Message says "Sophos Anti-Virus is not running"

Hi alansky,

Has anyone at Sophos ever questioned the wisdom of offering a free anti-virus app without any technical support? Unless it works perfectly, which it evidently doesn't, you're bound to end up with some unhappy users. How is this a benefit to your company?

This is a fair question to ask, and yes we challenge ourselves on this topic regularly. I really believe you have it backwards though: the benefit isn't for Sophos, it goes to those people who are successfully using our product. Sophos does not sell licenses to the home user market, we make the product available for free to those who can use it but wouldn't otherwise be able to due to cost.

Admittedly Sophos does derive some benefits (knowledge about the world of Mac users, for instance), although likely those are the same benefits gained from our corporate and enterprise users. We do offer 24 x 7 support for our business customers who choose to purchase their license. This seems fair, as people who gain the most value from our products and services can contribute to keep us in business.

I can also say we definitely want to make our product better. I accept there will be people who find the product lacking and therefore will be unhappy. My goal is to try to minimize complaints because of the feature set or product reliability. I can probably accept it when the lack of real-time 24 x 7 technical support for our free product is the reason people don't use our free product.

Hi alansky,

Has anyone at Sophos ever questioned the wisdom of offering a free anti-virus app without any technical support? Unless it works perfectly, which it evidently doesn't, you're bound to end up with some unhappy users. How is this a benefit to your company?

This is a fair question to ask, and yes we challenge ourselves on this topic regularly. I really believe you have it backwards though: the benefit isn't for Sophos, it goes to those people who are successfully using our product. Sophos does not sell licenses to the home user market, we make the product available for free to those who can use it but wouldn't otherwise be able to due to cost.

Admittedly Sophos does derive some benefits (knowledge about the world of Mac users, for instance), although likely those are the same benefits gained from our corporate and enterprise users. We do offer 24 x 7 support for our business customers who choose to purchase their license. This seems fair, as people who gain the most value from our products and services can contribute to keep us in business.

I can also say we definitely want to make our product better. I accept there will be people who find the product lacking and therefore will be unhappy. My goal is to try to minimize complaints because of the feature set or product reliability. I can probably accept it when the lack of real-time 24 x 7 technical support for our free product is the reason people don't use our free product.