ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Sophos Intercept X

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
ThreatDown (formerly Malwarebytes for Business), combines Malwarebytes' endpoint security capabilities in four bundles. The basic Core tier includes incident response, Next-gen AV, device control, vulnerability assessments, and the ability to block unwanted application.
$345
per year 5 endpoints (minimum)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (formerly Microsoft Defender ATP) is a holistic, cloud delivered endpoint security solution that includes risk-based vulnerability management and assessment, attack surface reduction, behavioral based and cloud-powered next generation protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), automatic investigation and remediation, managed hunting services, rich APIs, and unified security management.
$2.50
per user/per month
Sophos Intercept X
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Sophos Endpoint Protection (Sophos EPP) with Intercept X is an endpoint security product providing an antivirus / antimalware solution that when upgraded with Intercept X or Intercept X Advanced provides advanced threat detection and EDR capabilities.
$28
per year per user
Pricing
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Editions & Modules
Core
$345
per year per endpoint (minimum 5)
Advanced
$395
per year per endpoint (minimum 5)
Elite
$495
per year per endpoint (minimum 5)
Ultimate
$595
per year per endpoint (minimum 5)
Academic
$2.50
per user/per month
Standalone
$5.20
per user/per month
Intercept X Advanced
$28
per year per user
Intercept X Advanced with XDR
$48
per year per user
Sophos Managed Threat Response
$79
per year per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Free Trial
YesYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsOptional Add-Ons include server and mobile device protection. Server protection ranges from $129 to $179 per annum depending on service tier. Mobile security is $10 per device, no matter the service tier. A 10% discount is offered for choosing a two-year billing plan.Pricing is for a 3-year commitment. Government and Education pricing available.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Considered Multiple Products
ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes
Chose ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes
We chose Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection after reviewing hundreds of reviews from peers and calculating to cost of ownership and ROI which Malwarebytes handily beat any potential competitors we dealt with. They really worked with us to come up with a plan and a price that …
Chose ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes
Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection is dedicated to protecting against and the remediation of malware. No other product does it better. Their consumer version of the software is often refereed to by other security products and security researchers to clean infected systems. It …
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
CrowdStrike Falcon is also a good solution for endpoint protection which offer EDR Soultion, threat hunting and AI driven threat protection. Sophos Intercept X combines next-gen antivirus with advanced EDR capabilities with its deep learning technology, exploit prevention, and …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
As Microsoft Defender for Endpoint easily integrated with our Office 365 setup, it was more beneficial as compared to other products
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
The fact it is integrated into the Microsoft 365 licensing our customers already purchase makes it an easy choice.
Sophos Intercept X
Chose Sophos Intercept X
Sophos Intercept X is easy to manage and deploy under your business. I think it is comparable to BitDefend with the ability to send out deployment via email or directly add it to the computer. I have noticed that Bitdefender seems to eat a lot of resources during its scans …
Chose Sophos Intercept X
Trend Micro offered similar protection, however at the time did not offer EDR as a solution. The big benefit to Trend Micro was the capability to push out the installation of the agent to assets within the Trend Micro console, eliminating the need for a GPO or deployment …
Features
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Endpoint Security
Comparison of Endpoint Security features of Product A and Product B
ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes
8.7
15 Ratings
2% above category average
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
8.7
78 Ratings
2% above category average
Sophos Intercept X
8.1
24 Ratings
5% below category average
Anti-Exploit Technology8.414 Ratings8.975 Ratings8.623 Ratings
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)9.115 Ratings9.177 Ratings8.024 Ratings
Centralized Management9.715 Ratings8.777 Ratings8.024 Ratings
Hybrid Deployment Support8.08 Ratings7.210 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Infection Remediation8.414 Ratings9.075 Ratings7.924 Ratings
Vulnerability Management8.513 Ratings8.672 Ratings8.44 Ratings
Malware Detection8.615 Ratings9.276 Ratings8.024 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Small Businesses
ThreatLocker
ThreatLocker
Score 9.2 out of 10
ThreatLocker
ThreatLocker
Score 9.2 out of 10
ThreatLocker
ThreatLocker
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
Score 10.0 out of 10
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
Score 10.0 out of 10
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(15 ratings)
9.0
(133 ratings)
8.2
(41 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.4
(10 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.6
(10 ratings)
8.2
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(7 ratings)
8.1
(12 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ThreatDown, powered by MalwarebytesMicrosoft Defender for EndpointSophos Intercept X
Likelihood to Recommend
Malwarebytes
I think Malwarebytes is the best anti-malware company. I think it is well-suited for any situation and any device. I think Malwarebytes does the best on Windows and on MacOS. Also, Malwarebytes is always improving, and you can tell they are a company that stays on top of cybersecurity trends. If you have a tight budget or looking for the cheapest solution, then Malwarebytes may not be the solution for you. To clarify, I don't think Malwarebytes is that much more expensive compared to its closest competitors.
