Aura was born out of a crisis with Hari Ravichandran, the founder and CEO realizing in 2014 that his identity had been compromised. Frustrated with the lack of a single product to provide the personal digital security and identity theft protection he needed, he launched Aura, aiming to provide a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use security solution. . The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and says it’s trusted by 1.5 million customers.
Packages and prices
Similar to some competitors, there are both individual plans, for a single adult, and family plans, which can cover up to 10 people. There is a 14-day free trial, as well as a 60-day money-back guarantee.
The first tier tier is the Basic plan, which costs an affordable $12/month, with an annual discount that brings it down to $10/month for an individual, or under the family version, $20/month or 17 $/month when paid. annually. It includes a number of important features, including online account monitoring, identity verification monitoring, a password manager, and lost wallet solving. However, we consider it a significant shortcoming that some essential features, such as credit scores and credit monitoring, are excluded from this starter plan. Although these essentials are left out, they include an antivirus and a VPN for Wi-Fi security, but only for one device.
One step is the Total plan, which increases the price to $26/month, or $20/month when paid annually for an individual, and for a family, goes up to $35 per month, or $29/month for an annual purchase. Although this plan is much more expensive, it not only carries over the features of the lower plan, but adds credit monitoring and monthly credit score, credit lock feature, and financial transaction and bank account monitoring feature. . It also includes antivirus and Wi-Fi security VPN for a more realistic limit of five devices, which people would have to buy anyway, and helps cover the total cost of the plan.
At the top is the Ultimate plan, which costs $40/month, or $30/month per year on the individual side, and $50/month, or $39 when paid annually for a family. This includes everything from the lower plans, and adds home title and address monitoring, criminal and court records monitoring, 401k and investment monitoring, and an annual credit report. It also covers up to ten devices for antivirus and wireless VPN needs.
Characteristics
Aura has an easy-to-follow and sleek interface, which is logically laid out to be easy to follow. It has a comprehensive dashboard which, once configured, can show a comprehensive overview of a number of security settings.
A number of coins monitor your credit health, as well as financial metrics. This includes the Credit Activity component, which provides a credit score from Experian. While we appreciate that it can perform a “credit lock” a definitive way to secure your account so that it then tightens the security and makes it exponentially harder for anyone to take out a loan fraudulently, we think it’s a weakness that the score provided comes from a single credit service.
The Transaction Monitor is another essential module. It has the ability to monitor dozens of accounts, including credit cards, mortgages, 401k, checking accounts, and savings accounts. It can provide a total snapshot of “Money In” and “Money Out”. It then provides alerts when a transaction exceeds the limit and gives a list of them in the last 30 days.
There’s also the antivirus service, which covers a wide variety of devices, including Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, with a “Coming soon” Chrome plugin. It does not indicate if it is software developed by Aura or if it is renamed from another vendor. The same can be said for the VPN service which supports the same platforms, but it is not stated who the provider is, or whether it comes directly from Aura.
Support
The customer support page for Aura is a little underwhelming, consisting of flashy extra features and brief details on the actual nuts and bolts of product support. At least one of the bulleted features is “access to 24/7 world-class support” which is included in all plans, and it is also stated that the Aura team has solved some identity theft incidents per 150,000 people.
There is both a direct phone number and a direct email address at the bottom of the page. The other support options – fax, chat and support portal – are nowhere to be found. Also, there are no other self-help options, such as webinars, user forum, or introductory articles, which is another shortcoming.
final verdict
We believe Aura represents a worthy entry into the identity protection space. Highlights include 24/7 support, easy-to-use interface, included VPN, password manager and antivirus, and the upfront price. Keep the downsides in mind, including limited support options, significantly higher costs for higher tier plans, and lack of features, like credit monitoring, on the lowest tier plan. Overall, we think many people will find enough features to justify Aura’s subscription cost.
We have also highlighted the better protection against identity theft
Comments are closed.