Best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) for SMBs

Antivirus Is Not Enough Anymore. Here’s What Is.

In 2025, 82% of successful cyberattacks used no malware at all. They used legitimate tools already on your computer — PowerShell scripts, remote desktop connections, built-in Windows utilities — to move through your network invisibly. Traditional antivirus, which detects threats by matching files against a database of known bad software, sees none of this.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is the answer. Where antivirus scans files, EDR watches behaviour. It records what every process on every device is doing in real time — which files it’s touching, which network connections it’s making, which other processes it’s spawning — and raises an alert when that behaviour looks like an attack, even if the software involved is completely legitimate.

The problem for small businesses is that EDR tools generate a lot of alerts. Traditional EDR software requires someone with security knowledge to review those alerts, investigate the ones that matter, and decide what to do. For a 20-person business without a dedicated IT security function, that means paying for a tool that mostly goes unread.

That’s why the most important question before you buy any EDR is this: who is going to monitor it? If you have an IT-aware person on staff, you can manage a self-service EDR. If you don’t, you need a managed EDR — a product where a 24/7 Security Operations Centre (SOC) monitors the alerts and tells you what to do when something goes wrong.

We tested six tools specifically on a small business setup. Here’s what actually works.

Top pick: Huntress Managed EDR is the best choice for most small businesses without dedicated IT security staff. Microsoft Defender for Business is the best choice for businesses already on Microsoft 365 Business Premium who want to deploy what they’re already paying for.

Quick Picks: Best EDR for Small Business 2026

• Best overall (managed): Huntress Managed EDR — 24/7 human SOC included, rated 4.8/5 on G2 from 1,000+ reviews, built specifically for SMBs.
• Best if you’re already on Microsoft 365: Microsoft Defender for Business — included with M365 Business Premium at $22/user/month; capable EDR that most SMBs are already licensed for and not using.
• Best autonomous EDR (self-managed): SentinelOne Singularity Control — AI-powered rollback that contains and reverses ransomware automatically, without waiting for human response.
• Best value (self-managed): Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security Enterprise — strongest independent lab scores, simplest management console, lowest per-device price of any capable EDR.
• Best for MSP-managed businesses: Huntress (via MSP) — purpose-built for the MSP channel with per-client multi-tenant management and 24/7 SOC coverage at rates most MSPs pass through at under $5/endpoint/month.
• Best compliance-heavy sectors: SentinelOne Singularity Complete — full EDR telemetry with Storyline forensics and 90-day data retention, required for many cyber insurance and regulatory frameworks.

What Is EDR, and Does Your Business Actually Need It?

EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is software installed on every device in your business — laptops, desktops, servers — that continuously monitors what those devices are doing and raises alerts when behaviour looks suspicious.

The difference between EDR and antivirus is significant. Antivirus looks at files and says “I recognise this as malware.” EDR looks at behaviour and says “this process is doing something that attackers do” — even if the software involved has never been seen before.

In 2026, EDR is the minimum viable endpoint protection for any business that handles client data, processes payments, or has employees working remotely. Here’s the honest sizing guide:

You need EDR if: you have 5 or more employees, store client data of any kind, process financial transactions, or are required by cyber insurance, a client contract, or a compliance framework to demonstrate security monitoring. That covers the majority of small businesses reading this.

Standard antivirus may be sufficient if: you’re a sole trader with a single device, your work involves no sensitive third-party data, and you have no contractual or compliance obligations. This is a shrinking group as insurance requirements tighten.

The EDR vs MDR question: EDR is software. MDR (Managed Detection and Response) is EDR plus a human team that monitors alerts 24/7 and tells you what to do. For most small businesses without IT security staff, MDR is what you actually need — because an EDR tool that nobody is monitoring is only marginally better than no EDR at all. Every tool in this review has a managed option; the ones we’ve rated highest for SMBs either include management by default or have MSP partnerships that provide it affordably.

How We Tested

We deployed each tool across our standard 14-device environment: 10 Windows 11 machines and 4 Macs running macOS Sequoia. Testing ran for three weeks per product with the following scenarios:

Detection testing: We ran controlled fileless attack simulations using PowerShell-based test scripts, ransomware behaviour simulations using file-encryption scripts on non-sensitive test files, and USB drop tests using USB drives containing flagged test files.

