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Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

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

Acronis Cyber Protect Home ...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
22nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (37th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
214
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Anti-Malware Tools category, the mindshare of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.9%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Anti-Malware Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.9%
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office0.9%
Other92.2%
Anti-Malware Tools
 

Featured Reviews

GR
General Manager at Tilaknagar Industries Ltd
Reliable backups have protected our manufacturing data and now provide confident disaster recovery
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is used to take care of the data for our manufacturing company and its users. I work with CrowdStrike only for antivirus. We have antivirus products, but not as a main solution. The antiviruses we are using are from another vendor. For antiviruses, we are using Falcon CrowdStrike. My main experience is with CrowdStrike antivirus and Palo Alto firewall. These are the two things for security, and we are exploring other software solutions that will be beneficial for us. I track two levels of ransomware protection: one from Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and one from CrowdStrike. I do not work with Cortex cloud by Palo Alto; I have the hardware on-premise at my location. I do not work with WildFire, Prisma Access, or Prisma SD-WAN, but I will be looking forward to it. This is the only firewall I am using, but very soon, I will be opting for another Palo Alto firewall of the same model that will be working on high availability. I am not knowledgeable about the CN-Series firewall; I can only talk about the one I have. We have acquired one particular brand, a company called Pernod Ricard, which manufactures products like Chivas Regal whisky and Beefeater. Endpoint Detection and Response is something we will explore after a certain period of time and we are looking for it very soon. I would rate this review an overall eight out of ten.
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The customer service and support are excellent."
"The malware feature is most valuable."
"When it comes to backup, the biggest benefits of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office are its reliability and the assurance it provides, which we have specifically tried and tested during disasters as it saved us from losing data."
"Acronis schedules in the background and does incremental images so it doesn’t take forever to backup."
"The reliable tool allows for quick restoration from backup copies, meaning I do not have to reload Windows or programs."
"The virus scanning capability is excellent, and it feeds all the logs into the Microsoft 365 Defender portal, making them easy to search for."
"Defender is an ideal solution for web security."
"Defender for Endpoint has significantly improved our security posture."
"The attack surface reduction rules are the most valuable. We're able to have unattended remediation actions when the solution works side by side with a local antivirus like Microsoft Defender or Kaspersky. The attack surface reduction rules help us to proactively block and stop threats."
"The notification and reporting features are most valuable because we are part of a compliance project, and maintaining SOC 2 compliance is critical."
"It captures data through machine learning, which is built-in on the back-end. It also provides built-in analytics and a threat intelligence feature. It is a one-stop solution that doesn't require an antivirus because it comes prebuilt into Windows 10."
"It's effective against most types of infection, and the firewall is perfect for protection."
"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."
 

Cons

"I originally intended to use Acronis for cloud backup, however, the cloud backup had major problems."
"I had a couple of false positives, but that’s it."
"I originally intended to use Acronis for cloud backup, however, the cloud backup had major problems. After struggling with it for about two years, I switched to Carbonite and have not gone back."
"The configuration needs improvement."
"Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office needs to improve their reporting part, and the support provided is sometimes inadequate, which causes issues for customers."
"I wish they would extend the use of the Security Central portal, even for the free option of Defender."
"The central management console should be improved because it provides limited options to configure Windows Defender."
"The GUI is very complex and could be more user friendly."
"I would like to have additional features such as DNS lookup, which would help for detecting malicious sites."
"ATP is a work in progress. To me, it is not a complete product."
"The solution could be more friendly for end-users, with different type of scans or scheduled scans for it."
"The solution can be more user-friendly."
"We encountered some misbehavior between Microsoft Office Suite and Defender. We had issues of old macros being blocked and some stuff going around the usage of Win32 APIs. There is some improvement between the Office products and Defender, and there is a bunch of stuff that you can configure in your antivirus solutions, but you have several baselines, such as security baselines for Edge, security baselines for Defender, and security baselines for MDM. You have configuration profiles as well. So, there a lot of parts where we can configure our antivirus solution, and we're getting conflicting configurations. This is the major part with which we're struggling in this solution. We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have. That's really the part that needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is an expensive solution. It would be nice if it could be included with the Microsoft Office package."
"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."
"I do not have to purchase antivirus solutions anymore because Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is integrated into Windows and comes free."
"As we operate in the educational sector, we are eligible for an educational discount."
"Pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is competitive. Out of the bundle, you will get a lot of security, if I talk about Microsoft E5, for example, and get a lot of benefits. If the customer goes and purchases a different solution, it will cost more, so pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite reasonable at the moment. There isn't any challenge in terms of pricing, for example, I didn't see a customer who pulled back because of the price. Some prices could be negotiable, and sometimes, as a sales point, the two become negotiable, but they don't bill one and pull back because of the pricing. If you have an E5 license, you get everything."
"When customers haven't deployed the solution and don't have licenses, it can be expensive to start from scratch."
"I'm not too familiar with costs as I'm an architect, though I know about online pricing, as I help two teams with online purchasing and procurement. Nowadays, everyone has an enterprise agreement, such as an E3 license, which we provide to our customers."
"It is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
28%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise96
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office?
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office needs to improve their reporting part, and the support provided is sometimes inadequate, which causes issues for customers. The technical support from the third pa...
What is your primary use case for Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office?
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is used to take care of the data for our manufacturing company and its users. We are just exploring ourselves in cybersecurity, and it will take time for us to mat...
What advice do you have for others considering Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office?
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is used to take care of the data for our manufacturing company and its users. I work with CrowdStrike only for antivirus. We have antivirus products, but not as a ...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.