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Barracuda Email Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

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

Featured Reviews

Alex Clerici - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 3, 2024
Efficient and easier to manage than other products, especially Microsoft products
We use Barracuda primarily as an email gateway. It also integrates with the Microsoft 365 platform. It provides anti-spam protection and all the various anti-spam aspects of email management. We generally use it with products other than Microsoft, so we're very happy to have Barracuda available…
Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 8, 2023
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"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."
"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."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
 

Cons

"The product must enable bulk user management."
"The policies are set up in Barracuda by default; we don't have any control over them."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"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."
"The technology works on a supervised engine, but it would be better if it ran on an unsupervised engine."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"Configuring the default strategies and policies in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps generates a lot of noise and false positives."
"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 phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"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."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"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."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 have got the product at a high price from some other vendor. We also checked with...
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 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 various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the indi...
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 detection capabilities. We also need alerting features for abnormal actions like unus...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials
MS Defender for Office 365
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.