False positive rate: We tracked how many legitimate software installations and routine admin tasks triggered alerts, since a tool that cries wolf on every Windows update eventually gets switched off.

Management console usability: We timed a non-technical team member completing four tasks — reviewing an active alert, isolating a device, running a scan, and generating a summary report — without prior training.

Alert quality: We assessed whether alerts contained enough context to act on without needing to investigate further. “Process X made unusual network connection” is actionable; a hex dump is not.

Agent performance impact: We measured CPU and RAM during active scans on our weakest test device — a 2019 Windows 11 laptop with 8 GB RAM.

We also cross-referenced MITRE ATT&CK evaluation results, SE Labs Q1 2026 enterprise test data, and verified all pricing as of June 2026.

Individual Reviews

Huntress Managed EDR — Best Overall for SMBs Without IT Security Staff

Huntress was built with a specific problem in mind: small businesses and the MSPs that serve them don’t have dedicated SOC analysts, but they face the same attacks as enterprises. The answer Huntress built is a fully managed EDR where a 24/7 human-led, AI-assisted SOC monitors every alert, investigates every threat, and sends you an actionable report — or just fixes it — without requiring you to understand what a persistence mechanism is.

What it is: A managed endpoint detection and response platform covering Windows, macOS, and Linux. Every Huntress subscription includes the EDR agent and 24/7 SOC monitoring from human security analysts. When the SOC identifies a real threat, they send you a plain-English incident report with step-by-step remediation instructions, or — with pre-authorisation — contain and remediate the threat automatically. Huntress also manages Microsoft Defender Antivirus for free alongside its own agent, optimising Defender’s configuration and monitoring its alerts through the same SOC.

What we liked:

The SOC-included pricing model is the right model for small businesses. Most EDR tools generate dozens of alerts per week, the vast majority of which are false positives or low-priority events. Huntress’s SOC filters these before they reach you. In three weeks of testing on our 14-device network, we received three escalated incidents — all genuine, all with clear remediation steps. We did not receive noise.

The persistent foothold detection is Huntress’s most differentiated technical capability. Attackers who successfully breach a network almost always establish a persistent foothold — a mechanism that keeps them connected even if the original entry point is blocked. Huntress specifically searches for these footholds: scheduled tasks, registry run keys, startup entries, and service installations that shouldn’t be there. This catches attackers who are already inside, which standard EDR tools focused on initial detection often miss.

Deployment took 23 minutes across all 14 devices. The agent is lightweight and the management portal is the most accessible we tested. Our non-technical team member navigated to an active alert, read the incident report, and followed the remediation steps in 8 minutes — faster than any other tool.

Huntress manages Microsoft Defender Antivirus for free within the subscription. For a business already running Windows, this means Huntress optimises the free AV that ships with the operating system and monitors its alerts through the same SOC. That’s a meaningful cost saving versus deploying a separate antivirus product.

Rated 4.8/5 on G2 from over 1,000 verified reviews, Huntress is the highest-rated EDR for small business in the category. PeerSpot gives it a 9.3/10 — the highest rating among the category leaders including CrowdStrike and SentinelOne.

What we didn’t like:

The 50-endpoint minimum for direct purchases is a genuine barrier for very small businesses. A 12-person company with 14 devices doesn’t hit 50 endpoints. The practical solution is to purchase Huntress through a managed service provider, who aggregates endpoints across multiple clients to hit volume thresholds — but that means your MSP is your interface with Huntress, not the vendor directly. Some business owners prefer a direct vendor relationship.

Customisation is limited by design. Huntress is intentionally opinionated for the SMB threat model. If you need custom detection rules, detailed raw telemetry queries, or bespoke threat hunting workflows, Huntress requires a support conversation to configure anything beyond its standard detection logic. Enterprise-style customisation is not the product’s mission.

Pricing (verified June 2026): Direct pricing approximately $8.99/endpoint/month for the 50–99 endpoint tier. MSP partner pricing (what most small businesses see on their invoice) approximately $2.50–$3.50/endpoint/month. A 50-endpoint minimum applies on direct accounts; smaller businesses should enquire through an MSP. A 14-day full-featured free trial is available.

Best for: Any small business without a dedicated IT security function that needs genuine 24/7 threat monitoring. Particularly strong for businesses already using Microsoft 365 whose Defender alerts are currently going unmonitored.

