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Barracuda Email Protection vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
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Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Fortinet FortiMail
Ranking in Email Security
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.9%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.6%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 7.2%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 lacks proactivity in assisting us with preparing for potential threats before they occur. While they employ a substantial amount of threat intelligence to preemptively prevent incidents, their effectiveness diminishes when it comes to delivering proactive threat intelligence alerts from Microsoft. Their focus primarily revolves around managing the internal environment. On the other hand, my other vendor, Check Point, along with my membership in MS-ISAC, supplements me with this type of information. The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement. It is adequate, but it doesn't match the quality of Proofpoint or Mimecast. However, it comes close in effectiveness. Plus, if we're obtaining it for free, investing in the other products seems impractical.
Alex Clerici - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient and easier to manage than other products, especially Microsoft products
Regarding Barracuda Email Protection specifically, I'm quite satisfied. I think there's room for improvement in their other products, especially their cloud firewall protection and ZTNA offerings. Moreover, prices could be more granular, especially for the small business area. Typically, in Italy, the majority of our customers are small businesses. It would be better if the prices could be adjusted for small businesses.
Andras Solt - PeerSpot reviewer
Reasonable pricing and good spam filtering but does not offer robust gatekeeping
It's mainly suited for mid-size companies, not for bigger companies like us. We are more than 1,000 people. In fact, we're over 2000 users, so that's why we investigated some other products, and Clearswift, for example. We likely won't increase usage. We're looking at GFI in a year or so.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"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 email protection is excellent, especially in terms of anti-phishing policies."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"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."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"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."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is its fully detailed dashboard."
"Technical support is great. They are able to look at their patches and offer quick responses. We even have an account manager in the Middle East. They are very good."
"This solution is good for small and medium enterprise companies."
"It actually filters the compromised emails when on a network layer itself."
"The important feature is the application control, which makes administration much easier. It also has an intrusion prevention feature. There's also the wireless functionality, which works well with Huawei devices."
"The antiphishing capabilities are very good."
 

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."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"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."
"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 a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"The customer service and support could be improved if the support were available directly in Europe. Currently, the support is often managed from India, so we sometimes need to wait due to the time zone difference. It would be quicker and better if the support were provided by European staff."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"Barracuda Email Protection needs better reporting and more robust integration with security awareness training platforms and third-party solutions."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"Improving the upgrade process, making it more user-friendly, and simplifying the management of hardware components could enhance the overall user experience and appeal of Fortinet's email security solution."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"The only drawback to this solution is that the firmware is frequently updated, and each update results in downtime."
"Fortinet FortiMail's technical support team has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"Fortinet FortiMail's pricing could be improved."
"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."
"Online support sometimes takes up to a week to get back to you."
"The sandboxing features are not well done in Fortinet FortiMail, making it an area of improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"The product is 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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"The pricing is on the higher side."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
"9,000 Euro per annum for Fortinet Mail and sandbox."
"The product's licensing part depends on the number of mailboxes and the hard disk needed by customers. The cost of the license depends on the number of mailboxes and the number of emails."
"It is a fairly priced product, considering what it does. The product offers good value for the money users spend on it."
"Price-wise, the solution is not far from Microsoft ATP. So, it is affordable."
"Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
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?
The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detec...
What do you like most about Barracuda Email Protection?
I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Email Protection?
We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume. We would h...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Email Protection?
Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?
Barracuda is less expensive compared to FortiMail. FortiMail is mid-range, and Cisco is priced higher.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?
There are multiple areas for improvement, such as user visibility, which is less compared to Cisco's secure appliance...
 

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: October 2024.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.