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.
"Fortinet FortiEDR's firewalling, rule creation, monitoring, and inspection profiles are great."
"Ability to get forensics details and also memory exfiltration."
"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."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team with a comprehensive view at a glance."
"We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"The tool offers great detection. You need time only to setup the environment. After that, it is just plug-and-play to get the solution up and running. We can also control the PC remotely from the cloud and get all the information in one place."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the management."
"What is great about ESET is the ERA Web Console through which we can pull various reports, monitor and administer all clients and servers, and the console is easy to use."
"The stability is good."
"The ability to push policies and also to restrict an installation or to restrict any form of threat within the policy has been quite useful."
"I find the main valuable feature to be the antivirus, it is very effective with removing viruses."
"This solution blocks the brand new malware threats."
"It is absolutely invisible once running."
"Its simplicity is the most valuable. It also has very good integration. We like it."
"Stable endpoint manager, antivirus, and antimalware, with fast technical support and a straightforward setup."
"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."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ransomware and malware protection. The solution detects malware live and whenever it detects suspicious activity, it quarantines it."
"Endpoint's most valuable feature is deep analysis."
"Defender has very little impact on the end-user and the agent works quite well with a minimal impact on the client and server."
"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."
"It's pretty easy to scale."
"There's room for improvement in the quick response time and technical support for integration issues, especially when dealing with multiple vendors."
"They can include the automation for the realtime updates. We have a network infrastructure with remote sites. Whenever they send updates, they are not automated. We have to go into the console and push those updates. I wish it was more automated. The update file is currently around 31 MB. It could be smaller."
"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."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"I think cloud security and SASE are areas of concern in the product where improvements are required. The tool's cloud version has to be improved in terms of the security it offers."
"Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection."
"The SIEM could be improved."
"To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."
"They need to improve licensing for VMs. When ESET is uninstalled from a VM, the seat stays on the license management server. We have to manually delete the seat from that server because it doesn't know how to handle it. I contacted exclusive ESET support here in Croatia and they told me there is no solution for this yet."
"I would like them to use AI features to do preventative virus protection."
"In terms of what is lacking in ESET, it really would need more features for the users when they are working outside of the corporate network."
"Sometimes, ESET sends alerts within my own network that cause confusion. That is, it might warn about contamination, or that the VM has crashed, but it doesn't go further than that. It just shows me the alert and sometimes I am not sure what to do about it."
"If I were in an environment that required a large-scale deployment then I would choose another solution over ESET."
"A few times, we have had problems with downloading an agent. We had to try multiple times and multiple uploads."
"ESET's updates are mostly manual. That's my biggest concern. I'd like it to be more automatic. I've had to download the new version and run it manually to install it. I've got several workstations like that right now."
"They recently released an EDR integration. I hope they have more AI or intelligence filtering on the EDR events. Even though it has already got AI, but it is quite a different thing. So, they still have room to improve on the EDR part. This is one small piece that they need to improve. Otherwise, it is just fine."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can use more advertising to promote their features."
"This solution needs to move beyond relying on virus definitions alone and protect the system using behavioral analysis of the processes that are running."
"I would just like them to have more consistency, and that's a comment that's across the board with Microsoft. They change things a lot."
"A single dashboard would be a significant improvement."
"The price, in general, could always be a little bit cheaper."
"I would like to see improvement from a management perspective. We have had to depend on Intune for certain tasks."
"The management console is something that can be improved."
"Our team's knowledge of the solution needs to be improved, and Microsoft could do a better job conveying the necessary information to users. We could proactively use the tool more and explore capabilities we are not yet utilizing."
More ESET Endpoint Protection Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is ranked 11th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 97 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, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Fortinet FortiClient. 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.