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ESET PROTECT Enterprise vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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
8.4
ESET PROTECT Enterprise offers valuable security and protection, recognized for excellent ROI due to effective features and easy installation.
Sentiment score
7.3
Organizations achieve positive ROI with Microsoft Defender XDR by consolidating security measures, enhancing protection, and saving time and resources.
The return on investment is excellent due to its functionality and ease of installation.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
Previously, identifying and containing threats took a long time, but now, with Microsoft Defender XDR, it takes just a few minutes.
The biggest return on investment for us is that by being on the platform, we can sunset many legacy tools.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.9
ESET PROTECT Enterprise's customer service is highly rated for knowledgeable, responsive support, offering effective resolutions and valuable promotions.
Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Defender XDR support ranges in effectiveness; premium users receive better service, while standard support often involves delays and inefficiencies.
The tech support from ESET is amazing, and I would rate it as ten out of ten.
They are very responsive and help in solving issues quickly.
They were helpful with billing inquiries and offered promotions and discounts.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
Once issues are escalated to the second or third layer, the support is much better.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
ESET PROTECT Enterprise offers excellent scalability for large organizations, efficiently managing many users and endpoints across environments.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable, integrating seamlessly across devices and departments, despite some limitations with specific requirements.
It can efficiently scale up to thousands of devices in an organization without issues.
It is better suited for workstations rather than server environments.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
ESET PROTECT Enterprise is stable and reliable, with minimal issues, effective protection, and efficient support for occasional problems.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly stable, reliable, and effective, with minimal bugs and proactive issue resolution ensuring user confidence.
The solution is stable, and I have not encountered any glitches.
The solution is very, very stable.
I experience some problems occasionally but have fast support to troubleshoot.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
 

Room For Improvement

ESET PROTECT Enterprise struggles with deployment, performance impacts, integration, and user guidance, needing enhancements in management and detection features.
Microsoft Defender XDR requires improvements in speed, integration, cost-efficiency, support, and AI capabilities for a better user experience.
Sometimes, agents lose connection with the management console, and the administration team needs to reinstall the agents on the computers.
They need to reduce the number of notifications on the endpoints.
It takes a lot of processing power when the machine is initially booted.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
 

Setup Cost

ESET PROTECT Enterprise offers cost-effective pricing, competitive licensing, efficiency, and valued affordability compared to similar security solutions.
Microsoft Defender XDR pricing is competitive with Microsoft 365, though standalone costs and licensing complexity impact user perception.
I pay 40 dollars per agent annually, which is cheaper than 60 dollars per agent for Check Point.
We recently paid fourteen dollars and thirty-six cents per unit for 20 users, which is reasonable.
The pricing is reasonable, and I would rate it five on a scale of ten where five is moderate.
There are certainly savings when using Microsoft Defender XDR, which can range from 30%, 40%, and even up to 50%.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
 

Valuable Features

ESET PROTECT Enterprise offers robust security, user-friendly management, and efficient performance, even on older hardware, with minimal intervention.
Microsoft Defender XDR strengthens security with integration, threat detection, centralized management, and cloud service compatibility, enhancing IT efficiency.
It allows simple whitelisting and has a learning mode for new installations, which reduces false positives by adapting to typical user habits.
Its web component prevents infections from malicious websites, which enhances its anti-malware capabilities.
One of the strong features of ESET PROTECT Enterprise is its ability to work well on old computers.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
 

Categories and Ranking

ESET PROTECT Enterprise
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (11th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of ESET PROTECT Enterprise is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 6.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Cees Van Den Haak - PeerSpot reviewer
A reliable solution that offers enterprise protection
Our primary use case involves approximately 180 workstations, 180 laptops, and office protection in our environment ESET PROTECT Enterprise is reliable.  The tool is complex and expensive.  I have been using the product for 10 years.  The tool is stable.  The product is scalable. My company…
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ESET Protect?
The product enabled Zero-Day Protection for our environment. We never encountered any issues regarding threats.
What needs improvement with ESET Protect?
The management console could be improved. Sometimes, agents lose connection with the management console, and the administration team needs to reinstall the agents on the computers. This is a signif...
What is your primary use case for ESET Protect?
I use ESET PROTECT Enterprise for maximum protection on every computer in my organization. I work in a bank, and our security requirements mandate that we use only on-premise solutions.
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
There is nothing I can think of at the moment that needs improvement. I am a contractor and finishing up soon, so I haven't encountered any issues requiring enhancements.
 

Also Known As

ESET Protect, ESET File Security
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about ESET PROTECT Enterprise vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.