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Avanan vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.4
Avanan improved email security, reduced phishing, increased user trust, enhanced mobile protection, and boosted ROI and revenue growth.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps enhances security, reduces costs by 35-45%, and improves uptime with efficient cloud application management.
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
As a small team, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allowed us to manage systems with just one or two people.
We have at least saved the costs we had from the Netskope solution this year.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
Avanan's customer service is highly responsive, professional, and proactive, with excellent communication and extensive support staff knowledge.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is generally good, but users suggest faster responses and improved communication.
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
The support is excellent, and the speed of response is commendable.
There were instances where the engineers were knowledgeable and helpful, but at other times it felt like a ping pong game, with unnecessary transfers until the right person was found.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Avanan integrates with Office 365 and Google, praised for scalability, admin capabilities, and efficient email protection across diverse organizations.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalable security, efficiently managing large user bases and app integrations with centralized management.
For what I know about the log collector and how much data it can take in, it is super scalable and capable of handling high workloads.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very scalable, provided you have the right subscription.
In my experience, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good enough for small to medium businesses.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Avanan is highly praised for its stability, efficiency, security, minimal maintenance, seamless Microsoft 365 integration, and reliable AI-based scanning.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is praised for high reliability, minimal downtime, consistent performance, and swift issue resolution.
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps as stable
My impression on the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it is very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Users feel Avanan needs improvements in Active Directory dependency, email quarantining, AI logic, training, UI, performance, pricing, mobile app, and integrations.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps could improve integration, pricing, support, reporting, automation, alerts, and overall user experience across multi-cloud environments.
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
Defender typically connects to Entra ID, but we have local users on the cloud for database access, SSH, or RDS, and there is nothing produced by Defender regarding those local IAM users.
A significant improvement I would like to see is the integration into a single pane of glass.
 

Setup Cost

Avanan provides flexible pricing for Office 365, with straightforward setup and costs between $4 to $8 per user.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is cost-effective within Microsoft 365 bundles, especially for large organizations with discounts available.
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable.
My organization is currently revisiting pricing, but previously, the cost was a bit expensive, yet comparable to other solutions with similar functionalities and features.
It's not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, placing it in the mid-level range.
 

Valuable Features

Avanan provides advanced malware and phishing detection, 24/7 cloud protection, easy integration with Microsoft 365, and ensures secure communications.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers integration, threat detection, and management, enhancing security with comprehensive visibility and proactive assessment.
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very comprehensive, providing a complete 360-degree view of applications within an organization.
The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include live, up-to-date information, which provided real-time alerts.
 

Categories and Ranking

Avanan
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (14th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (26th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Avanan and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Avanan is designed for Email Security and holds a mindshare of 3.4%, down 3.8% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), holds 8.8% mindshare, down 11.5% since last year.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Avanan3.4%
Microsoft Defender for Office 36511.4%
Proofpoint Email Protection8.2%
Other77.0%
Email Security
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps8.8%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks17.8%
Netskope15.0%
Other58.4%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances email security and has a very simple and easy-to-use UI
Spam protection is the most valuable feature. We have implemented the tool to enhance our email security. It helps prevent phishing attacks. The anomaly detection capabilities are baked into the security platform. The product integrates wonderfully with Microsoft 365. It's built right on a cloud platform and works almost natively. The solution has a very simple and easy-to-use UI. The tool appears extremely powerful and has a good solid feature set. It catches things that are bad for my environment. The user interface is good the way it is. If the solution continues down that path, I see no problems with the way it is going. It feels like a mature product.
Abdulrahman Muhammadi - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with existing cloud workflows has simplified compliance and threat detection
Licensing cost is a significant concern. With Defender Plan 1, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comes with a pay-per-use model. Each feature has its own pricing when activated on VMs. For example, the vulnerability assessment has separate pricing, the base model including encryptions has separate pricing, and the compliance features have separate pricing. This applies to each VM and Azure resource individually. It is not straightforward where you can take one license and apply it to everything. Each feature has its own pricing model which can be tedious, as the costs keep accumulating. The only lacking feature currently is XDR (extended detection and response). Apart from that, I have only positive experiences with the whole Microsoft suite, except for the pricing structure.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s backup and retention services. I've brought this up with the vendor. They told me t...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since all our productivity applications were on O365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps...
 

Also Known As

No data available
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Abnormal AI, Proofpoint and others in Email Security. Updated: September 2025.
870,697 professionals have used our research since 2012.