Quick Heal Total Security for Mac Review

Most security companies offer Mac security, but the options can be limited compared with their Windows editions, which might include multiple levels of security suite upgrades. Mac users often get nothing beyond basic Mac antivirus. With Quick Heal, Mac users go straight to the Quick Heal Total Security for Mac suite as there’s no standalone antivirus. Yet this suite’s feature set is limited compared with the company’s Windows antivirus. Worse, the macOS app did poorly in our malware and phishing testing, its parental control is weak, none of the independent labs we follow have tested it recently, it’s expensive, and it offers no volume discounts. For basic antivirus protection on macOS, Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac is a better choice. If you really want a security suite with VPN and other high-end features, try Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac. These two are our Editors’ Choice winners for Mac security.

How Much Cost Quick Heal AntiVirus Total Security for Mac?

The most common price for a Mac antivirus utility is just under $40 per year. Bitdefender, Trend Micro, and Webroot are among those in that price range. Quick Heal runs $75 per year, almost twice as much.

Those prices are all to protect a single Mac. Most security companies offer volume discounts for three, five, or even 10 licenses. For example, Malwarebytes for Mac Premium and Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus for Mac charge $59.99 per year for three licenses. That same $59.99 gets you five ESET licenses, while F-Secure and Vipre charge around $80 for a five-pack. If you really need to protect a lot of Macs, a single Sophos Home Premium for Mac subscription gets 10 licenses for $59.99 per year.

As for Quick Heal, it doesn’t currently offer any volume discounts. Protecting three, five, or 10 devices would cost $225, $375, or $750, respectively.

It’s Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online

Apple makes it easy for Mac users to keep up to date with the latest macOS, and most consumers seem to do so. If you’re stuck using an old version, perhaps due to outmoded hardware, your antivirus choices can be relatively limited. Norton, for example, only supports the current macOS and two previous versions. ESET and F-Secure Internet Security for Mac want macOS 11 (Big Sur) or better. As for Quick Heal, you can use it under any macOS back to 10.9 (Mavericks). Intego Mac Internet Security has the same requirement. If your Mac is a true antique, you may need to look at ProtectWorks, which extends support back to 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Getting Started With Quick Heal for Mac

For a preview of this antivirus tool’s features, you can install a 30-day trial. At the end of the trial (or whenever you choose to purchase), you simply activate the full suite using a registration code.

Like all macOS antivirus tools, Quick Heal requires special permission to perform its tasks. However, its handling of the important Full Disk Access permission is remarkably awkward and difficult. With most Mac security tools, you simply turn on access or drag an icon to the list of apps that have this permission.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Quick Heal, by contrast, sends you on a grueling odyssey. It lists the full pathname for five processes that require full disk access. You must manually add each of these to the Full Disk Access list by clicking the + button and navigating to the specified file location. And you can’t skip this task—the antivirus won’t work until you complete it. I worry that consumers who went with the Mac, thinking it doesn’t demand tech skills, just won’t be able to get past this step.

Once you grind your way through the necessary permissions, you can start working with the app. Three colorful images dominate the center of the main window, representing Mac Security, Web Security, and Email Security. A banner above these three reflects security status; a button below shortcuts the process of launching a scan.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Navigation is just a bit awkward. Clicking one of the three large images takes you to the corresponding feature page, but there’s no back button or arrow. Rather, you must look to the Home button near the top right corner, adjacent to the Reports and Settings buttons. Once you get used to it, it’s not too bad.

No Test Scores From Independent Labs

For every review of a Windows-centered antivirus, I check the reports from four independent testing labs around the world: AV-Test Institute, AV-Comparatives, SE Lab, and MRG-Effitas. Two of these, AV-Test and AV-Comparatives, also put macOS antivirus apps to the test.

Unfortunately, neither of these two labs has seen fit to evaluate Quick Heal’s Mac antivirus. To be fair, two-thirds of the Mac antiviruses I track also lack current lab scores. Only a half-dozen appear in reports from both labs, and only four (Avast One for Mac, AVG, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro) hold the maximum score from both.

