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Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Datto Endpoint Detection an...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
42nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
214
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is 1.3%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.0%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.0%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)1.3%
Other89.3%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
reviewer2406663 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Effective risk response, easy deployment, and enhanced security
They use Datto EDR as part of the solutions that we supply Datto EDR has helped reduce overall security incident costs by fifteen percent. The ease of deployment has been good, and the responsiveness of the application to risks has been quite effective. The inclusion of web filtering would be…
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a simple platform to use."
"I like the centralized console and the predictive analysis it does of malware. It is very stable and also scalable."
"We switched because there were a lot of added features with Palo Alto that Check Point didn't have, and it was an upgrade for us."
"The solution is a new generation XDR that has a lot of artificial intelligence modules."
"Cortex XDR lets us manage several clients from the same console, and its endpoint defense is more advanced than traditional antivirus."
"Stability is a primary factor, and then there's the ease of distribution and policy management."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks saves time in various ways, although the user interface is fairly standard."
"If any application performs suspicious activities, such as changing registries or modifying other applications, Cortex XDR detects and blocks the entire application."
"The most valuable feature of Datto EDR is the visibility of the endpoints."
"The ease of deployment has been good."
"The insight that the solution provides is the most valuable aspect. The security scanning they do is excellent."
"Datto Endpoint Detection and Response is a perfect product for endpoint security."
"The insight that the solution provides is the most valuable aspect."
"Automatic scanning and cleaning of viruses is the best and most valuable feature helping this tool to thrive. If any viruses are found, they are cleaned automatically."
"What the Defender platform does is that it reduces the size of the haystack, and it'll say that the needle is over here."
"The scalability is amazing; using Azure, the sky is the limit."
"This is a stable solution that has matured over the years."
"The best feature is the fact that for certain mobiles you can control your corporate profiles versus your personal profiles. That is amazingly important. Apple just supported the separation of corporate and personal profiles, whereas Android has been doing that for quite some time... Because Android supports that, if an Android phone is lost or stolen, I can wipe out all the corporate-related information from that phone and not touch the personal side. I can separate the apps and I can separate the ability to cut and paste between apps."
"Defender is a part of Windows; you just need to enable it. There is no need to install anything."
"Provides good security features and you can view it in the central console."
"This product offers cost-effective threat protection, which integrates with Office 365 and has unified endpoint management features."
 

Cons

"Currently, if you use Palo Alto endpoint protection as the only solution it's very complicated to remove pre-existing threats."
"The MAC agent is not as robust feature-wise as the PC version."
"It would be good if they could make an exception for applications."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"The GUI could be improved. It's a little bit cumbersome. It could be more user-friendly."
"This product has not improved my organization - in fact, we are in the process of moving back to another product as a result of Cortex's horrible impact on system performance."
"We had a problem with getting our older endpoints up to date, but their newest updates have been really good."
"The inclusion of web filtering would be good."
"The solution could improve by having more deployment methods."
"The deployment of the solution right now is terrible. We find it to be very bad."
"The deployment of the solution right now is terrible. We find it to be very bad. It could be improved enormously."
"The solution should allow the automation of playbooks."
"I had some cases a while back and told an agent my issue. When I called the next day, I had to explain everything again to a different person, so I found it annoying to repeat myself all over."
"It is so expensive. It isn't cheaper than McAfee or other solutions."
"It would be nice to have a paid upgrade that would provide additional screening of the day-to-day activities."
"The interface could be improved."
"The scanning is slow when it is working with incoming emails."
"The detection of viruses could be a little bit better."
"It's not easy to create special allowances for certain groups of users. It can be a little heavy-handed in some areas where Microsoft has decided to lock a feature out, meaning they make it hard to make an exception... One company we work with needed to use about 20 different thumb drives for about 20 users. To make that exception for them was very difficult. In fact, you can't really make an exception. But what you can do is allow them to use it and, while it will still alert, you can actually suppress those alerts."
"There's scanning going on that occasionally topples the memory, causing everything to freeze. This should be fixed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Datto Endpoint Detection and Response is not an expensive solution."
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The price of the solution can be expensive depending on the company."
"The solution comes free with Microsoft Windows 10."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an expensive solution."
"I pay for it through the Windows Professional or Standard license. It is a one-time cost for me, and I use the same license."
"The normal, standalone model, is not expensive, but the enterprise model that includes the bundle with email and some web protection, is a bit more expensive."
"The licensing fee is a function of your Office 365 license. The feature set you get is a function of the license as well. There is probably an E2 version, an E3 version, and an E5 version. There are several versions, and not all features are the same. So, you might want to check what features you're expecting because you might get shocked. If you only have an E3 license, the capability isn't the same."
"We pay a yearly license for Microsoft Defender. We also have a support contract with them."
"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."
"The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise49
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise95
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infocyte HUNT?
The price is quite low. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a four, meaning it is quite cheap.
What needs improvement with Infocyte HUNT?
The inclusion of web filtering would be good.
What is your primary use case for Infocyte HUNT?
They use Datto EDR as part of the solutions that we supply.
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Infocyte HUNT
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Check Point Software, PwC, Grant Thornton, AT&T, DHL, U.S. Department of Defense
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.