Webroot Internet Security Complete Review: Now Webroot Total Protection

Fix it now

The top Webroot tier is now Webroot Total Protection, and Internet Security Complete is a retired name. It covers five devices and one identity, or ten and ten on the family plan, and its backup allowance is unlimited but applies to one PC or Mac – which is the fact that decides whether this tier is worth it to you.

1. Ask for Webroot Total Protection. Internet Security Complete will not match a current price list.
2. Buy it if you want identity cover, a VPN, parental controls and a backup for one machine on a single subscription and one renewal date.
3. Buy the family plan if you need identities monitored for more than one person, because it raises that from one to ten.
4. Consider Webroot Premium instead if you want the identity monitoring without the VPN, the backup or the parental controls. It is the middle tier and it is the right answer more often than the range’s marketing suggests.
5. Skip it if you already have a backup routine you have tested, because the unlimited allowance covers one machine and will not replace a real plan.
6. Skip it if you only need protection, because Webroot Essentials runs the same engine and already includes password protection and mobile cover.

Detection does not improve as you climb this range. Every tier runs the same protection, so the higher tiers are buying you identity, privacy and backup features rather than a better shield.

If the tier is settled you can stop here. If you want the backup and identity components assessed properly, read on.

Why it happens

Webroot’s consumer range is now Essentials, Premium and Total Protection, each with a family variant, and the older names – AntiVirus, Internet Security Plus, Internet Security Complete – have been replaced. Total Protection is the top tier, and the first thing to understand about it is that nothing in the protection stack changes as you climb. The engine, the web filtering and the phishing defences are the same at every tier. Any comparison implying that the expensive tier detects more is wrong.

What Total Protection adds is a package of services around the protection. Webroot publishes it as covering five devices and one identity, or ten devices and ten identities on the family plan, across PCs, Macs, smartphones, Chromebooks and tablets. The VPN covers five devices on the standard plan and ten on the family plan. Alongside that sit a password manager with autofill, parental controls, identity monitoring, dark web monitoring, financial and credit bureau monitoring, 24/7 US-based support with identity restoration experts, and up to $1M in fraud expense reimbursement.

The backup deserves the most attention because it is the component most easily misread. Webroot publishes backup and restore with unlimited cloud storage – for one PC or Mac. That is a different limitation from the one older reviews describe. The allowance is not small; the reach is. One machine gets an unlimited backup, and every other device on the licence gets none. If your reason for buying this tier is protecting a household’s documents, that constraint is the whole conversation.

Used correctly, though, it is genuinely useful. A copy of your documents somewhere other than the machine they live on is much better than no copy at all, and for a household with no backup habit this is the difference between losing everything and losing some things. It is a file backup rather than a disk image, so it will hold documents and photographs and it will not rebuild a machine. If you already run a backup you have tested and restored from, this component is a duplicate and should not influence the purchase.

The middle tier is the part most reviews of this range skip, and it changes the recommendation. Webroot Premium carries the same identity monitoring, dark web monitoring, financial and credit bureau monitoring, the 24/7 US-based support with identity restoration and the same $1M reimbursement – and it includes no VPN, no cloud backup and no parental controls. So if identity cover is what you actually want, Premium is the tier, and you would be paying for three components at the top tier that Premium does not charge you for.

Which leaves the honest question for the top tier: would you use the VPN, the parental controls and a one-machine backup? Three yeses make Total Protection good value on one renewal date. One yes usually means Premium. No yeses means Essentials, which already includes password protection, the firewall and network monitor, the Web Threat Shield, the breach monitor and cover for phones, tablets and Chromebooks.

Full reference

The current range, tier by tier

Read the middle column before the right-hand one. Premium is where the identity package lands, and most people describing what they want from a top tier are describing Premium plus one thing.

The backup, assessed

• Unlimited storage, for one PC or Mac. That is the published shape, and it is the number that decides whether this tier suits you.
• It is a file backup, not a disk image. It will hold documents and photographs; it will not rebuild the machine.
• It is a genuine improvement for a household with no backup at all, and a duplicate for one that has a working routine.
• Nothing about it replaces a second copy somewhere else. One cloud copy of one machine is a start, not a plan.

Whatever you back up with, restore something from it once. A backup you have never restored from is a hypothesis rather than a safety net.

Identity cover, in plain terms

Identity monitoring watches for your details appearing where they should not and tells you when they do. Dark web monitoring is the same idea aimed at a specific set of sources. Financial and credit bureau monitoring watches accounts and credit records. The reimbursement figure is expense cover for putting things right rather than a payout for losses, and the restoration support is the part people actually use, because the work of unwinding an identity theft is administrative and tedious. On the family plan those services cover up to ten individuals rather than one, which is the reason a household would choose it.

Sizing it without over-buying

1. Count devices first: five on the standard plan, ten on family, across PCs, Macs, phones, tablets and Chromebooks.
2. Count identities second. If more than one person needs monitoring, the family plan is the reason to move, not the device count.
3. Decide whether the backup’s one-machine reach covers what you were worried about. If it does not, buy a backup service and drop to Premium.
4. Ask whether anyone will use the parental controls and the VPN. If not, Premium is the tier.
5. If the answer to identity monitoring is also no, buy Essentials and keep the difference. The protection is identical.

What this review does not tell you

No laboratory score appears here, in either direction, and no price. Test results move between rounds and vendors enter and leave the panels; a figure without its date and methodology is worse than none. Prices in this market are set as introductory and renewal terms separately, so a number quoted in a review is a number you will not be charged. Read a current test round yourself if that matters to you, and read the renewal terms on the order page before you pay.

Questions people ask about this