I've been a Bitdefender subscriber, with multiple accounts covering a couple of dozen devices, since 2017. It was, at that time, easily the best in class AV/Malware suite on the market, offering excellent protection combined with very good low-profile resource management, at very fair pricing. It worked in the background, quietly, discreetly, doing exactly what most average and 'power users' want from AV solutions.
While the protection level remains very strong, over the last couple of years, in particular, it's turned into overweight bloatware, clearly dominated by marketing teams over technical people. The endless SSL warning notifications and focus hijacking, huge network speed degradation, clunky and overwrought UI and absolutely terrible, even offensively patronizing technical support in these forums, typically by people with far less technical knowledge than many users, offering cut & paste templated replies that rarely even acknowledge problems, or typically inform users a software problem is how it's 'supposed to work' and not a failing. These are problems that many reported back in 2020 (such as the notification hijack) and still haven't been addressed. It's an application that now gets in the way of productivity as well as leisure.
At this point I'm seriously considering cancelling my accounts and uninstalling Bitdefender in favor of Kaspersky or Webroot. In the event Bitdefender management (versus marketing) people ever read these forums, know that your product is failing and you've let the non-technical people take over the tent. This seems to be the same cycle that killed McAfee and Norton, as good products, if not in sales.
