I am overjoyed to announce the first public beta of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 2.0. I know you've been waiting a very long time for this and so have we! The purpose of this beta is to get feedback from the people we care most about -- our users!
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 2.0 ships with a completely redesigned user interface to make the product easier to use, more informative, and provide quicker access to key functionality.We have built in and improved our Anti-Rootkit and Chameleon self-protection technologies that have been in beta for the past year. Additionally, we've rewritten Malicious Website Blocking and improved native x64 support. Most importantly, our detection and removal engine was significantly improved under the hood and kicks even more malware butt! This is the biggest rewrite we have ever undertaken, and we hope you’re thrilled with the result.
With the launch of 2.0, we'll also be moving to a subscription licensing model, $24.95 per year. As more and more people have come to rely on us for malware protection and cleanup, our costs in bandwidth, hosting fees, infrastructure, salaries of our researchers, QA department, and more have grown immensely. Though our company is about more than just making money, we are a company and we do have to make money to pay our staff to continue doing what they love, which is fighting malware. The subscription model will help us to be sustainable for the future while staying true to our roots that we will always make malware cleanup free for everyone.
We will continue to honor existing lifetime licenses, meaning any users that already have a lifetime license for 1.x will continue to have a lifetime license for 2.x. We'll be offering a few thousand more lifetime licenses during launch as well. On top of all of that, new subscription licenses will be valid for 3 PCs, not just 1.
We could have gone other routes to make our business more financially sustainable, like adding toolbars or advertisements like many other security products have, but that's not the company we are. We believe that products should be nag-free and cleanup shouldn't cost our users a dime, and we're going to stay true to that.
With all that said, please see the download link and license key (temporary so that you can help us test!) below.
DOWNLOAD:
http://downloads.malwarebytes.org/file/mbam_public_beta
LICENSE KEY:
id: MBAM2BETA
key: 4XZHE-6ANRN-TKWCV-EV6HZ-G79PH
Please also realize that this is beta and is not necessarily stable. We appreciate all feedback, good and bad. If you have feedback, please start a new thread in this forum. Our goal is to provide two more beta builds within the next month and then target a late March public release. As you know, this all relies on how successful our beta period is.
This public beta is for the consumer version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware only. The business version is a few months away and has a number of additional capabilities designed for business users. We'll keep business customers informed via forums and your registered email address as that release gets closer. Meanwhile you're welcome to try this beta on your home computer, but the beta should not be used in a commercial environment, and you should not replace your existing Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Small Business Edition as the license keys are not the same.
Finally, Samuel, Ryan, the developers, and the rest of the team will be making their rounds to assist in answering any questions you may have! :)
Thanks Corrine!