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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."
"Defender has very little impact on the end-user and the agent works quite well with a minimal impact on the client and server."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite good. We haven't really experienced any issues with it."
"The protection that it provides is quite good."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive and scalable solution for protecting on-premises and hybrid infrastructure."
"It's really stable. I've used a lot of stuff, a lot of products, like ESET and Kaspersky. None of them are comparable with this one. This one is much better."
"The most important and the most relevant features of Defender for Endpoint are the malware and ransomware protection."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is free and part of the licensing stack of other Microsoft products."
 

Cons

"Kandji should give open customization."
"Auto recovery is the most important feature that we would need from this solution. For decryption, similar to Malwarebytes, there should be something to be able to recover the data up to the last normal status. Its ability to recover data to the last normal copy must not exceed 5 to 10 minutes."
"With the XDR dashboard, when you're doing an investigation and you're drilling down to obtain further details it tends to open many different tabs that take you away from your main tabs. You can end up having 10 tabs open for one investigation. This is another area for improvement because you can end up getting lost in the multiple tabs. Therefore, the central console can be improved so that it does not take you to several different pages for each investigation."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could improve by making the reporting better."
"Lowering the price would be an improvement."
"There is room to improve the security of the solution."
"I would like to see fewer pop messages and alerts."
"The file scanning has room for improvement. Many people use macros within their files, so there should be a mechanism that helps us to scan them for malicious payloads."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's licensing is confusing. It has conflicting information on the website. We also faced integration issues with other systems. It makes laptops slower than traditional antivirus systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee for Kandji, which is expensive."
"The price for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is about three euros, which is considered reasonably priced."
"As we operate in the educational sector, we are eligible for an educational discount."
"We went for Microsoft Defender once we were informed that it would be part of our Office 365 package. So, we combined the licensing for the OS with Office 365. Yeah. We thought it was a good bargain."
"We have seen ROI. Most of the other competing alternatives will cost up to around $30 per user device. We average 400 devices. Therefore, the amount that we save each year is 400 times $30."
"Defender doesn't cost that much. When you use Microsoft technology, you can start with the free version and see how much the technology helps your organization solve security problems before you use the subscription. They also do this pay-as-you-go model, so you only pay when you use it."
"The license for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included in the license for the Microsoft Windows operating system."
"We mostly use Microsoft products. We use Office 365, and we use Azure. We're also a Microsoft partner. So, the licensing was much cheaper for us, and at the same time, a lot of the features that we were looking for were included in Defender."
"It is built into Windows 10. If our clients are using Microsoft Defender, the cost goes away for them."
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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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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
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