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Malwarebytes Teams vs Symantec Endpoint Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

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 Protection Platform (EPP)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
Malwarebytes Teams
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Endpoint Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
146
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes Teams is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Endpoint Security is 3.3%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.5%
Symantec Endpoint Security3.3%
Malwarebytes Teams2.1%
Other91.1%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
reviewer2594097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at a wholesaler/distributor with 11-50 employees
Exceptional malware protection with regular updates and behavior-based detection
There are no built-in backups or integrated backup options, which could be an opportunity. The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it. Other customers have mentioned issues with false positives. It lacks enterprise-level management and more enterprise functionality. CrowdStrike and SentinelOne are much more enterprise-grade solutions. Malwarebytes has limited integration with cybersecurity tools and lacks enterprise integrations because it is not an enterprise product.
Kumbesh Rajagopal - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Delivery Analyst at Accenture
Management becomes easier with minimal complications, but improvement in support tools needed
Regarding areas of improvement for Symantec Endpoint Security, there are many changes, and the support portal tool is complicated compared to other tools. When trying to get service from Symantec, the process is complex. I'm not sure whether it's because of my project or something else. Though it is easy to manage, easy to get, easy to install, and works efficiently for managing policies, we faced a significant disadvantage. We wanted to add multiple hashes because of numerous new alerts coming, but we could only add them one by one, which is a considerable disadvantage in Symantec.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The information the dashboard provides is very clear."
"It'll not slow down your system when compared to others."
"The user interface of the solution is sophisticated and straightforward."
"The solution helps find bugs, and it is safe to use to prevent attacks by hackers."
"Cortex XDR lets us manage several clients from the same console, and its endpoint defense is more advanced than traditional antivirus."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"Cortex covers everything I need. It's a perfect solution. Cortex provides a different level of visibility because it's an extended EDR, allowing you to grab logs from the network and firewalls. Palo Alto invented the concept of the extended EDR or XDR."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"The endpoint protection and response that allows us to restore a machine back to a pre-infected state are the most valuable features."
"The solution has a good management interface."
"It is intuitive and easy to use. For the most part, it does a good job of catching things. It is good at stopping stuff. I did a couple of tests with a password cracker. I tried to load that on, and Malwarebytes didn't let me do that, which was pretty good. It has a rollback feature that I haven't seen with any other company. If one of your endpoints are hit with mass ransomware, you could actually roll it back. I watched a demo of them do that, and it was pretty sweet."
"We don't have to spend any time remediating bad things happening: Not viruses nor ransomware."
"The technical support services are good."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable features of the solution are malware scanning and malware removal."
"The most valuable features of Malwarebytes are the EDR and the complete feature set provided."
"The best thing about Symantec is its ability to control our endpoints from a single point. You can manage the antivirus definitions, upgrades, remote scanning, etc., from one console."
"Its ease of use in deploying it and regular updates are most valuable."
"What I appreciate most about Symantec Endpoint Security is that it's easy to manage compared to other tools I have worked with, such as minimal endpoint security, McAfee, and CrowdStrike."
"The IPS function (with no firewall needed to be installed in the SEP client) is quite good."
"The product has valuable features for insights."
"Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is easy to use."
"It's good at detecting signature-based stuff and stopping that."
"What I like most about Symantec is the intrusion detection module. If you are scanning the environment, it will flag a possible intruder and tell you the IP and where the attack is coming from. Traditional antivirus solutions will never flag that. If you have a traditional SIEM, you might be able to pick that up. Symantec is a holistic endpoint security solution, so when you scan an endpoint, Symantec will let you know that something is happening to it."
 

