Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) Reviews

We use Microsoft Exchange Online Protection for scanning and protecting email attachments and URLs. Primarily we use Mimecast for URL protection, but it's good to have a second step, particularly Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, just in case something slips through.

What I like most about Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is its integration with Windows, so we have one central view for all alerts and incidents.

I'm pretty happy with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, so off the top of my head, I can't think of any reason for me to want to change something in the solution.

Having orchestration features added to Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, particularly automation and remediation, would be quite useful.

I've been using Microsoft Exchange Online Protection for five or six years.

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is quite stable.

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is a scalable solution.

I haven't contacted technical support for Microsoft Exchange Online Protection.

Before Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, we used Mimecast. We still use Mimecast, but for an antimalware solution, we've always used what's available on Windows.

I didn't configure the solution, so I can't tell if the setup was straightforward or complex. Our Exchange administrators were the ones who set up Microsoft Exchange Online Protection.

We implemented the solution in-house.

Our license for Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is covered by our enterprise agreement.

There are three thousand users of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection in our company. There is no plan to increase the number of users, at least not in the near future.

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is quite a difficult product. I would recommend it because it's a good product. My advice to others looking into using it is to make sure their rules are configured correctly, and they have turned on all the necessary features.

I'm rating Microsoft Exchange Online Protection eight out of ten.

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection's use case can be email collaboration, data protection from various threats such as phishing or malware, and deploying anti-spam policies and anti-malware policies to ensure user safety. Additionally, the attack simulation and training features within the solution can be used to train end users across different campaigns happening over the internet. Other features like saved attachments, saved documents, and disabling options in Microsoft Exchange Online Protection can also be utilized.

The pre-set policies and configuration analyzer are the most valuable features in my opinion. The configuration analyzer is a great function to bring about strong external protection, and one can either turn on the pre-set policies or take help from the configuration analyzer to get recommendations for better protection.

One area that could be improved is handling gray emails, which are emails with attachments or newsletters that are not necessarily malicious, but are coming from different providers and are being received by various customers. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection may not be fully capable of stopping these emails until submitted for investigation over a specific period of time by Microsoft experts. This process needs improvement.

I have been working with the product for approximately six years.

The stability of this solution is quite good. It's been working well for a long time. Microsoft is constantly updating it and adding more features. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I would rate its scalability a seven out of ten. There are certain restrictions. When you're using a Microsoft product solution, you can scale it, but if you're not, there are limitations.

If a company is doing business transactions, sending and collaborating, or choosing teams, I suggest they use Exchange Online Protection. But it may not be enough for any organization that is doing its best, as many threats are happening through different communication channels. I suggest using Office 365 as well, which comes with more advanced functionalities.

The experience with customer service from Microsoft varies. For example, if you open a ticket and get good engineers or support representatives, the experience is obviously good. It really depends on the quality of the support you receive. Overall, my experience has been average. Sometimes I get very bad responses from engineers or developers who don't understand the service or may not be properly trained on it. It can be hard for someone like me to explain everything so that they can understand the problem, and they may need to consult their team or do some research before providing a solution. These things take time. But if you get a good representative who is knowledgeable, then the experience is very smooth.

The initial setup is very simple. There are certain policies within the environment that will do the job automatically if you don't do anything. Moreover, every organization has default policies that are automatically applied if you don't do anything, but Microsoft provides documentation if you want to customize the policies. It is easy to work around the default policies if you need to make changes.

EOP is mainly deployed for the public cloud and there is no on-premises version available. However, if an organization has an on-premises email solution, they can choose to connect it to EOP to protect their emails with external protection. Organizations can reroute their emails through EOP so that all inbound and outbound emails go through the EOP solution and get filtered accordingly.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. It is a low-price solution.

Overall, I would rate Microsoft Exchange Online Protection a six out of ten. It is a good product. However, it may not meet all the requirements of today's business world. But if you combine it with different solutions in production, then it becomes a lot more effective.

