We performed a comparison between ESET Endpoint Security and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: ESET Endpoint Security ultimately won out in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that ESET Endpoint Security is easy to install and easy to use. In addition, it has excellent customer support.
"The setup is pretty simple."
"Fortinet is very user-friendly for customers."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"The solution was relatively easy to deploy."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The price is low and quite competitive with others."
"Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."
"Impressive detection capabilities"
"The performance of the solution is very good it does not impact my hardware and is user-friendly."
"The inspection feature allows complete monitoring"
"It is pretty easy to deploy. Its update definition file is small, so it can dispatch very quickly within the enterprise. The product itself is very lightweight, so it won't delay your endpoint. You also don't have to do any difficult configuration because it comes with a very good default setting. So, you just install it and forget it."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"This solution does not slow down your systems. It is very light."
"It can scale as well."
"The pricing, if compared to other products, is cheap."
"They do a program where you can renew for three years. It's very reasonable, as far as the cost per year, because you can renew for three years. They will also do multiple computers, so I actually protect all my family computers, as well as my work computers, all under one license. This means I only have to deal with re-upping my license once every three years. That's the big thing for me."
"A few years ago, when I was using a different product, I was affected by a virus that destroyed everything. Since using Microsoft Defender, I have not had this kind of problem."
"The visibility into threats that the solution provides is pretty awesome... This is something that makes me think, "Wow, okay. If I had my own organization, I would probably get this too." It stops the threat before an employee gets phished or something gets downloaded to their computer."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been secure and there is zero maintenance required because it updates with Microsoft Windows."
"It depends on the licensing. Most of the customers have got at least a 365 E3 license, and they can use most of the features of Windows 10 Defender. So, anyone who has got an enterprise license can start using those features. Some of the customers have got E5 licenses, and they can use all advanced features. Customers with E5 licenses use the advanced site protection (ATP) features and web content filtering without going via a proxy, which gives the benefit of replacing the proxy. They can get the benefit of MCAS and integration with Intune and the endpoint manager. It is a kind of single platform for all 365 technologies. It helps customers in managing everything through a unified portal."
"We had certain compliance and usage issues. For example, our company wanted to go with CIS, but we didn't have a proper way of measuring whether the endpoints have the right standards in place or whether they were compliant with CIS. Microsoft Defender was like a one-stop for most things because it gave us the vulnerability and patching scores so that our vulnerability management teams can focus on covering up the vulnerabilities and the patching team can check the vulnerable versions and deploy the right versions."
"Ensures that I'm working with a product that gets updated regularly without me having to remember to do it. Since it's a Microsoft product, I'm confident that it requires a low use of system resources. The benefit of that being that my computer isn't constantly being drained."
"Defender's analytics are much better than CrowdStrike's."
"It is stable and very easy to use."
"I haven't seen the use of AI in the solution."
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices."
"Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection."
"We've had a lot of false positives; things incorrectly flagged that require manual configuration to allow. Even worse, after we allow a legitimate program, it sometimes gets flagged again after an update. This has caused a lot of extra work for my team."
"To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"The solution is not stable."
"I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components."
"It seems to have some issues with updates. When you do updates, it sometimes requests for a reboot, and even when you do the reboot, it still says that you need to reboot. Currently, on my computer, it says that a new ESET Endpoint Antivirus has been installed, and I need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect, but I've already done that, and the same message is still there, which is a little annoying. It should have a feature similar to the Intercept X feature in Sophos."
"They should focus more on the offline market as well. Everybody is connected nowadays, and they want to do everything via cloud or fast internet connections, however, that's still not possible in many situations."
"The solution should offer more security surrounding blacklisted websites."
"There are some new antivirus technologies that rely on AI, artificial intelligence. ESET does not have this technology right now."
"The feature is somewhat lacking in security protection."
"High-end hardware requirements across workstations"
"It would be useful if they could automate the deployment more."
"The new versions only support no operative systems in Mac and do not support operative systems."
"I wish they would extend the use of the Security Central portal, even for the free option of Defender. Because, as companies grow, it is labor intensive to manage the AV and detection part of it. For companies already subscribed to Office 365, I think this would be a good enhancement."
"The solution could be even more secure and provide an even higher level of security."
"The scanning is slow when it is working with incoming emails."
"We need better support to learn about the product. Documentation is available, but we need some kind of training program so that we can get a better understanding of the product."
"The anti-ransomware features need to be improved upon."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's licensing is confusing. It has conflicting information on the website. We also faced integration issues with other systems. It makes laptops slower than traditional antivirus systems."
"The file scanning has room for improvement. Many people use macros within their files, so there should be a mechanism that helps us to scan them for malicious payloads."
"Threat intelligence has the potential for improvement, particularly by integrating more sources."
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ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is ranked 9th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 99 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of ESET Endpoint Protection Platform writes "Easy to set up with good security and rapidly improving capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Eliminates the need to look at multiple dashboards by automatically providing one XDR dashboard to show the security score of each subscription". ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is most compared with Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Check Point Harmony Endpoint and Fortinet FortiClient, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Trellix Endpoint Security and Check Point Harmony Endpoint. See our ESET Endpoint Protection Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors, best Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) vendors, and best Anti-Malware Tools vendors.
We monitor all Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.