Cons

"Whenever the tool releases a new version when deploying the product across the organization, I feel like there are some disturbances in the CPU usage after upgrading the tool to the latest version."
"Cortex XDR is trickier to configure than other Palo Alto products. This is one area where we are not so satisfied."
"Impact on system performance is horrible, adding a lot of delays for users."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"Dashboards do not allow everyone to see what's happening."
"There's room for improvement with Mac device installations, which can be challenging."
"Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth."
"If they had pulse rate detection, it would be better."
"The interface could be improved. Currently, you need to really dig around to find the elements you need."
"The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it."
"They should make it faster, less taxing on the processor."
"It would be better if updates could be downloaded, and deployed, on-premises to avoid low bandwidth causing issues."
"Notifications are lacking."
"Malwarebytes is too simplistic. From a SOC IR perspective, it doesn't give you very much data around it. It doesn't tie things or provide SHA-1 and SHA-256 detection information, which makes it hard to do an additional investigation."
"The EPP solution lacks the sophisticated artificial intelligence required for automating reports and letting you know about things in real-time. It stops a suspicious activity in real-time, but it doesn't let you know in real-time. You have to look at a report, and then you find out that something is wrong. You have to manually kick off a scan. With the Advanced EDR solutions, Malwarebytes has the ability to alert you in real-time, but they still don't do automatic remediation or quarantining of devices. That is something that you still have to do manually. So, the endpoint protection piece, which is just like their basic endpoint protection, lacks AI. For the advanced detection and response piece, there is an add-on that comes with it, but it still doesn't go far enough in terms of automatic remediation of viruses. It won't separate that virus from your network if something happens. You have to manually go there and do it."
"Requires increased efficiency in terms of detecting false positives."
"It would be nice to have customized reports integrated on the main console with no additional DB server or BI server."
"There are a few negative points. They should separate the feature for each separate solution for mobile devices. The second one is about the price, it's expensive. Finally, the third would be the complexity of implementation."
"If a machine is infected by ransomware, it's hard to recover the data. We don't have any data on the client, so we're not overly concerned about that. Still, it would be nice to have this feature if there are any future problems."
"Any external device which is inserted into a computer should be subject to an auto-scan policy, to automatically scan it before accepting the device... They need to make it more user-friendly, so that when anyone puts in a USB stick it will be scanned, popping up any problems before it is used."
"The spam filter is something that you can't control, and you can't set the filter to intercept different types of emails."
"They're just starting to get into this now, but I think they can do better - they're just starting out with I think is called the SEP Cloud Console. It has more limited functionality. It will be good once we can run SEP from the cloud. That would be good."
"If you're not charged with administering the product and you don't do it every day it can sometimes be difficult to remember how to do the simple basic things, so some type of help or guidance for your most regular or frequent tasks would be good."
"Its interface needs improvement. Its interface is very old, and it needs a new look. Other solutions, such as Sophos and BitDefender, have a better and more modern interface, whereas Symantec has had the same interface for a while. There has been no enhancement in the interface. They should update and provide a better interface in 2022 for a better user experience for their customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."
"Malwarebytes is a cost-effective product."
"I would say that it's affordable. It costs much less than Sentinel One, CrowdStrike, or anything of that nature. But, at the same time, you are getting what you pay for. So I would say it's one of the best when you're comparing traditional NextGen AVs like Webroot that aren't the best in the bunch."
"The platform pricing is competitive with other antivirus products."
"We expect to pay $1,000 USD a month, depending on the number of users."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the product's pricing a seven."
"Its cost is around $60 a machine. The cost of the total solution for 250 people is about $8,500 a year. If we add EDR to it, it will bring that cost up to about $15,000. The cost for Carbon Black is about $25,000, which is $10,000 more, but you get all AI functions with it."
"The cost may be something in the ballpark of $20-25 a year per computer."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"I rate the product's pricing a six out of ten."
"There is a yearly license."
"We pay on a yearly basis..."
"They're on the reasonable side. They are at mid-level. They're not too expensive as compared to their competitors. They're also not too cheap. In terms of price structure, hopefully, they could do a subscription."
"It's not cheap."
"I’d say SEP deserves the money."
"Symantec Endpoint Security is an expensive solution."
"When it comes to pricing, Sophos is preferrable to Symantec."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise63
 

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 do you like most about Malwarebytes?
Ten times a day, improved signatures will be downloaded, so it is very up-to-date in terms of malware experience.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Malwarebytes?
I really hate the automatic rebilling without officially confirming it with me. It's an annoyance and they should at ...
What needs improvement with Malwarebytes?
It takes up too much space when it's trying to run in the background.
Which is better - Cortex XDR or Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
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...
What do you like most about Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?
Symantec have everything – documentation, videos, data sheets.
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Knutson Construction
Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Malwarebytes Teams vs. Symantec Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.