How Much Does LifeLock Cost?

Our own identities are priceless, which is why we should do everything we can to protect them – even if that means paying for an identity protection service. Those services don’t come cheap, though, and we’re not made of money. So before buying identity protection, we should do a thorough check to make sure the service is reliable, practical to use, and cost-effective. After all, nobody wants to pay too much for a product or service.

This is one of those checks for LifeLock. LifeLock has been one of the best identity theft protection services for most of the 21st century. And since merging with Norton – the antivirus brand – it gained even more features and advantages.

On this page, our focus is on NortonLifeLock’s pricing. With so many available options, NortonLifeLock’s subscriptions need a separate page so you can choose the best subscription for you and your budget.

LifeLock’s Subscription Options

This gets a bit tricky. We’ve mentioned the Norton and LifeLock merger, but despite that, both companies still offer their own products. That makes their subscription options a lot more complicated than the pricing of Aura identity theft protection, one of their top competitors. LifeLock still offers identity protection without antivirus software, and the same goes for Norton; it still offers antivirus packages without LifeLock.

Since LifeLock is our main focus, let’s start with the four LifeLock plans available: Select, Standard, Advantage, and Ultimate Plus. Those plans offer varying degrees of identity protection.

As for NortonLifeLock, bundles that include Norton 360 are available for the Select, Advantage, and Ultimate Plus LifeLock plans.

With that quick overview, here’s a look at LifeLock’s pricing.

In case it isn’t obvious yet, we like the LifeLock and Norton 360 bundlings. Yes, NortonLifeLock might be using these bundles to get customers to use more of their products, but it really makes sense to bundle these two types of services together. After all, cybercriminals can use malware to infect users’ devices and steal important information stored on those devices. Using antivirus software alongside LifeLock gives you a proactive means of preventing identity theft yourself. Additionally, a 2013 study showed that of more than three million smartphone thefts, nearly 10% led to identity theft.1

Another thing we really liked was LifeLock’s deals, including LifeLock’s Black Friday offers and low introductory pricing. Some comparable services offer a free trial month, but don’t provide discounted service for those willing to sign up for a full year; IDShield pricing fits this mold, for example. A plan from IdentityIQ, on the other hand, skips the free trials and offers discounts of around $5 per month to annual subscribers.

In addition to discounted first-year pricing, LifeLock’s free trial period lasts for 30 days, with the option to cancel service with a 60-day money-back guarantee. Of course, the prices after the first year jump pretty substantially, with their most robust service running $34.99 per month.

LifeLock Features

With pricing out of the way, let’s jump to what these plans offer.

As you can see, the difference between the Standard LifeLock plan and the Ultimate Plus plan is monumental, yet there are some universal services offered in all plans that can be the difference to protecting your identity or getting you the help you need if your identity is compromised.

While we’ll break down the features in more detail later, some of the big pluses to LifeLock’s offering that are consistent throughout all the plans are their Million Dollar Protection Package, which purports to cover the cost of lawyers and experts up to a million dollars, stolen wallets, USPS address change verifications, dark web monitoring, data breach notifications, identity and Social Security number alerts, and more.

The Standard LifeLock plan as advertised, while not nearly as extensive as the other plans, does offer great value at its given price point. However, we’d recommend taking advantage of the Norton 360 with LifeLock Select plan, since the company is really pushing the merger and giving customers the perks of the service at almost the same introductory price. For those looking for a plan with complete coverage, the Ultimate Plus plan really does offer everything we’ve come to expect from a total identity protection and monitoring service.

LifeLock Family Plans

In addition to its individual plans, NortonLifeLock offers family plans. Quick note here: All NortonLifeLock family plans are bundled with Norton 360. They also offer the same features as their individual plan counterparts; the only difference is the number of people covered.

There are two types of family plans: the family plan for adults and the family plan for adults with kids. Both cover two adults, but the latter includes protection for up to five children. Here’s how the pricing breaks down.

A Bit About LifeLock’s Questionable History

As we mentioned earlier, LifeLock does have a bit of a sordid history, and it might be best to clear the air before we go any further.

One of the major complaints and points of caution surrounding LifeLock is how they handle privacy and advertising. In 2010, the company had to pay the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) $11 million dollars, in part because they made false claims regarding data security with the FTC concluding that the company’s system was vulnerable. This vulnerability was further demonstrated in 2018, when a bug exposed millions of customer email addresses.2

LifeLock’s major claim to infamy, however, stems from an arrogant and ill-advised advertising campaign that involved displaying their company’s CEO’s Social Security number asking for criminals to steal his identity. The plan backfired, his identity was stolen multiple times, and it exposed LifeLock’s claims as a complete identity protection service to be fraudulent. Five years after the stunt, LifeLock still hadn’t softened their claims, and had to pay out $100 million to their customers for continued false advertising. In short, between data security and false claims, LifeLock is not the most trustworthy company when it comes to protecting customers’ data.

