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ESET PROTECT Enterprise vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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
ESET PROTECT Enterprise offers excellent ROI with superior ransomware, malware protection, high-value features, and easy installation.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
The return on investment is excellent due to its functionality and ease of installation.
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
8.8
ESET PROTECT Enterprise customer support is highly rated for being pleasant, helpful, responsive, and knowledgeable, with excellent partner feedback.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
They were helpful with billing inquiries and offered promotions and discounts.
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 technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
ESET PROTECT Enterprise scales easily with extra licenses, ideal for workstations and servers, despite minor server vulnerability concerns.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable solutions for diverse organizations, with strengths in cloud setups and dashboard management despite some challenges.
It is better suited for workstations rather than server environments.
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
8.3
ESET PROTECT Enterprise boasts high reliability over five years, with minimal issues and strong user ratings for stability.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
The solution is very, very stable.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
 

Room For Improvement

ESET PROTECT Enterprise needs improvements in deployment, automation, device management, documentation clarity, and user experience due to complexity.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
They need to reduce the number of notifications on the endpoints.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
It would be better if much of that information were immediately visible, especially when looking at endpoints or users.
 

Setup Cost

ESET PROTECT Enterprise is viewed as cost-effective with competitive pricing around $10 per license despite occasional increases.
Microsoft Defender XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
We recently paid fourteen dollars and thirty-six cents per unit for 20 users, which is reasonable.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
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.
 

Valuable Features

ESET PROTECT Enterprise provides efficient security management, zero-day protection, and easy deployment with minimal resource usage and effective threat management.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
It allows simple whitelisting and has a learning mode for new installations, which reduces false positives by adapting to typical user habits.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
The Email Explorer feature has proven invaluable, offering a broader perspective than automated alerts and incidents alone.
The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target.
 

Categories and Ranking

ESET PROTECT Enterprise
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
19th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (11th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of ESET PROTECT Enterprise is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 9.6%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Cees Van Den Haak - PeerSpot reviewer
A reliable solution that offers enterprise protection
Our primary use case involves approximately 180 workstations, 180 laptops, and office protection in our environment ESET PROTECT Enterprise is reliable.  The tool is complex and expensive.  I have been using the product for 10 years.  The tool is stable.  The product is scalable. My company…
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
19%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ESET Protect?
The product enabled Zero-Day Protection for our environment. We never encountered any issues regarding threats.
What needs improvement with ESET Protect?
They need to reduce the number of notifications on the endpoints.
What is your primary use case for ESET Protect?
We are using ESET PROTECT on our workstations. We previously used it on the servers, but now it is mainly implemented on the workstations.
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

ESET Protect, ESET File Security
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Learn More

 

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 ESET PROTECT Enterprise vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.