We are using Microsoft Exchange Online Protection for the migration of users from on-premise to the cloud.

The most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection are the EOP, ATP, safe links, fishing, and antispam.

Not all settings can be configured automatically and most still require manual configuration. However, there is an automation tool available that can be used to input all the configurations either as a script or a tool it would be helpful.

I have been using Microsoft Exchange Online Protection for approximately three years.

The stability of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is good. We have not had many issues.

I rate the stability of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection a nine out of ten.

I have used Mimecast. I do not have a lot of experience in Mimecast. 

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection can handle a more broad range of areas than Mimecast.

The initial setup of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection and streamlining is complex. When we use a feature and we try to streamline them based on its outcomes can be difficult, such as false positives.

We often use third-party tools for the deployment. We try and use Microsoft native tools, such as Office Configuration Analyzer.

I help my customers implement the solution and it typically takes one week with two consultants.

The price of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is reasonable.

If you're looking for recommendations, I suggest selecting the standard or strict settings provided by Microsoft for configuring Microsoft Exchange Online Protection. You can start with the standard settings and gradually increase the blocking and other settings such as spam confidence level based on your experience over time. It's important to keep in mind that further tuning may be required based on false positives and other factors, which will require manual adjustments based on experience. This configuration process is not a one-time setup and will evolve based on your customer experience.

I rate Microsoft Exchange Online Protection a nine out of ten.

We use the product to configure anti-spam solutions.

The product's most valuable feature is third-party integrations.

The management interface of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) could be intuitive. Additionally, it could be easy to configure and fine-tune the components.

We have been using Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) for two years.

It is a stable platform.

It is a scalable product.

I work with Microsoft's technical support team a lot. In some simple cases, the services are very good. However, it needs improvement for dealing with complex issues.

Neutral

I have experience working with Mimecast and Barracuda. In comparison, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has good integration and policies. However, it is not easy to configure.

The initial setup process is easy. At the same time, it's complicated to configure. From a maintenance perspective, it requires keeping a tab on the console for security or operations to filter out emails.

The product generates a good return on investment for the US market.

The product's pricing is competitive for the US market. However, it is expensive for the regions where businesses don't have enough budget to invest.

I recommend Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) to others and rate it a seven out of ten.

We use it for email protection. 

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is very good when it comes to anti-phishing and anti-malware. And the fact that it has an impersonation feature for the domain as well as users.

The reporting needs a little bit of improvement. When you compare it to Mimecast features and data porting tools, it's less superior compared to EOP.

Another area of improvement could be pricing. So Exchange Online Protection has a higher price compared to its competitors.

I've been working with it for over three years now.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. The scalability is pretty good; it does what it is supposed to do. I haven't encountered many issues because Microsoft regularly updates its product.

We're just over 650 users in our company using this solution.

The customer service and support have been really helpful. Whenever we raise a support ticket with them, they respond in a timely manner, and almost 99.9% of the time, issues are resolved.

Positive

I have used MessageLabs in the past, and I would say that EOP is better than MessageLabs in terms of the interface and ease of use. 

The initial setup is easy. Moreover, it is easy to maintain. The deployment model is cloud-based, but we are in a hybrid environment. So it does protect our on-premises environment as well.

The initial deployment was done by our IT team. In our IT department, I would say roughly 12 people are required for maintenance.

It's a high price. When comparing it to Microsoft Defender and Mimecast, it is more expensive. 

I would definitely require using this solution. Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The reason for the use of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is that the solution is native to Microsoft Exchange.

It is easy to configure, easy to use, easy to add exclusions, easy to track, and easy to add anything else if you want.

