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Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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
7.9
Amazon ECS provides significant cost savings and ROI with reduced server expenses, auto-scaling, and a pay-as-you-go model.
Sentiment score
7.2
Organizations gain significant returns from Microsoft Defender for Cloud through improved security, cost savings, and enhanced productivity.
This saving is achieved since, with EC2, the entire virtual machine must be running regardless of workload, whereas Fargate eliminates this cost.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon ECS support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, yet feedback varies due to cost, knowledge gaps, and response times.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support varies, with premium users receiving better service, while others face repetitive explanations and variable expertise.
We do not rely heavily on technical support from AWS as we have our own teams managing the infrastructure.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Amazon ECS is highly praised for scalability, handling diverse workloads effectively, with minor regional and autoscaling challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is praised for scalability, seamless integration, and adaptability across environments, despite potential cost implications.
Amazon Elastic Container Service has a scalability rating of ten out of ten.
Scalability becomes an inherent capability in the cloud context, and this service does well in that regard.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Amazon ECS is highly rated for stability and performance, achieving up to 99.99% uptime, with infrequent user-related issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable, with minor issues in response times, connectivity, and update-related downtimes.
The stability of Amazon Elastic Container Service is excellent.
Amazon Elastic Container Service is mostly very stable.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon ECS needs improved management, user experience, pricing transparency, security, integration, support, auto-scaling, reliability, and intuitive interface.
Users desire improved automation, integration, transparency, controls, and documentation for better management and protection in Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously.
When it comes to new-age services around AI, particularly in the areas of LLMs and genomics, these services are not fully available in our region's availability domain.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Elastic Container Service offers variable, usage-based pricing, appreciated for cost-effectiveness despite potential regional and configuration-related cost variances.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers competitive pricing, but complex models and hidden costs can be concerns for enterprise buyers.
Amazon Elastic Container Service is quite cheap compared to Google, particularly for hosting databases.
Our customers often do a trade-off between requiring services at particular SLA levels and being willing to pay a premium price to us as partners.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Elastic Container Service is scalable, cost-effective, easy to use, with seamless AWS integration and flexible deployment options.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security through advanced threat protection, multi-cloud integration, AI capabilities, and automated incident responses.
It inherently offers scalability by default, without our IT teams needing to take the extra load to make the services available for our end users.
Amazon Elastic Container Service makes horizontal scaling easy and is especially effective when working under the ECS service.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Elastic Container Se...
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Containers as a Service (CaaS) (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 1.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Horizontal scaling is streamlined when deploying modern workloads
Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously. This limitation makes it challenging to define a balanced scale-out automation since a well-written software should balance between processing and memory.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Elastic Container Service?
Implementing the product has helped me monitor the parameters. I utilize tools like CloudWatch and AWS systems to track these parameters. If any issues arise, I alert our developer team to address ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Container Service?
The solution must improve backup and compatibility around OS like Windows and Mac.
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The cost is generally reasonable. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Plan 2 costs $15 per server, per month. For a normal customer with ten to twenty servers, the cost is about $300 per month, which is a...
 

Also Known As

Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.