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Barracuda Email Protection vs Proofpoint Email Protection comparison

 

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

Barracuda Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
12th
Ranking in Office 365 Protection
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (2nd), Security Incident Response (9th)
Proofpoint Email Protection
Ranking in Email Security
2nd
Ranking in Office 365 Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Digital Risk Protection (3rd), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Barracuda Email Protection is 3.7%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Email Protection is 8.1%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Proofpoint Email Protection8.1%
Barracuda Email Protection3.7%
Other88.2%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Sherif Fouad - PeerSpot reviewer
Group ICT Manager at a mining and metals company with 501-1,000 employees
Have raised concerns about scanning engines and automation while continuing to rely on layered protection strategies
Incident response is something that requires more development from Barracuda's side. Regarding room for improvement for Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response, for the product, developing or improving the scanning engine is important, but it's a bit tricky. I know that they are working on it heavily. The difference between Barracuda and Sophos is Sophos focused heavily on cybersecurity while Barracuda tried to increase their product portfolio. Sometimes, in some cases, this might end up with their teams being unfocused or a bit thin and stretched and super busy. However, there is room for improvement. The product is great. The teams that are supporting are great. But there is always room for improvement. Even if you have a product that you would give a rating of 10 out of 10, there is always room for improvement. The day we stop improving is the day we die. Regarding the scanning engine, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response has a very good feature where you can create automated flows for how to handle specific emails that are detected as incidents. This needs a bit of an improvement. That's the only component of Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response that I believe requires improvement.
Steve Bradbury - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Exelixis Inc
Email defenses have blocked advanced threats and provide deep visibility into risky users
The areas that have room for improvement in Proofpoint Email Protection include their cost of ownership, which is fairly high. To manage and run all their products, I have to list and manage administrators in seven or eight different places. That is too many places to keep track of since for this tool I have to go to one location, and for another tool I have to go to a different location. They need to simplify the administration management of administrators and consolidate that into one place for all their products. Access to all the different products is very scattered. For some products I go to one URL, and for different products I go to a different URL. They have a threat URL that has most of their products in it, but not all. They need to simplify the interface to show all the products I have access to in one location.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most helpful aspect for me is the out-of-the-box configuration, which is fairly good."
"The solution is straightforward to set up."
"Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features."
"The product is easy to deploy and maintain."
"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage."
"I'm quite satisfied with the graphical user interface for Barracuda products."
"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 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 most valuable feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is the dashboards and their visibility, easy configuration, and artificial intelligence. Additionally, the reports are very important and helpful."
"URL scanning and online relay service are the most valuable features of Proofpoint Email Protection."
"Its main defense is to stop malicious emails from coming through. There is a sandbox environment where you can open malicious or suspicious emails to make sure that they're not malicious, instead of taking the risk of having your employees do it. This is definitely something that everybody needs nowadays, especially with the rise in cyber attacks."
"It was easy to set up."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has provided top shelf email protection services and has prevented breaches and loss of data."
"Proofpoint Email Protection has positively impacted my organization by advancing our email security posture."
"Proofpoint provides an expandable project model, including DLP, email archiving, and encryption, which makes it a complete email security solution."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is the best solution from the perspective of email security."
 

Cons

"The product must enable bulk user management."
"There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment."
"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."
"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."
"Two to three months back, we got fraudulent emails in which someone in the organization was being blamed."
"Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver."
"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing."
"I would like to see better integration with other products."
"Sometimes it doesn't detect actual spam emails, and sometimes it catches normal emails."
"You only receive one model in Proofpoint Email Protection and the other ones you have to purchase at a high price. There should be more available with the solution and additional models should be less expensive."
"The solution could be improved with the addition of PLP and email encryption features."
"The support team was a bit slow."
"I want Security Awareness Training in there as a package deal. A lot of companies are starting to value email security a little bit more and take it a little bit more seriously, and the great product that we link together with a lot of these sales is a training product called Security Awareness Training. It is an upsell that we do with Proofpoint, and it is definitely something that I recommend everybody with email security to look into. It would be great if Security Awareness Training is included with the email security."
"The email DLP portion could be a bit easier."
"The setup requires expertise. It needs someone with experience on managing it, and I would rate the implementation as needing someone experienced."
"The accessibility of Proofpoint Email Protection, particularly access to product trials, could be improved. It's hard to get a trial for Proofpoint Email Protection, and many customers prefer not just to do the POC or demo but try the product out."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Barracuda licensing model is good."
"Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
"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."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is moderate, where it is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"They are competitively priced, but I have been forced to get quotes for other solutions now because they haven't been responding to requests to do the work that we would like them to do."
"The end customer is buying our solution, which can be for monthly or annual usage depending on our payment and business model."
"The solution charges per user per month to use it. There are not any additional fees in addition to the standard living fees."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"It is multiple times more expensive, which made it very much less attractive."
"The licensing model for Proofpoint Email Protection is simple. It's based on the number of users. Price-wise, Proofpoint Email Protection is a five out of ten because it's a pretty expensive solution."
"Proofpoint is fairly expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

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 tool.
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 a list price possibly around $40 per user, their market price allows customers t...
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 default included in certain settings. For instance, for email quarantine, I can't se...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Email Protection?
In terms of pricing, it is okay compared to others. I would say it is normal. Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Email Protection?
I have not seen specific outcomes or metrics since implementing Proofpoint Email Protection, such as a reduction in phishing incidents or improved response time. Proofpoint Email Protection can imp...
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Essentials, Barracuda Forensics and Incident Response
Proofpoint Enterprise Protection, Proofpoint Digital Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
Blocket, University of Waterloo, Lincoln Memorial University, WellSpan Health, U-Haul, Carestream Health, Westinghouse
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Proofpoint Email Protection and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.