Read full review
Microsoft
I can definitely tell you where it’s more suited, because we haven’t come across any less appropriate scenarios. But definitely in regard to how we centrally manage our user space and our endpoints, it’s been beneficial from an API perspective and is really transferable, with strong collaboration with our Azure stack. It works very well.
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Sophos
To be frank, this product is fairly expensive. So I would recommend this to companies that are mid-sized or larger to condone the cost of the purchase. It does save me a significant amount of time in my day - being able to glance at the dashboard and see if there are any outstanding issues that require my attention, as not much digging must be done to accomplish this. So for our company, with a short-staffed IT department, it's incredibly helpful to us. We also qualify for Educational pricing which brings the cost down - which helps tremendously
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Pros
Malwarebytes
  • Protects against malware - No matter how much training you give end users on social hacking, there is always a breach at some point.
  • Protects against ransomware - Ransomware could spell disaster for a company...it could literally shut the doors for good.
  • Centralized administration - Without a terrific centralized method to manage all the systems being protected, it would require an extra position just to maintain all endpoints.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Definitely on the threat action and response. We didn't have a stress-response option before, but the dependent brand point provided it instantly. Also, it's doing UVA and machine learning, which we didn't have before. So it's definitely providing more sophisticated threat-detection capabilities than we had before.
Read full review
Sophos
  • Sophos Intercept X is great at preventing malware infections and rolling back their effects. I have seen this happen hundreds of times since we installed it
  • When combined with Sophos Central, you have an easy to use dashboard where you can manage all installations from a single pane of glass.
  • It's easy to deploy on machines and stays updated.
  • Good reporting features including alerts sent to the admin if there's ever something wrong with it.
Read full review
Cons
Malwarebytes
  • poor customer service
  • dashboard says product is working EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NOT!
  • slow response to concerns that should be easy to remedy
  • creates baggage which caused certain computers and the network to run more slowly
  • caused 3 computers on our network top have windows errors and network issues
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The only thing is sometimes, because Microsoft has so many platforms, it gets a little confusing, like am I in the security platform? Am I in Purview? Where am I at right now? Because there's so many sites that are kind of doing a lot of the same thing, and so that does get a little confusing from time to time, but outside of that, it's a pretty good product.
Read full review
Sophos
  • Sophos OOTB policies are very strict and they don't offer anything less strict without you creating new custom policies. I'm sure this is deliberate because the product starts you out in the safest way possible but it means that you will have lots of calls to your tech support desk when you first deploy it unless you do somewhat extensive testing beforehand.
  • Sophos Intercept X is currently broken (at least the DLP component) by having secure boot turned on in the UEFI/BIOS. If any user wants to be able to write data to a USB drive or floppy from their PC (yes we still have a couple users who need to use floppies) we have to turn off secure boot on their PC, even if the DLP policy for that user/PC combination specifies that the user and PC are allowed to write to USB/floppy. This would be a very serious problem if it weren't for the fact that we have very few users who need to write files to USB. For us it's OK but I bet it would be a deal-breaker for others.
  • I don't see a whole lot of evidence that Intercept X is any different than any other anti-virus, so maybe their admin alerts just don't clearly identify when they have identified a zero-day threat or maybe we just haven't had any zero-day threats.
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Likelihood to Renew
Malwarebytes
When I first used the tool in my home systems MANY years ago, I wished for a Business version. I was once at a focus group for a major antivirus company, and one attendee’s feedback to “what could we do better?” was “buy out MalwareBytes and add it to your tool”. I’ve used the Business version since it first became available, and have continued to be a dedicated user through the many iterations and improvements
Read full review
Microsoft
Cost add-ons for Security features is nickel and diming the process to keep pace with cybercrime. Limited Education budgets require us to be more pro-active in finding cost-effective measures to protect our devices, staff and students. Defender is a strong, well-featured product that is pricing itself out of the education market
Read full review
Sophos
We have gotten a great product for the price. Easy to maintain and set up on new devices. Support is great and easy to work with and understand.
