Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Defender for Business vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery 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
8.2
Microsoft Defender for Business boosts ROI with increased productivity, cost savings, improved security, and enhanced business opportunities.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery boosts ROI by improving data efficiency, compliance, risk management, and reducing legal and IT workloads.
Using Microsoft Defender for Business results in cost reductions as it consolidates various features under one product, saving around 20% to 30% of the budget.
It is pretty good because it offers various features such as Exchange, OfficeSuite, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
The value I see in Microsoft Defender for Business is in its ability to track and respond to application usage and security threats through its CASB and automation features, which are cost-beneficial.
We have seen a 100% return on investment.
The ease of accessing necessary information promptly is the biggest return on investment.
It's hard to quantify the ROI in a dollar amount, but we realize value by doing more tasks in less time than we did before.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.4
Microsoft Defender for Business offers prompt support but lacks efficiency, with slower resolutions and mixed user satisfaction ratings.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is praised for responsive support, despite some mixed experiences with wait times and outcomes.
It is rated ten out of ten for its quality and assistance.
The onboarding support is exceptional, ensuring seamless integration and implementation.
Faster support is needed for endpoint security solutions.
I would rate Microsoft Purview eDiscovery's customer service and technical support a ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender for Business is praised for scalability, with high ratings, despite configuration challenges across sectors like IT and government.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is scalable and efficient, seamlessly integrating with cloud infrastructures but lacks some search functions.
The cloud-based nature of the solution ensures high scalability.
The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Business is rated as ten, indicating it is very scalable.
In terms of scalability, I find Microsoft Defender for Business to be good and reliable.
It scales with us seamlessly.
With the E3 licensing, I would rate the scalability of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery as a six because it lacks certain critical search functionalities.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Business is stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and occasional bugs, maintaining user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is generally stable, with minor slowdowns, but users seek more transparency on performance issues.
No customer complaints about its functionality or reliability.
Although it generally works, there are occasional issues and errors that sometimes require a complete system format to rectify.
Threat detection capabilities could be improved.
For us, it has been one hundred percent reliable.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is highly reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Business needs enhancements in reporting, integration, support efficiency, and pricing, with user-friendliness and communication issues.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery needs faster, more efficient features, better integration, NLP for queries, and affordable pricing for users.
Microsoft should provide batch management solutions with the application, integrating pass management with roles.
Features related to Advanced Persistent Threat detection vectors and cyber kill chain integrations are not available out-of-the-box.
There can be improvements in the user interface to make it more intuitive.
Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial.
Defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives.
We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Business offers cost-effective pricing within Office 365 Premium, valued for features and nonprofit discounts, despite some competitors.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery pricing is complex, with E5 costly yet beneficial, while E3 is cheaper but limited.
Single-year pricing remains good.
The pricing is quite affordable at the enterprise level with no extra expenses noted.
The package with Business Premium is good for what you get for the price.
With CSP or MCE-style agreements with Microsoft, the process is streamlined since we have reps from both Microsoft and CDW working together.
As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile.
The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Business provides scalable, cost-effective security with AI-powered threat detection, easy integration, and user-friendly features.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery ensures efficient data retrieval with multi-platform integration, automation, compliance visibility, and adherence to global data privacy laws.
The threat detection capabilities are robust, with a dedicated research team and a continuously updated threat feed.
Its vulnerability management is regarded as one of the best in the industry.
The most effective features of Microsoft Defender for Business include its threat detection and response capabilities in managing vulnerabilities and ransomware attacks.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, Android, and SaaS apps, which is critical for capturing SMS and MMS text message data.
Purview's inclusion of global regulations is critical because we're heavily regulated by FERC, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the SEC.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (25th)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 2.9%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced threat protection secures diverse workloads with cost-effective deployment
If I need logs and don't have local storage bundled with Defender, I need to add workspace and log analytics, which is costly for storing logs of 2 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB. A default storage of 5 GB for logs should be included with Defender. There are limitations in whitelisting folders and files, and the whitelisting feature for Defender threat protection was deprecated. A straightforward feature for this should be added.
Frank Radeck - PeerSpot reviewer
Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented the solution now take just 30 minutes.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms. It is critical for Purview to be able to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From a support perspective, I can do things while I'm eating lunch or something else. It's more dynamic and responsive. I think everybody appreciates it. We're not tied to one device. Purview's multi-cloud capabilities are also essential for the same reasons. Keeping everything under one umbrella further increases the time savings. Purview accounts for critical regulations from around the world. This is crucial because we hold ourselves accountable to standards and need to align with them. Working at a law firm, we have clients who dictate to us what standards they expect. The visibility is excellent. As we move more things into the cloud, more opportunities exist to put everything under one umbrella.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Business?
A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is goin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Microsoft Defender for Business offers the best pricing option in the market and is very cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
The areas where Microsoft Defender for Business could improve include the support, installation process, and wiki. I should be able to find solutions to issues quickly without having to delve too d...
What do you like most about Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The setup process was very straightforward. We acquired pricing through our reseller in NASDAQ, eliminating the need to search for prices ourselves.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be benefici...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.