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Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs N-able Mail Assure comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Ranking in Email Archiving
1st
Ranking in Email Security
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (9th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
N-able Mail Assure
Ranking in Email Archiving
14th
Ranking in Email Security
42nd
Average Rating
1.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 5.2%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able Mail Assure is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Office 3655.2%
N-able Mail Assure0.8%
Other94.0%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Emeka Ndulu - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Improves threat visibility and response while reducing manual tasks and training users against phishing
I appreciate the attack simulation feature whereby I get to train users and educate them on how to identify phishing emails and spam emails, as well as the anti-spam protection. It gives me visibility into my threat environment and threat landscape to ensure that I am one step ahead of any likelihood of threats within my environment. I get to detect it and respond, so the threat intelligence is very effective. Microsoft security solutions save my time. It saves money because once I protect my environment, I don't lose money. It has decreased my detection time and my time to respond.
This is a dud product with inferior spam filtering
This is a dud product with inferior spam filtering versus alternatives like SpamHero, and the continuity feature is essentially marketing fluff. Failed deliveries, for example, they don't count it as an issue so those messages won't be queued for another delivery attempt. As I understand it from talking to their support, if the server pings or sends any response at all, then Mail Assure will not keep a copy. It will also weirdly mark messages during that outage as rejected, so it's not like Mail Assure doesn't know that the message never reached the user(s).

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has significantly decreased my time to detection and response."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"Defender has reduced the time our security team spends on tasks by 10 to 15 percent, allowing us to focus on other areas."
"The feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 that I like the most is probably the email features specifically, because those are the ones that a typical end user will accidentally click on a link not knowing what it is, and it'll catch it, and then it'll feed it over to Defender and stop the attack from happening before it actually can."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"Microsoft so far has been good; we haven't faced any kind of disruption or anything else, it's a good product and good platform, I must say, and overall it's a good product and good service and we haven't dealt with bugs or glitches."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"The only benefit from Mail Assure is its white label feature and its per-user licensing plus the ability to package archiving and spam protection into a single interface."
 

Cons

"Its price should be improved. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"From a development point of view, if I wanted to do development on my actual machine where Defender is, the organization can set certain policies or Defender makes that prohibitive."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"This is a dud product with inferior spam filtering versus alternatives like SpamHero, and the continuity feature is essentially marketing fluff."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise32
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
My experience with pricing, setup, and licensing is that it's actually quite reasonable even on the licensing side as a standalone product. It's very competitive compared to what competitors are ch...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I think Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can be improved by creating more educational pieces about not just looking for malware. We are seeing a lot more malware-less emails that Defender for Offi...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
My main use cases for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 include email hygiene.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
SolarWinds MSP Mail, SolarWinds Mail Assure, SolarWinds MSP Mail Assure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
eNet Systems, WinAdmins, Newport Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint, Microsoft, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Email Security. Updated: August 2026.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.