Everyone talks price per endpoint per month. That's fantasy math. You pay for the whole stack, and they get you on the "add-ons" and the year-two price hike.
We just finished a three-year cycle. Here are the actual, all-in costs for ~500 endpoints, averaged per endpoint per month over 36 months. This includes professional services for deployment, required support tiers, and the inevitable "you need this module for real protection" upsells.
* Vendor A (Legacy, big name): Started at $8/endpoint. Year 3 bill was effectively $14.50. **3-year avg: $12.30**
* Vendor B (Next-gen darling): Base product was competitive. Their cloud logging and MDR add-ons doubled it. **3-year avg: $11.80**
* Vendor C (Consolidated platform): Cheapest to start. Then you need their other agents. Licensing became a full-time job. **3-year avg: $10.90**
* Vendor D (Leaner, newer): Most straightforward. Fewer bells, but it worked. Smallest price jump at renewal. **3-year avg: $9.40**
The takeaway? The initial quote is meaningless. The real cost is in the contractual creep and the operational tax of managing their ecosystem. D gave us the least grief, but you trade off some advanced hunting. B's product was good, but I felt nickel-and-dimed for every feature that should be standard.
CRM is a necessary evil