Scan Timing and Windows Malware

I’ve been coding for PCs since before Windows existed, and I have developed significant programs and resources for real-world testing of Windows antivirus utilities. In the Mac realm, though, I have no similar high-end skills or hand-coded resources. Even so, I can find ways to quantify and compare Mac antivirus tools.

Whenever you install a new antivirus, you should run a full scan to clear out any lurking malware. After that, real-time scanning should fend off any new attacks. But just in case, Quick Heal lets you schedule a daily or weekly scan.

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Mac antivirus tools seem to differ quite a bit on precisely what constitutes a full scan, though. CleanMyMac, Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac, and Sophos completed their full scan in two minutes or less, while Vipre Advanced Security for Mac and G Data took more than an hour. ESET Cyber Security for Mac needed more than three hours to grind through its full scan.

From absurdly quick to ponderously slow, the average full scan time for current Mac antiviruses is 25 minutes. Quick Heal required 45 minutes for its scan, which is fine.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Most Mac antivirus utilities include detection of Windows malware in their repertoire. Yes, it’s impossible for a Windows program to execute on a Mac, much less cause a malware infestation. But there’s always the possibility that your Mac might serve as a carrier. Quick Heal includes Windows malware scanning—it says so right in the scan report. To test this capability, I copied my collection to a thumb drive and plugged it into the Mac.

Quick Heal’s real-time protection immediately caught precisely one malware sample, which I found a bit odd. I proceeded to actively scan the drive full of samples, with disappointing results. Quick Heal’s overall detection rate of 3% is the lowest among Mac antivirus apps that scan for Windows malware. Webroot AntiVirus for Mac detected 90% of the Windows samples, and G Data Antivirus for Mac topped the list with 96%. I note also that while the USB drive contained well under 100 samples, the antivirus reported scanning well over 2,000 files.

Unimpressive Phishing Protection

As noted, Windows malware can’t run under macOS, and macOS malware won’t launch in Windows. Phishing attacks, on the other hand, have no such limitations. A phishing site masquerades as a bank site or other secure site, hoping to fool unsuspecting netizens into giving away their login credentials. You can fall victim to these frauds on any platform, be it a PC, a Mac, a game console, or an internet-aware pencil sharpener. Alert web surfers can spot the tells that reveal a site as fraudulent, but we’re not always at our most alert. Some help from the antivirus is welcome.

Like its Windows counterpart, Quick Heal on the Mac detects fraudulent and dangerous sites before they reach the browser and reports its findings in a popup notification. The Windows edition replaces the blocked page with a warning notice for HTTP connections; secure HTTPS pages just show a browser error. The Mac version doesn’t bother with the warning; rather, it leaves the browser to display an error for both secure and insecure sites. In both cases, the popup notification is the same.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

To test phishing protection, I start by harvesting hundreds of suspected fraudulent URLs from websites that track such things. I make sure to include both verified frauds and URLs too new to have gone through the blacklisting process. Then, I launch each URL in four browsers. Three of them are protected by the antiphishing protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, and the fourth relies on the antivirus that’s being tested.

In some cases, the fraudulent page has already failed or been taken down; in others, the report was incorrect. For testing, I retain only those pages that precisely fit the profile for phishing, meaning they try to steal login credentials for secure sites. I also discard any that don’t load properly in all four browsers.

Quick Heal managed 63% detection, slightly better than Quick Heal AntiVirus Pro on Windows but worse than the three browser built-ins. The Mac and Windows versions seem to rely on different detection codes given that each caught some that the other missed. Only a handful of competitors have scored lower than Quick Heal in my phishing test. At the other end of the spectrum, McAfee Total Protection for Mac and Trend Micro Antivirus for Mac managed 100% detection.

