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.
"This is stable and scalable."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup of Fortinet FortiEDR was straightforward."
"he solution is an anti-malware product that integrates well with other vendor products such as firewalls, SIEM, etc. It captures threat intelligence and gives you better visibility. The product also has sandboxing features."
"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."
"Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team with a comprehensive view at a glance."
"The most valuable feature is the antispam module, which comes in the bundle."
"The ability to push policies and also to restrict an installation or to restrict any form of threat within the policy has been quite useful."
"The most valuable thing for me is that when I'm using the internet and I reach some site that isn't so secure, or isn't recommended because they don't have a good reputation, ESET will notify me."
"The solution is easy to install and configure."
"I have found the ESET Management Console very good. It gives me many features, such as managing users and installing a new version."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the management."
"ESET has regular updates, and it gives me good feedback. It's not too onerous like some of the products I've used in the past."
"It's scalable."
"It is a straightforward setup."
"It's great for investigating what's happening on a machine. They show a whole bunch of machine timeline events that are related to a security incident. They have quite good details on the things related to threat and vulnerability management, such as any weakness that has been disclosed publicly, assets that are exposed, and if there is an exploit active in the wild for that vulnerability. It can provide you with all such information, which is cool."
"The solution is highly scalable."
"The patch updates and version updates are very good. Those happen on an automated basis whenever I'm connecting to the organization network, either through LAN or through the VPN."
"It is a very advanced system based on AI. It has a very large database of places or sites on the internet where you should not go. It is continuously online."
"You have endpoint security to keep your devices safe. That's the feature that we're interested in."
"The antivirus is the most valuable feature."
"I enjoy using the live response feature, which allows me to remotely access different endpoints and investigate malicious files, such as malware that people may have downloaded, and other related issues."
"The solution is not stable."
"They can include the automation for the realtime updates. We have a network infrastructure with remote sites. Whenever they send updates, they are not automated. We have to go into the console and push those updates. I wish it was more automated. The update file is currently around 31 MB. It could be smaller."
"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 amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions"
"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."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"We've had a lot of false positives; things incorrectly flagged that require manual configuration to allow. Even worse, after we allow a legitimate program, it sometimes gets flagged again after an update. This has caused a lot of extra work for my team."
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"They should focus more on the offline market as well. Everybody is connected nowadays, and they want to do everything via cloud or fast internet connections, however, that's still not possible in many situations."
"They could be more aggressive with malware."
"It's not a huge thing, because it doesn't happen very often, but I'll notice sometimes, when there's a startup scan, the computer does bog down a little bit. However, this happens rarely."
"I would like them to use AI features to do preventative virus protection."
"There are no areas for improvement. It does everything the consumer needs."
"iOS compatibility for mobile security and parental control."
"The product could have better integration with third-party products that would help extend functionality."
"This solution is not secure, which is why I have moved to Linux."
"I would like Microsoft to have some kind of direct integration for USB controls. They have GPO and other controls to control the access of the USB drives on devices, but if there is something that can be directly implemented into the portal, it would be good. There should be a way to control via a cloud portal or something like that in a dynamic way. USB control for data exfiltration would be a good feature to implement. Currently, there are ways to do it, but it involves too many different things. You have to implement it via GPOs and other stuff, and then you move or copy those big files via Defender ATP. If there is a simple way of implementing those features, it would be great."
"Its price could be better."
"The detection of viruses could be a little bit better."
"This solution needs to move beyond relying on virus definitions alone and protect the system using behavioral analysis of the processes that are running."
"The solution should be updated by Microsoft with new features from time to time."
"The GUI is very complex and could be more user friendly."
"It is using a large space in your memory all the time. While an antivirus will use some of your memory, if they could reduce the load of the antivirus to some extent that would be good."
More ESET Endpoint Protection Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
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.