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Barracuda Email Protection vs Fortinet FortiMail 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

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)
Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Fortinet FortiMail is 5.1%, down from 5.8% 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.
Nigus Machin Amare - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers advanced protection from email-based attacks and consistently blocks spam
The most valuable features are Fortinet FortiMail ( /products/fortinet-fortimail-reviews )'s ability to protect from advanced features of email-based attacks, including protection against ransomware and malware attacks. It is especially effective in blocking spam through standards like wrong source IP for email-based attacks. Its high scalability and stability, especially for financial institutions, are noteworthy.

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's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications."
"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."
"The product's scalability is good."
"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."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"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 product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"The solution can scale."
"The product helps users handle security challenges as it offers prefiltering options and does relatively good incident reporting."
"It can block a lot of fake emails."
"This solution is good for small and medium enterprise companies."
"It actually filters the compromised emails when on a network layer itself."
"Technical support is great. They're available 24/7 and their response time is typically within the hour."
"FortiMail is extremely flexible and very easy to learn. Compared to other email security products that we've tried, it is mainly the ease of configuration that makes FortiMail valuable to us."
"The GUI isn't hard to use. When we do a demo and explain the features of Fortinet products to our customers, they understand very quickly. They can easily manage their systems without us."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities."
"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 only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"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."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"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."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"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."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"The Ui isn't that intuitive."
"I think they need to look into it and improve their signatures. This will help with blocking incoming spam emails."
"In the Latin America market, some spam messages use Portuguese language. Some clearly spam messages would be better identified by the anti-spam if not for the language."
"The statistics and BI in general could be improved."
"Online support sometimes takes up to a week to get back to you."
"I don't know if it is possible, but I would like to see Artificial Intelligence and machine learning introduced."
"The biggest room for improvement would be the deployment. It will be hard for someone who doesn't understand the interface to deploy. If you understand it, you can find your way around the problems."
"The solution could improve by making the UI more user-friendly and increasing spam and threat detection capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"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."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"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."
"The product is very expensive."
"Despite a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers to easily buy the solution."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"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."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The pricing is good."
"Price-wise, the solution is not far from Microsoft ATP. So, it is affordable."
"If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
"There is a license required for this solution and it is on an annual basis. I am satisfied with the price."
"In terms of licensing, we are using a virtual machine license for the single virtual server which it runs on. Doing it this way enables us to cut costs by only licensing FortiMail for our exact use case. If you need to expand in future, you can later buy extra licenses per virtual machine."
"The fees for Fortinet FortiMail can be complicated. However, overall the pricing is fair."
"Fortinet FortiMail is a little bit expensive."
"This is a good solution and value for the money."
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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%
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
4%
 

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 experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
The pricing of Fortinet FortiMail is cheaper compared to Cisco, which was quite expensive.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
The area that could use some improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is the integration process. I would like the integrati...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Barracuda Essentials
FortiMail
 

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
Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.