Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.9
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers significant ROI with cost savings, seamless integration, and real-time protection against ransomware attacks.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery boosts ROI by improving data efficiency, compliance, risk management, and reducing legal and IT workloads.
Without detection and protection measures, organizations would face substantial payments and reputational damage, including the necessity to inform customers about data breaches, potentially leading to loss of business.
Consultant at ACT4SERVICES
We have seen a return on investment when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it saves labor by reducing the need for staff to focus on it.
IT CONSULTANT at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
The biggest return on investment for me when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the time saving.
Lead security engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
We have seen a 100% return on investment.
Senior System Engineer at a sports company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The ease of accessing necessary information promptly is the biggest return on investment.
Manager, Information Technology Operations & Security at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
It's hard to quantify the ROI in a dollar amount, but we realize value by doing more tasks in less time than we did before.
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Many users find Microsoft Defender for Endpoint reliable, but support experiences vary, with premium support offering quicker assistance.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is praised for responsive support, despite some mixed experiences with wait times and outcomes.
The Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, 'Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then.'
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The level-one support seems disconnected from subject matter experts.
Office 365 Subject Expert at a government with 10,001+ employees
I rate Microsoft support 10 out of 10.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
I would rate Microsoft Purview eDiscovery's customer service and technical support a ten.
Is admin at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable and integrates well with Microsoft’s ecosystem, despite needing improvements for handling massive data.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is scalable and efficient, seamlessly integrating with cloud infrastructures but lacks some search functions.
We managed to scale it out in a short amount of time, with two months of planning and three months of implementation on 10,000 computers.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable enough to handle various devices across environments, whether they are laptops, Android devices, or operating in hybrid environments.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Compatibility is its main feature.
IT CONSULTANT at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
It scales with us seamlessly.
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
With the E3 licensing, I would rate the scalability of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery as a six because it lacks certain critical search functionalities.
Is admin at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is praised for its reliability and stability, with minor concerns about resource intensity and performance.
Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is generally stable, with minor slowdowns, but users seek more transparency on performance issues.
I haven't seen any outages with Microsoft.
IT Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I rate Defender 10 out of 10 for stability.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Defender for Endpoint is extremely stable.
Systems engineers at Delta Dental of Colorado
For us, it has been one hundred percent reliable.
Manager, Information Technology Operations & Security at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is highly reliable.
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint faces interface complexity, slow detection, high CPU usage, integration issues, and seeks improvements in multiple areas.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery needs faster, more efficient features, better integration, NLP for queries, and affordable pricing for users.
Repeated interactions are necessary due to Level One's lack of tools and knowledge, hindering efficient problem-solving and negatively impacting our experience with Microsoft support.
Office 365 Subject Expert at a government with 10,001+ employees
In contrast, competing products offer reduced pricing for long-term commitments, which makes it difficult for us in that environment.
Solution Consultant at BIM Group of Companies
We use Microsoft partners to help govern the platform, and as part of an alliance, we want to gather data from each tenant and combine them for a complete view.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial.
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
Defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives.
Senior System Engineer at a sports company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders.
Is admin at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers flexible pricing, making it competitive and cost-effective compared to standalone security products.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery pricing is complex, with E5 costly yet beneficial, while E3 is cheaper but limited.
That has been the trend we have seen with Microsoft lately—it is just getting more and more expensive.
Assistant Director, Hybrid Infrastructure & Operations at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
It costs $15 per VM for the P2 plan, which is seen as affordable for customers.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
With CSP or MCE-style agreements with Microsoft, the process is streamlined since we have reps from both Microsoft and CDW working together.
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile.
Senior System Engineer at a sports company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently.
Enterprise Content Mamagement Lead Developer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint excels with seamless integration, advanced threat intelligence, AI-driven protection, and continuous cloud-based security management.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery ensures efficient data retrieval with multi-platform integration, automation, compliance visibility, and adherence to global data privacy laws.
Defender for Endpoint's coverage across different platforms in our environment is pretty good. We have devices running Linux, Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It covers all of them.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides a unified management interface allowing customers to manage their on-premises and hybrid infrastructures from a single pane.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
One of the best features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is its database for identifying zero-day attacks or malware attacks.
Consultant at ACT4SERVICES
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, Android, and SaaS apps, which is critical for capturing SMS and MMS text message data.
Is admin at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Purview's inclusion of global regulations is critical because we're heavily regulated by FERC, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the SEC.
Enterprise Content Mamagement Lead Developer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 7.5%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.5%
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery1.5%
Other91.0%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.
reviewer2595618 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a sports company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Has made it significantly easier to handle rare litigation requests
The speed of it is valuable. I am able to search even 10,000 mailboxes for specific content. It helps search and accommodate the often limited information provided by users regarding what they need. It provides a solid starting point, and then we are able to refine the data from there. That has been very helpful because we do not always get enough information from our users to know what to look for. For example, a user is missing an email from x date but does not know anything else. In such a case, I give them a list of emails to look at so that they can tell me what they are missing. It is not a lack of the tool. It is more of a lack of the user providing info.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Government
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise92
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
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 solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The setup process was very straightforward. We acquired pricing through our reseller in NASDAQ, eliminating the need to search for prices ourselves.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be benefici...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
I sometimes use it for legal holds or to find lost items, and to determine what is going on. However, most of the time, my use case is legal-related.
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.