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Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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 Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Microsoft Exchange Online P...
Ranking in Email Security
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (8th)
Perception Point Advanced E...
Ranking in Email Security
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.1%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is 6.8%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perception Point Advanced Email Security is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

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.
Nur Mohammad - PeerSpot reviewer
An effective email security solution that provides DLP, Safe Attachment, and Safe Links
If you want extensive email security, you need to purchase a Plan 2 license. Plan 1 and Plan 2 are the two plans for Microsoft Exchange Online Protection. Some customers hesitate to purchase this product because it adds some costs to them, which is necessary for them. It would be helpful for customers if Plan 1 features were included with EOP. However, they still need to purchase Plan 2 for advanced security features. One of our clients recently requested to compare Zimbra's features with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection. Zimbra is open source, while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is not. When I compare both the products, many free features are available in Zimbra because it is open-source software. It makes no sense to request Microsoft Exchange Online Protection add all the features people get on open-source software like Zimbra. Hence, I would say whatever features Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has are enough. Microsoft has a dedicated research team that should research and add new techniques like phishing and spamming solutions to the product.
Jijin Joseph - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives in-depth analysis reports to end users for any malicious content found in emails
Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I send malicious email to my colleague. There is a dependency on AWS cloud.This means if the cloud service is down, which may impact the perception point's email delivery.So it would be great if there is any HA for the solution. I would like a user-friendly configuration, like APIs. This solution is API-friendly configuration by following the steps provided. It would be great if it could be automate it, like the Avanan.Also, it would be good if Perception Point Advanced Email Security could have an MSP model. During the early stages of working with this solution, there were some constraints and issues.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its ability to protect us from malware."
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"The product's scalability is good."
"In general, my company is happy with Microsoft support...My company hasn't faced any stability issues with the solution."
"You can use the product to create special accounts."
"It provides security to both on-premises and Azure infrastructures."
"I rate Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) nine out of ten."
"I like the product's ZAP feature."
"The initial setup was easy. The configuration process is very straightforward."
"The initial setup of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection was easy."
"The security features provided by Microsoft are robust."
"One is the hardware-assisted platform that provides more insight into the threat scenarios. And the other is their instant response team's availability, 24/7, for identifying and responding to incidents. These are the two main things that everyone likes."
"We haven't had a client, who uses their protection, have an email security breach. That is the best thing about what they do. We don't have to think too much. Their product just works and keeps bad emails away."
"The Perception Point Incident Response team acts as an extension of our SOC team. This is very important for us. This is a benefit provided for their main product of scanning our emails. If Perception Point can give me IR, this is really good versus other products that do not provide this kind of service. Perception Point's service is great. They are very professional. That reduces the time that my internal SOC has to deal with my internal IT person. They just send an email to the IR team at Perception Point, who continues the investigation and blocks any emails, if necessary. This is very good because it can reduce a lot of time and effort from my team. It is like an extension of my SOC, but external."
"The solution is used to block malicious items hidden inside a document or PDF file."
"What's really good about this platform is that you have full visibility, it has a very nice and very friendly UI, it's quick, and there's no latency in the scanning."
"The solution’s effectiveness when it comes to detection is very good. It has a very good mechanism. It scans our emails. It identifies any threat or phishing attempts and phishing campaigns as well as any bad reputation, servers, or links, then it blocks them. This is what I find to be very good about this system."
"The most valuable feature is the technical support services."
"It has modules to detect malware and that is a strong point. It has a very nice way of showing you, directly in the product, a lot of details about certain pieces of malware. It goes very deep and even shows you the assembly code. It also does detonations on files and shows you the results in different operating systems. That is very useful."
 