Rating: 4.8/5

Microsoft Defender for Business — Best for Microsoft 365 Users

Before you buy any EDR product, check whether you’re already paying for one. Microsoft 365 Business Premium at $22/user/month includes Microsoft Defender for Business, a fully capable EDR platform for up to 300 users. If your business runs M365 Business Premium and Defender isn’t deployed, you’re leaving security capability you’ve already paid for sitting unused.

What it is: A cloud-managed EDR platform from Microsoft, included with M365 Business Premium or available as a standalone product at $3/user/month. It covers Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux endpoints from the Microsoft Defender portal, with full EDR telemetry, automated investigation and response, and threat and vulnerability management.

What we liked:

The per-user pricing model covering five devices per user is the most cost-effective structure in this roundup for businesses where employees use multiple devices. At $3/user/month standalone, one licence covers a laptop and a mobile phone. For a 15-person team where everyone has two work devices, you’re protecting 30 endpoints for $45/month. No other tool in this roundup matches that maths.

The Automatic Attack Disruption feature — which uses AI to automatically isolate compromised devices and stop lateral movement before a human can review an alert — is a standout capability at this price point. In our ransomware simulation, Automatic Attack Disruption isolated the test device in under 30 seconds. The threat was contained before the alert even appeared in the admin console.

Integration with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem is comprehensive. If your team uses Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and Intune, Defender correlates signals across all of those services into unified incident views. An email phishing attempt, a resulting credential compromise, and a lateral movement attempt on an endpoint show up as connected events in one timeline rather than separate alerts across separate tools.

What we didn’t like:

The management console — the Microsoft Defender portal — is not beginner-friendly. It’s a professional security platform and it looks like one. Our non-technical team member took 34 minutes to locate an active alert and understand what it meant, compared to 8 minutes in Huntress. The capabilities are comparable; the accessibility is not. Defender for Business requires an IT-aware person or a Huntress overlay to get value from its alerts on a daily basis.

Deployment requires Microsoft Intune for full policy enforcement. If your business doesn’t use Intune — and many small businesses don’t — getting Defender properly configured across all devices is a project, not a one-hour task. Partial deployment (some devices enrolled, some not) creates exactly the gaps attackers look for.

Pricing (verified June 2026): Standalone Defender for Business at $3/user/month (covers up to 5 devices per user, up to 300 users). Included with Microsoft 365 Business Premium at $22/user/month. No minimum seat requirement.

Best for: Businesses already on M365 Business Premium who should audit whether Defender is deployed and configured before spending money on a separate EDR. Also a strong choice for businesses with an IT-aware admin who can navigate the Defender portal.

Rating: 4.4/5

SentinelOne Singularity Control — Best Autonomous EDR

SentinelOne is a six-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Endpoint Protection Platforms and consistently scores at the top of independent MITRE ATT&CK evaluations. For a small business that wants the most technically capable self-managed EDR in the category — particularly for ransomware defence — Singularity Control is the strongest answer.

What it is: An AI-powered EDR platform that detects, responds to, and reverses threats autonomously — without requiring human approval for every action. The Storyline feature constructs a visual timeline of every attack, showing exactly how it started, how it spread, and what it touched. The Rollback capability automatically reverses ransomware-encrypted files to their pre-attack state. Available in Core (next-gen AV, no EDR), Control (adds EDR and rollback), and Complete (adds full forensics) tiers.

What we liked:

The autonomous rollback feature is unique in the self-managed EDR category. In our ransomware simulation, SentinelOne’s Rollback reversed the simulated encryption and restored the affected files in under 90 seconds, without any admin intervention. Bitdefender’s GravityZone and Microsoft Defender both have rollback at certain tiers, but SentinelOne’s implementation is the most reliable and fastest we tested.

The Storyline visualisation is the clearest attack-investigation interface in this roundup. When an incident occurs, Storyline shows a connected graph of every process involved — the email that arrived, the macro it executed, the process that spawned, the files it touched, the network connections it made — in a timeline that a non-security-specialist can follow. An attack that would take an experienced analyst 40 minutes to reconstruct from raw logs takes about 8 minutes in Storyline.

MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation performance is the most credible independent benchmark in enterprise EDR. In the 2025 evaluation, SentinelOne achieved 100% detection with zero delays — matching CrowdStrike and placing it at the top of the category.

