Microsoft Purview eDiscovery vs Varonis Platform comparison

The compared Microsoft and Varonis solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #2 in eD , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 17.4% mindshare in the category. Varonis is ranked #9 in DLP , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 5.9% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Varonis users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Read 8 Microsoft Purview eDiscovery reviews

2,454 Views
1,791 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Varonis Platform

Read 14 Varonis Platform reviews

9,243 Views
2,126 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Varonis Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and Varonis Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Google, Microsoft, Commvault and others in eDiscovery.

To learn more, read our detailed eDiscovery Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

eDiscovery

September 2025

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Helped 868,787 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

eDiscovery (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (26th)

Varonis Platform

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Security (20th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (9th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (7th), Data Governance (4th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Compliance Management (7th), Ransomware Protection (10th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (7th), Insider Risk Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and Varonis Platform aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is designed for eDiscovery and holds a mindshare of 17.4%, down 24.2% compared to last year.
Varonis Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Data Loss Prevention (DLP), holds 5.9% mindshare, up 4.4% since last year.

eDiscovery Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery	17.4%
Google Vault	8.8%
kCura Relativity	6.0%
Other	67.8%

eDiscovery

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Varonis Platform	5.9%
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention	12.6%
Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention	8.5%
Other	73.0%

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Featured Reviews

Frank Radeck

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.

Read full review

Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"I think eDiscovery Premium has made dealing with data from Teams much more accessible than any other platform."

"Our legal team benefits from using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is the content search. We can use it to find the data we need by searching for keywords, phrases, or the sender or recipient. It helps us gather information from current employees or ones who have left the company."

"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."

More Microsoft Purview eDiscovery pros

"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."

"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."

"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."

"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."

"That alerting and reporting service is great."

"Technical support from Varonis is rated as nine out of ten."

"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."

"I also appreciate the reporting feature, which allows for the extraction of various reports based on specific needs. These reports can be used for audit purposes, such as tracking changes in file locations or deletions."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"I would suggest adding more platforms."

"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."

"It has been one of the most solid tools I have worked with. However, Purview Data Loss Protection for remediating policy violations needs refinement, for example, in defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives."

"I would suggest adding more platforms. Currently, it's compatible with OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, and Exchange. Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial. Exploring options like Azure Files might be an avenue for improvement."

"Purview Data Loss Protection for remediating policy violations needs refinement, for example, in defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives."

"The sorting and filtering of the result data need improvement, and the interface for writing queries is not user-friendly for business users."

"We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders."

More Microsoft Purview eDiscovery cons

"I would like it to have cloud integration."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"

"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."

"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The costs associated with E5 licensing are currently expensive for us, so we use the E3 license, which comes with fewer features and functionalities."

"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."

"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."

"With the full bundle, pricing is not a significant concern. As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile."

"Microsoft Purview eDiscovery comes as part of Microsoft 365 licenses."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

University

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?

The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and th...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area for improvement. Varonis requires more access permissions for its core function...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organization to protect it. We are looking for a solution that can scan our repositor...

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Vault vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Compared 33% of the time

Relativity vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Compared 10% of the time

Exterro vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Compared 7% of the time

Veritas Enterprise Vault.cloud vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Competitors

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Varonis Platform

Compared 21% of the time

Cyera vs Varonis Platform

Compared 11% of the time

BigID vs Varonis Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Wiz vs Varonis Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More Varonis Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

September 2025

Download Microsoft Purview eDiscovery product report

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

September 2025

Download Varonis Platform product report

Also Known As

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SlashNext Complete

Overview

Efficiently respond to legal matters or internal investigations with intelligent capabilities that reduce data to only what’s relevant. Discover data where it lives. Discover and collect data in place, within your Microsoft Purview boundary. Manage workflows efficiently. Streamline your eDiscovery process with an end-to-end workflow from one platform. Accelerate your process. Get insights quickly with built-in capabilities, reducing review time and costs.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Varonis Platform enhances data security and governance with advanced analytics, identifying unusual access patterns and sensitive areas. Its centralized interface manages permissions across systems, offering essential capabilities for alerting and reporting.

Varonis Platform provides continuous data protection and monitoring by identifying and alerting on unauthorized data access. It offers comprehensive insights into file access and user activities, supporting data classification and simplifying compliance with tracking and monitoring capabilities. Integration with storage systems enables users to manage permissions and access effectively. Room for improvement includes cloud integration and simplifying its interface and calculation engine for ease of use. Challenges include on-premises dependency, licensing costs, and a need for enhanced DLP capabilities.

What are the primary features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Technical Support: Ensures continuous assistance and issue resolution.
Advanced Analytics: Identifies unusual data access patterns for increased security.
Centralized Permission Management: Manages access permissions across systems.
Data Classification: Categorizes data to enhance protection measures.
Integration with Storage Systems: Simplifies compliance through tracking and monitoring.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Increased Security: Protects against unauthorized data access.
Compliance Simplification: Offers comprehensive tracking and monitoring to meet compliance standards.
Efficient Permission Management: Simplifies access controls across platforms.
Enhanced Alerting: Provides timely notifications of potential security breaches.

In finance, Varonis aids in safeguarding sensitive financial data, while in healthcare, it secures patient records. Legal industries utilize it for protecting client information, and retail sectors manage sensitive customer data. These industries benefit from Varonis' ability to prevent unauthorized access and streamline compliance.

Varonis

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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Find out what your peers are saying about Google, Microsoft, Commvault and others in eDiscovery. Updated: September 2025.

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