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Abnormal Security vs Avanan comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Abnormal Security
Ranking in Email Security
12th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (6th)
Avanan
Ranking in Email Security
23rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (41st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Abnormal Security is 3.2%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Avanan is 1.8%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Abnormal Security3.2%
Avanan1.8%
Other95.0%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

ChrisBrown5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology Technical Services at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automated threat detection that protects against corruption with minimal intervention
Abnormal Security is valuable because it features an automated scoring tool that doesn't require much intervention from our team. It enhances threat detection capabilities by making the process automated and is easy to scale to our entire environment. Additionally, it protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security.
Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Information Technology at Makeready
Enhances email security and has a very simple and easy-to-use UI
Spam protection is the most valuable feature. We have implemented the tool to enhance our email security. It helps prevent phishing attacks. The anomaly detection capabilities are baked into the security platform. The product integrates wonderfully with Microsoft 365. It's built right on a cloud platform and works almost natively. The solution has a very simple and easy-to-use UI. The tool appears extremely powerful and has a good solid feature set. It catches things that are bad for my environment. The user interface is good the way it is. If the solution continues down that path, I see no problems with the way it is going. It feels like a mature product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"Abnormal Security's AI capabilities are what we like most, as they can categorize and classify the emails, and based on the context of the email, understand if it's a graymail, a bulk mail, or a phish."
"I like Abnormal's threat protection with auto-remediation, but I also love its abuse mailbox feature, which automatically responds to the end user. That feature has a super-valuable security component and helps improve the user experience."
"I would recommend Abnormal Security."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"It protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"Easy to use for non-technical users."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness; when scanning incoming emails for threats it can, in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"It can detect corrupted files and filters out documents with viruses."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its Anti-Malware solution for Office 365, and box.com."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"Avanan is just outstanding on how efficient and effective their learning modules are to pick up on these different pieces."
"Now, we aren't worried about any email threats as Avanan catches everything."
"Avanan has been an everlasting security solution for our email and messaging applications."
 

Cons

"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"For Abnormal Security as a product, I would say probably somewhere around a seven, as there are some other areas where they can improve to achieve a higher rating."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails."
"Since it periodically identifies ordinary emailers as spam or dubious, they may need some AI logic improvement."
"In Avanan, the email channel is one of the channels where data leakage happens, and they need to consider it from a DLP perspective."
"Being cloud first and because we are in the movie business, we use a lot of Macintoshes. So, there is absolutely no reason for us to have Active Directory whatsoever. However, if you are using Office 365, you must have Active Directory in order to reset passwords. Even though we have a single sign-on provider, we must have Azure Active Directory for Office 365, which is really stupid. As a cloud application, you would think that I don't need Active Directory, which I don't need for anything else except Office 365. We have one server inside that space to help us manage Active Directory just for Office 365. This is a very sore point, but it is what it is."
"Familiarization with performance for new teams may take a long time."
"There are some things that they can't remediate. The honest thing is nobody can right now because of the nature of how some of the secure email platforms work."
"The cost is higher for SMEs, however, the pricing and billing criteria can be lessened to accommodate more willing customers."
"Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Overall, we'd certainly prefer lower pricing, but Abnormal Security doesn't seem unreasonable compared to similar offerings in the market."
"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"Abnormal Security, on the other hand, provides the same level of functionality for just over $60,000 – that's half the price!"
"The license is based on the user count, so the number of users that have an email address in the organization."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"Having the flexibility and modeling to do the pricing that best fits the needs of the organization is incredibly ideal. That is what Avanan does. They know exactly how many users are using it, etc. We can tune the invoicing associated with how we are using the product so we can charge it back to the shows appropriately."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Abnormal Security?
I find the pricing to be favorable, but I did not disclose the exact cost.
What needs improvement with Abnormal Security?
Ease of use is important, and Abnormal Security's responsiveness and ability to deliver solutions when issues arise are crucial. However, there is always room for improvement, as achieving a perfec...
What is your primary use case for Abnormal Security?
The main use case for Abnormal Security is as a spam filter and for mail hygiene. This use case is for the finance industry.
Ask a question
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. Avanan and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,338 professionals have used our research since 2012.