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McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is 10.9%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

DavidJones7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers automation alert features with easy integrations and impressive scalability
I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. There are a few technical challenges with the deployment, but it can easily solved by an experienced professional but not by a beginner user of the tool. The complete implementation and migration to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator will take around three months. If someone is using a software platform already with implemented use cases in their environment, it might be difficult to implement the same use cases when the customer is migrating to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. The conditions and prior alert settings needs to be accurate when migrating to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, otherwise false positive alerts might get generated.
NikhilSharma2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to multiple playbooks to fetch data from multiple firewalls and utomated several tasks, including vulnerability scans and SOCL (Security Orchestration, Automation
Recently, they started implementing microservices in XSOAR, which has improved quality and addressed previous issues. However, they should focus more on licensing costs. The user licensing fees are quite high. For example, I received a quote for XSOAR, and it was $12,000 per user per year. If you have a SOC team of 30 members/analysts, you're looking at a substantial expense. They should consider reducing these costs since this high pricing seems to be more about profit. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing. Moreover, the reporting and dashboard features are decent but could be improved. The user interface (UI) is quite heavy and takes time to load, which is a major drawback.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator has a built-in advanced pattern, which is very useful because it can detect any pattern."
"The central management console is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The general endpoint protection is valuable, and it is easy to manage."
"The graphical interface of the solution is its most valuable aspect."
"The valuable feature of the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is the management of the policies."
"If you set it up right, it can really manage a very complex environment which require fine tuning where there are a lot of exceptions. That's what it caters to. It can just do those specifics in those exceptional situations, which is good."
"It is a scalable solution...I rate its scalability a nine out of ten."
"The central manager policy means we have almost all client modules in one solution."
"From the security team's standpoint, the solution has improved our organization's overall cybersecurity."
"Each incident collected is orchestrated with automation that selects the security analyst to be involved, or provides complex execution plans for managing security incidents."
"The Palo Alto ecosystem has a marketplace offering integration with Sentinel or other products."
"The product’s stability is good."
"The product can automate security tasks."
"The product is quite easy to use."
"I have no complaints about Cortex's stability."
"The automation part and the playbook creation part are awesome. The way it is responding to the customers and incidents is also very good. In the SOC environment, I guess it will carry out around 50% of the work."
 

Cons

"There are some issues we are having with updating our Windows server. So we need to contact support or access our support portal."
"There should be more insights and completeness into the cyber kill chain, similar to CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. It just seems a little outdated in being 100% signature-based without all of the insights and protections that come with CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. Overall, they've got some catching up to do if they plan to compete in the comprehensive EDR space."
"There is a problem when it comes to agent communication and duplicate records, where the rebooting of a machine leads to the installation of a new agent and you get a lot of duplicate records that ultimately affect your compliance monitoring."
"The impact of the agent on the endpoint's performance - the resources it takes. Additionally, the difficulties we experience with inheriting and breaking inheritance on the organization's structure breakdown for policy inheritance and then for rules inheritance. We are actually struggling with this."
"I would like to see McAfee reduce the amount of manual work required."
"There are some issues relating to the automation of reports. That's why I wanted the DLP reports. There are some problems in this area. Sometimes it does not work even though all the configuration words are right. There are also some problems with automatic updates."
"The solution sometimes has some false positives on IP addresses, from the web control aspect of the product. This needs to be improved."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator needs to upgrade the technology; it's like their area function is not quite as good as compared to other market vendors."
"The platform’s setup procedures could be streamlined compared to one of its competitors."
"The price of the solution could be improved."
"Palo Alto needs to develop more AI-centric products."
"The solution's correlation rules and playbooks should be improved."
"The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules."
"It's only one cloud right now. It might be helpful for some companies to have an on-premies option."
"One of the significant issues we encounter is system slowdown when we receive an influx of alerts, which inhibits how quickly we can access the information needed for investigation."
"I would like to see Cortex become less dependent on Active Directory and group policies to manage the deployment. Maybe I need to update my understanding of how to deploy it, but that's the way I know how to use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For large enterprise companies, the price should be alright, but for small businesses, the uptake might be slow because, for these clients, the price doesn't look very attractive."
"It's an expensive solution"
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"McAfee tries to package different things into different products, then sell them as different products with different licenses. They just split everything up into multiple things. That's just their sales pitch and how they do it."
"$The price of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is expensive, it is approximately $6,000 to $9,000 per license annually."
"Compared to other Antivirus products, the cost of this solution is a bit high."
"It is attractively priced. It is a fraction of what we're going to pay for CrowdStrike or SentinelOne, but it only has a fraction of the capabilities as well."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is not an expensive solution."
"My company did not make any payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product since we were only using its pilot version."
"From the cost perspective, I have heard that its price is a bit high as compared to other similar products."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is expensive."
"When I first looked at Demisto, it had a price tag of $250,000 but when we finally purchased it, it was $345,000."
"The solution's cost is reasonable."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR could be reduced. We are always looking for a discount. There is an annual license needed to use this solution."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing a nine."
"The solution is based on an annual licensing model that is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator network security software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mcafee's ePolicy O...
What do you like most about McAfee MVISION ePO?
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator's performance is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Even though customers often comment on the price, the potential savings come from managing a large number of security events with a limited number of analysts. This leads to economic advantages des...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The product can be tailored for each deployment to respond to specific customer needs, and this complexity may be seen as a down...
 

Also Known As

McAfee ePO, ePolicy Orchestrator, Intel Security ePolicy Orchestrator, McAfee MVISION ePO
Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brelje & Race, Cognizant, Sutherland Global Services, Eagle Rock Energy, Arab National Bank, Bank Central Asia, Kleberg Bank, Leading Mexican Bank, SF Police Credit Union, Macquarie Telecom, Seagate Technology, Blackburn & Darwen Council, California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, IRCEP, Major U.S. State Government, State of Alaska, State of Colorado, Cemex, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke
Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
Find out what your peers are saying about McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
852,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.