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Microsoft Defender for Office 365 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
7.4
Users found Microsoft Defender for Office 365 cost-effective, citing improved protection, time efficiency, and savings in security management.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery boosts ROI by improving data efficiency, compliance, risk management, and reducing legal and IT workloads.
It has also decreased our time to detection and response by about 15 to 20 percent.
The ease of accessing necessary information promptly is the biggest return on investment.
We have seen a 100% 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
6.9
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers knowledgeable support, though escalation delays and outdated documentation can affect resolution speed.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is praised for responsive support, despite some mixed experiences with wait times and outcomes.
Customer service and support have been fantastic.
I would rate Microsoft Purview eDiscovery's customer service and technical support a ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is scalable, adaptable, and integrates seamlessly, supporting medium to large enterprises efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is scalable and efficient, seamlessly integrating with cloud infrastructures but lacks some search functions.
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 Office 365 is highly rated for stability, featuring strong performance and rare minor network issues.
Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is generally stable, with minor slowdowns, but users seek more transparency on performance issues.
For us, it has been one hundred percent reliable.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is highly reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 requires improvements in antivirus, scalability, integration, interface, threat intelligence, and licensing transparency.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery needs faster, more efficient features, better integration, NLP for queries, and affordable pricing for users.
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process.
I would reduce the cost.
Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial.
We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders.
The reporting, sorting, and filtering capabilities that other products have aren't available natively in Purview.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 pricing varies; often costly for SMBs but competitive for enterprises, with added licensing complexities.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery pricing is complex, with E5 costly yet beneficial, while E3 is cheaper but limited.
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 suite, making it slightly more expensive compared to Trend Micro.
The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently.
As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile.
With CSP or MCE-style agreements with Microsoft, the process is streamlined since we have reps from both Microsoft and CDW working together.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 provides comprehensive email protection with seamless Microsoft integration, enhancing threat management and data security.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery ensures efficient data retrieval with multi-platform integration, automation, compliance visibility, and adherence to global data privacy laws.
It ranks the threats and allows us to prioritize those hitting us the hardest, such as email threats.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is now part of a centralized tenant for my entire group.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
Purview's inclusion of global regulations is critical because we're heavily regulated by FERC, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the SEC.
Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, Android, and SaaS apps, which is critical for capturing SMS and MMS text message data.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st)
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 Office 365 is 2.3%, down from 2.9% 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

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the indi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
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...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,646 professionals have used our research since 2012.