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 price is low and quite competitive with others."
"Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance."
"The main thing is that I feel safe. Because the processes that have been used to get a handle on the attackers are much better than other competitors"
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers."
"The most valuable feature is the analysis, because of the beta structure."
"This is stable and scalable."
"It is absolutely invisible once running."
"Technical support has been very good. They're quick to respond to any problems."
"The most valuable features are the sandbox, mail scanning, sandboxing attachments, files, and that it responds to VPN porting."
"We use ESET, which is pretty much perfect for us. It is also absolutely simple and automatic once setup."
"The solution is stable."
"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 features seem to be alright."
"The most valuable feature of ESET Endpoint Security is the antivirus for the endpoints."
"Easy to understand and easy to set up endpoint security solution. It's a multifeatured product with web content filtering and automated investigation features. It also has a fantastic vulnerability management dashboard."
"We found that because the endpoint devices are based on Microsoft Windows devices and Windows Defender is integrated with the foundation and the core layer, it makes it more integrated and more agile in terms of responding to any security threats or changes or development"
"You have endpoint security to keep your devices safe. That's the feature that we're interested in."
"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."
"I am using it for very simple purposes. It is perfect and quite effective. I have been using it for a while, and I have never had any virus infection, data leak, or other security breaches. It works fine for standalone purposes. If you log on to OneDrive, it has ransomware protection."
"The integration of Defender, Security Center, and the Microsoft compliance score, is the feature we use most to share the results with our clients and to create a roadmap together."
"It is stable and very easy to use."
"Endpoint's most valuable feature is deep analysis."
"The support needs improvement."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"Detections could be improved."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."
"Everything with Fortinet having to do with their cloud services. They need to invest more in their internal infrastructure that they are running in the cloud. One of the things I find with their cloud environment compared to others' is that they go cheap on the equipment. So it causes some performance degradation."
"The solution's installation from a central installation server could be improved because the engineers had a little bit of trouble getting it installed from a central location."
"I suspect there will be some changes required to ESET because some experts I know just moved to MDR. I can imagine there might be some issues that were not fully covered by the ESET Endpoint that would be covered by MDR that we're on now."
"The integration capabilities might be lacking a bit."
"The initial setup of ESET Endpoint Security was not complex because we have five years of experience. However, it is not as easy if we did not have the experience."
"We do get false positives."
"The proactive feature is excellent, but I do not believe ESET will make any changes to this feature in the future."
"The update process can be improved, and there could be an automatic update process when a new version comes out. For system updates or program updates, there could be more automation."
"ESET Endpoint Antivirus could improve the mobile device experience by having more coverage."
"The solution could improve by having higher-level security and reporting."
"We encountered some misbehavior between Microsoft Office Suite and Defender. We had issues of old macros being blocked and some stuff going around the usage of Win32 APIs. There is some improvement between the Office products and Defender, and there is a bunch of stuff that you can configure in your antivirus solutions, but you have several baselines, such as security baselines for Edge, security baselines for Defender, and security baselines for MDM. You have configuration profiles as well. So, there a lot of parts where we can configure our antivirus solution, and we're getting conflicting configurations. This is the major part with which we're struggling in this solution. We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have. That's really the part that needs to be improved."
"I would like Microsoft to have some kind of direct integration for USB controls. They have GPO and other controls to control the access of the USB drives on devices, but if there is something that can be directly implemented into the portal, it would be good. There should be a way to control via a cloud portal or something like that in a dynamic way. USB control for data exfiltration would be a good feature to implement. Currently, there are ways to do it, but it involves too many different things. You have to implement it via GPOs and other stuff, and then you move or copy those big files via Defender ATP. If there is a simple way of implementing those features, it would be great."
"In the next release, I would like to see better management reporting."
"There could be an increase in security for the solution."
"It should support non-Windows products better. Microsoft is now one of the leading vendors in the security area. So, they should be product-independent."
"Its user interface (UI) can be improved. Currently, in the console, you have to dig down for certain things. They've got many different layers to get to things instead of having it all on the surface. You have to go three folds lower to get to specific functionality or click a particular option. It would be good if we can manage the console through menus and instead of three clicks, we can do things in one click. They need to change the UI and work on it in terms of a better user experience."
"Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort."
"There's a lot of manual effort involved to configure what we need."
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ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is ranked 9th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 96 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, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete 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.