Cons

"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive."
"I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"The visibility into threats is not up to the mark, as I do not have control. I rate my experience with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as six out of ten due to troubleshooting and pricing concerns."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication."
"Some of the searchability when looking for specifics in Exchange logs is tedious."
"The product's end-of-life cycle could be extended."
"I would like to get reports about vulnerable connections from our clients with information about domains, public IPs, etc. That would be highly useful."
"The solution needs to improve its backup."
"The tool's classification for bulk email is cumbersome."
"Not all settings can be configured automatically and most still require manual configuration. However, there is an automation tool available that can be used to input all the configurations either as a script or a tool it would be helpful."
"Some features, like encryption, are not available."
"When you're using a Microsoft product solution, you can scale it, but if you're not, there are limitations."
"They could improve their anti-spam engine a little bit, because there are a lot of false positives. Sometimes, emails pass through their system but are spam. In terms of security and engines for malicious emails and antivirus, they're doing a good job. Their other engines can be improved."
"Email alerts should be available in real-time."
"Perception Point Advanced Email Security should make available more use cases."
"Its websites for analysis need to be a bit more approachable for people who are less technical. Technically, it is a fire-and-forget solution. So, you want to be able to implement this solution for a lot of companies who don't have security operation teams (SOCs) behind them. You need to have something where a secretary can jump onto this console and release whatever she needs to release. Therefore, it needs to be written in a very specific non-technical language."
"They just don't do a good job of promoting themselves. They seem like a typical busy IT company who is just working on fixing problems and making technology better. However, they are not fantastic at marketing themselves to existing partners, which is not a bad thing. It is just something for improvement."
"I think the interface could be improved in the next release."
"In terms of architecture, and I know that they're going to improve this, the solution needs to be much more redundant. There was an outage a month ago in AWS, and that basically stopped the service for two or three hours. Although in two years, this was the first time that something like that happened, our expectation from a company like Perception Point is that it should work with either a multi-cloud or multi-region architecture, to improve the resilience."
"There is still room for improvement with BEC. There is more work to be done by Perception Point on machine learning and neuro language as well. BEC is very difficult if you don't have a computer language looking into the content of the email and trying to make a determination through that. With BEC you often don't have an attachment or a URL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"The product is expensive."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"The product is very expensive."
"The solution falls on the higher or more expensive side of the spectrum."
"Microsoft Exchange Online Protection's pricing is a little bit more because its price has recently increased."
"The solution is expensive but is backed by Microsoft's reputation."
"Regarding the price, it's comparable to other service providers. We've also looked at Check Point's offerings, and the pricing doesn't seem to be an issue."
"It's a high price."
"The product is bundled with Microsoft 365."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable."
"Online Protection is fairly expensive."
"We were able to get reasonable pricing that matches the ROI we want, so I think that it is the correct price point."
"The pricing and licensing are very fair compared to competing companies in the same field."
"It has very reasonable pricing. Normally, the end user is paying. Perception Point is already in the Amazon marketplace, so we cannot sell it as a distribution partner. For example, we cannot take more than that margin of what they offer in the marketplace. Whatever the end user is paying, it is definitely worth it and it is not that high."
"It fits every budget. It has a low price. I can't go ahead and sell it for any price I want. They are quite strict. They say, "This is the price that you can sell it for and this is the price for you as a reseller." That is it. It is not a lot of money. I will not become rich from it, but I like that they keep a standard for everyone. They are a fair company."
"The price of the solution is high."
"There is room for improvement for them with an MSP partner. The pricing is good and fair. Our customers don't complain. The only thing is that it's a little bit old school. They don't have a system that automatically checks the number of users that our customers have so we can just update the licenses ourselves through a website. It is still done manually. They have a person who checks invoicing monthly to determine if there have been any changes. A nice improvement would be if they could get automated licensing counts."
"We would always like it to be cheaper and save more money. However, we are getting the value from it."
"The pricing was fair in comparison with the other solutions. We have received good value for what we paid."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Retailer
5%
 

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 variou...
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 Exchange Online Protection?
The initial setup was easy. The configuration process is very straightforward.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection?
Some of the searchability when looking for specifics in Exchange logs is tedious. Although eventually the information...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Exchange Online Protection?
I use the tools to protect customers' emails, mostly utilizing Defender products to protect emails and links from Sha...
What do you like most about Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
The most valuable feature is the technical support services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expen...
What needs improvement with Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could ac...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Microsoft EOP, MS Exchange Online Protection
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.