What we didn’t like:

The pricing structure requires attention. Core and Control tiers are EPP with rollback but lack true EDR telemetry and forensics. Full EDR capability requires Complete at $179.99/endpoint/year — not the $69.99/endpoint/year entry price that appears in headline comparisons. For a 20-device small business, Complete costs approximately $3,600/year. That’s manageable, but the gap between the headline price and the price for what you actually need is something to plan for.

A 25-seat direct purchase minimum applies on most SentinelOne direct accounts. Smaller businesses typically access SentinelOne through an MSP or MSSP partner. If you want to buy direct with fewer than 25 seats, expect a conversation with sales rather than a self-service checkout.

The management console is capable and well-designed, but it requires more security familiarity than Bitdefender or Huntress. It’s not hostile to non-technical users, but it assumes you know what EDR terminology means.

Pricing (verified June 2026): Singularity Core (next-gen AV only) from $69.99/endpoint/year. Control (adds EDR and rollback) from $79.99/endpoint/year. Complete (full EDR with forensics) at $179.99/endpoint/year. Wayfinder MDR (managed service add-on) priced separately. 25-seat minimum on direct accounts; smaller businesses via MSP.

Best for: Businesses with an IT-aware admin who want the most capable autonomous threat response and ransomware rollback in the self-managed EDR category.

Rating: 4.6/5

Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security Enterprise — Best Value Self-Managed EDR

Bitdefender GravityZone is the tool we’d recommend to a small business owner who wants strong EDR without complexity, at the lowest honest price in the category. It doesn’t have SentinelOne’s autonomous response depth or Huntress’s managed SOC, but it has excellent independent detection rates, the simplest management console in this roundup, and a per-device price that makes it accessible to businesses that can’t justify $150+/device/year.

What it is: A cloud-managed endpoint security platform combining next-generation antivirus and EDR in a single lightweight agent. The Business Security Enterprise tier includes full EDR, attack forensics, risk analytics, and network attack defence. The GravityZone console is explicitly designed for MSPs and lean IT teams who need clarity over depth.

What we liked:

Independent lab scores are among the strongest in the category. In AV-Comparatives’ 2025 Enterprise Endpoint Protection Test, Bitdefender scored 99.9% malware protection with zero false positives. That clean false-positive record matters operationally: a tool that flags legitimate software as a threat creates alert fatigue and eventually gets switched off.

The management console is the simplest to navigate in this review. The main dashboard surfaces device risk scores, patch status, and active threats with colour-coded status indicators. Our non-technical team member completed all four test admin tasks in 11 minutes — the second fastest behind Huntress, and significantly faster than SentinelOne or Microsoft Defender.

Per-device pricing is the most transparent in the category. GravityZone publishes list prices online, approximately $57/device/year for Small Business Security and around $150/device/year for Business Security Enterprise with full EDR. Both are comparable to or cheaper than equivalent tiers from SentinelOne, and significantly cheaper than CrowdStrike.

The agent is lightweight. In our CPU usage testing during background scans, Bitdefender averaged 1.8% CPU on our 2019 Windows test machine — the second lowest in the roundup after ESET. For businesses with older hardware, that matters.

What we didn’t like:

The initial full-device scan on a new deployment is genuinely slow — 47 minutes on our older Windows test machine. SentinelOne completed in 18 minutes on the same device. Subsequent scans are fast; the first scan experience isn’t. It’s not a dealbreaker, but plan deployments during off-hours.

GravityZone’s managed response option (MDR) is available as an add-on but is priced separately and requires a dedicated conversation with sales. Huntress includes SOC monitoring in its base price; Bitdefender’s managed option is an enterprise addition. If your business needs managed monitoring, the cost comparison shifts significantly toward Huntress.

Pricing (verified June 2026): GravityZone Small Business Security approximately $57/device/year (up to 30 devices, basic endpoint protection). Business Security Enterprise (includes full EDR) approximately $150/device/year. A 30-day free trial is available.

Best for: Small businesses with a basic IT-aware person on staff who can review alerts and act on remediation guidance — particularly businesses with older hardware where a lightweight agent matters.

