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Abnormal Security vs Barracuda Email Protection comparison

 

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
3rd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Office 365 Protection (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Abnormal Security is 7.5%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

ChrisBrown5 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
LeeMiles - PeerSpot reviewer
Very good threat protection, spam filtering, and cloud backups
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't set up a global setting. Users must go through an induction session where I guide them in configuring quarantine alerts rather than having default settings based on group membership. This seems like an oversight since they already use Active Directory details. They should assign policies based on group membership, which configures these settings by default.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"What I like about Abnormal Security is that it notifies me if any of my partners or suppliers are experiencing a security breach by analyzing their database and identifying potential cyber threats."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"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."
"I would recommend Abnormal Security."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Essentials are it's a trusted name and is rated very high on review sites. It blocks high percentages of spam and junk email and it's in the cloud. They have hardware appliances, but this is in the cloud. The solution is very effective at blocking malware and blocking spam and this is what we are looking for. There's not a whole lot of complexity, you want a solution that is very good at blocking out all of the unwanted emails."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."
 

Cons

"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"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."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"The license is based on the user count, so the number of users that have an email address in the organization."
"Abnormal Security, on the other hand, provides the same level of functionality for just over $60,000 – that's half the price!"
"Overall, we'd certainly prefer lower pricing, but Abnormal Security doesn't seem unreasonable compared to similar offerings in the market."
"The product is expensive."
"We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Abnormal Security?
The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360.
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?
There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available.
What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy and maintain. It doesn't require a specialized resource to manage this tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
Their list price is too high, but in India, the selling price is affordable at around $10 per user per year. Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers t...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Considering it integrates with Azure, I would like to be able to effectively set up policies where people are by default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't se...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Barracuda Essentials
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. Barracuda Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.