We performed a comparison between ESET Endpoint Security and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: ESET Endpoint Security ultimately won out in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that ESET Endpoint Security is easy to install and easy to use. In addition, it has excellent customer support.
"The ease of deployment and configuration is valuable. It's very easy compared to other vendors like Sophos. Sophos' configuration is complex. Fortinet is a lot easier to understand. You don't need a lot of admin knowledge to do the configuration."
"Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team with a comprehensive view at a glance."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"The main thing is that I feel safe. Because the processes that have been used to get a handle on the attackers are much better than other competitors"
"It is very easy to set up. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with ten being very easy to set up."
"I like FortiClient EMS. FortiEDR has a lot of great features like lockdown mode, remote wipes, and encryption. I can set malware outbreak policies and controls for detecting abnormalities. You can also simulate phishing attacks."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Advanced level endpoint firewall, which helps to block unwanted and malicious traffic."
"If it detects ransomware or something, it can isolate that computer."
"It's light. I almost don't know that I am using it."
"The protection and device control features are the most valuable. I found its user interface and integration pretty good. It is very user friendly as compared to other products."
"It rarely gets in the way, and we don't even notice it scanning."
"We use ESET, which is pretty much perfect for us. It is also absolutely simple and automatic once setup."
"The product is good and has a good interface."
"Its real-time security is the most valuable."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are the ease of use and it was available within the operating system."
"Ensures that I'm working with a product that gets updated regularly without me having to remember to do it. Since it's a Microsoft product, I'm confident that it requires a low use of system resources. The benefit of that being that my computer isn't constantly being drained."
"It is stable and easy to use. Everything is okay, and there are no performance issues."
"The investigation aspect is the most useful. It's user friendly and has a good user interface."
"We had Norton Antivirus before, and with Norton, we didn't have a way to centrally manage a lot of features. Defender allowed us to deploy it from our Office 365 admin console. That is probably the biggest thing that made us go with Defender."
"The scalability is good."
"Defender's analytics are much better than CrowdStrike's."
"The solution's installation from a central installation server could be improved because the engineers had a little bit of trouble getting it installed from a central location."
"Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection."
"The support needs improvement."
"I think cloud security and SASE are areas of concern in the product where improvements are required. The tool's cloud version has to be improved in terms of the security it offers."
"Everything with Fortinet having to do with their cloud services. They need to invest more in their internal infrastructure that they are running in the cloud. One of the things I find with their cloud environment compared to others' is that they go cheap on the equipment. So it causes some performance degradation."
"The solution is not stable."
"To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."
"We find the solution to be a bit expensive."
"ESET's updates are mostly manual. That's my biggest concern. I'd like it to be more automatic. I've had to download the new version and run it manually to install it. I've got several workstations like that right now."
"It seems to have some issues with updates. When you do updates, it sometimes requests for a reboot, and even when you do the reboot, it still says that you need to reboot. Currently, on my computer, it says that a new ESET Endpoint Antivirus has been installed, and I need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect, but I've already done that, and the same message is still there, which is a little annoying. It should have a feature similar to the Intercept X feature in Sophos."
"iOS compatibility for mobile security and parental control."
"We are looking to move towards an EDR solution rather than EPP. EDR is a solution that can dynamically detect threats based on the process behavior. It would be better if this solution was an EDR and an EPP solution, this would increase security protection."
"There are some complexities if you want to manipulate the software."
"The migration between on-prem and cloud has room for improvement."
"In the future, a cloud version of the solution would be great."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"It would be helpful if they offered video tutorial guides."
"The system can always be simplified and have a better integration check. More detailed reports would be good. When it does the integrated check, it just shows if the system is okay but I want to know what happened."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should include better automation that will make it faster to detect the latest threats happening across the world."
"In terms of improvements for their technical support, a focus on enhancing response times could be beneficial."
"The solution could always be more secure."
"The interface isn't necessarily intuitive to a nontechnical person. You can get stuck in the little endpoint security portal. Sometimes, if you uninstall a competitive product, the end user doesn't always know if it's running or if they're protected even though it's silently running. There could be a notification, widget, or something that's resident on the screen for at least a bit, especially if you're doing remote support. You want to talk them through it, but sometimes, we're not allowed to look at the PCs we support."
"We would like to see more tools for managing on-premises security... Sometimes, we have the tools, like Defender, to manage security in the cloud, but because we are so focused on the cloud, we forget the fact that we need to be sure about the security of the on-premises environment, specifically Active Directory."
"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home."
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ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is ranked 9th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 96 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of ESET Endpoint Protection Platform writes "Easy to set up with good security and rapidly improving capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Eliminates the need to look at multiple dashboards by automatically providing one XDR dashboard to show the security score of each subscription". ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is most compared with Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Check Point Harmony Endpoint and Fortinet FortiClient, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Fortinet FortiClient. See our ESET Endpoint Protection Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors, best Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) vendors, and best Anti-Malware Tools vendors.
We monitor all Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.