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N-able EDR vs VMware Carbon Black 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)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
N-able EDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
46th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
27th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (28th), Security Incident Response (3rd), Ransomware Protection (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able EDR is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.6%
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint1.9%
N-able EDR0.7%
Other93.8%
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.
NM
Senior Operations Specialist at Tagit cc
Reporting effectiveness and advanced AI capabilities improve threat awareness while needing pricing simplification and licensing self-service
With pricing, they can improve by bundling their pricing because sometimes billing comes in a very long process. If they could bundle it as one solution and show the capabilities or features, they would be able to sell it more effectively, and as resellers, we could sell it to customers more easily. The technical support is responsive, but sometimes we experience limitations regarding the ability to add licensing. They could implement a self-service platform for assigning new licenses or ordering more. Currently, we depend on contacting someone who sends a new contract to sign through the process. They could change their licensing model, though I am not the right person to comment on functionality. On the reporting side, everything is covered.
PM
CTO at Microsoft
Improved incident investigation has supported response while core protection still needs progress
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint does not have easy integration, as there are many complexities with the Ribitava API, which is very deep. I rate this solution overall as a five or six on a scale from one to ten. I have integrated VMware Carbon Black Endpoint with other tools that are helpful. I think this solution should be targeted at small clients, because adoption will grow more with small businesses tomorrow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I recognize that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is one of the best products in its category regarding capabilities."
"The most valuable features are incident creation, policy-based protection, IP whitelisting, and device encryption. These are beneficial for endpoint and server security."
"Palo Alto is one of the tech vendors that always provides top-of-the-line products."
"The ability to kind of stitch everything together and see the actual complete picture is very useful. I guess you'd call it a playbook. Some people call it the forensics analysis of what was happening on particular endpoints when they detected some malicious behavior, and what transpired before that to cause that. It is also very user friendly. The way they have done everything and integrated all the solutions that they've purchased over the years to make it a very seamless, effective product is very good. One thing about Palo Alto is that they take the products or services that they purchase and make them seamless for the end user as compared to some companies that purchase other companies and then just kind of have their products off to the side or keep different interfaces. Palo Alto doesn't do that."
"Implementing Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has had a significant impact on my security analyst workload because it becomes much easier."
"Cortex is the best solution for avoiding security breaches, malware attacks, and other kinds of security issues."
"Overall, it's a great platform; it integrates very well with other solutions from Palo Alto and also with our vendors, the ease of use is excellent, I love the root cause analysis from Cortex, which is amazing, and in a few clicks you can have the full root cause."
"The level of security I get for my endpoints and servers is extremely valuable."
"The most valuable feature, which I can describe as the '360 vision' of the inventory device, provides a complete view of all the devices."
"We have been using this solution for quite some time, and the AI functionality is quite advanced; we are able to provide insights on different aspects and read the reports easily."
"The most valuable features are the rollback feature, it's important for us. The AI models and are good."
"It provides visibility and a storyline to track the virus or malware's activities, showing infected processes and changes made."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Carbon Black CB Defense has helped improve my organization by allowing us to have better data so that we can do correlation and get visibility into the alerts."
"I like the historical features, interface, and integration."
"The offline networking is the most important feature. Some of our users are engineers that work offsite, and they can still be on the solution, which is also great."
"The best feature of this solution is that we have a live response, which is really tailored to our needs."
"It actually does some heuristics, and some behavioral analysis."
"Using Open API, we were able to freely perform the necessary integration with our other security solutions."
"Carbon Black has very good market strategies."
 

Cons

"It's more focused on network communication. If a customer wants to increase the level of protection and start working with documents, it's impossible to integrate these features into the system. It's more of a communication-oriented system than a content security-oriented system."
"The main issue I could point out is the offline agents and the way that it is missing."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"I would like to see improvement in the tool's user interface, particularly in the area of managing alerts and providing more reporting capabilities."
"There are some default policies which sometimes affect our applications and cause them to run around."
"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"I have run into some detection issues with Cortex XDR. It needs to be better at detection of internal attacks."
"I would like to see them add support for both Android and iOS smartphones."
"We have a lot of false positives we see in the dashboard. I think this is the only problem we are facing."
"I would rate the scalability as seven out of ten. The capability is useful. Concerning the license, if I add one more device without a license, it will automatically subscribe to a license. I do not appreciate that."
"With pricing, they can improve by bundling their pricing because sometimes billing comes in a very long process."
"It is difficult to extract reports for ongoing scans"
"In our company, we also wanted to have network detection, like a host-based IDS on VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, but we did not get it."
"It would be a better solution if Carbon Black Cb Defense had an on-promise solution and a virus auto delete or quarantine."
"The EDR portion could be better. I'm not a big fan, but it works."
"Sometimes the solution blocks items that were previously approved and we don't know why."
"The directions for Splunk are spot on, but it is difficult to find anything on integration with AlienVault,"
"Enterprise capabilities are probably a hindrance for a large organization to take up such a product."
"Stability is one thing that's not robust. Other products are faster, but as far as the CB Defense, it's slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a yearly renewal."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The pricing is average."
"Its pricing was very good, which is one of the reasons I went to it as an alternative. It is on a yearly basis. There are no additional fees."
"It is more expensive, but it's worth it. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"The cost is a considerable factor, but the benefit factor is the most important. When you compare it with other products, the price is high. Carbon Black will negotiate the price."
"It's reasonable in price"
"The price for the solution is completely at government level, meaning one which is very high."
"​The cost/benefit factor has great relevance in Cb Defense implementations​."
"The product’s price is less expensive than other vendors."
"I am not really involved in the pricing of this product. But, from my understanding, it is OK for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Transportation Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise33
 

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 needs improvement with N-able EDR?
With pricing, they can improve by bundling their pricing because sometimes billing comes in a very long process. If t...
What is your primary use case for N-able EDR?
We are using N-able EDR, but I think Sophos makes sense because of the environment we operate in. The localization an...
What advice do you have for others considering N-able EDR?
I am more focused on operations and procurement. The decision to use this solution was made before I joined the compa...
What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
I can recommend Carbon Black, an award-winning next-gen anti-virus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) s...
What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
Carbon Black offers two different levels of Endpoint Detection and Response. One is the VM Carbon Black Cloud Endpoin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Carbon Black CB Defense?
My rating for the pricing of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is that it is not cheap, but it is also not as inexpensive ...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about N-able EDR vs. VMware Carbon Black Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.