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

Barracuda Email Protection vs Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration 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)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Check Point Harmony Email &...
Ranking in Email Security
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (5th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (11th)
 

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 Barracuda Email Protection is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is 4.8%, up from 3.1% 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.
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.
Rahul Kamble. - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers complete detection and simple management and is a user-friendly solution
It's very effective as a solution to prevent mobile app threats. It has a mobile MDX, mobile detection, and response session. As a comprehensive solution, Check Point offers a very granular and best-in-class experience. Compared to competitors like Fortinet, Trend Micro, Palo Alto, and Cisco, Check Point provides a superior solution according to both the MITRE and Gartner frameworks. For example, in a recent attack simulation, Check Point only allowed ten malicious emails through, while Fortinet allowed 1500 and Cisco allowed 1800. Check Point's email attack ratio is nearly 0.10%, while others range from 1% to 3%. This demonstrates Check Point's superior email filtering capabilities. Check Point's email cleaning ratio is 99.9%, significantly higher than the 98%, 95%, or 93% of its competitors. Moreover, Check Point Harmony Email incorporates AI technology within its security features. Harmony Email & Collaboration (HEC) provides full protection and addresses zero-day files. It's the best solution available, as others don't offer protection against zero-day attacks and rely on signature-based solutions. HEC is truly the best option.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 facilitates efficient management and updates through the cloud. We do not have to worry about incompatibilities. It just works."
"The email protection is excellent, especially in terms of anti-phishing policies."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"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’s easy to handle integrations, and we don't need a lot of people in our IT team."
"Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"The initial setup was easy."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"I would rate the solution nine out of ten."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It protects cloud email and collaboration suites from cyber-attacks that evade default and advanced security tools. Its invisible, multi-layer security enables full-suite protection for cloud collaboration solutions such as Office 365, G-Suite, Teams, and Slack."
"The product offers good and easy integration capabilities with other products."
"This DLP is very useful, as it gives our users additional protection."
"The setup is very easy. I haven't faced any complexity with the setup of the solution."
"It's very easy to use, and the onboarding process is straightforward."
"The fact that we can share documents without emailing them and still be confident they will go through the corresponding scrutiny is great."
"Its analysis or emulation in the review of each file using the cloud and Check Point helps make each interaction via email more secure."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"The changes to customer service, specifically the new model for support agreements, are not favorable."
"One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"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."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"We still get some false positives. There are times when legitimate stuff gets flagged and it could be that somebody is expecting a very important email but they don't end up getting it. On the flip side, when we alert Check Point about stuff like this, it is corrected, so they are improving. That's a plus."
"It would be good to have the option to export the respective record data from dashboards or logs to .csv or other files."
"Stability has been a pain point. I was going back and forth with my product engineer and project manager for a couple of months. I had the product in a demonstration mode and wasn't satisfied with the results initially. After a few alterations and a few revisions later, it is fine."
"There is too much functionality, which makes it difficult to use. More guidance for users would be helpful."
"Although it has good characteristics, it should improve the graphical interface and the latency that it sometimes presents."
"Maybe Check Point can work on the DLP part."
"There is always room for improvement and growth."
"The left-hand feature can be made more granular for the implementation of the policy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"The product is expensive."
"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 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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"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."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"Cost is the main concern that every customer takes into consideration, and Check Point always negotiates a price that is affordable."
"The difference between [Check Point and its competitors] boiled down to money. Price-wise, Check Point was very good, it was very competitive."
"The pricing is expensive."
"The cost is similar to other competitors. It's not much higher."
"I rate the product's pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"Being able to keep the phishing campaigns out of my company has been ROI for me."
"I'm in this business as a system integrator, so I need to suggest Check Point to some customers who are comparing products. I sell Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto solutions. In terms of licensing, this solution is quite competitive but very costly. For someone looking at security as a primary concern, they should only invest in Check Point. For a customer who is looking at security combined with pricing, Check Point might not be the core solution for them. In today's market, customers are looking for effective security with efficient pricing, and Check Point is not suitable for these types of customers."
"Usually, we pay for the licensing part on a yearly basis and not on a monthly basis. If Check Point's team is providing a good amount of discount, then it is very easy for us to select it since its competitors are also giving the best prices or best discounts."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
844,944 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
17%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

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 Barracuda Email Protection?
Barracuda Email Protection is easy to deploy and maintain. It doesn't require a specialized resource to manage this t...
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 ...
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 defa...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Harmony Email & Office?
We are using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to protect our organization from phishing attacks. For exa...
What do you like most about Check Point Harmony Email & Office?
The product offers good and easy integration capabilities with other products.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Barracuda Essentials
Check Point CloudGuard, Check Point CloudGuard SaaS , Check Point Harmony Email & Office
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Helvetia, Denham Capital, Daymark Solutions, Neopharm Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.