Read full review
Usability
Malwarebytes
It simply works. It doesn't require the hand-holding and monitoring that some other solutions do. It's simple to deploy and maintain, and adding custom content such as Exceptions require minimal effort. I’ve had to add a few exceptions for internal-use, in-house-developed tools, but it’s quite simple to do so within the online interface
Read full review
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a great EDR to have that works quickly and silently in the background and it integrates well with other Microsoft services. As an IT manager, I can appreciate that I do not get bombarded by alerts for every small detail. On the flipside, the management site can use some work in being more clear and should be more streamlined so I'm not clicking through multiple pages to figure out what happened
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Sophos
The usability has never been a problem. Sophos Intercept X is a program you can install and let protect your company without much intervention. Apart from a few policies, Sophos will keep you protected better than most any product on the market. Sophos Intercept X works quite well when you are looking to "tighten your grip" on user's access to websites, programs, and add-ons.
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Reliability and Availability
Malwarebytes
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint chugs along just fine no matter what we throw at it and what systems it's running on. It doesn't take up a lot of resources either, so that's welcomed.
Read full review
Sophos
No answers on this topic
Performance
Malwarebytes
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy on memory and resources on clients.
Read full review
Sophos
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Malwarebytes
As I mentioned, we have only email support. Their phone support was very expensive. If we ever have any issues, we have to email them and wait for their response. In most cases, I have figured out the issue on my own. The software is very stable so we haven't used their support much.
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Microsoft
The first time I tried to onboard my macOS endpoints to MDE I struggled for quite a bit. I had to reach out to Microsoft's MDE support team. The tech was very helpful in walking me through the steps during a screen share session
Read full review
Sophos
Most of the support reps are fantastic. There have been a few though that have had to be escalated via Account Manager when they haven't followed up but this is a rare instance, and often followed up by the Support Manager for APAC.
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Implementation Rating
Malwarebytes
I first implemented this more than 10 years ago, when it required an in-site setup with SQL Server (or SQL Express), and even that was pretty easy. With the move to centralized web management some treats ago, it’s become even easier to deploy
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Microsoft
Deployment was handled by our team here and everything went pretty smoothly. We did have a few hiccups in our test group, but that only took a bit to get ironed out.
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Sophos
Best thing was the help pushing out via group policy and was able to get instructions for that on sophos site
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Alternatives Considered
Malwarebytes
It's no contest. Cisco AMP, Umbrella and Endpoint use vast amounts of resources and provide little protection when compared with Malwarebytes. One client recently replaced Cisco with MWB and found over 7,300 vulnerabilities on 352 endpoints, including 120 listed as Critical and 7,180 listed as High, with CVE's dating back to 2008.
Read full review
Microsoft
Previously, we've used Sophos. We've used, way back when, McAfee, Norton, Symantec, all those. And we finally settled on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We're a Microsoft technology stack shop. So obviously it was natural. It's built into Windows, so we're not adding additional agents. Some of the other vendors and their agents, for a while, would compete with CPU usage. And so it actually slowed down the machines. Because Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is built into the Windows product, Microsoft is going to ensure that it does not affect the other productivity tools that a user may use.
Read full review
Sophos
Webroot Endpoint Protection is not even in the same league as Sophos Intercept-X. I have tested and compared both sides by side, run simulations and it's not even close. Plus the Sophos central management is so much better. Easier to view user activities and apply policies and remediate threats. Sophos is the clear winner between these two products.
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Scalability
Malwarebytes
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easily scaled from small orgs to giant enterprises.
Read full review
Sophos
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Malwarebytes
  • The ease of remediation has saved our IT team a number of hours manually installing, for example, the free version of Malwarebytes to remove infections, and then cleaning the machine up. Being able to centrally send commands to clean the device is much more efficient.
  • The centralised management has also alerted us to infections on machines that we might not otherwise have known about, as the existing AV had not detected them, saving us potential data loss, or system damage.
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Microsoft
  • Reduced incidents of security breaches lead to lower remediation costs and avoid potential financial losses and reputational damage.
  • Reduces the need for additional third-party security solutions and training, thereby lowering overall security management costs.
  • Increased efficiency and productivity of IT staff lead to better allocation of resources and cost savings.
  • Reduces the risk of fines and sanctions associated with non-compliance, ensuring business continuity and protecting revenue.
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Sophos
  • Once our technical and commercial areas got certified, the ROI over the time spent, is great. Actual customers, and/or new ones with other tools, feel safe and advised, once they get in touch with us.
  • When Sophos EndPoint is being compared against Web Management Tools (competitors), we have failed to deliver, nevertheless, there is a version of Sophos Central (Cloud) which achieves this requirement at 100% and more, since is Cloud Based (on AWS).
  • We are grateful to be on Sophos "Radar" as a Platinum Partner, and "The Americas" valued partner, we have seen our business grow, thanks to this kind of technology, throughout the years.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Screenshots

Screenshot of blocked activitiesScreenshot of Detects & respondsScreenshot of discovers vulnerabilityScreenshot of Eliminates blind spotsScreenshot of Risk management

Sophos Intercept X Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of