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Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Datto Endpoint Detection an...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
42nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is 1.3%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.0%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.0%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)1.3%
Other89.3%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
reviewer2406663 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Effective risk response, easy deployment, and enhanced security
They use Datto EDR as part of the solutions that we supply Datto EDR has helped reduce overall security incident costs by fifteen percent. The ease of deployment has been good, and the responsiveness of the application to risks has been quite effective. The inclusion of web filtering would be…
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 most valuable for us is the correlation feature."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"If the user leaves our premises or network, Palo Alto Traps will still be on that endpoint and will still apply our policies."
"We use Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for its ability to detect based on behavior rather than simple virus scan to prevent malicious activities."
"Stability is a primary factor, and then there's the ease of distribution and policy management; Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very easy to work with, and we're quite happy with them."
"The initial setup isn't too bad."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to rapidly detect certain hardware files."
"The ease of deployment has been good."
"Datto Endpoint Detection and Response is a perfect product for endpoint security."
"The insight that the solution provides is the most valuable aspect."
"The insight that the solution provides is the most valuable aspect. The security scanning they do is excellent."
"The most valuable feature of Datto EDR is the visibility of the endpoints."
"Defender is an antivirus program available at a lower price than other products, like Symantec, McAfee, etc."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's most valuable feature is its ease of use."
"Overall, our security posture looks much better and our attack surfaces are limited."
"Defender for Endpoint has one dashboard with security-related information, vulnerability-related information, and basic recommendations from Microsoft, all in different tabs. That's helpful because if we want to fix only the recommended ones, we can go fix all of them..."
"Microsoft Defender has been around for many years, and since Windows 10, they've really ramped it up, and it has gotten a lot better."
"The solution has an easy-to-use interface, is always updated, and is user-friendly."
"Defender for Endpoint saves me a lot of time because I have all the alerts and information in one application."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been awesome, so far."
 

Cons

"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"There are some default policies which sometimes affect our applications and cause them to run around. In the hotel industry, we use a different type of data versus Oracle and SQL. By default, there are some policies which stop us from running properly. Because of this, the support level is also not that strong. We have to wait to get a results."
"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"The GUI could be improved."
"For Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, if I had to point out improvements, I would say the UI is still somewhat difficult for beginners."
"There are a large number of false positives."
"The inclusion of web filtering would be good."
"The deployment of the solution right now is terrible. We find it to be very bad."
"The solution should allow the automation of playbooks."
"The solution could improve by having more deployment methods."
"The deployment of the solution right now is terrible. We find it to be very bad. It could be improved enormously."
"There is a need for improvement in reducing false positives."
"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home."
"The interface could be improved."
"In terms of improvement, they update the platform it seems quite a bit. Every month something is in a new spot or something changed somewhere; there should be less of that."
"If a threat actor comes in, and creates a global administrative account, they can gain access to everything and whitelist then block everything else. Having everything, including Defender, under one brand is like having all of your eggs in one basket."
"The central console needs improvement. Both McAfee and Symantec antivirus have dashboards. These integrate with a server and work on my antivirus or some other product. However, with Microsoft Defender, you use Microsoft Group Policy Object. Defender does not provide a central console. Therefore, if you implement Defender, then maybe use another tool for the central view."
"The technical support isn't too bad but their responsiveness needs to be improved."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."
"Cortex XDR is a costly solution."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Datto Endpoint Detection and Response is not an expensive solution."
"There is an annual license to use this solution. The price of the solution can be expensive depending on the company."
"They are now doing it on an endpoint basis. It is based on the number of endpoints, which is good."
"We have an enterprise agreement so from my perspective, this is a product that ships with Windows and it is not priced standalone."
"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."
"It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
"Because Microsoft Defender comes as an add-on, it can be a bit expensive if you're trying to buying it separately. Another option is to upgrade, but the enterprise licenses for Microsoft can also be quite a bit pricey. Overall, the cost of Microsoft Defender compared to that of other endpoint detection solutions is slightly higher."
"I pay for it through the Windows Professional or Standard license. It is a one-time cost for me, and I use the same license."
"Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise48
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise95
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
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,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infocyte HUNT?
The price is quite low. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a four, meaning it is quite cheap.
What needs improvement with Infocyte HUNT?
The inclusion of web filtering would be good.
What is your primary use case for Infocyte HUNT?
They use Datto EDR as part of the solutions that we supply.
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 sol...
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 pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Infocyte HUNT
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Check Point Software, PwC, Grant Thornton, AT&T, DHL, U.S. Department of Defense
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.