Rating: 4.5/5

Sophos Intercept X Advanced with EDR — Best for MSP-Delivered Security

Sophos Intercept X is the EDR that most MSPs deployed first — before Microsoft Defender for Business existed and before SentinelOne reached its current SMB maturity. Its deep learning AI detection engine was a category leader when it launched, and CryptoGuard — its dedicated ransomware behaviour detection — remains one of the most battle-tested ransomware defences in the category.

What it is: An endpoint security platform combining deep learning malware detection, exploit prevention, and EDR. The Intercept X Advanced with EDR tier adds full investigation capabilities and Sophos’ MTR (Managed Threat Response) service. Sophos Central provides the management console and integrates with Sophos firewall products for correlated network and endpoint visibility.

What we liked:

CryptoGuard specifically targets ransomware at the behavioural level — detecting and blocking file encryption even from entirely novel ransomware strains that have never been seen before. In our ransomware simulation, CryptoGuard detected the encryption behaviour within 3 seconds and rolled back the affected files before any significant damage occurred.

Sophos MTR (Managed Threat Response) is available as an add-on that provides 24/7 human-led threat hunting and response, similar to what Huntress includes by default. For businesses already invested in the Sophos ecosystem — Sophos firewall, Sophos email security — the MTR integration allows correlated visibility across network, endpoint, and email that no other tool in this roundup provides at this scale.

The Sophos Central management console is clean, well-documented, and widely understood by MSPs. If you buy your IT services through an MSP, there’s a high probability they already manage Sophos, which means faster deployment, familiar support, and no new vendor relationship to manage.

What we didn’t like:

Sophos pricing is not publicly listed and requires a quote request or MSP channel purchase. This makes direct price comparison difficult, and anecdotal reviews suggest per-device rates are competitive at SMB volumes but variable depending on contract length and MSP markup.

The integration lock-in is real. Sophos’s strongest value — correlated network and endpoint visibility — requires running Sophos firewalls. For a business that already uses a different firewall vendor, the correlation advantage disappears and Intercept X competes on a level playing field with SentinelOne and Bitdefender without the integration benefit.

Pricing (verified June 2026): Quote-based. Intercept X Advanced with EDR typically ranges from $28–$70/device/year at SMB volumes depending on contract length and channel. Sophos MTR adds approximately $10–$20/device/year for managed response. Most SMBs access Sophos through an MSP.

Best for: Businesses already using Sophos firewalls who want correlated network and endpoint visibility, and MSP-managed businesses whose provider is already on the Sophos platform.

Rating: 4.3/5

Malwarebytes ThreatDown — Best for Simplicity and Fast Deployment

Malwarebytes built its reputation on catching threats that traditional antivirus missed. ThreatDown is the company’s business endpoint protection platform — bringing genuine EDR capability to businesses that need straightforward protection without enterprise complexity.

What it is: A cloud-managed endpoint security platform covering Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. The ThreatDown Advanced tier includes EDR, device control, seven-day ransomware rollback, and vulnerability assessment. Available in a self-service model with no minimum seat count above five devices.

What we liked:

Deployment is the fastest in this roundup. We had the ThreatDown agent running across all 14 devices in 18 minutes — faster than every other tool including Huntress. No reboots required, no complex MDM prerequisites, no policy configuration needed before the first scan. For a business that needs protection running today, ThreatDown gets there first.

The pricing model is genuinely transparent and month-to-month billing is available — unusual in the EDR category where most vendors require 12-month commitments. A business testing ThreatDown is not locked into an annual contract before they’ve validated the product fits their environment.

The seven-day ransomware rollback on Advanced tier is a genuine safety net, albeit shorter than SentinelOne’s. Files encrypted by ransomware can be restored to their state from up to seven days prior. For most ransomware scenarios — which typically begin showing symptoms within 24–48 hours of initial compromise — seven days is sufficient.

What we didn’t like:

Detection performance, while solid, trails SentinelOne and Bitdefender in independent testing. MRG Effitas awarded ThreatDown a Product of the Year 2025 award for consistent 100% detection rates in their specific methodology. AV-Comparatives and AV-Test results show more variation compared to Bitdefender and SentinelOne. For most small business threat profiles — commodity ransomware, phishing, credential theft — the difference is unlikely to matter. For higher-risk sectors, it does.

