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Barracuda Email Protection vs Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) 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
16
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (3rd), Office 365 Protection (4th)
Microsoft Exchange Online P...
Ranking in Email Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (11th)
 

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 Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is 8.5%, down from 12.2% 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.
Offers valuable alert features
In my experience, everyone is using Azure or solutions from Microsoft. Word, Excel, and Outlook are present for a majority of companies. There is very little on the Google platform for email. The solution's discussion is more about budget and whether you are going to choose the on-premises or the cloud version. Microsoft is huge and a top-three vendor that really only competes with AWS and maybe Oracle. Certain features like scalability really are not relevant because the company's reputation is more than enough. Age in the market and investments in security are more important. You can rest assured that Microsoft has a particular team dedicated to each feature or issue. They are always improving and always delivering. Certain features of the solution will be valuable based on your role. For example, I am part of the security team so threat management is interesting to me. An an engineer or email team might be more interested in policies, configuration, or the administrative exchange. Nothing is perfect but the solution is very good. When you don't have opponents, it is easier to achieve a good rating. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

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 feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"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."
"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’s easy to handle integrations, and we don't need a lot of people in our IT team."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"The product's scalability is good."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"The solution's most valuable feature is impersonation detection."
"We check the reports sometimes to see that frequent attacks and malicious emails are being blocked by the solution."
"The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365."
"The archiving and search features are very good."
"The most valuable features are security and ease of use."
"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."
"In general, my company is happy with Microsoft support...My company hasn't faced any stability issues with the solution."
"It has a really nice web-based administration console."
"The threat management feature includes policies and alerts that are valuable."
"It is easy to configure, easy to use, easy to add exclusions, easy to track, and easy to add anything else if you want."
"The product protects against malware."
"It's definitely scalable."
"It is scalable."
"The solution's stability is very, very good. I didn't face any problems in the last year."
 

Cons

"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."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"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."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"The product must enable bulk user management."
"The solution's graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved visually."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"The biggest issue that I experience is that Microsoft keeps moving things around, and it's very inconsistent as to where you find the information when you're trying to work on different pieces."
"The price of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection could be reduced to make it more competitive."
"Not all settings can be configured automatically and most still require manual configuration. However, there is an automation tool available that can be used to input all the configurations either as a script or a tool it would be helpful."
"We would like the solution to have more in-built intelligence in the way that it reviews potential security risks, rather than our team constantly having to update the policies."
"Our company faces difficulty with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) because it's too big, clunky, and difficult for a small client to implement quickly and easily."
"The security compliance features need to be improved. Sometimes, a client's mailbox becomes full because of retained information and not because of mail. I would like to see improvement in block rules as well."
"The tool's classification for bulk email is cumbersome."
"Online Protection has an issue in that it doesn't provide an option to stop impersonation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."
"The product is very expensive."
"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."
"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"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."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"The price is similar to that of Microsoft 365."
"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"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."
"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."
"We didn't have to pay a lot for the solution because we got it from a good vendor with a good user volume."
"Microsoft Exchange Online Protection's pricing is a little bit more because its price has recently increased."
"The solution is expensive but is backed by Microsoft's reputation."
"Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is a good solution at an affordable price. It is a good investment."
"The product is expensive."
"Apart from the license fee for the solution, there are no additional costs."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable."
"The product's pricing is competitive for the US market."
"It's a high price."
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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%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 do you like most about Microsoft Exchange Online Protection?
The initial setup was easy. The configuration process is very straightforward.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection?
The product's end-of-life cycle could be extended. When it gets upgraded, we should receive some incentives. For exam...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Exchange Online Protection?
The main use case is to block suspicious links in emails. However, some functionalities like SIPP attachment are not ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Barracuda Essentials
Microsoft EOP, MS Exchange Online Protection
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.