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Azure Front Door vs Microsoft Defender XDR 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
7.6
Azure Front Door offers cost savings and efficient management, yielding a clear return on investment despite initial transition uncertainties.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR boosts security efficiency, saves time, reduces breaches, despite high licensing costs, enhancing overall organizational security posture.
Azure Front Door offers a quick return on investment once it is set up.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Azure Front Door receives high marks for customer service, with users praising knowledgeable support staff and clear documentation.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender XDR support excels in premium tiers but has mixed reviews for basic service response times and expertise.
I am able to set up a critical call with Microsoft, and they respond quickly to tickets with the highest severity.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
The customer service is good, and they supported us well.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Azure Front Door offers scalable, reliable solutions for enterprises, enhancing performance and managing applications efficiently despite higher costs.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable and cloud-based, with positive user feedback, but may face network and licensing challenges.
I find that Front Door can become expensive for large-scale projects with more transactions and users.
I consider the scalability of Azure Front Door to be strong.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Azure Front Door is praised for high stability and reliability, though some DNS management issues are occasionally noted.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly stable and reliable, with users rating it 8 or 9 out of 10.
I rate Azure Front Door's stability a nine because it is easy to make updates through Azure Portal.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Front Door requires enhancements in multi-cloud support, load balancing, IP support, latency, UI, pricing, rules, monitoring, and APIs.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, improved integration, intuitive dashboards, cost-effective licensing, better automation, and broader environment support.
If I could use Azure Front Door with private IP addresses, it would be more beneficial.
The only significant adjustment required is with URL set parameters that need to be passed for an existing domain.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
It would be better if much of that information were immediately visible, especially when looking at endpoints or users.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Front Door's pay-as-you-go pricing offers flexibility, with costs and value balancing for various project needs.
Microsoft Defender XDR pricing opinions vary, with some appreciating bundled savings and others finding standalone costs high.
Azure Front Door is cheaper for small projects, companies, or applications compared to using separate tools.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
The pricing is a little high, however, it is on par with other competitive tools in the market.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Front Door provides scalable, secure, and affordable solutions with advanced features like SSL offloading, load balancing, and DDoS protection.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers integrated tools, enhancing threat detection, management, and automation, simplifying security tasks for enterprise environments.
Azure Front Door includes a built-in web application firewall, which performs signature-based checks of the request payload, offering protection against common attacks or malicious requests.
Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Front Door
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Azure Front Door is 2.7%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 5.6%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Zebar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides great security with a good application firewall
The initial setup is straightforward. If you want to use the portal, CLI, or PowerShare, or you want to use automation data for one month, it's straightforward. Even when it comes to operational maintenance, it's pretty easy and straightforward. Microsoft has done a great job on that front. Maintenance generally requires someone who is a cloud administrator or similar to maintain services in general, with Front Door a small piece of a larger maintenance requirement. There's not a lot to manage, the configuration is simple. I encourage people to document the configuration and infrastructure as well as disaster recovery in case anything happens.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
Azure Front Door is cheaper for small projects, companies, or applications compared to using separate tools.
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
 

Also Known As

Azure Front-Door
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Front Door vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.