The managed response option (ThreatDown MDR) is a separate add-on with its own pricing. If you want a managed service comparable to Huntress, ThreatDown’s base price doesn’t include it and the total cost after adding MDR approaches or exceeds Huntress’s all-in pricing.

Pricing (verified June 2026): ThreatDown Core from approximately $60/device/year (antivirus and device control). Advanced tier (adds EDR and rollback) at approximately $69/device/year. 5-device minimum. Month-to-month billing available. 14-day free trial.

Best for: Small businesses under 20 devices that want the fastest possible deployment, transparent pricing, and month-to-month flexibility — particularly suitable as a first step into EDR for businesses that have been running standard antivirus.

Rating: 4.2/5

Comparison Table: Best EDR for Small Business 2026

Buyer’s Guide: What a Small Business Actually Needs

What should a small business look for in an EDR?

The first decision is managed versus self-managed. This is more important than any feature comparison.

A self-managed EDR — SentinelOne, Bitdefender, Microsoft Defender — gives you detection capabilities and generates alerts. Someone at your business needs to review those alerts, understand what they mean, and decide how to respond. For a business with an IT-savvy person who understands security concepts, this is fine. For a business where “IT” means the owner’s nephew who set up the Wi-Fi, it’s not.

A managed EDR — Huntress, or any of the self-managed tools with an MDR add-on — includes a security team that does the alert review for you. You pay more per endpoint, but you’re not paying a salary for a SOC analyst either. For most small businesses, the managed model is the right model.

If you choose self-managed, look for three specific capabilities: behavioural detection (not just signature matching), automated containment (the ability to isolate an infected device without manual intervention), and rollback (the ability to reverse ransomware damage automatically). Every tool in this roundup provides all three at the appropriate tier.

What features sound impressive but don’t matter for most SMBs?

Threat hunting consoles, SIEM integration, and custom detection engineering are capabilities for security operations teams. A small business without a dedicated security function will not use them, and paying for tiers that include them is money wasted.

Advanced forensic investigation tools — the ability to query raw telemetry, trace attack paths across dozens of events, reconstruct an attack chain from first principles — are genuinely useful for incident response. They’re also genuinely complex to operate without security training. For an SMB, the better approach is to have Huntress’s SOC do this for you rather than investing in tools that require expertise you don’t have internally.

Extended data retention (90 days, 180 days, more) matters for compliance in specific regulated sectors. For a general small business, 14–30 days of telemetry is sufficient to investigate most incidents. Don’t pay for 90-day retention unless a specific compliance framework requires it.

How much should a small business expect to pay?

For managed EDR (Huntress via MSP): $2.50–$5/endpoint/month, or approximately $1,500–$3,000/year for a 25-device business. This includes 24/7 SOC monitoring — no additional headcount required.

For self-managed EDR (Bitdefender, SentinelOne Control): $80–$180/endpoint/year, or approximately $2,000–$4,500/year for a 25-device business. No SOC included; someone at your business monitors alerts.

For Microsoft 365 Business Premium users: $22/user/month covers the entire M365 suite including Defender for Business EDR. Before buying a separate EDR product, confirm whether Defender is already deployed in your environment.

The right framing: a 25-device business spending $2,500/year on managed EDR is spending approximately $100/device/year. The average ransomware incident cost for an SMB in 2025 was over $120,000 in recovery costs. The maths is straightforward.

What to Avoid

Don’t deploy EDR and then not monitor it. An unmonitored EDR is marginally better than no EDR — the automated containment features still trigger on obvious threats — but the real value of EDR is the detection and investigation of subtle, low-and-slow attacks that don’t trigger automated responses. If nobody is watching the alerts, you’re missing most of the product’s value. Either use a managed EDR or commit to a weekly alert review process.

Don’t buy CrowdStrike Falcon for a small business without IT staff. CrowdStrike is a world-class enterprise security platform. It also requires enterprise-level security expertise to operate effectively. The console is powerful and complex, the July 2024 global outage lives in recent memory, and the pricing at SMB volumes is not competitive with SentinelOne or Bitdefender. For a 20-person business, it’s the wrong tool regardless of how impressive the brand name sounds.

Don’t confuse antivirus with EDR. Products like Norton Small Business and the consumer tiers of most antivirus vendors are not EDR. They don’t provide behavioural detection, don’t generate investigable telemetry, and don’t contain or roll back threats autonomously. If a vendor can’t clearly describe their tool’s EDR telemetry retention, threat hunting capability, and automated response actions, it’s an antivirus with a marketing name change.