Simple Protection for Email

Chances are good that your email provider filters out spam, so you never have to see it. Work-based email that runs on a company server is also likely to be spam-checked at the server level. If you need local spam filtering, though, Quick Heal has you covered.

This feature is turned on by default, using moderately strict detection rules and tagging spam messages with [SPAM]. Those messages still reach your inbox—if you want them diverted to a spam folder, you’ll have to create a message rule. Buried in the help is a note that the spam filtering system doesn’t work on Macs that use Apple’s proprietary chips.

You can tweak the spam filter’s settings by clicking Email Security from the main window and then clicking Spam Protection in the resulting window. From here, you can change the protection level from its default to Soft or Strict, but you shouldn’t. At the Soft level, it lets through more spam; at the Strict level, it’s likely to misidentify valid mail as spam.

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There is an option to enable allowlisting, blocklisting, or both. Mail from addresses on the allowlist will always go through, while messages from the blocklist will always get flagged as spam. There’s no provision for automatically allowlisting your correspondents or blocklisting active spam senders. You manage both lists manually.

There’s also a feature called Email Protection, which checks email and attachments for malware. Given that opening a malware file from email would require saving it to disk, at least as a temporary file, it’s hard to see this layer of protection as necessary. The regular real-time antivirus should prevent a malware attack delivered by email. But it certainly can’t hurt to wipe out dangerous attachments.

Limited Parental Control

PCMag doesn’t rate or recommend third-party parental control systems at present, advising readers instead to look at the free parental components found in modern operating systems. The one thing you might get from a third-party solution is the ability to configure one child profile and then apply that profile to all the child’s devices across all platforms. Quick Heal does have parental control built in, but its functionality applies to a single Mac.

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Click Web Protection from the main screen and then click Parental Control to get started. The resulting popup dialog lets you restrict access to websites in several ways. As with most similar systems, the primary feature involves restricting sites based on their content category.

Quick Heal assigns websites to nearly 60 different categories, with about 20 of them denied by default. You can make your own choices as to which categories are allowed, though the interface isn’t the most convenient. A scrolling list lets you see just five or six categories at a time, and the visual difference between allowed and denied categories is subtle.

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You also have the option to create a list of sites that should be blocked or to exclude specific sites from category-based blocking. While this is a common feature, my impression is that parents rarely, if ever, use it. Either way, your site-blocking choices apply to everyone who uses the Mac in question.

I turned on content filtering, using its default settings, and tried dozens of sites that should be blocked for one reason or another. Quick Heal blocked all those it should, including secure anonymizing proxies. That last category is important because a child who can access such a proxy can totally evade content filtering.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Parents likely have an interest in just what websites their children are trying to access. Some parental control systems record every site visit, both allowed and blocked. Quick Heal only reports on blocked attempts, and its report is next to useless. All you get is a list of dates and times. To see just what was blocked, you must open each entry individually. And the report doesn’t tell you which user attempted access.

There’s also an option to schedule when internet access is permitted. Here, too, the setting affects all users. On the plus side, configuring this feature is convenient and easy. You view the week as a grid, with days for columns and hours for rows. Dragging with the mouse lets you easily block or allow big swathes of the schedule.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Unfortunately, Quick Heal’s handling of off-schedule connection attempts is poor. I expected to see a message about the time schedule, either in the browser or as a popup notification. Instead, the browser just displayed an ERR_SOCKET_NOT_CONNECTED message.

This feature checks the box for parental control, but it’s limited to content filtering and internet scheduling. Content filtering works, but the reporting component is useless. Configuring the time scheduler is easy, but it just disables the internet connection, leaving error messages in its wake.

Better Mac Antivirus Abounds

Quick Heal Total Security for Mac combines antivirus that has no lab certification and scored poorly in our hands-on testing, with a price that quickly becomes astronomical if you want protection for more than one machine. For lab-certified Mac antivirus protection, we recommend Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac. If what you want for your Mac is broader suite-level protection, try Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac, which adds VPN, password management, a firewall, and more.