Said It Here

Does switching from SentinelOne to Huntress and Defender lower security?

Switching from SentinelOne with a Managed SOC to Huntress paired with free Microsoft Defender leaves a gap in advanced endpoint protection features that Defender Free does not provide natively. Without paying for higher M365 tiers or adding third-party tools like ESET, IT providers risk losing critical security capabilities and going backward in overall protection.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    staying with existing SentinelOne and SOCaaS setup
  2. 2
    upgrading all clients to M365 Business Premium
  3. 3
    Staying with the current vendor (ESET)
  4. 4
    Evaluating a split stack combining Huntress and Microsoft Defender
  5. 5
    Using third-party tools to cover missing endpoint controls

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/msp2 people · September 2026

Not all our clients are on M365 Biz Premium. Without Defender for Endpoint, are we losing a lot compared to S1+SOCaaS using just the free Defender? I don't want to go backwards in security.source ↗

wowitsdave · r/msp · 15 upvotes

We're trying to determine which path makes the most sense long term.source ↗

For those running Huntress + Microsoft Defender, what are you doing for the endpoint protection features that Defender Free doesn't provide, or that products like ESET handle natively?source ↗

Local-Morning · r/msp · 3 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised