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IRONSCALES vs Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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
7.9
Implementing IRONSCALES led to cost savings, improved cybersecurity, and enhanced security awareness with immediate efficiency and threat detection benefits.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence consolidates security, reduces costs, enhances intelligence, and effectively prevents breaches, offering significant ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.8
IRONSCALES and its third-party resellers are praised for their quick, efficient issue resolution, excellent support, and high customer ratings.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender support varies, with excellent technical help praised but mixed experiences with contact ease and expertise levels.
Level two support is knowledgeable and knows how the product works, which is very good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
IRONSCALES is cloud-based, easily scalable for up to thousands of users, integrates with Office 365, and requires minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence offers scalable security, favored for flexibility, ease of use, and seamless cloud integration despite potential costs.
If there were some customizations available, I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
IRONSCALES is highly stable and reliable, featuring minimal downtime, easy maintenance, and consistent uptime, ensuring smooth performance.
Sentiment score
8.3
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is praised for stability, performance, security features, and resilience, despite occasional outages and delays.
It provides a high level of security and avoids phishing and scam emails.
 

Room For Improvement

IRONSCALES needs improved Google Suite integration, better UI, enhanced training and reporting, refined algorithms, and more comprehensive feature bundling.
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence needs pricing, integration, support, AI, automation, and customization improvements for better affordability and usability.
Providing code customization would help keep pace with new vulnerabilities and threats.
From the telemetry data standpoint, I would prefer Defender data to be more open in future updates.
 

Setup Cost

IRONSCALES pricing is considered high but cost-effective and valuable, offering significant security benefits and savings for varying budgets.
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is cost-effective in E5 bundles but can be complex and costly standalone for SMEs.
 

Valuable Features

IRONSCALES offers scalable AI-driven phishing detection, automated response, and integration with Microsoft 365, enhancing email security and user experience.
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence integrates globally informed threat detection with seamless Microsoft product integration for comprehensive, automated protection and analysis.
One of the best features is that it provides a certain level of customization, allowing us to set our spam confidence levels.
Our threat detection is enhanced due to the AI agents in Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which helps in detecting automatically.
 

Categories and Ranking

IRONSCALES
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
20th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (17th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (8th)
Microsoft Defender Threat I...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of IRONSCALES is 2.4%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Orion Trist - PeerSpot reviewer
Saved us a big deal by catching malicious links and attachments sent directly to our staff and has also been helpful for educating our staff
It has helped immensely because it has gotten rid of malicious links and malicious attachments that have been targeted at our different staff members. It has definitely protected us on more than one occasion. Their integrated approach of combining email security and employee awareness training is excellent because the training is a reminder for staff to continually be on their feet and look out for the ever-changing landscape. It also lets us know who has been trained, who hasn't been trained, and what they're like. It integrates a risk ratio for all our employees. Its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are very important because I don't want to have to manage 24/7. Having the AI to do a lot of the work for me is invaluable. Its automated detection and response capabilities are excellent. It does a wonderful job. They provide all the stats on what it has done. It gives you information about how much time is saved and all that kind of good information. Its automated detection and response capabilities have massively decreased the time we spend manually reviewing email events. Since May, it has taken care of 170 hours. So, it has saved 88 hours per analyst. It is very good in terms of the customization of the automated detection and response capabilities. It is granular, and you can adjust it however you want. If it is too high, you can turn it down. If it is too low, you can turn it up.
TapabrataSamanta - PeerSpot reviewer
A cost-effective solution for monitoring and security but lacks supports for non-Microsoft products
There are weaknesses, and Microsoft is working on addressing them. Over the past three to four years, the ATP and other components have improved significantly, and the integration has also advanced. We are using third-party services. While we have Microsoft Threat Intelligence, which leverages Microsoft's facilities, we also utilize additional third-party threat intelligence. As of today, we don't completely rely on Microsoft for certain regions. This is an area where Microsoft needs to improve. Consequently, we use Anomali, a third-party threat intelligence provider. We integrate our product's intelligence with Anomali, from which we obtain threat insights. Microsoft products offer significant advantages, especially in the realm of threat intelligence. It works very well with Microsoft products. However, you might need additional services if you have non-Microsoft products in your environment. For instance, if you use Apple or Linux, Microsoft's solutions alone might not be sufficient. If they can work more effectively, especially with zero-day attack speed and other sophisticated threats, it will help us provide our customers with timely newsletters about new attacks.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IRONSCALES?
The solution captures a bit more of the unknown, quantifies it, and applies intelligence to it to pick out and stop a lot of phishing emails that come through.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IRONSCALES?
The product is available as a middle-priced tool. I think it is not the cheapest solution. There are other solutions apart from IRONSCALES that are more expensive, while some are a little bit more ...
What needs improvement with IRONSCALES?
I think maybe on the side of the awareness training, the tool can improve a little more information and have some other languages since even though English is good, Spanish is not so good. The tool...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
It just runs in the background. I don't have to worry about, making sure it's Intelligence. So, you know, this kind of makes it very easy, have to worry about installing. It is easy to use.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
From the telemetry data standpoint, I would prefer Defender data to be more open in future updates.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
We have tried Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence. I have expertise with Microsoft Defender products. I am not familiar with Microsoft Defender for IoT because we did not use that in our environ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IRONSCALES vs. Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.