No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Purview Communica...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
GRC (12th), Digital Risk Protection (6th)
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 August 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is 1.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery1.8%
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance1.3%
Other96.9%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2840445 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineering Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Data lineage and quality checks have streamlined team-wide collaboration and business context
The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is cost-wise it is acceptable, but sometimes unexpected errors will occur, though this happens very rarely. There are features I wish Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance had that it does not provide today. Enterprise-level lineage is one such feature. As of now, if Microsoft were to provide this tool for free when you buy Microsoft Fabric, I feel that would be better. This would also result in lower license costs. I do not have any changes I would make to Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance at this time.
Frank Radeck - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented the solution now take just 30 minutes.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms. It is critical for Purview to be able to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From a support perspective, I can do things while I'm eating lunch or something else. It's more dynamic and responsive. I think everybody appreciates it. We're not tied to one device. Purview's multi-cloud capabilities are also essential for the same reasons. Keeping everything under one umbrella further increases the time savings. Purview accounts for critical regulations from around the world. This is crucial because we hold ourselves accountable to standards and need to align with them. Working at a law firm, we have clients who dictate to us what standards they expect. The visibility is excellent. As we move more things into the cloud, more opportunities exist to put everything under one umbrella.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features I appreciate the most in Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance include the ability to build cases, give them dates, and find them based on the notes that I left behind."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance has impacted my organization positively; it is a good tool that provides an end-to-end business view for a particular organization."
"Customer support is excellent."
"The time it saves is very useful."
"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance helps with extra collaboration and ensures communication is within the framework."
"Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented Purview now take just 30 minutes."
"I think eDiscovery Premium has made dealing with data from Teams much more accessible than any other platform."
"The most valuable features are automatic content logging tagging. Performing these tasks manually would be impossible. Since most of our data is already in Microsoft, it's convenient to run it through this tool."
"The machine learning wasn't half bad. I really like that part. I thought it was novel. It pretty much automated it, once you trained the model."
"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."
"The return on investment is saving the equivalent of one or two full-time IT department employees and a few hours per week for legal staff."
"Our legal team benefits from using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery."
"The ability to query everything that's in Microsoft and send links or add people, like managers, to review the documents is valuable. It's easy as I don't have to download and email anything. I just add them as a reviewer, and they can access it from there."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can be improved by having more tutorials available for those who aren't used to using this platform."
"The product should incorporate more automation with the help of AI."
"Monitoring and compliance for web applications could be improved."
"The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is cost-wise it is acceptable, but sometimes unexpected errors will occur, though this happens very rarely."
"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users."
"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 beneficial. Copilot is expected to add such functionality in the future."
"The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially."
"I see two significant challenges with many of my clients. One is that there are some functionality gaps compared to specialized tools in the legal industry, like a legal hold tool or a document review tool. They have features that Purview eDiscovery lacks. Those gaps create a situation where I almost have to do things twice. I need to collect all my data in eDiscovery and ship it to another platform to complete the review."
"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders. It would be beneficial to have more options available for E3 customers. Enhanced Teams functionalities and better capture of text message data, both SMS and MMS, would also be improvements."
"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users. We still need all the backend stuff. We have to use Graph API to interface with everything and create custom interfaces on the front end to make it easier for the end users, which is costly. The reporting, sorting, and filtering capabilities that other products have aren't available natively in Purview."
"Purview eDiscovery works, but it's not entirely perfect. There were times when search results would get hung up or error codes would be presented and we'd have to contact Microsoft to get that sorted out."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery should be cheaper."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The costs associated with E5 licensing are currently expensive for us, so we use the E3 license, which comes with fewer features and functionalities."
"With the full bundle, pricing is not a significant concern. As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile."
"The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently. While the licensing for Purview is not as tricky as other Microsoft products, navigating licenses since the shift to E3 and E5 plans has been a task, as individual licenses must now be purchased separately."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comes as part of Microsoft 365 licenses."
"In the positions that I've had through contracting over the years, I've heard talk of it being overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
The biggest friction point or frustration I have encountered with Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is cost-wise it is acceptable, but sometimes unexpected errors will occur, though this h...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
The scope of Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is a team-wide workflow. The first thing I do when I open Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is check how many workspaces are availab...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance?
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is a bit expensive, $500 per license, but it is cheaper compared to products like ComplyAd, GeoComply, and ComplyAdvantage.
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.
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.