We have come across cases pointing out that if one is not registered with DKIM on the solution, certain features don't work. Also, tools don't work if you do not register your SPF. So, the aforementioned areas should be considered for improvement. That's why one needs to configure the tenant perfectly. After that, the features and security tools can be used nicely. Also, If one could have any other email gateway that is not working and acts as a secondary gateway on your tenant, then it would be a helpful update. As I see right now, there is no such feature update on Microsoft 365's roadmap. So, such changes can lower the cost of licenses. The solution can be made cheaper.

I have experience with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection for fourteen months. My customers have been using the solution for three years. A lot of customers changed their antiviruses to Microsoft Defender. We are consultants and not resellers. We give samples of Microsoft products, and our customers decide what is what. Owing to budget, our customers opted for Microsoft Defender. Also, there is no version of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection.

The product could be more stable. Microsoft products could be more stable because sometimes, even though they are updating some things, we cannot find those updates. Sometimes, they change their UI, and since we are not made aware of it fully, we keep searching for the new UI feature. Sometimes they also depreciate some of the features. At times, there are new viruses being introduced, and they need time to adjust the viruses.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. My clients range from small to very large enterprise-sized businesses. One of our clients has five million users, while some of our clients have a hundred and fifty users. So it varies extensively.

Microsoft support is the worst. If you are in a hurry, they don't address your issues. As a consultant, my problems are level two and above, not level one. We are creating cases and tickets while level-one issues are coming to us, which is a time-consuming thing. We do not have any time to spend on such issues. It's their job to manage us, but we can solve the level one problem. Maybe we can solve the level two problem as well, but we have to start from zero again and again. Also, sometimes they go on holiday for one month maybe, and we are our cases. So, we keep waiting. It takes too much time to get to a support partner. I rate the technical support a three out of ten.

Negative

The solution's initial setup process was easy. Even a finance employee can do the setup.

Those with previous experience can deploy it in one hour. If you need to check the documents and check the videos, then it may take two or three days to deploy the solution. Only one engineer is required for deployment.

Maintenance is required because sometimes it doesn't work. If you have not registered to DKIM or SPF, you cannot use the solution on the cloud. If you delete it somehow, you cannot use the solution. Hence, you need to check the solution regularly. So, it is not Microsoft's problem. It's your problem. So, it's a tenant-owner problem, so you need to check them.

I am the only person involved in maintaining the solution.

My clients have deployed the solution on public and hybrid clouds.

The solution is very expensive right now.

On some occasions, it's cheap compared to the Microsoft Defender. If I check online, its prices can be made a little bit lower. On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the pricing a six. For licensing, we can make monthly or yearly payments. Right now, we pay 5 USD per month to secure a person's license.

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is easily accessible. Also, it's easy to use and configure. The solution offers a user-friendly UI, and tracking incidents becomes effortless. It provides the convenience of easily monitoring specific aspects and utilizing KQL to track any additional requirements. Considering these advantages, I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

I primarily use Online Protection for technical support.

Online Protection has allowed our customers to keep their data on our site using the DLP the solution offers.

Online Protection's most valuable feature is its admin interface.

Online Protection has an issue in that it doesn't provide an option to stop impersonation. 

I've been using Online Protection for about a year.

I would rate Online Protection's stability seven out of ten.

I would rate Online Protection's scalability ten out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Online Protection is fairly expensive.

I would give Online Protection a rating of seven out of ten.

The tool scans all inbound emails. It ensures that we do not get links to malicious sites. The solution also prevents phishing attempts. 

I like the product's ZAP feature. 

The tool's classification for bulk email is cumbersome. 

I have been using the solution for five years. 

I have had no issues with the tool's stability in the last four to five years.

I have had no problems with the solution's scalability. We have tenants with four to five people and others with around 600 people. There is not much difference in either case. 

The tool's technical support responds fast. 

Neutral

The tool's initial deployment is cumbersome. We have one person devoted to the solution's maintenance. Microsoft handles most of the updates and rule additions. 

The tool's pricing is excellent. 

 The tool's maintenance is minimal. It is easy to maintain. I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.