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Avanan vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Avanan
Ranking in Email Security
15th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (11th)
Perception Point Advanced E...
Ranking in Email Security
16th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.4%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Avanan is 4.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perception Point Advanced Email Security is 2.2%, up from 1.5% 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.
Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Jijin Joseph - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives in-depth analysis reports to end users for any malicious content found in emails
Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I send malicious email to my colleague. There is a dependency on AWS cloud.This means if the cloud service is down, which may impact the perception point's email delivery.So it would be great if there is any HA for the solution. I would like a user-friendly configuration, like APIs. This solution is API-friendly configuration by following the steps provided. It would be great if it could be automate it, like the Avanan.Also, it would be good if Perception Point Advanced Email Security could have an MSP model. During the early stages of working with this solution, there were some constraints and issues.

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."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"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."
"The product's scalability is good."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"It can detect corrupted files and filters out documents with viruses."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"This technology is one of Check Point's acquisitions, and it is currently a powerful tool that provides all the protection that is not found in other tools."
"The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."
"Spam protection is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its Anti-Malware solution for Office 365, and box.com."
"Email inspection has saved many employees from spam attacks and viruses from unauthorized sources."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness. When scanning incoming emails for threats it can in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"The solution’s effectiveness when it comes to detection is very good. It has a very good mechanism. It scans our emails. It identifies any threat or phishing attempts and phishing campaigns as well as any bad reputation, servers, or links, then it blocks them. This is what I find to be very good about this system."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to identify malicious content and phishing emails and reduce the workload we have to do in terms of security."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the ones that are related to finding impersonation attacks and detecting attempts to steal credentials. In scenarios where attackers get you to follow URLs to a malicious site that looks similar to a good site, and then ask for the user credentials to try to steal them, it is very useful."
"I see from time to time that Perception Point is being proactive. They approach us, and say, "Can you check this, and this?" So, it does seem that they are an extension of my incident response."
"One is the hardware-assisted platform that provides more insight into the threat scenarios. And the other is their instant response team's availability, 24/7, for identifying and responding to incidents. These are the two main things that everyone likes."
"We can use it to perform detection and analysis of emails. For any malicious content found in emails, it gives in-depth analysis reports to end users. If you log into the console, you can see in-depth detection and how it happens."
"It has modules to detect malware and that is a strong point. It has a very nice way of showing you, directly in the product, a lot of details about certain pieces of malware. It goes very deep and even shows you the assembly code. It also does detonations on files and shows you the results in different operating systems. That is very useful."
"The most valuable feature is the hardware-assisted platform module."
 

Cons

"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"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."
"We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."
"There are times when we have false positives."
"They should come up with a mobile application so that it can be more flexible."
"Sometimes it seemed like the allow list wasn't working. I've created many allow list rules however, they still seem to be blocked; the same is true with the blocked list rules."
"Familiarization with performance for new teams may take a long time."
"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."
"It is very difficult to find the required documentation."
"The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails."
"The customer service team could come up with clear tutorials on how to use this platform to help new teams."
"The only thing that can be improved in Perception Point is the in-depth analysis and attribution to cyberattack groups."
"There is room for improvement in terms of adding the DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solution, which would be a good option for Perception Point to look into."
"Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I am sending a colleague that malicious content."
"In terms of architecture, and I know that they're going to improve this, the solution needs to be much more redundant. There was an outage a month ago in AWS, and that basically stopped the service for two or three hours. Although in two years, this was the first time that something like that happened, our expectation from a company like Perception Point is that it should work with either a multi-cloud or multi-region architecture, to improve the resilience."
"I think the interface could be improved in the next release."
"There is still room for improvement with BEC. There is more work to be done by Perception Point on machine learning and neuro language as well. BEC is very difficult if you don't have a computer language looking into the content of the email and trying to make a determination through that. With BEC you often don't have an attachment or a URL."
"To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could access the portal and see their emails or events. They could also refresh the names."
"They just don't do a good job of promoting themselves. They seem like a typical busy IT company who is just working on fixing problems and making technology better. However, they are not fantastic at marketing themselves to existing partners, which is not a bad thing. It is just something for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"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."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"The pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
"When compared to other solutions on the market, it is relatively fair."
"If a user only wants protection for email, then the price of the product is okay, but if they opt for the collaboration options offered by the product, then it becomes a little expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are very fair compared to competing companies in the same field."
"The pricing is not cheap, but I can see the value. In security, if you are trying to save by giving up quality, that's a very bad decision."
"We would always like it to be cheaper and save more money. However, we are getting the value from it."
"The price of this solution was within our budget and I think that it will suit most SMBs."
"We were able to get reasonable pricing that matches the ROI we want, so I think that it is the correct price point."
"In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
48%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s bac...
What do you like most about Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
The most valuable feature is the technical support services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expen...
What needs improvement with Perception Point Advanced Email Security?
To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could ac...
 

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.
Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Avanan vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.