdefender, which is fully cloud-based.

Does PC Matic have a VPN?

Yes, PC Matic does offer a VPN service. It has 256-bit AES encryption and a no-logs policy, and it’s a decent choice for protecting your privacy while on public Wi-Fi networks. It supports up to 5 active connections and is compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. However, the VPN is only available with PC Matic’s higher-tiered plans. If you’re after an antivirus with a VPN, you’re better off going for a product like Norton, which includes a good VPN bundled with all its 360 plans.

What is PC Matic Privacy?

PC Matic Privacy, formerly known as PC Matic Magnum, is a program that removes sensitive information from your browser and Windows device. It permanently deletes your browsing history, download history, cache, image cache, and cookies — and can also remove MS Office and PDF files.

Unfortunately, PC Matic Privacy isn’t included in any of the antivirus plans. You’ll need to purchase it separately. There is a link to purchase it within the PC Matic app.

Where is PC Matic based?

PC Matic, from development to customer support, is based in the USA. The company takes pride in its American roots, and the product was created entirely within the USA. Its research, development, and technical support are all fully US-based.