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

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management 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 Data Life...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
33rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (11th), Document Management Software (2nd), Data Governance (29th)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery1.1%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management0.6%
Other98.3%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

AnonyAdmin - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides data protection across platforms and connects to different devices
The rollout of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is not yet complete. The goal of this implementation is to mitigate the risk of oversharing, particularly in anticipation of the broader adoption of Copilot. Purview's ability to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, as well as data in other SaaS applications, is crucial. As a university with a bring-your-own-device policy, we cannot control the devices used by our diverse population of students and faculty. Therefore, an inclusive ecosystem that seamlessly integrates with various devices is essential, as we cannot enforce restrictions on specific devices or mandate particular technologies due to the open nature of our system. It is critical that Purview provides data protection across diverse cloud and platform environments, including AWS and GCP. Historically, our primary platform has been AWS, but we are increasingly expanding into Microsoft Azure. Therefore, I anticipate a future where we utilize both platforms extensively, making comprehensive data protection essential. Purview's design incorporates critical global regulations, ensuring compliance for university researchers and the institution itself with government and various regulatory requirements. Purview enhances visibility across our data estate. The new AI-powered data security features, especially the oversharing report, promise to be invaluable by providing insights into potentially overshared files and sites. This automation eliminates the need for custom scripts and manual data mining, previously necessary for identifying such issues, and ultimately saves significant development time. Purview saves time by eliminating the need for manual scripts, which can take days to run due to the volume of people and sites involved. Instead of running scripts multiple times or waiting hours for completion, Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process.
Frank Radeck - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
"Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented Purview now take just 30 minutes."
"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."
"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."
"I think eDiscovery Premium has made dealing with data from Teams much more accessible than any other platform."
"Purview eDiscovery 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."
"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."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery has saved me personally a lot of time because I can query it, and it touches everything we have as a full Microsoft shop."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery should be cheaper."
"I would suggest adding more platforms. Currently, it's compatible with OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange. Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial. Exploring options like Azure Files might be an avenue for improvement."
"I would suggest adding more platforms."
"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
"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."
"With the full bundle, pricing is not a significant concern. As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile."
"The costs associated with E5 licensing are currently expensive for us, so we use the E3 license, which comes with fewer features and functionalities."
"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."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comes as part of Microsoft 365 licenses."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
I am a customer and user of the tools. We are a big shop, and both the companies I work for are Microsoft Office 365 customers with over eighty thousand seats. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Mana...
What do you like most about Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and th...
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...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.