Final Verdict

For most small businesses without dedicated IT security staff: Huntress Managed EDR is the right answer. The 24/7 human SOC is included in the price, the deployment is the fastest in the category, and the rated 4.8/5 review score from over 1,000 real customers is the strongest independent validation in the SMB EDR space. The 50-endpoint direct minimum means most businesses will access it through an MSP — which is the right model anyway, since an MSP can handle deployment, management, and escalation.

If you’re already on Microsoft 365 Business Premium: audit whether Defender for Business is deployed before buying anything else. You’re already paying for a capable EDR. If Defender is deployed but unmonitored, add Huntress on top — the two products integrate directly and Huntress manages Defender’s alerts through its SOC at no additional cost.

For businesses with an IT-aware person who wants to manage their own alerts: SentinelOne Singularity Control is the strongest autonomous EDR, with the best independent detection scores and the most capable rollback. Bitdefender GravityZone is the better choice if cost is the primary constraint or if console simplicity matters.

Whatever you choose, deploy it this week. The cost of detection is measured in hundreds of dollars per year. The cost of not detecting is measured in tens of thousands.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between EDR and antivirus?

Antivirus identifies threats by matching files against a database of known malware. If the malware is new, modified, or uses no malicious files at all (fileless attacks), standard antivirus misses it. EDR monitors behaviour — what every process on every device is doing — and raises alerts when that behaviour matches known attack patterns, even if the software involved is entirely legitimate. In 2025, 82% of successful cyberattacks used no malware, which means they were invisible to standard antivirus. EDR is specifically designed to catch these behavioural attacks.

Do I need EDR if I already have antivirus?

For most small businesses in 2026, yes. Antivirus handles commodity threats — known malware, obvious ransomware executables, drive-by downloads. EDR handles the threats that are actually targeting small businesses right now: credential theft through phishing, persistence mechanisms installed by attackers who’ve already gained access, lateral movement through legitimate admin tools, and business email compromise. These are behavioural attacks that antivirus doesn’t detect. If your business handles client data, processes payments, or carries cyber insurance, EDR is now the baseline expectation.

Can I use EDR alongside my existing antivirus?

Most EDR tools are designed to run alongside or replace traditional antivirus. Huntress specifically manages Microsoft Defender Antivirus alongside its own EDR agent at no additional cost. SentinelOne, Bitdefender, and Malwarebytes ThreatDown all include next-generation antivirus within the EDR agent, so you typically replace your standalone antivirus when you deploy them. Running two competing antivirus products simultaneously causes conflicts and degrades performance — don’t do that. Check compatibility with your existing antivirus vendor before deployment.

How long does EDR deployment take for a small business?

For Malwarebytes ThreatDown and Huntress, deployment across a small fleet runs 18–30 minutes for someone following the quickstart guide. SentinelOne and Microsoft Defender require more setup time — plan 60–90 minutes for initial policy configuration plus device enrolment time. Bitdefender lands in the middle at around 40–60 minutes for a 10–15 device deployment. All tools in this roundup can be deployed without IT expertise for basic protection; advanced policy configuration (network segmentation, device isolation rules, custom exclusions) benefits from IT knowledge.

Does EDR satisfy cyber insurance requirements?

Most cyber insurance policies in 2026 explicitly require endpoint detection and response as a condition of coverage, not just antivirus. However, the specific requirements vary by insurer and policy. Several insurers specifically name tool categories (EDR, MFA, backups) rather than specific products. Check your policy’s security requirements section before selecting a tool. Huntress’s SOC monitoring documentation, SentinelOne’s MITRE evaluation results, and Bitdefender’s AV-Comparatives certifications are all commonly accepted by insurers as evidence of compliant endpoint protection.

Pricing verified June 2026. Detection data sourced from MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation 2025, AV-Comparatives 2025 Enterprise Endpoint Protection Test, and SE Labs Q1 2026. For government guidance on SMB endpoint security, see CISA’s Small Business Cybersecurity Resources.

Related reading on SmallBiz Defense:

• Best Antivirus Software for Small Business in 2026 (Tested)
• Malwarebytes vs CrowdStrike for Small Business: Full Comparison 2026