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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs ZoneAlarm comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
ZoneAlarm
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Anti-Malware Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 7.8%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ZoneAlarm is 2.0%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Anti-Malware Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.8%
ZoneAlarm2.0%
Other90.2%
Anti-Malware Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.
Bala_Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at esupport Solutions Pvt ltd
Security suite has protected individual devices from threats, while installation and network features require improvements
BIG-IP is actually the LTM, Link Load Balancer, which comes with ASM, meaning Application Security Module. It consists of multiple modules, such as ASM, SWG, and a domain DNS manager. ZoneAlarm allows defining trusted and public networks, which helps maintain security in public Wi-Fi environments. It offers comprehensive protection, securing PCs against threats. Users do not experience any system slowdowns while scanning. Harmony Browser protects all your browsing activity and is bundled with Harmony Endpoint and Harmony Connect. It provides a small but effective security layer and sometimes comes packaged with the larger Harmony suite.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I recommend Microsoft Defender for Endpoint due to its features and capabilities, which cover more loopholes than other EDR solutions."
"The installation is straightforward."
"One of the best features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is called Threat and Vulnerability Management, TVM, which provides real-time visibility of vulnerabilities and misconfiguration at our endpoint level and helps prioritize and remediate based on risk information."
"It's free. There is no additional cost. It's part of Windows."
"It is stable and easy to use. Everything is okay, and there are no performance issues."
"The features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that I like the most are that it is not a very intrusive product, so it is not using up a lot of compute."
"Microsoft Defender can block some viruses or malware. So, it can protect my files. It can save files on Office 365 OneDrive. I use encryption for some files, then I can recover them from OneDrive."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's WCS function, a content filtering solution, has proven to be the most useful, stable, and reliable option for our current needs."
"It is quick and easy to configure."
"The phone access scan stands out as the most valuable feature for me."
"It is easy to use through interfaces and easy to configure each of the customizations we created based on the characteristics that we wanted."
"The product's most valuable feature is the detection engine due to its ability to identify threats."
"It gives us security for the users' mobiles and ends up protecting us in a significant way."
"This antivirus is regularly updated, and the updates can be scheduled."
"ZoneAlarm protects all computers from viruses, spyware, and hackers."
"Personally, I find the Game Mode of the Firewall very useful."
 

Cons

"The actual product updates have caused a little bit of disruption that could be avoided, so I think that customers need to have more granular controls as to when updates can be deployed versus more done from a top-down deployment perspective."
"We'd like to see integrations with more vulnerability scanning solutions like Tenable."
"I would like to see better integration with their other security products to give better visibility from a higher level."
"Threat intelligence has the potential for improvement, particularly by integrating more sources."
"I have accounts for administrators and corporate employees, but I also have accounts for students. I can't split these types of accounts. I need a separate configuration for both... I need to research how I can get alerts for only the administrative machines."
"The solution could use improvement on the interface."
"I would like Microsoft to have some kind of direct integration for USB controls. They have GPO and other controls to control the access of the USB drives on devices, but if there is something that can be directly implemented into the portal, it would be good. There should be a way to control via a cloud portal or something like that in a dynamic way. USB control for data exfiltration would be a good feature to implement. Currently, there are ways to do it, but it involves too many different things. You have to implement it via GPOs and other stuff, and then you move or copy those big files via Defender ATP. If there is a simple way of implementing those features, it would be great."
"Windows Firewall is integrated with Windows Defender. Over the last few days, I have had a problem with defining a wildcard on Windows Firewall. For example, I wanted to pull out the connection of my program and install a software package with a lot of executable files. I wanted to prevent it from accessing the internet. I could not select executables by using a wildcard. I had to select a single executable with its full name."
"We'd like better performance of the network equipment. There are high-speed environments where an immediate response is required."
"The solution's efficiency in threat containment and overall protection needs improvement."
"Currently, the client is only available for the Windows Operating System but it would be good if it were released for Mac OS as well."
"Some of our users say that the interface is a little bit outdated for 2020, and want it to be more modern and cozy."
"Perhaps the primary area for potential enhancement is to make it faster, ensuring a more seamless experience while maintaining robust security features."
"They should release a single update with all the necessary characteristics to avoid being in a cycle of consecutive updates."
"I would like it to be integrated with the Check Point centralization solution like Infinity Portal. It would be great to be able to manage it through the same website."
"ZoneAlarm should be a light application that does not take too much memory in mobile phones."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is built into Windows 10. If our clients are using Microsoft Defender, the cost goes away for them."
"Licensing options vary. Some customers buy it as an enterprise agreement and pay yearly. Others buy it as a CSP, so they pay per month. It completely depends on the customer's needs."
"It came with Windows."
"This is an expensive product and licensing for all Microsoft products is a big issue."
"The solutions price could be cheaper."
"The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route."
"It is an expensive solution. It would be nice if it could be included with the Microsoft Office package."
"The price is fair for the features Microsoft delivers. If you want tailor-made features, you have to mix different licenses. It isn't straightforward."
"We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for ZoneAlarm, which is cheap."
"The pricing is reasonable, with a yearly renewal license costing seventy dollars."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"This is a freeware product and I recommend using it."
"We use the free version of the software, but it can be upgraded to the paid Extreme Security edition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Hospitality Company
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise93
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ZoneAlarm?
ZoneAlarm has an acceptable price. Not much detail can be provided as I am not the one to judge the price.
What needs improvement with ZoneAlarm?
Check Point support needs improvement. Currently rated at 9 out of 10, more support is required. There are some concerns on support that need addressing. The integration of new products with their ...
What is your primary use case for ZoneAlarm?
I work with vendors such as F5 and deal with F5 as a reseller. I work with F5 BIG-IP regarding F5 Shape Security. BIG-IP Advanced WAF is what I work with regarding BIG-IP DNS or BIG-IP AFM. Advance...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Terma, Optix, Samsung Research Amercia, SF Police Credit Union, Independence Care System, Mattias Thomsen, Carmel Partners, Desert Research Institute, CRIF, FXCM Inc, US State Agency
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. ZoneAlarm and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
884,012 professionals have used our research since 2012.