Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Abnormal Security vs TitanHQ SpamTitan comparison

Sponsored
 

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

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Abnormal Security
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
TitanHQ SpamTitan
Ranking in Email Security
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (17th), Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.1%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Abnormal Security is 7.4%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TitanHQ SpamTitan is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
William Schellhaas - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides comprehensive email security management, effective in detecting a wide range of email threats
The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails. This means Abnormal Security would assess emails before they reach my inbox, even if it happens slightly after Microsoft's initial scan. Currently, the process isn't seamless. Microsoft analyzes emails and delivers legitimate ones to my inbox. Abnormal Security then scans these delivered emails, and if flagged as malicious, they disappear. This creates a problem for our ticketing system mailbox, which is a third-party service. Emails sent to the ticketing system address are automatically forwarded by Microsoft. However, if these emails are malicious, Abnormal Security only cleans them from my Outlook mailbox after they've been forwarded. Since we primarily rely on the ticketing system and not the Outlook mailbox, these malicious emails still reach the ticketing system.
George Kajaia - PeerSpot reviewer
Work hours are not lost searching through spam emails to determine which emails are legitimate
In history on the reporting graph, when you are trying to search for sender by address, it won't search by domain. I could send an email from SendGrid with my domain, but with SpamTitan, if you search by that domain then it wouldn't search it. It only searches from the field, not in the envelope field. Unfortunately, mass mailing companies, like SendGrid, send email with the form address and that completely differs from the domain envelope form address. There is no way to search for the envelope form. So, I gave them an idea to improve this filtering. For example, if I have to search an email sent by SendGrid, then I am forced to search by the recipient, then find the emails marked as spam. This is quite a huge hassle. They told me that they are aware of this and will try to add it, but they haven't added it yet. I would like to implement a secondary delivery pool for mass mailings, having an alternate pool for mass mailing lists since there is only a single mail queue with SpamTitan. For example, if 10,000 emails are being sent, then the queue will be large. Unfortunately, without a secondary delivery pool, legitimate emails will wait in the queue to be delivered to my email. Therefore, I would like to have two queues: one for everyday emails and another for mass mailings. Now, I have to decide whether to buy a second SpamTitan license just for this reason because I am very satisfied with the functionality of SpamTitan overall and don't want to use another sender's appliance for this. From 2020 to 2021, there was a huge switch in the types of spam coming in. SpamTitan's anti-spam should be enabled to catch this spam. The spam catching rate went down over the last three to four years. I think this is because spammers are evolving and using different methods to send spam emails. The phishing rate of SpamTitan is not great, even Exchange Online Protection catches phishing better than SpamTitan. The most worrying are the phishing emails. I would like SpamTitan to upgrade and improve the phishing catch rate. The sandbox of the Bitdefender engine is not working correctly. They sent me an email that they pulled it because it was not working as it was intended to work. So, they are working on this as well, and maybe the sandbox will be fixed. The sandbox is for viruses. If something goes through then it is sent to the sandbox for analysis. However, I am not using the sandbox right now. I am just quarantining this type of attachment right away.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the individuals within our organization who are affected."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"The product's scalability is good."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"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."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"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."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"It protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security."
"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 have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"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 most valuable features is that it's very straightforward. It's a really simple interface. With our previous products, you could spend a week, if not more, training on those products just to figure out the interface. With SpamTitan it took an hour or two or three, tops."
"The granularity of the setup is most valuable. It has all the features we need from global settings to per-user settings. We are pretty happy with it."
"The solution works really well. For a small nonprofit like us who don't have a large server footprint and rely heavily on cloud services, this is great for all our emails and the mobile workforce that we have. This is a great way to manage the traffic, hopefully keep our people from getting the phishing emails and stuff like that, helping to mitigate the risks."
"Within a week of implementing SpamTitan, it blocked a ransomware event."
"I like the notifications SpamTitan sends. Other products require the user to log into the system to see if something was blocked. SpamTitan sends users an email showing them any potential spam that was blocked and they can click on it to release it. It's much easier for the end-user."
"SpamTitan is perfectly suited for managed service providers. It's easy to use and sell. It's also straightforward to configure and monitor. In my opinion, software developers at TitanHQ did an excellent job with SpamTitan."
"SpamTitan has made it easier to manage spam. When other solutions I've used quarantined something, an admin had to manually find and release it. With SpamTitan, the end-user can monitor it themselves and release their own quarantined items. It's faster and less work."
"We have had no cases of malware slipping through since we have had SpamTitan."
 

