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Barracuda Email Protection vs Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Security Incident Response (6th), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Fortra's Clearswift Secure ...
Ranking in Email Security
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 2.8%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Email Protection2.8%
Cloudflare One1.6%
Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway1.2%
Other94.4%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Xavie Simons - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Procter & Gamble
Improved email security has reduced spam, simplified encrypted mail, and strengthened user trust
The best features Barracuda Email Protection offers include good spam filtering and very good sandboxing of all links, as well as good encryption. It also has integrated logging for user management of their own spam. It has better filtering technology, so few are false positives as well, with excellent anti-spam engines and logging. It is extremely easy to install, configure, and set up, and there is excellent message tracking for folks that say they have not received an email they were expecting. Integrated logging and user management make my daily work easier because it is very easy to log in and to manage this tool, hence making it a very good tool for email protection. It also has excellent, easy-to-add designated users as site administrators, and it is competitively priced. It has a user-friendly portal, strong cloud-based features, and no additional maintenance cost, along with responsive support. Barracuda Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by handling encryption better than any other tool I have used before, which has increased our email protection significantly. Our security has also increased from forty percent to sixty-five percent, especially when dealing with all the threats that come through emails. It has been a great tool because we can handle email delays and delays on file scanning. When our partners are happy, we are very happy, and it has helped us have less time chasing bad emails. The fast implementation of encrypted mail keeps employees working with less interruption since they are happy, satisfied, and secure.
PC
Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Stable, but malware needs improvement and customer support is poor
They need to improve the malware in the product. I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support. The support is poor, the supplier takes a lot of time and it's expensive. We have some issues here when I contact the supplier, it takes a lot of time for them to get back to us but there's no solution. I am now looking at Symantec as a possible alternative.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"It is a stable solution."
"The simplicity of the solution is its valuable features as almost no effort was needed to learn the configurations. It is also one of the cheapest firewalls available in this category."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"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 best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft."
"The beauty of Barracuda Email Protection is that it is easy to manage and simple to deploy."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"Go for it! I think it's an excellent product with great technical support."
"Ability to create your own content-filtering policies with relative ease."
"We use a few features for web proxy, and another feature is the email content filter and malware for our internal policy in the email content."
"A stable solution."
 

Cons

"Feedback could be enhanced."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"Customers chose a different product after experiencing a problem when they upgraded the firmware, which caused the system to restart multiple times during working hours."
"Regarding the threat protection feature in Barracuda Email Protection, it does not help to manage threats or sophisticated threats."
"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."
"Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"Regarding the price, I find it pretty expensive. It is not even reasonable; it is pretty expensive because we are dealing with the South African market and our currency is not as powerful as the dollar."
"Malware needs improvement."
"I am not satisfied with Clearswift because of the lack of customer support."
"FTP server and TRUST Manager functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"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."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The product is expensive."
"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 price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
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?
I would say the price for Barracuda Email Protection is very nice; the solution is not expensive.
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...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.