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Kandji vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 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

Kandji
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
62nd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (86th), Mobile Device Management (MDM) (10th), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (20th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Kandji is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 7.9%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.9%
Kandji0.5%
Other91.6%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Amit-Sarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Apple Mobility Service Manager at ZONES PVT LTD
An easy-to-manage and deploy solution, but it should provide open customization
You don't need a certification or great knowledge to manage and deploy the solution because it's not complex. It's a very easy plug-and-play solution where you can just enroll the devices and choose the features you want. Kandji doesn't require much customization because it has built-in features that we have to create manually otherwise.
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

"It's a very easy plug-and-play solution where you can just enroll the devices and choose the features you want."
"It's very easy to scale because it comes built-in with Windows 10, and you just need to enable it. This can be done on scale using group policies or through Endpoint Manager on cloud or Intune."
"I like that Defender is integrated and doesn't have a third-party payload trying to advertise subscription renewal."
"The endpoint detection of threats is valuable. The initial detection of things like ransomware and viruses and being able to shut down machines immediately and stop a threat is valuable. We can stop a threat at a source versus allow it to propagate it across the network."
"A few years ago, when I was using a different product, I was affected by a virus that destroyed everything. Since using Microsoft Defender, I have not had this kind of problem."
"The installation is straightforward."
"It comes included with the Windows license."
"It integrates very well with all Windows workstations or other Microsoft Endpoint products. It also works quite well. So far, I have not had any issue that hasn't been sorted out. It doesn't use too many resources, so you don't have to install different things."
"The main features of this solution are that it handles everything by itself and is well integrated."
 

Cons

"Kandji should give open customization."
"The integration and effectiveness of email security could be better. It's already built-in to the solution and checks emails, scans the links they contain etc."
"Monitoring can always be better, onboarding can be a little bit faster, log collection could be easier, they could streamline the dashboard. They could maybe split it up into different workspaces and have the ability to segment groups a little bit more."
"It should support non-Windows products better. Microsoft is now one of the leading vendors in the security area. So, they should be product-independent."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can improve by providing more and different types of reports."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can have more options and more AI capabilities in the future, because everything keeps changing."
"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."
"A single dashboard would be a significant improvement."
"I would like the solution to be able to prevent unauthorized programs from installing and to block unauthorised URLs which is similar to web filtering product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee for Kandji, which is expensive."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included with a Microsoft E5 license."
"Currently, for us, Windows Defender is free with the purchase of Windows Server. Pricing is an important point for us when we are looking at the competitors of this solution. If we choose to go with another vendor, we will have to pay some license fees."
"Most people don't realize M365/E5 licenses are an amazing deal. They think "Oh, it's expensive," and I'll ask, "Compared to what?" If you don't have it you will have to buy licenses for multiple products to fill the same security space that you would have gotten with the Microsoft product. Go figure out how much it costs you per product, per user, and then come back and tell me how things add up financially."
"I recently switched from education to private business, and all I can say is that private business licensing from Microsoft is not cheap until you hit certain quantities or scale. That does not mean that it is not comparable to other industries. It is similar pricing, but it is still crazy to me how much you pay for a client. I feel it is high, but it is in line with other vendors."
"The licensing fee is a function of your Office 365 license. The feature set you get is a function of the license as well. There is probably an E2 version, an E3 version, and an E5 version. There are several versions, and not all features are the same. So, you might want to check what features you're expecting because you might get shocked. If you only have an E3 license, the capability isn't the same."
"It came with Windows."
"Pricing can always be lower."
"When compared with other vendors, the pricing is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

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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
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