Standout Features

Though there are certainly some things about LifeLock as a company that gives us pause, there is a lot to like about their service, especially the more robust features included with the Ultimate Plus plan. For the purposes of this standout features section, however, we’re just going to look at some of the things we liked most about LifeLock’s service generally.

• Free Trial— With all of LifeLock’s plans, there is a 30-day free trial which enabled us to test the service to make sure it suited our needs before making a long-term commitment.
• Million Dollar Protection™ Package— LifeLock offers three tiers of insurance on their identity theft protection. The lowest plan includes $25,000 in both stolen funds reimbursement and personal expense compensation, the median Advantage plan bumps that number up to $100,000, and the Ultimate plan maxes those numbers out at $1 million. All three plans offer up to $1 million in coverage for lawyers and experts should we need that resource in fighting an identity theft case, the standard across the industry.
• Device Protection— Because of the Norton 360 tie-in, LifeLock offers device protection for a minimum of five PCs, tablets and smartphones. This service includes virus protection, secure VPNs, PC cloud backup at a minimum capacity of 100 GB, anonymous browsing, ad blocking services, parental controls, and more.

Digging a Little Deeper Into LifeLock’s Service

The three main Norton 360 with LifeLock plans, Select, Advantage, and Ultimate, offered increasing levels of identity and device protection. Let’s break down those features to see what we’re really getting for our money.

• Norton 360 Device Security— All plans included Norton 360 device security, which could help detect and quarantine threats to our computer, tablet or smartphone. The Select plan covered five devices, Advantage covered ten, and the Ultimate plan covered an unlimited number of devices.
• Additional Device Services— For the same number of devices included with the previous point, LifeLock also offered VPNs to help cloak our identity online. The plans also offered secure cloud backup at a capacity of 100 GB, 250 GB, and unlimited storage for the three plans. There were also other digital security features like an ad tracker blocker, parental controls, anonymous browsing, and PC SafeCam, which blocked our computer’s camera from being accessed by outside users.

• Identity and Social Security Number Alerts— All of LifeLock’s plans offered this alert service as a baseline, trawling the Internet for our personal identifying information and alerting us if it showed up anywhere where it may be compromised. One thing we liked about LifeLock was the ability to add extra identifying personal information within the service’s dashboard, which gave them more information to look for as they scanned for potential threats.
• Credit Monitoring— LifeLock monitored our credit score for any changes. The Select and Advantage plans looked at Equifax, while the Ultimate plan additionally included Experian and TransUnion.

• USPS Address Change Verification— If our address was changed without our knowledge or consent, LifeLock would let us know.
• Lost Wallet Protection— With all plans, if our wallet was lost or stolen, we could contact LifeLock and they’d walk us through canceling credit cards and replacing any other identifying documents we may have had in our wallet.
• 24/7 Live Member Support— LifeLock offers all of its customers live support from one of their operators, which can be a great source of comfort in an identity theft crisis. Ultimate plan members are given priority for support. We did find their customer support to be generally responsive and helpful, especially in a crisis.
• Dark Web Monitoring— All of the plans include dark web monitoring, which scanned the dark web (a notorious source for sharing and selling stolen identifying information)3 to see if our personal information appeared there.

• LifeLock Privacy Monitor— As a company with a sordid past when it comes to customer data governance, including FTC lawsuits,4 their Privacy Monitor service is a nice addition to all of their plans. The service allowed us to identify and remove ourselves from “people-search websites and Internet-based advertising companies”.
• ID Verification Monitoring and Data Breach Notifications— For all plans, LifeLock offered ID verification monitoring and data breach notifications to alert us if our personal information was digitally compromised.

All of these services are available for the three Norton 360 with LifeLock plans. The Advantage and Ultimate plans have a number of additional features that are too much to cover here but include more robust, specialized identity protections for criminal and financial services. For example, the Ultimate plan includes 401(k) and investment account alerts as well as alerts on crimes committed in our name.

LifeLock’s Return and Cancellation Terms

One of the things we like most about LifeLock is their confidence in their service; they really want to get you in the door with their plans and hope you stick around from there. LifeLock offers a free 30-day trial on all of their plans, which can be canceled within 30 days without incurring a charge. The cancellation process is relatively easy and can be done online or over the phone.

The company offers a 60-day money-back guarantee, which enables dissatisfied customers to get a full refund if they cancel their service within that 60-day window. Again, the cancellation process can be done online or over the phone, though we’d recommend doing it over the phone in the case of a refund to make sure the company has it documented properly.

Recapping LifeLock

The truth is, LifeLock still hasn’t really sorted out their service since merging with Norton, which is frustrating given the number of features they offer and the overall quality of their protection. The company provides a large list of features for a reasonable price within the industry, yet the buying process and the products themselves suffer from a lack of uniformity in the wake of the merger, and the company’s overall trustworthiness is a little suspect given their past history of false advertising and data insecurity. Hopefully, in time, the company will focus its product to avoid confusion and offer the best service possible.