Cons

"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"The visibility into threats is not up to the mark, as I do not have control. I rate my experience with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as six out of ten due to troubleshooting and pricing concerns."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"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."
"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"Abnormal should add more automatic reports. I have an open request to our account team for more notification and report types that can be sent automatically. For example, they have an awesome report that gets sent weekly, and I also want them monthly, so I don't need to do so much adding up when my director wants numbers over time."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"We have submitted requests for a feature which would be a total control panel… Our previous spam filter had that and it saved us from having to log in to the panel online, search for an email, pull it up, and figure out where it came from originally and why it got the spam score it did. That would be a huge improvement and time-saver because then we wouldn't have to be in the webpage for that."
"The stability of SpamTitan is equivalent to other email security solutions that I have previously used. Some of them have more bells and whistles that you can add. For example, inside the email subject line, you can put in the words encrypt secret, or secure. Then, it will automatically secure that email and send an email to the person who is supposed to receive it. They can identify it for themselves in a series of different Q&A questions. That is sometimes a deciding factor for clients."
"Sometimes, things can get caught back in spam that you had previously released. Without going in, releasing the whole domain, and opening it up, since you don't want to do that often because the company can get infected as well, I have a couple of things that I previously released show back up again. I don't understand why this is happening, but I would like to know why it happened, e.g., did an algorithm change? It is important to know if I released an email last week why it was caught in spam the following week."
"We would like to improve the number of quarantine reports received per day. At the moment, only one is received within 24 hours. So, there are a number of complaints that we get from customers who want to improve the reporting of the quarantined emails since they only get one copy per day. This means they may not receive other emails that have been received after they get the report. So, we would like SpamTitan to improve on the frequency of the quarantine report."
"If they had a little more documentation explaining how to use regex, or if they could include that inside of the cloud interface so that it generates regex code based on the parameters you input, that would be a lot more useful for people who aren't familiar with coding languages and HTML."
"When in the control panel, the context menu that appears when you right-click on an email should present options for adding the sender to the whitelist or blocking them."
"The interface is a little dated aesthetically. I know that's a small thing, but it could use a little bit of a facelift."
"SpamTitan doesn't allow you to customize the frequency of reports. Sometimes our users complain that they cannot control how often SpamTitan's report comes. Users get a daily report, but some would prefer a notification every time an email is quarantined."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"The product is expensive."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"Overall, we'd certainly prefer lower pricing, but Abnormal Security doesn't seem unreasonable compared to similar offerings in the market."
"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!"
"This pricing is absolutely fine and it's never been an issue of it being too expensive."
"For the service, the pricing is reasonable."
"We are on a per-user or per-mailbox monthly subscription. We are happy with the price of the solution. When comparing it to other solutions it is much cheaper."
"The pricing was much more competitive than other solutions, so I was like, "Okay, let's give it a try.""
"The product's cost is average."
"Compared to the market, its price is fair."
"Its pricing is good. We've been happy with the pricing. I know that they did some extensive research, and the pricing was quite favorable with everything else that they looked at. My budget hasn't changed a whole lot over the last three to five years. It's nice to see that it has remained pretty steady. So, I am happy with the pricing. It provides good value for money."
"The price is quite advantageous; we were initially surprised at the pricing compared to other solutions, which made us doubt if this was the solution for us. Then, we discovered SpamTitan's features and how cost-effective it is. The sales team does an excellent job making our life easier in terms of pricing, which is another significant advantage of this product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 ( /products/office-365-reviews ) suite, making it slightly more expensive ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process. There are many conditions to be ...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TitanHQ SpamTitan?
Pricing is affordable. We renewed for three years, and the cost is reasonable.
What needs improvement with TitanHQ SpamTitan?
The GUI is problematic. It's a mess and absolute rubbish now. We also face issues with the settings that are not yet ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
De Montfort University, Scope Services, Park County School District, NRC, Quality Smith, Toyota, CarTrawler, Videotron
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. TitanHQ SpamTitan and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.