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IRONSCALES vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management 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
5.6
Determining ROI from Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is challenging due to package inclusion and unclear financial benefits.
As a Microsoft partner, we receive significant discounts, making the solution affordable for us.
 

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
7.6
Microsoft Defender's customer service receives mixed reviews, highlighting inconsistent support and varying effectiveness in technical assistance.
They are sometimes responsive, however, often issues cannot be reproduced on their end, making it challenging.
The support we receive from Microsoft is declining, and for example, after taking advanced support, we have not received satisfactory answers.
My team raised multiple support tickets for the product, and we were able to get responses from Microsoft support team.
 

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
8.4
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is praised for its high scalability and seamless integration, receiving consistently high user ratings.
It is scalable; I evaluated the product and decided to use Defender on over 700 of our company servers.
 

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
6.6
Microsoft Defender is rated highly stable with 99% availability, despite minor portal, compatibility, logging, and memory issues.
There are compatibility issues occasionally arising with false positives when other security tools are not whitelisted in Microsoft Defender.
It is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU.
I would rate the overall stability as an eight.
 

Room For Improvement

IRONSCALES needs improved Google Suite integration, better UI, enhanced training and reporting, refined algorithms, and more comprehensive feature bundling.
Microsoft Defender needs improvements in accuracy, customization, integration, resource efficiency, macOS support, user-friendliness, and affordability.
This scoring should be for specific industries as well. If I belong to the healthcare industry using Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, it should provide me with a risk score and show how I fare against the risk score of my industry.
Sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours.
The product is not stable; it often uses excessive memory and CPU, which makes it slow.
 

Setup Cost

IRONSCALES pricing is considered high but cost-effective and valuable, offering significant security benefits and savings for varying budgets.
Microsoft Defender offers varying pricing; complex licensing may incur additional costs, but security benefits can justify the investment.
For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look at the security side as well, so we are good for now.
The pricing is reasonable, and it's included in the whole Microsoft E5 bundle, so it's all-inclusive.
 

Valuable Features

IRONSCALES offers scalable AI-driven phishing detection, automated response, and integration with Microsoft 365, enhancing email security and user experience.
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management excels in integration, compliance, risk prioritization, and real-time assessments, enhancing security across diverse environments.
The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available.
A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products.
It shows us the recommended plan, along with vulnerabilities and remediation options, which is one of my favorite parts.
 

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 Vulnerab...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (12th), Microsoft Security Suite (20th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
 

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 Vulnerability Management is 0.7%, up from 0.2% 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.
NaySan @ Suraj Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides actionable vulnerability insights and recommendations with notable efficiency
They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours. Overall, everything is good with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, but the portal refresh rate can take up to seven days in some cases and three or four days in others to reflect changes.
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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
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typically an operational maintenance process. The operational maintenance process refers...
 

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 Vulnerability Management and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.