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Exterro vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Exterro
Ranking in eDiscovery
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Ranking in eDiscovery
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the eDiscovery category, the mindshare of Exterro is 4.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is 9.0%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
eDiscovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery9.0%
Exterro4.0%
Other87.0%
eDiscovery
 

Featured Reviews

PM
IT Analyst III at Federal Credit Union Bank
Automates processes relating to sharing, reviewing, and collecting electronically stored information (ESI)
I think one of the pain points I had was the number of emails that had to be sent out. If there was a way to just maybe reduce the bulk — that would be great. Like I mentioned before, OGC or the General Counsel, they're kind of the business owners of the tool. They're the ones that use it on a daily basis. So one of the things that would be helpful but we just can't do involves the way the role structures are set up. Any time that somebody outside of the Office of the General Council needs something, they need to contact the General Counsel directly in order to get that information from Exterro. I guess as far as a pain point, maybe a more robust role-based access model would be useful. We had to go through a third-party to use it. I understand the risk because you don't want anybody to just go into Exterro and potentially see legal matters, but I think it's just the way we have it set up — it's an all-or-nothing type role-based model. That's why only the General Council can use it. If the roles could be scaled in a way where let's say, a visitor role could come into the tool and view a report, that we can't do right now. So if there was a way to do that, I think that would be nice to have.
Frank Radeck - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, IT Infrastructure & Cloud Technology at a legal firm with 501-1,000 employees
Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented the solution now take just 30 minutes.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms. It is critical for Purview to be able to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From a support perspective, I can do things while I'm eating lunch or something else. It's more dynamic and responsive. I think everybody appreciates it. We're not tied to one device. Purview's multi-cloud capabilities are also essential for the same reasons. Keeping everything under one umbrella further increases the time savings. Purview accounts for critical regulations from around the world. This is crucial because we hold ourselves accountable to standards and need to align with them. Working at a law firm, we have clients who dictate to us what standards they expect. The visibility is excellent. As we move more things into the cloud, more opportunities exist to put everything under one umbrella.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We like the reporting functionality. It just seems very clean."
"Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented Purview now take just 30 minutes."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery has saved me personally a lot of time because I can query it, and it touches everything we have as a full Microsoft shop."
"The return on investment is saving the equivalent of one or two full-time IT department employees and a few hours per week for legal staff."
"The speed of it is valuable. I am able to search even 10,000 mailboxes for specific content. It helps search and accommodate the often limited information provided by users regarding what they need."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms."
"I think eDiscovery Premium has made dealing with data from Teams much more accessible than any other platform."
"The machine learning wasn't half bad. I really like that part. I thought it was novel. It pretty much automated it, once you trained the model."
"The most valuable features are automatic content logging tagging. Performing these tasks manually would be impossible. Since most of our data is already in Microsoft, it's convenient to run it through this tool."
 

Cons

"I think one of the pain points I had was the number of emails that had to be sent out. If there was a way to just maybe reduce the bulk — that would be great."
"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders."
"Purview eDiscovery works, but it's not entirely perfect. There were times when search results would get hung up or error codes would be presented and we'd have to contact Microsoft to get that sorted out."
"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders. It would be beneficial to have more options available for E3 customers. Enhanced Teams functionalities and better capture of text message data, both SMS and MMS, would also be improvements."
"The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be beneficial. Copilot is expected to add such functionality in the future."
"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users. We still need all the backend stuff. We have to use Graph API to interface with everything and create custom interfaces on the front end to make it easier for the end users, which is costly. The reporting, sorting, and filtering capabilities that other products have aren't available natively in Purview."
"I see two significant challenges with many of my clients. One is that there are some functionality gaps compared to specialized tools in the legal industry, like a legal hold tool or a document review tool. They have features that Purview eDiscovery lacks. Those gaps create a situation where I almost have to do things twice. I need to collect all my data in eDiscovery and ship it to another platform to complete the review."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery should be cheaper."
"I would suggest adding more platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"In the positions that I've had through contracting over the years, I've heard talk of it being overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors."
"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comes as part of Microsoft 365 licenses."
"The costs associated with E5 licensing are currently expensive for us, so we use the E3 license, which comes with fewer features and functionalities."
"With the full bundle, pricing is not a significant concern. As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile."
"The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently. While the licensing for Purview is not as tricky as other Microsoft products, navigating licenses since the shift to E3 and E5 plans has been a task, as individual licenses must now be purchased separately."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
12%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Hospitality Company
8%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The setup process was very straightforward. We acquired pricing through our reseller in NASDAQ, eliminating the need to search for prices ourselves.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be benefici...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
I sometimes use it for legal holds or to find lost items, and to determine what is going on. However, most of the time, my use case is legal-related.
 

Also Known As

Exterro Fusion
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Allstate, Statoil, AOL, Nike, Citgo, Target, UnitedHealth Group, Microsoft, MetLife, VISA, Oracle, American Express
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Google, Commvault and others in eDiscovery. Updated: March 2026.
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